Graffiti: Haggerston

A small number of pieces I found around Haggerston

Film: Arrival

A trip to the cinema for a blind-choice night (no idea until we get there) saw us seeing Arrival, the new film from the director of last year's sleeper hit Sicario. This one features Amy Adams as an interpreter and Hawkeye as a scientist who are recruited by the government to try to communicate with one of 12 lozenge-shaped alien spaceships that have landed around the planet. 

The film is based around the linguistic challenge that would face us when attempting to communicate with aliens, in this case a pair of heptapods, and figuring out if they come in peace or not. A much better premise than checking if your virus software is compatible with their flight systems a la Independence Day.

The film is slow paced, like Sicario, but that's how it needed to be. The performances are strong and editing is alright although there's a noticeable jump in how fast they're translating the alien words.

Gig: Kero Kero Bonito @ Scala

Time for another gig and this time brit J-pop act Kero Kero Bonito. Two keyboard guys and a half-Brit, half-Japanese singer/rapper called Sara. I only discovered this lot after Spotify suggested their track "Lip Slap", which I liked and with a new album Benito Generation having just been released (and which I like) I thought I'd go and see them.

The support act was someone called Oscar, apparently a long-time friend of the band. He was alright but his voice was noticeably deep for the music he was singing. As a support he did his job though.

Kero Kero Bonito are unashamedly pop, and embrace it and the songs are straightforward in depth and sung in a mixture of English and Japanese with music that sounds like it has been produced on a nintendo. The song with the biggest reaction was one from their previous album and questioned how much shrimp a flamingo had to eat to turn it's pigment pink; the Otaku crowd were well into that.

The encore featured a second reworking of the track "Graduation" which is one of the stronger tracks on the new album, and we had the obligatory costume change, and being Japanese we went from pink romper suit to the graduation robes that feature on the album.

So a good night, and a fun, respectful crowd, which isn't always the case at gigs, but with no negativity in the bands material you'd be out of place if you brought it here.

Film: My Scientology Movie

A big screen viewing courtesy of the Prince Charles Cinema of Louis Theroux's new documentary and his take on the Scientology cult and the rumours that surround how its run. 

With the religious organisation / cult not wanting to appear in the documentary Louis comes from an angle of casting actors to recreate the leader David Miscavige and notable member Tom Cruise's involvement in the organisation and using information from a couple of ex senior figures to reconstruct how the organisation recruits and disciplines its members.

As he gets close to the organisation he starts to get followed and there's some great encounters with lower members filming him as a sign of intimidation, which Louis takes in his stride. The documentary does confirm that some elements of the group are bonkers (the squirreling where they openly badger former members is a highlight).

However like Hypernormalisation I'd seen the week before there's no summing up and Louis leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions, but that's his style so I wasn't disappointed. 

Film: Hypernormalisation

A bit of a weird documentary that had been released by the BBC ahead of the US elections that tries to explain the unusual events that are going on the world of politics trying to explain the Brexit decision, and the following that Donald Trump has got in the U.S.  

It starts with the beginning of the media's influence on politics and the rise of the banking sector and how they control many governments around the world. It's pitch is that by dumbing down the media we become blase to the real issues that impact us. There are some interesting theories around how Libya was played and the Governments' inability to deal with the Saudis correctly. However as it goes on some of its tone borders that of conspiracy theories and overall I wasn't fully taken in by what was being told. The ending, mashing up Brexit with the blood spilling scene in Carrie looked like they were unable to pull their theories into a single takeaway.

I can relate to the content as I no longer read the press and I hardly watch the news on TV, because you're always shown a spin or take on the story being told. I prefer to find my own news and follow independent sources and make my own mind up.

I'm not sure why the BBC of all companies were behind this, they're not as impartial as they like to make out.

Gig: Daughter @ Brixton Academy

Daughter is a band who I came across earlier in the year and I really like their sound so when they announced they were on tour I thought I'd get a ticket. Unfortunately when it came to gig night I was tired from work and wasn't really in the right frame of mind to go and see them.

There wasn't really much to see and whilst the live sound was ok, it wasn't quite like the albums. The sound levels didn't feel right with the drummer coming out over the voice of the lead singer. She was also very taken aback with the size of the crowd that had come to see the band (it was sold out) and this made her a little nervous.

The good news is that the songs I do like were all played early on in the set. I decided it was time to leave when someone completely out-of-their-mind decided they wanted to take a photo with me, and I wasn't up for that. That episode triggered my social anxiety so I left. 

Park: Phantasialand

Our second park of the weekend was Phantasialand, one of the best "theme" parks in the world, and by "theme" I mean the park has spent a lot of money on the detail of the ride rather than on a license and a minimal attempt at associating the ride to that...Pay attention Six Flags.

So the park announced a new coaster Taron, and the theming looked incredible. The ride had received mixed reviews from those that had already gotten to it since it opened a few months ago so it would be interesting to see what we thought.

It was clear that a lot of the people in this park were here to ride this too, and the queue which was kept moving by the excellent operations still took around 2 hours to get through in the morning and was just over an hour at the end of the day.

The new area in the park is called Kugelheim, a Game of Thrones type Nordic town surrounded by impressive looking basalt arrangements.

The track is pretty long at over a kilometer in length and each ride taking around a minute and 40 seconds to get around. With two launches removing the need for a lift hill, almost all of that time is spent twisting and diving on a track that runs close to buildings, tunnel walls and other parts of the track. An incredible design which shows how poor a design like Smiler really is.

As stated earlier the queue was long but kept moving and queue jumping was hardly occurring here.

We decided to have our first run on the front row, we'd queued for a long time and another 20 minutes or so didn't matter. It was the right move, as the ride in the front is incredible with near misses, air time and the launching leaving me giggling insanely...and a ride that renders me to fits of laughter is now my measure of a good ride. 

This ride was great.

The theming is incredible too and the park have done so much here just for the look. Some of the windows on the building on the left have become nests to birds. I don't know if that was intentional.

We left Klugelheim to see what else the park had for us. Chiapas was a new boat ride they installed in 2014/5. It was horrendously wet with what felt like half of the water supply residing in the bottom of our boat. Sitting in the back meant all that water came over my legs whenever we went uphill.

Deluge aside the ride is superb with my favourite bit being the raving section in the middle where the 3 people we were riding with started clapping with their hands in the air before we entered it. They had been on this before and had come back for more.

It's probably the best water ride in the world. The final drop is one of the steepest of these things.

Tal hadn't ridden Black Mamba, an inverted coaster that rides slightly better than Nemesis in my opinion. On the downside with most of it tucked away it's not an easy ride to photograph.

Talocan is the best themed Top Spin in the world.

In amongst Taron the designers managed to find some room to house a second coaster called Raik. The location is great as for the little kids who can ride this they will feel they were doing the bigger ride that surrounds it. It was down in the morning which is why we came back in the afternoon for it.

Maus au Chocolat is the park's shooting dark ride themed around mice running loose in a cake shop. It's similar to Toy Story at Disney and the more you shoot the more tired you get. In this you're shooting cream guns at the mice. A fun game, and I'm sure there are hidden secrets I've not yet figured out. The theming is so good they have a real cake shop in this building :)

Near the dark ride is a well-themed fun house which I never knew was here, so a first for us both. A sign of a good theme park is when you miss stuff...

Wurz Town is the indoor section of the park and home to the two Winja's coasters: Fear and Force. With very long queues we only chose one side and got the one with the tilt track reminding us there are closer tilt coasters in the world than the one in China and Taiwan.

Incredible theming.

We finished our day on Taron this time trying the single rider queue which we think took just as long as the hour long main queue. Something to bear in mind. This time I was near the back and whilst still an amazing ride the front-row experience topped it.

We also spent some time here taking photos of the ride to make up for not having the time to keep queueing for it. Another factor on what I think makes a good coaster is what it offers to the photographer and they've taken that on board here. Those that have read my Silver Dollar City review from the Summer will know that as great as that park is they've made it nigh on impossible to get good photos of their rides. Phantasialand made the same mistake with Black Mamba so it's great that it's not been repeated with this ride.

Some "enthusiasts" had reported disappointment with the ride. I can only say that from my experiences it's an incredible coaster and probably in my top 5. As I get older and more jaded I find I like the sensation of speed and near misses more than forces. It's not a forceful coaster, it doesn't invert but it does make me giggle - that's good enough for me. If I could make one improvement it would be to fill the second launch trench with water to make it look like a river and have some hanging signs from the building to add to the near miss during that section of the track.

and well done to one of the best themed sections in any park, and that includes Disney and Universal. Well done Phantasialand. 

We finished our day with crepes filled with too much nutella; they'd had such a successful day they'd run out of other fillings.

Park: Walibi Belgium

A mate was going to go over to the continent for a couple of parks and he very kindly opened up an invitation for me to tag along. He'd do all the driving, I'd just have to keep him awake for the long drives as the plan would go through Belgium to Cologne in Germany.

Our first park was Walibi Belgium which was having an extended run for Halloween.

This year it opened Pulsar, a new water coaster but it also had opened up a number of scare mazes, which would be pretty cool.

It was going to be a busy day, and we had to rework a plan to ride the new stuff, then do what we can before the mazes opened up in the evening.

A nice Autumnal day and it wasn't too cold and we had no skies in the cloud. 

First up, Pulsar, a new shuttle water coaster.

To help capacity the station comes with a turntable allowing the rather efficient operators to load a second car whilst the first was running the back and forth track.

The ride features a bi-directional launch system that accelerates the boat between spikes.

Rather cleverly the final drop is the only one that creates a splash.

This video shows how they've cleverly engineered this.

The drop tower still stands over the other rides and was running really well all day.

Some attempt was made at the Halloween theming.

Tal had more to ride at this park than I, which meant I could duck out of rides like this kiddy coaster.

In a previous visit I had ridden Turbine, the park's Schwarzkopf coaster. Following complaints of noise the park decided to fully enclose it, which must have been some financial undertaking but a great way to keep the coaster in the park. Being enclosed made the loop much more interesting as there was no horizon to focus on resulting on the loop feeling like it was going around more than it actually was.

Tal also needed Loop Garou, the wooden coaster. This was running well although when we were queueing to get our scare maze tickets we saw it stall on the lift hill then rather worryingly roll back through the catch mechanism for a little bit before stopping properly. The staff, to their credit were quick to respond and had the ride running soon after.

There were a number of scare mazes and by the time we'd gotten to the ticket office, and shouted off a kid who thought he could jump the queue (jerk) some of them had already filled up. We got the ones we could and headed back into the park. The mazes all had pre-allocated times which meant we also had some time to enjoy the park still. 

The asylum is the biggest attraction and had some cool scares like having to walk through a dining hall where some of the actors are mixed amongst robed dummies, and another section where the ceiling drops in. The exit had people running out being chased by a chainsaw wielding clown, which was cool.

We also did a mine one which was pretty cool and the miners shovels they were scraping the ground with must be pretty sharp as they were throwing sparks.

I'm pleased with how this photo came out. This is the Sally Dark Ride which is still very good. The better you do at the shooting the more of the ride you get to see. Unfortunately our car didn't score high enough to go into the extended journey (our weak links were two randoms in front of us)

The best scare maze by far was the first one we did and one that wasn't advertised with the others. We'd picked up a ticket at the start of the day without realising what it was, and when we realised we'd picked up a scare maze ticket we were pretty excited.

As for the maze, the story is that you've to help a DJ find his mixing partner. The pre-show is great as you watch a large joker face become more and more lit up as a trance track plays then as a countdown hits zero the room is filled with a smoke cannon and a number of chainsaw wielding clowns burst into the room from nowhere and somehow you're on the edge of a hayfield with lasers going over your heads and strobe lights all over the place. You have 2 minutes to escape the maze, which is more than enough time to have an absolutely incredible scary time. This was so much fun.

We didn't actually get over to the other side of the park where the boomerang is. The scare mazes over there were the ones we couldn't get a ticket for.

"Enjoy the Day, Fear the Night". We liked this, and the park have done an incredible job with their Halloween event. We know for next time just how busy this event gets and we did say we should come back.

A cool steam punk chap on the way out.