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Alton Towers Near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK

YOU HEAR THE THUNDEROUS NOISE of the Nemesis train swinging round its amazing track: You know it's going to be a ride to remember. The story behind the theme of the ride is a bit dodgy with talk of monsters and druids: The area of the roller-coaster has oil-drums, huge eye-balls, dissolving track, an abandoned bus and flowing rivers of blood. It is a challenge to see any of these from the train: It moves too fast.
The inversion shown in this top pictures is a twist that immediately follows the first-drop. The drag-lift is shown rising in the back-ground from the bottom right of the photo, and another inversion is just visible on the right hand side of the picture. The people in the picture are in the line to ride.
If you enlarge this second photograph, you may notice the fake blood water-fall and fleshy station as the theme. The station is in the upper left of the photograph. Also notice the queue zigzagging. All the people visible are waiting to ride, and this photograph was taken from another part of the same line!
The ride lasts about 40 seconds. It is well presented, very fast and very thrilling! It may take an hour or more to progress through the line. All the time though, there are excellent views of the ride, and this builds anticipation. Gaps in the line arise as people stand and watch the riders flying by; people forget to move on!
This is an inverted coaster, like Warner's Batman, where riders sit in cars suspended from an overhead rail with their feet swinging off the ground. The front seats are definately best on this ride, although they are not easy to get.
Alton Towers is probably Britain's biggest theme park with a handful of coasters: one more remarkable coaster is The Corkscrew. I believe The Corkscrew was Britain's first coaster with a gun-barrel twist. The picture here shows the train entering the two-inversion twist, unfortunately the viewing angle isn't very good. Another coaster, The Thunderlooper was sadly shutdown at the end of the 1996 season, locals complained about the noise.

See also:
o 1ST4FUN.NET - Top 10 of UK Attractions www.1st4fun.net
o Staffordshire Leisure Parks http://www.soc.staffs.ac.uk/county-tour/parks.html
o The Nemesis Rollercoaster http://www.coasternut.demon.co.uk