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Benin's Bits & Bobs

A blog by Benin in General

  • Entries

    43

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    59

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    17979

About this blog

Assorted What-Nots

Entries in this blog

Efteling - A weekend of Fairies, Dragons and Pancakes - Day 1

Day 1 What better way to spend the UK closed season than by visiting a park that doesn’t close? Goodbye depressing Merlin situations and hello Efteling, who certainly are the opposite end of the ownership scale, what with being owned by a non-for-profit organisation who happily throw €42 million on a show. So a blustery Saturday morning greeted us, with a flight to remember as the winds took hold of our plane throughout, providing an intense experience I never wish to repeat again in my life.
  • Benin

Benin's Take on 2013 - International Parks

So I’ve discussed the UK parks, but what about the foreign ones I visited? Well here we goooooo! Disneyland Paris Well it snowed, oh BOY did it snow. Not that it ruined the enjoyment of course, there’s nothing more hilarious than riding Tower of Terror, getting to the top and the doors opening to a mini-blizzard. The park did extremely well dealing with the heavy snow and I take my hat off for the way they dealt with our booked restaurant situation. The parks were their usually selves really,
  • Benin

Benin's Take on 2013 - UK Parks

So we come to the end of what has been a rather disappointing year in the UK (there’s no two ways about that) it was up to the park’s abroad to show us how to do things, and that is something they most certainly did. United Kingdom I didn’t actually visit any non-Merlin UK parks this year, I nearly made it to Mingoland but fortunately that didn’t pan out. The additions to the Merlin parks sounded good (at least if you weren’t Thorpe, who seemingly cannot think of suitably well thought out add
  • Benin

Belgiqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! - Day 2 - Plopsaland

In what will probably be an unsurprising development, our 2nd park of the weekend was Plopsaland, because we all love it to bits. It also has an immense amount of new things at the place this year, from a new MASSIVE theatre, two new rides in a newly themed area, and two rethemed rides (the kiddie cred and onion boats) which is really fantastic to see. Add this to the hotel development which is on-going and it does seem like the park is going places. They had a good amount of Halloween
  • Benin

Belgiqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! - Day 1 - Walibi Belgium

So after a month of going to all the Merlin Halloween events the ‘last’ weekend of the month needed to be something different. As such, discussions were had and plans put in place for a quick jaunt over the Channel on a Friday afternoon to enjoy a weekend of Belgian creds and scary things. The Saturday was at Walibi, which has had an interesting life it must be said, and recently rebranded itself to a rather different park theme of a music band. They also hold one of Belgium’s premier Ha
  • Benin

It's like a fairytale or something... In Bruges - Day 3 - Bagatelle

Day 3 – Parc Bagatelle A very early morning led to the 2 hour drive across half of two separate countries towards the seaside of France towards Bagatelle. This is rather a small park, but recently nabbed a Vekoma Invertigo last year, and was once infamous for having a scary as hell Lion show which is now gone. We arrived at the park to be greeted by a long queue, as out of the 4 cashier desks they had 1 open. And the queue barely moved due to large groups and numerous vouchers. This annoyed
  • Benin

An Express Visit to Port Aventura - Day 3

Day 3 And lo, the final day approached as we groggily awoke for one last B&M whorage session. However there was some unfinished business to attend to first, so we checked out the hotel, dumped off our bags and headed in to Baco once more. It was announcing technical difficulties… This turned out to be the addition of the second train however, so we waited it out and before long we were winging our way out of the station on the front row. The pre-show began, the brake fins dropped,
  • Benin

An Express Visit to Port Aventura - Day 2

Day 2 A lovely buffet breakfast began our long second day at the park, which was coincidentally the first day of their Halloween event. At 10 we walked very quickly past Baco and through Sesame Street. In order to faff longer, we popped on the wonderfully named Magic Fish ride, one of those Wave Racer things which was reasonably enjoyable. Afterwards we sat in that pathway leading to China and mused until Khan roared into life, and we duly skipped the queue twice before doing exact
  • Benin

An Express visit to Port Aventura - Day 1

An Express visit to Port Aventura Day 1 They always say you should keep an eye out for good deals in life, theme parks being no exception, so when Port Aventura had an offer for 50% hotel stays I leapt at the chance to revisit the park, namely for Shambhala. A VERY early Friday morning was the backdrop to our journey via Gatwick and Barcelona, and after eventually finding the coach to the hotel, we arrived at the park armed with quite possibly the best value for money unlimited Express Passes
  • Benin

It's like a fairytale or something... In Bruges - Day 1 - Bruges

Day 1 – Bruges An early Friday morning greeted us as my car was packed and we set off for the Channel Tunnel, before long however we had reached Calais and the drive to Bruges through 20 million sets of road-works began. About 2 hours after our arrival in Calais, we had arrived at our hotel, on the outskirts of the ‘Old Town’ of Bruges. A quick note about the hotel, it is pretty fab… Not in the way of being amazing, it’s just extremely nice, with great people running it who are very helpful an
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 7 - Legoland Billund

Day 7 – Legoland Billund Now here was an interesting one, the Merlin park of the group, a park that is usually a burden to visit in the UK, how would the original fare? Would it be smothered in adverts? Would it be full of low throughput rides? Would we hate it for being part of a massive corporate entity? Answers are found and more… After once again navigating the emptiness of Denmark and a surprise car park appearing out of nowhere (next door to Billund’s own airport) we had arrived and awai
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 8 - Farup Sommerland

Day 8 – Farup Sommerland And so the final day, we packed up and departed Aarhus northwards. We eventually arrived after more venturing through country roads and paid upon arrival in the car (which took us all by surprise, fortunately we were prepared for this) and ended up in the car park, which strangely sits in the middle of the park, allowing for some good views of the two main coasters. Our first destination was Lynet, the Gerstlauer launched, to which I was excited for because Anu
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 3 - Bon Bon Land

Day 3 – Bon Bon Land A park that is relatively infamous and well known from a certain American coaster site, Bon Bon Land is essentially famous for being silly. With farting dogs, defecating seagulls and various other creatures doing random stuff; it’s a park I’ve been interested to visit to see what the hype is all about. So we hopped into the Nissan of Narcissism and directed by Cassandra the Sat-Nav and were taken off the motorway into the middle of nowhere, a theme certainly to be followed
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 4b - Bakken

Day 4b – Bakken After a morning of alcohol we returned to the car and ventured off to Bakken, the world’s oldest amusement park. Set within an old hunting ground the woodland setting is quite nice, although the layout of the car park is little to be desired. We went in, purchased our wristbands and found a place to eat whilst we waited for Tornado to open at 2. It did, and we were ready to experience the World’s first (and only) Intamin Spinning Coaster. Tornado is a very fast spinning
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 2 - Tivoli Gardens

Day 2 - Tivoli Gardens After an afternoon of lovely sunshine and warmth, the Sunday morning was the complete opposite, with rain pelting down as we prepared to venture into our first park of the trip. As we waited outside the park, the Gumball 500 decided to venture forth, so we had some entertainment building up to the park opening. The park opened at 11, but the majority of rides opened at 11:30, so we hid under a building and awaited our first ride and coaster to open Daemonen. Th
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark PTR - Day 1 - Copenhagen

A trip designed to visit one of the lesser countries in Europe known for its parks, even if it has 6 big parks, including one of the most visited in the continent, not much ever seems to come out of Denmark, so as such, this trip was created, organised and visited. Day 1 - Arrival and Copenhagen We arrived in the afternoon to a warm and humid Denmark, a certain surprise to the 4 of us who were travelling along, and it wasn't long until we realised the Danish way of life was completely differen
  • Benin

Only Teardrops in Denmark - Day 6 - Djurs Sommerland

Day 6 - Djurs Sommerland After a long rainy drive to Aarhus the day after was nice and sunny for our next venture into the middle of nowhere for a theme park. Djurs seemed to be a 'true' theme park in comparison to the parks so far, so I was intrigued to see how they would go with it. We arrived into the rather empty car park and ventured to the gates. The park opened, and we ventured to the nearest coaster, and a highly rated one to boot, that of Piraten. Apparently the worst Mega-
  • Benin

It's like a fairytale or something... In Bruges - Day 2 - Bellewaerde

Day 2 – Bellewaerde Park Time for coasters! And with a brand new one it was time to head along to Belle, via several country roads and an awful diversion, we eventually arrived at the destination (N.B. There is an easier route to take to get to the park we discovered on our way back, blergh)… Formerly a safari park, this place certainly shares similarities with both Chessington and Flamingoland, but let’s not set our hopes too low, and go and ride the first coaster of the day (in order t
  • Benin

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