Welcome to the theatre. Please take your seats, the show is about to begin!
This will definitely be the Big One.
Orchestra ready!
Water effects ready!
It's time to...
Immerse your senses in the biggest spectacular of all time!
The 4D experience with a Blackpool Tower Post Show!
It's a small world from up here. Only the most realistic effects are used within this show.
Quick the bad guys have arrived! (sorry I didn't have time to finish this set off)
Vikings are bad g
To break up the flow of Benin Germany trip reports ( ), I've written a little something about my trip to Liseberg. Anyone who follows me on twitter or Facebook, probably knows what's coming. Alas, this will be a more detailed account of my trip.
So I'm just going to start with, great park. It features a good selection of flat rides, a well paced fun rapids ride and a very peculiar log flume. There's not many parks which have four very re-rideable roller coasters and Liseberg arguably has thre
To celebrate my birthday there was only one park out of all the ones we visited that made sense to visit in the area we were in, and that was of course, Legoland Germany. With German MAP in hand, we headed in, though their gate organisation is a bit burdenous, as you have to use certain gates if you have a MAP, but this is a lottery when you’ve never visited before and you can’t see the signs to direct you when the main gate is down.
The opening ceremony was cute though, with the Ollie the Dr
Our start to the day did not go well. On our way to Tripsdrill, there was bountiful traffic on our motorway exit, which delayed us by an hour, arriving at the park just after 10 when the thrill rides opened instead of the 9am arrival time hoped for.
As a result, the first ride of the day was Karacho, Smiler’s German lapbar wearing cousin who’s actually still not finished at all (and won’t be fully completed till at least next year). So this was to be an interesting one anyway, as people are
Another day, another park, but this park was more of a stop-over to break up the monotony of driving all the way to Stuttgart. The original plan was to actually hit up the Nurburgring, however once Ring Racer was confirmed as spited, Klotten was chosen as the park of cred run.
Whilst it is in the middle of nowhere, it cannot be argued that the location on the mountainside with valleys all around is pretty amazing.
The first port of call was Heisse Fahrt, the Gerstlauer Bobsled. I’ve alwa
The second day at Phantasialand started similarly to the first, parking in the China car park and straight off to Black Mamba. A front row ride was in order since it was unlikely another chance would raise its head, front rows are very useful wake-up calls.
Over to Wuze Town, and as Fear was having the morning off, Winjas Force was ridden, followed by another go on Tittle Tattle Tree. We then rode lots of the new Wuze Town stuff that has been added over the years, starting with the Monora
Day 7 – Phantastic Part 1
My last visit to Phantasialand was 6 years ago, which in some cases doesn’t tend to mean a whole lot has changed. However, here, pretty much every single area had something different about it, be it from an addition of some flat rides in Wuze Town, to replacing some tatty old Flumes, or in several cases, the rides simply don’t exist anymore. Lots of change, but would I still like the park?
We parked in the China car park (due to limited space, there are several car pa
Me and Toofpikk thought we'd head down to Paramount Park last Friday. It STILL isn't ready, clearly didn't get ultimate planning fastrack, only standard. So we went on a random adventure through a £2 tunnel to some place. We had no idea where though.
They had delicious milkshakes but that didn't help.
This place was obsessed with pink and yellow.
Like this Fireball thing.
Look at the pink and yellow!
We just couldn't think what theme park was obsessed with pink and yellow.
They
Movie Park Germany was the park of the day, having been a stone’s throw from it the day before, so it was a bit weird to drive to it for a second day in a row.
Upon arrival I grew frustrated by the park not opening up the turnstiles prior to the official opening, mostly due to the lack of space available to the large crowd building up outside and the low number of actual turnstiles available. Does annoy me greatly when they could instead let people into the park, get some early sales from a c
It may not be a theme park, it may only open its doors once a year to friends and family of staff. It is one of the elusive companies within England that few people get to witness. Hidden away in Woking just around the back of Horsell Common it lies, McLaren. (If you're not a fan of rides skip the majority of this report for something at the bottom).
Welcome to McLaren's Motor Show 2014 (although I prefer that name!)
The general gist of the day is for staff to bring in their vehicles and s
We were done with Hamburg, so today was a day of driving as we headed to our next base of operations in Dortmund. We decided that because there wasn’t much option of things to do in Dortmund as we were staying in a soulless industrial estate and Dortmund isn’t known for having much in the way of touristy stuff (Football stadium aside, but it had a game on that if I’d known about I would’ve gone to), we would visit Schloss Beck instead to pass a few hours.
Schloss Beck is a tiny little park a st
Another day and this time it was off to the first random small park of the trip in Serengeti Park, which is Germany’s version of West Midlands Safari Park. But this one had two fantastic attractions which were worth the entrance fee alone.
Unlike everyone else visiting, we weren’t doing the safari portion of the park, as a hire car and an animal safari would probably not combine well in my mind, so we walked into the ride area to find absolutely nothing open. Presumably because they assume th
Ah Heide, the weird red-headed step-child of the Merlin machine from my last visit, with its strange mixture of music and atmosphere seemingly stolen from other parks. It lured me back with the prospect of completing the European B&M collection (of course, until Garda and Efteling’s ones open next year), and an attempt to ride Colossos again to see if I can actually like it.
First thing was first though, and that was to collect our German MAPs. The reasons for this were for the free entry
Here we are, the park home to Ultimate things like Raptor Attack, Angry Birds and some random stuff.
Here we see the Ultimate wheel that they have. It's so good that even on busy days they only load half the carriages.
Much like the annoying Drayton, LWV opens its gates at 10 but the main rides at 10:30. However, you can't even go down towards them from 10 so this happens. And with Ultimate things behind the man a queue of stampeding people formed!
So we went on the wheel which was open
The first day proper of the trip led us to Hansa Park, a place which I really enjoyed on my previous visit 3 years ago. Unfortunately, not much has really changed to the park overall since my last visit aside from the entrance area being tarted up. But when you have one of the best Eurofighters around (potential damning with faint praise comments here), that sits in my top 10, of course a revisit was in order.
Upon arrival a group of enthusiasts were spotted, evidenced by their gooniforms a
I’m already regretting this decision for a massive 2 week holiday featuring 12 parks, mainly because this is gonna be a long as hell TR, and I don’t want to spend ALL my time at work typing it up either. But, the show must go on, so here we go, Germany.
A pleasant flight in with Germanwings (budget Lufthansa) led us to Hamburg and our Volkswagen Polo for the fortnight, and we drove off to the hotel. Quickly it was discovered that roadworks would be the bane of the holiday, as the Sat-Nav’s path
As part of my annual holiday, I would have the opportunity to see and visit one park [just one] outside of the uk and the Merlin circle. But the big question is, which park would it be?
Well it's definitely not Port Aventura for starters.
Nor is it Europa Park.
And it certainly is not Disneyland Paris either [more to come on that tagline later].
But the big question is, which theme park in Europe did I manage to visit this year?
The answer to that question is Tivoli World. But the
Helix, Liseberg and Mack’s 2014 project has been at the forefront of many an enthusiast’s mind during the past year or so. With Blue Fire being reasonably rated by the community, hopes were high for Helix when it was announced. Two launches, multiple inversions, a terrain based layout and the odd airtime hill meant that this ride was ticking all the right boxes for enthusiasts around the world.
The real proof though, was in the pudding of actually riding it. And this is a more detailed review o
Two months later, with the dust settled on my trip I already look back with great fondness. I've talked about the theme parks but what about the culture of California. How different is it to the humid and tourist trap that is Florida. Many UK enthusiasts don't venture past the state with all the oranges for obvious reasons.
First thing is people in California are thinner then the East side. Disney World is full of ECV's, California has very few. Florida theme parking is one big bubble of touris
Oddly placed sign in the trees
Odd water slide effect at the entrance.
"You calling my park odd?" Yes.
The Lynx didn't want to argue
That's a Fishing Cat. Odd that it wasn't fishing.
Odd chimp (because there's one of them ) looks at Appocalypse.
This seems more humpty bumpty
Compared to this. This is just weird.
But a good weird.
How odd.
BEST ENTRANCE EVER!!!
AND QUEUE!
This is odd.
But so much fun!
Rainy Shockwave
With odd straight bits.
Designe
For the first in about 10 or 11 years, I visited a non-Merlin theme park. It's been a long time coming, and anywhere was a start. And that start was to be Drayton Manor.
After such a beautiful week, Saturday decided to take a turn for the worst, and give us rain, thunder, lightning (though with a couple of breaks of sunshine during the day!). Adam picked me up and we arrived at Drayton around 9ish. Even though we were early, we could tell it was gonna be quiet day, and thank goodness, aft
Yesterday we decided to take an important English man to a place of Lego. Mr Lego William Shakespeare. I'll hand him over to you for this report
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind. And this hand is suspicious, but I'm not guilty.
Welcome to the very merry land of Lego. Let's not read that rubbish book though, lets read a few of my plays.
This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow.
Certainly a big walking shadow!
Look mum it's
At the end of June I spent a week in Salou. This of course meant that some trips to PortAventura would be happening! As well as a trip to Barcelona and the somewhat little known park of Tibidabo.
First off, Salou is a lively large town situated right on the coast of the Costa Dorada, we stayed in a hotel in Salou and couldn’t fault anything about the place. Right in the centre & 5-10 mins walk to the beach. Loved it. One thing I particularly enjoyed about the stay was on the evening of the
