Grandma jumps at chance to be park’s official “thrillseeker”
Her job is to check out Alton Towers’ coasters and other rides
Tomorrow (Friday, July 26) will be the monthly “What’s the Attraction” discussion thread that is exclusively for paid subscribers. (Kindly consider joining this wonderful group.) What are your three favorite steel coasters? That’ll be the topic of tomorrow’s thread. Please gather your thoughts, and plan to share your picks.
Maybe I’ve got quite a few more good years of riding the rails in me. After more than three decades covering the industry I love, I’m not exactly the spry G-force warrior I was when I started this crazy, wonderful adventure. But at the age of 72, Jackie Smith has a few years on me. And Alton Towers, the theme park resort in England, just hired her to be its first-ever “Chief Thrillseeker.”
According to parent company Merlin Entertainments, Smith’s responsibilities for the 12-month gig will include riding the park’s roller coasters and other thrill rides to “ensure the resort continues to offer the ultimate experience for visitors of all ages.” Sounds pretty cushy, right?
For her inaugural assignment, Smith checked out Nemesis Reborn, one of Alton Tower’s marquee attractions. Opened in 1994, it was one of the first inverted coasters from Bolliger & Mabillard (in which the trains hang suspended from the track above and passengers sit in ski lift-like seats to navigate inversions and other elements). The ride closed for refurbishment at the end of the 2022 season and was “reborn” this March. The park replaced the entire track and added multimedia effects to flesh out the attraction’s post-apocalyptic, alien creature theme. After riding, Smith said Nemesis Reborn “met my high standards for thrills.”
Lest you think this grandmother of four is just randomly gauging rides, she knows a thing or two about thrills. In 1971, at the tender age of 19, Smith was the first woman to join the the Red Devils, the British Army Parachute Regiment’s Freefall Display Team. Throughout her career, she has jumped more than 5,000 times and parachuted at spots across the globe including Rio De Janeiro and Yugoslavia. Smith base-jumped off El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in California. She was the first skydiver to consistently land on the target at the World Parachuting Championship (who knew there was such a competition?) in 1978. So yeah, extreme coasters aren’t going to faze Smith.
“My first time on the iconic Nemesis Reborn felt like my first jump all over again,” she noted.
Other coasters that Smith will be evaluating will include Wicker Man, a themed wooden coaster from Great Coasters International. It includes fog-filled tunnels and the namesake burning effigy, through which the train passes three times. A coaster made of wood and a flaming effigy sound like an, er, combustible combination, no? With 14 inversions, the steel coaster Smiler holds the record for the most number of times it turns passengers upside down. The world’s first dive coaster from Bolliger & Mabillard, Oblivion drops 180 feet straight down into an underground tunnel.
Smith can test her mettle for psychological thrills on the park’s famous Alton Towers Dungeon. The 45-minute walk-through experience includes live actors and a boat ride along the Black River.
In her role, Smith will also be hanging at Alton Towers’ biannual Thrillseeker Summit. I don’t know what the park has planned when she wraps up her year-long tour of duty. But if Merlin Entertainments is looking for another oldster with plenty of experience facing thrills with aplomb to step in, I’d like to toss my hat into the ring.
Would you like to be a park’s official thrill seeker? What do you make of Alton Towers’ choice of Jackie Smith for the position?
I find these types of promotions, which seem exclusively to happen at European parks, delightful and silly. I wish American parks could have their tongue a little more in cheek when it comes to promotional events. That being said, smaller parks like Holiday World do trend towards that, but it would be fun to see a goofy and zany Cedar Fair or Six Flags promotional campaign. Oh wait, is that Mr. Six I see in the distance…?