Drifting Experience Day
Discussion
Anyone done a drifting experience day? I was looking at http://www.allstarsdrivingacademy.co.uk/ but it looked a little rough around the edges maybe ;-)
Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
27tim said:
Anyone done a drifting experience day? I was looking at http://www.allstarsdrivingacademy.co.uk/ but it looked a little rough around the edges maybe ;-)
Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
im looking into this too?Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
should be a good read.
I have done a half day with these guys www.driftlimits.co.uk I believe their initial special pricing is no longer.
Off topic - sorry
How much actual driving time did you get on the Caterham Circuit one? I've been looking at similar days, but want something where you are encouraged to drive the car hard/come away as a better drive, rather than just being able to tell your mates you've driven a <insert name of supercar here>.
How much actual driving time did you get on the Caterham Circuit one? I've been looking at similar days, but want something where you are encouraged to drive the car hard/come away as a better drive, rather than just being able to tell your mates you've driven a <insert name of supercar here>.
Plenty. I couldn't put a figure on it but I didn't feel short changed.
You get the same instructor all day and share the car with 2 or 3 others taking turns, probably 15-20 minutes in the hour.
They do get you to press on, you are sharing the track with other experiences so it occasionally gets a little crowded. We were going past Ferraris in the corners but getting passed back on the straights.
You get the same instructor all day and share the car with 2 or 3 others taking turns, probably 15-20 minutes in the hour.
They do get you to press on, you are sharing the track with other experiences so it occasionally gets a little crowded. We were going past Ferraris in the corners but getting passed back on the straights.
I've seen the Caterham drift experience. It looked like it was all low speed stuff and the drift initiation seemed to be just power, which is for girls.
If your drift experience doesn't involve entering a corner at high speed very sideways then you aren't experiencing the best part of drifting.
Sadly I'm no longer involved in "the scene" and don't know who is good any more.
If your drift experience doesn't involve entering a corner at high speed very sideways then you aren't experiencing the best part of drifting.
Sadly I'm no longer involved in "the scene" and don't know who is good any more.
27tim said:
Anyone done a drifting experience day? I was looking at http://www.allstarsdrivingacademy.co.uk/ but it looked a little rough around the edges maybe ;-)
Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
In my experience, I'd avoid them.Has anyone experienced it, or tried any others?
Thanks!
For my birthday, the good lady booked this experience for me through Groupon. My mate is car mad too so his wife bought him the same experience for the same day.
We arrived at 10am and the event was already running an hour late. So by 11am we managed to get in the briefing room whereby an instructor asked everyone what they drove and gave a breif tutorial on how to set a car up prior to drifting it.
We eventually get outside and there must be around 30 people in our group. They have 3 lay-outs: donuts, figure of 8 and the oval drift. Instead of splitting people into 3 seperate groups of 10 for each event, they make all 30 people do the same lay-out at the same time which took a really long time. To make matters worse they had 3 cars out on the track (350z, R32 Skyline and the Nissan 180sx) but the 180sx wasn't running for the first 3 hours and the Skyline managed to rip it's bumper off when it bottomed out on a dip on the track.
This meant that we had 30 people waiting for either 1 or 2 cars to complete their 10 minutes and then come back to the pits.
Safety was practically none existant. The guys running the event were slidding the cars upto the 'safe area' where they told everyone to queue. They got far too close for comfort on more than one occassion!
At the end, they give you a quick drive around a pre-prepared track layout to show you what the cars could do. This was basically a jolly for the instructors as the guy driving me nearly wiped out another instructor and had to take evasive action...which nearly had him mow down the spectators.
I drove all 3 cars. The first trip out saw me make use of the full 10 minutes, second time out was 4 minutes and third time out was a minute and half. And we still over-ran by over 2 hours.
It was a disgrace. I advise anyone wanting to use this company not to bother. Get yourself along to Silverstone instead and try out their caterham experience day. Much better value for money and they actually know what they are doing.
Bullett said:
Plenty. I couldn't put a figure on it but I didn't feel short changed.
You get the same instructor all day and share the car with 2 or 3 others taking turns, probably 15-20 minutes in the hour.
They do get you to press on, you are sharing the track with other experiences so it occasionally gets a little crowded. We were going past Ferraris in the corners but getting passed back on the straights.
Thanks!You get the same instructor all day and share the car with 2 or 3 others taking turns, probably 15-20 minutes in the hour.
They do get you to press on, you are sharing the track with other experiences so it occasionally gets a little crowded. We were going past Ferraris in the corners but getting passed back on the straights.
The Driftlimits people seem(ed) alright. When they launched using MX-5s they offered Nutz members are reduced rate and everyone who went along seemed happy with what they got.
I suspect that cheap will always be rubbish though, because the wear and tear/consumable costs are so high, even for little 5s, so a firm thats going to give you proper go will need to give you a proper invoice too.
I suspect that cheap will always be rubbish though, because the wear and tear/consumable costs are so high, even for little 5s, so a firm thats going to give you proper go will need to give you a proper invoice too.
While the whole thing sounds like a massively rubbish day this bit...
The trick is to explain this, and not have a huge queue of angry punters waiting all the time.
Having a rubbish time because an elderly Nissan is broken is an essential part of the drift experience. As is having a bumper get smashed off. Those two bits should be part of an "advanced drifter" extra cost option with some cable-tie body repair lessons thrown in.
Robatr0n said:
We eventually get outside and there must be around 30 people in our group. They have 3 lay-outs: donuts, figure of 8 and the oval drift. Instead of splitting people into 3 seperate groups of 10 for each event, they make all 30 people do the same lay-out at the same time which took a really long time.
...is because it's easy getting someone to do a donut. Then once they've mastered that you move on to a figure of 8 to earn how to do transitions, then once you've mastered that you move on to the oval, which gives you the option to manji the straight or try different initiation techniques.The trick is to explain this, and not have a huge queue of angry punters waiting all the time.
Having a rubbish time because an elderly Nissan is broken is an essential part of the drift experience. As is having a bumper get smashed off. Those two bits should be part of an "advanced drifter" extra cost option with some cable-tie body repair lessons thrown in.
Captain Muppet said:
While the whole thing sounds like a massively rubbish day this bit...
The trick is to explain this, and not have a huge queue of angry punters waiting all the time.
Having a rubbish time because an elderly Nissan is broken is an essential part of the drift experience. As is having a bumper get smashed off. Those two bits should be part of an "advanced drifter" extra cost option with some cable-tie body repair lessons thrown in.
Yes you're right, they should have explained this. But they didn't.Robatr0n said:
We eventually get outside and there must be around 30 people in our group. They have 3 lay-outs: donuts, figure of 8 and the oval drift. Instead of splitting people into 3 seperate groups of 10 for each event, they make all 30 people do the same lay-out at the same time which took a really long time.
...is because it's easy getting someone to do a donut. Then once they've mastered that you move on to a figure of 8 to earn how to do transitions, then once you've mastered that you move on to the oval, which gives you the option to manji the straight or try different initiation techniques.The trick is to explain this, and not have a huge queue of angry punters waiting all the time.
Having a rubbish time because an elderly Nissan is broken is an essential part of the drift experience. As is having a bumper get smashed off. Those two bits should be part of an "advanced drifter" extra cost option with some cable-tie body repair lessons thrown in.
And whilst cars do break down, there was no sign of any of the other cars listed on their website. They needed a couple of spare cars incase this kind of thing happened. Punters shouldn't be paying through the nose for next to no time in their cars due to their breakdowns.
As you say, if I was an experienced or advanced drifter it would have been all part of the fun / experience. But standing in a cold and damp car park with numb feet for 7 hours was not my idea, nor was it any of the other 30 people's idea of fun. A fair chunk of people left early which I guess was a good thing for the people having their experience after us.
All in all, I reckon they just got greedy with Groupon and allowed far too many people to participate.
Robatr0n said:
In my experience, I'd avoid them.
For my birthday, the good lady booked this experience for me through Groupon. My mate is car mad too so his wife bought him the same experience for the same day.
We arrived at 10am and the event was already running an hour late. So by 11am we managed to get in the briefing room whereby an instructor asked everyone what they drove and gave a breif tutorial on how to set a car up prior to drifting it.
We eventually get outside and there must be around 30 people in our group. They have 3 lay-outs: donuts, figure of 8 and the oval drift. Instead of splitting people into 3 seperate groups of 10 for each event, they make all 30 people do the same lay-out at the same time which took a really long time. To make matters worse they had 3 cars out on the track (350z, R32 Skyline and the Nissan 180sx) but the 180sx wasn't running for the first 3 hours and the Skyline managed to rip it's bumper off when it bottomed out on a dip on the track.
This meant that we had 30 people waiting for either 1 or 2 cars to complete their 10 minutes and then come back to the pits.
Safety was practically none existant. The guys running the event were slidding the cars upto the 'safe area' where they told everyone to queue. They got far too close for comfort on more than one occassion!
At the end, they give you a quick drive around a pre-prepared track layout to show you what the cars could do. This was basically a jolly for the instructors as the guy driving me nearly wiped out another instructor and had to take evasive action...which nearly had him mow down the spectators.
I drove all 3 cars. The first trip out saw me make use of the full 10 minutes, second time out was 4 minutes and third time out was a minute and half. And we still over-ran by over 2 hours.
It was a disgrace. I advise anyone wanting to use this company not to bother. Get yourself along to Silverstone instead and try out their caterham experience day. Much better value for money and they actually know what they are doing.
ive done the same thing. To put it more succinctly, it was chavs messing around in a car park. For my birthday, the good lady booked this experience for me through Groupon. My mate is car mad too so his wife bought him the same experience for the same day.
We arrived at 10am and the event was already running an hour late. So by 11am we managed to get in the briefing room whereby an instructor asked everyone what they drove and gave a breif tutorial on how to set a car up prior to drifting it.
We eventually get outside and there must be around 30 people in our group. They have 3 lay-outs: donuts, figure of 8 and the oval drift. Instead of splitting people into 3 seperate groups of 10 for each event, they make all 30 people do the same lay-out at the same time which took a really long time. To make matters worse they had 3 cars out on the track (350z, R32 Skyline and the Nissan 180sx) but the 180sx wasn't running for the first 3 hours and the Skyline managed to rip it's bumper off when it bottomed out on a dip on the track.
This meant that we had 30 people waiting for either 1 or 2 cars to complete their 10 minutes and then come back to the pits.
Safety was practically none existant. The guys running the event were slidding the cars upto the 'safe area' where they told everyone to queue. They got far too close for comfort on more than one occassion!
At the end, they give you a quick drive around a pre-prepared track layout to show you what the cars could do. This was basically a jolly for the instructors as the guy driving me nearly wiped out another instructor and had to take evasive action...which nearly had him mow down the spectators.
I drove all 3 cars. The first trip out saw me make use of the full 10 minutes, second time out was 4 minutes and third time out was a minute and half. And we still over-ran by over 2 hours.
It was a disgrace. I advise anyone wanting to use this company not to bother. Get yourself along to Silverstone instead and try out their caterham experience day. Much better value for money and they actually know what they are doing.
maser_spyder said:
Groupon took 50% of what you paid, you do know that, right?
Take 50% of what you paid, then take off the 20% VAT, and that's what the company received to entertain you for the day.
Not much, after wear and tear, is it?
Again, that's not really my problem. They should have charged more for it rather than entertain 3 times as many people as they normally do and heavily reduce the amount driving time.Take 50% of what you paid, then take off the 20% VAT, and that's what the company received to entertain you for the day.
Not much, after wear and tear, is it?
I've used Groupon before now and have had exceptional service in both the UK and the States, namely riding quadbikes through the Valley of Fire in Nevada. Now I'll admit, maybe Groupon operate differently in the States but we did a full 5 hours on Quadbikes for $40 each. Good for 60mph and probably the best fun on 4 wheels I've ever had.
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