Sonic Spinball @ Alton Towers

So this weekend me, my parents and my girlfriend spent the weekend up at Alton Towers, where we stayed in one of the hotels in the park, went out for some lovely pub dinners in the local village and larked about in the park and water park. But this is Sega Memories so let's get straight to the point: the Sonic Spinball ride. It opened this year, as did a Sonic themed hotel room (we didn't stay in that) and we had a go on it. Impressions and photos of the ride and the general Sonic-ness added to the park after the jump!

Now while the ride is technically 'new' it's actually just a new paint job of a ride that used to be called Pinball Whizzer so if you have been to Alton Towers before, this is the same exact ride as far as i know just with a new paint job, but this was the first time any of us had been to the park so that fact didn't really matter. There was some pinball machine things scattered about the queue area that were clearly left un-changed, as they looked rather old and beat up. There was artwork of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Robotnik all over the place which is nice: fans of the other 526 characters be damed.

This statue was also adorning the front of the ride. I've actually seen this statue a few times before: once in a GAME store and again at Summer of Sonic last year, though this one looked shiner and less knocked about. But what is this? What have they done to him?



They have him held up with metal bars shoved up his arse! What kind of sick cruelty is this?


Inside he is crying..



Also there was this sign near him. That means YOU furries! maybe the bars are there to protect from yiffing.

While in the queue they played music on the speakers dotted about: mainly from what I could tell were Rooftop Run from from Sonic Unleashed and Station Square from Sonic Adventure, and you would also hear someone as Sonic (not the current official VA I don't think. EDIT: turns out this is probably the new Sonic VA who was just announced here.) talking about the ride and safety procedures etc. When we were queuing up for it the ride stopped for a bit and it voice came out with "uh oh! Dr. Eggman is up to his tricks again so the ride is temporarily on hold" or something of the sort. There was also the occasional sound effect from the games played out.

The ride itself is quite neat and defiantly fits the theme. Four can sit in one of the carts (two on each side) and while it's flying about on the roller coaster the carts spins back and forth randomly, as if you've bouncing off the turns like a ball. It doesn't go upside down or anything but I wouldn't really say it's a ride for little kids either as it's fast and bumpy. It was fun though, and that's what matters. Somewhere while on the ride, like most of the rides at the park, your photo is taken so you can buy it later. For £6 you get your photo in this cardboard frame..

 

I was a bit disappointed in the total lack of exclusive merchandise for the ride at the park, though. The frame above is all there is. So not even a t-shirt with the logo on it. The souvenir store near the entrance only had stuff you can buy elsewhere from the 'classic' range of figures, bags, t-shirts etc. Would of been nice to bring back something unique to the park only but to be fair if there was anything else I would of thought we would have known about it from other fans that have been to the park by now. Oh well.

The only other merchandise you could find all over the place was these cheap PMS plush toys in claw machines of Sonic, Tails, Amy and Shadow. They're for the most part pretty ugly so not even worth the effort to try and win from these rip off machines. This machine mainly full of Tails was in the hotel's arcade, which also had After Burner Climax which is nice. One of those Amy's is flashing her knickers, the dirty girl! For those curious one of the arcades in the park had a deluxe Scud Race which I haven't seen in some time (only the basic ones in Southend). 

Last but not least here's a quick video of the ride we took and yes, that is me and Stacey on it! Didn't really get the whole thing going around but you get the idea.