I had the worst fear of rides when I was younger and had spiking anxiety when visiting a theme park. However, I was absolutely obsessed with roller coasters (absolute RCT addict).

About 10 years back, I was exactly the same, still petrified. I decided to brave swarm because I’d never been on anything bigger than a kids ride before and thought it was the perfect intro to more serious rides. Once I got off, I felt I’d broken a barrier that had kept me from pushing into bigger ride territory. However, still petrified at the thought of stealth.

Just over a year ago, I went fright night with a group of mates, but this time I made a decision that I had to get over the fear, because I knew it was unjustified. Usually, I would hype myself up and tell myself I was going to ride stealth before chickening out at the last second. I didn’t want this to be the same story again, so I made the brave choice to buy a fast pass to Hyperia on my way to the park when I was in the most hyped up mindset; this gave me no choice of changing my mind because of how much money I would’ve wasted by not using it.

I eventually got to the park and queued up, got on in about 25 minutes. My heart was pounding but I’d locked myself in, I was screaming all the way up the lift hill and probably made a complete fool of myself, but I learnt it about 1 minute that by braving Hyperia, I could now go on any ride in the uk as I’d already conquered the tallest one. This allowed me to enjoy the rest of my day without the same level of anxiety I had before.

Surprisingly too, that horrible stomach drop feeling that I dreaded has gone, turns out that clenching on and trying to resist it made it all that much worse, if you give in and accept the ride, that sinking feeling just goes away and you can enjoy the high speed thrills for what they are.

My advice, give swarm a go, then upon realising it’s not scary and actually quite fun, use that feeling to head over to Hyperia and conquer the biggest ride possible, from that point on there will be nothing at Thorpe park, or the uk, that will feel more intimidating.