Pleasure Beach

Our last full day away saw us all at the Pleasure Beach. Aunty Kate had arrived, along with Nana Pat and Grandad Terry. The day was hot, but punctuated by sudden drenching downpours of rain, that together with the crowds and noise made it a rather hot and cross atmosphere - however I wouldn't have missed the experience of my little girl's first adventure at an amusement park for the world, and having family there made it absolutely priceless.

I'm going to post a whole load of photos with very little text, but just let me say that seeing Audrey on the little rides was blissful. Well, the very few ones she liked at least. Most of them she hated and screamed her way through, and I feel like I made some bad judgements about which rides to take her on, but the ones she didn't hate were pretty special.

By the time we headed home we were sunburnt, tired, overwhelmed, heads aching and feet aching, happy.

The above ride is called the Steeple Chase, and it's one of my favourites. It's just a tame little roller coaster but you ride it STRAPPED TO A PLASTIC HORSE like it's a carousel. It's certainly no carousel. This makes it a bit different and super fun. However this time, it managed to break down while we were on it. Hilariously, only Holly and Sam's horse was affected. Oh, I cannot tell you how Kate and I loled (disclaimer: no one was hurt).

See, Holly and Kate and I have been coming to this place (and many other similar parks) for years. We are huge fans, so is our dad, and as such our shared childhood is peppered with roller coaster rides. We've developed a certain competitiveness about the thing, which is a little unfair to Hols as she has never been so into the scary roller coaster type rides, preferring instead what we would call "Holly rides" - slightly too much for my mum, who goes green on the children's train that goes 2 mile an hour round the perimeter of the park, but way behind the Big One or the Grand National. Think teacups and ghost trains.

She's getting more adventurous in her old age, but still generally approaches anything with a track higher than her own head with that attitude that this is definitely where she's going to die.

Rides where more than one "carriage" sets off at once are the very best/worst for encouraging our competitive streak, so naturally we made sure through careful queue selection that we'd be leaving at the same time and proceeded to start the fighting talk even before we'd got to the end of the line. By the time we'd actually gotten on the (TOTALLY REALISTIC AND NOT AT ALL CREEPY) plastic horses, people were staring (it's extra fun at those times to pretend you don't even know each other, you're just all REALLY, AGGRESSIVELY passionate about "winning" the fake horse race ride and that's totally normal).

It is perfectly acceptable to: loudly berate/firmly kick your horse for not going fast enough, pretend to whip it viciously as if you're going for first place in the National instead of just cruising up the first little rickety bump on the plastic horse track, stick your finger up at the losing horse as you race past them, make insulting personal comments about the other "team", and refer to them only by some variation of the word "loser" ("Oh, I like the loser horse you chose this time. Pretty." or "Hey loser, I think your horse is crying. Never mind, loser-horse, maybe the winning team will pick you next time.") and generally act like anything you say or do will affect the pre-determined outcome of the "race".

For most of the ride, Hol's horse was ahead, no matter how much Kate and I attacked it's self esteem with our barrage of smack talk. You can only imagine the glee on our faces when the thing lurched to a dead stop as we whizzed past, and STAYED THAT WAY FOR LIKE TWENTY MINUTES WHILE HOLLY HAD A QUIET NERVOUS BREAKDOWN BECAUSE THIS WAS FINALLY THE DAY WHEN SHE WOULD MEET HER INEVITABLE ROLLER COASTER BASED DEATH.

Oh my god, even thinking about it now is freaking hilarious.

On with the lovely family photos.

Hint: the Alice in Wonderland Ride is the scariest thing I've ever experienced in my life. I would suggest not ever never taking kids on this ride. Inside it is pitch darkness, lit periodically with UV, while weirdly lit weird things lurch out of the darkness at you. Wtf, Pleasure Beach. At one point a flower with a face came out of an egg. I can never un-see that. Audrey cried the whole way round and I don't blame her.

Big plastic bunnies make it all better though.

That's the end of our Pleasure Beach adventure. One more holiday post to come, to wrap up the last night away.