slycat | My fun packed weekend :oD

Saturday

Got the train up with Torque to get to the King-X meeting point for more or less 11 on the dot. There were a few furs there when we got there. More arrived soon after - a few of which I didn't reckognise and I didn't bother introducing myself, just had a peanut butter bagel instead (mrr!). Soon enough furs went their seperate ways, some to Forbidden Planet, others to Camden while me,

bhavfox and AlexFox just went to the pub. Scary Nanaki with his big eyes was already there with some other random furs who I don't really know. I bought a pint and went upstairs.

Usual stuff occured in the actual meet, chatted with people, got complimented for my Invader Zim t-shirt lots,

dreamersofgaia(Anarta) put out a pride flag, placed sticks on top of it in the shape of a pentagram and then surrounded it with pictures for reasons still unknown to this day, got drunk from only 3 pints(!), threw dog biscuits at Torque and ate McDonalds MegaMac to sober up... A normal furmeet really. We all split off and I went with the bunch who were going for pizza. After we split off again, some of us wanted pizza, others though chinese at Wong Kei's would be easier due to the lack of seating and so

timmypup,

xendragon,

kurtbatz,

sebcat and I ended up at Pizza Hut. We ate luverly pizzas and took full advantage of refillable drinks, got to know Xen and Seb a bit better - both are really nice people, Seb offered our waitress man-made mayonaise(!) so he got strange looks for the rest of our visit :D.

After the Hut, we went to Namco at Westminster to meet up with everyone else. They had the new Dance Stage (DDR) EuroMix 2 so I had to have a go and see what was new. It seemed to be a mix of 5th, 6th and 7th mix with quite a few new 'Euro' tracks thrown in and some of the old classics from EuroMix 1. I had a go with SebCat the first time but he gave up half way through the first song cos he thought he looked a prat. In place of him the resident pro (Or the person who had the most money and had been there all day) jumped on and we played together. He ended up helping me to choose tracks that I simply couldn't do (I can't even begin to do 7 footers but we did them). Max300 is a killer - fastest track they have made and I bloody played and failed it :P Had a go against

nonezumi(Glis) afterwards to which we failed on the second track cos he likes to play the harder tracks (Again, we both failed on a 7 footer - I simply cannot move fast enough for them!).

After that Seb,

afurinwales(Paddy/Whatever his name is now) and I went on the dogems and battered each other to oblivion and then found I was completely knackered and couldn't do anything other than sit down. We must have left around 10ish. I went off with Bhav to his place to stay the night in Bow. The walk to his place from Mile End station wasn't as scary as I anticipated. There were some kids who pretended to smash a window anf then ran off but that was about it.

At Bhav's, we mucked about online, watched a strange movie called "Rejected" that Paddy pointed us too and I had a gurning competition with

acefox via webcam. I think we went to bed around 1.30am and must have woken up around 6.30am. Bhav's mum had made Bhav's bed out for me and Bhav had to sleep on the sofabed. Thought this was nice of his mum but I never did see her to thank her...

Sunday

Waking up at 6.30am was unintentional but Bhav didn't get much sleep and he had woken me up. I had a bath as there wasn't a shower and put on some nice fresh clothes (I played a bit too much DDR the previous day) including my Michel Light "Lab Mouse" t-shirt :D. We left around 7.40am and got to Waterloo shortly before 9am.

We bought tickets and breakfast and waited for all the people to arrive...

sfox and Ace called to say they'd be late, I called Tim (Who was with Xen, Seb and Kurt) and seemed to have woken them up and so they were to be late too, Arag called to say he was there already but couldn't find the Zoo (Somehow he got the idea that we were going for the zoo...) and

hawx called to ask where we were. The rest were driving so out of 9 who were supposed to be there at 9am, only 3 made it!! I suppose I should have assumed this would happen :P We jumped on the 9.25 train and were on our way to Chessington!

Chessington South station was a bit of a dive... Would have thought that Chessington would have paid to do it up and stuck loads of advertising up and stuff but it was just a run down little station with graffitti everywhere. About a million townie girls and other kids got off the train along with us. They seemed to know the way to the park so we just followed them along out "10 minute" journey. When we got to the park, we walked round the huge queues and picked up the tickets from the advanced booking booth. Arag managed to find his way to us and so he paid for his ticket. We waited around for a bit before

ruination and

diodiva turned up. Glis was off buying Dio a ticket from the other side of the park. He didn't have a phone tho so we weren't sure where to meet him. After a bit of waiting, he turned up after a while by the group ticket booth. Ace arrived and then we decided to go in the park. As folks were hungry, we went off to Mcdonalds. When we got there, I got a call from Sfox to say that he had arrived at Chessington. I went off to the entrance to find him while the others ate food but I couldn't find him anywhere. I called him about 20 times but all I got was the Orange answerphone so I went back to McDonalds to find the others. Just as I sat down, Sfox rang me again to say he was at the netrance gates - as I was pooped, Glis offered to go off and collect him so I gave him the ticket and I finally ate my McFlurry. A while later, Sfox and Glis returned and then we went off for our first ride, The Bubbleworks.

I had been on it before when I went to the park last, 8 years ago but it was still fun. In my boat was Ace, Seb and Bhav. We sprayed the fountains at each other and raved when the strobes flickered ;). After the ride, Glis bought a magnet of them "posing" for the camera. As Tim's group were still at Clapham by this stage, we went on a tame spinny boat ride to kill time without killing TOO much time. After the ride, Hawx and I went off to collect the "Spechal" group who we caught queueing for tickets! After a 100m hurdle dash out of the queues (Kurt winning), I gave them their tickets and we met up with the others and we were finally all there (Although Arag had split off to go see the animals rather than go on rides).

We went on the swinging boat ride which was quite extreme and then we went on the new Vampire ride which was really cool. Apparantly it was new even though it originally opened when I last visited 8 years ago... 4 rides down, we went off to the Market Place so Tim & co could get KFC while we bought sweets and fudge. I wondered off into the arcades to see if they had DDR and sure enough they had one surrounded by 8 screens showing the player's progress. I ran off to tell Glis and so we had a go. The buggers at Chessington had put it on only 2 tracks for £1 (The cheapskates) so we had a go at Dynamite Rave at 5 feet and then Dam Dariram at 6 feet. We passed both but I couldn't help feeling I let Glis down cos he wanted to do something harder (Probably to show off to the croud). We returned to the group and walked off to our next ride, Rameses Revenge.

Rameses Revenge was much like a ride I had gone on in Six Flags but it was much more intense... You sit in one of 2 rows of seats which are elevated and spun around before teetering over a fountain which sprays you in the face :oD Next ride was Tomb Blaster. This must have had the longest queue in the universe but about 80mins later, we had got on the ride. It very much reminded me of Men in Black in Universal, Florida and so I told everyone what I thought it would be like. It was similar in that you had to shoot things and you get a score. I managed to get the worst score of all - I guess that's what I get for being a smug git who think's he knows it all. See me on the ride here: TombBlaster1.jpg.

We continued on our tour, on our way to the Mystic East. We passed the scary looking Samurai and bought hot dogs before going on Dragon Falls (Dragon River from what I remember). I got completely soaked as I was at the front which I appreciated as I had dodgy salt deposits from my sweat showing on ht eblack t-shirt (Is what I get for playing DDR in reasonably hot weather while wearing black). Glis's boat looked like this as they went down: DragonFalls.jpg. Somewhere along the line, we managed to lose Tim, Xen, Kurt and Hawx so we walked round to the Samurai and queued for an age.

The Samurai looked like the most scary ride in the world. Very hard to describe so look at here and see what I mean. I was whined at for squealing like a baby on this ride but it was because I felt my restraint move and I thought it was coming lose (Of coruse it wasn't but that's what I thought). That was the scariest ride I have ever been on and one of the most fun I had on a non-coaster :D. Time was running thin so we went off to ride the Rattlesnake which was scary cos it had very sharp turns and I thought that due to my weight, we'd fall off :P I got a nice photo from it at the end which I'll have to scan sometime :D.

That was to be our last ride as it had gone 7pm and all the rides were shutting now. The shops were still open so I took advantage and got me some fudge to take home and managed to link the two groups together again. Glis, Ruin and Dio were off by car so we said goodbye and the rest of us got the 8pm train. I finally got to my house 10.20pm... :-/

To summarise, I had a fantastic weekend with a lot of people I like to be around and I took home some great memories. It started off as just me wanting to go to Chessington and trying to find others to go with. I never expected have the number of people go that did go. I sold all the tickets, all were paid for bar one and despite the lateness of somefurs, it all went quite smoothly. I have to say thank you to everyone for going to Chessington, we'll have to do it again sometime!