11th September 2024: PortAventura Park Day 2 and Ferrari Land

We had our second day today! Today, we headed back into PortAventura Park for another day of fun, and also headed into Ferrari Land to get on Red Force for the first time!

Similarly to yesterday, we entered via the Gold River hotel entrance at a bit before 10am. It looked a little busier here today, and I did have some trepidation about whether it could be busy due to it apparently being a public holiday in Catalonia today, but we decided to initially try the park without Express once again and see how it went:

We decided to tackle the park in a slightly different manner today, starting in China to knock off Shambhala and Dragon Khan early. As much as doing Uncharted first yesterday got us on the ride with a short wait compared to anything we saw at other points in the trip, we did note that as per the app, we ended up missing half an hour of Shambhala and Dragon Khan being incredibly quiet, so we thought that we should take advantage of that today…

Shambhala

Shambhala only had a very short pre-queue, so we decided to ride that first. This proved a good decision, as we only waited around 5 minutes for it; you can never complain about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the front part of the very back car, and it was sublime once again; you really feel the pull over the first drop and the hills in the back, the airtime is sublime, the speed is sublime, and everything about it is just wonderful! You’ve undoubtably heard me rhapsodise about Shambhala enough by now, so I’ll end my take there:

After our ride on Shambhala, me and my mum headed to the other Chinese coaster…

Dragon Khan

Dragon Khan was on an advertised 10 minute queue time, so we decided to give it a go. This queue was if anything overstated, as we only waited 5 minutes for it; I would never complain about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in an outer seat on row 2, and similarly to yesterday, it was not a bad ride at all! It was maybe fractionally rougher than it was yesterday, but still nothing too bad overall, and the layout is excellent on there, with some brilliant inversions and great forces! My mum was not a massive fan, although that perhaps isn’t overly surprising given that she also doesn’t like things like Nemesis and Kraken:

After Dragon Khan, I went in the single rider queue for another reride on Shambhala. I waited 40 minutes (exactly the same as the advertised queue time) and got dead centre in the train that time, but it was still sublime, and I noticed that you got stronger force going up into the hills sitting a bit further towards the front!

I then met back up with my mum and dad, and we headed into SesamoAventura, an area we only briefly walked through yesterday, and did something a little more unique to our trip…

Sesame Street: Street Mission

Street Mission was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so we decided to take a ride on there. The queue time board was true to its word, as we waited exactly 20 minutes; it’s always quite satisfying when these things are bang on the nose! So, how was the ride? Well, I went in with somewhat low expectations and was unsure of what to expect other than that it was an interactive dark ride themed to Sesame Street… but this possibly ended up being the biggest positive surprise of the trip so far! Street Mission was an absolutely fantastic dark ride! The 3D technology worked very well and the screens were excellent, but there was also an abundance of physical theming that was blended in seamlessly with the screens, the simulator section at the end was excellent, and overall, it was just such a fun and well executed dark ride! Overall, we all thoroughly enjoyed Street Mission, and I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s my favourite interactive dark ride I’ve done (yes, I would even say that it beats out Men in Black at Universal); it was fantastic, and such a positive surprise! We’ve even talked about possibly doing it again tomorrow:

After Street Mission, we further explored SesamoAventura, and as it was on a short queue, me and my mum did another ride to get the clean sweep of PortAventura Park’s coasters…

Tami Tami

Now as I don’t generally ride kiddie coasters, I was not originally expecting to do Tami Tami, but it was on an advertised 10 minute queue time, and it honestly didn’t look too embarrassing in person (it looked big enough to possibly qualify as a “family coaster” rather than a kiddie coaster), so me and my mum went to give it a go. The 10 minute advertised queue time was if anything overstated, with the queue taking more like 5 minutes, and we were on the ride within only a train or two’s wait. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the back row, and for a smaller coaster, it actually wasn’t half bad, with some good bits of speed! These coasters are what they are, but some of the turns were surprisingly good fun for a smaller coaster! Overall, then, Tami Tami wasn’t a bad kiddie/family coaster at all, and better than we were expecting; it did feel good to get the clean sweep of PortAventura Park’s coasters:

After Tami Tami, we headed over to Mexico to do an attraction me and my dad had already done yesterday…

El Diablo

El Diablo was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so as my mum hadn’t done it and me and my dad thought that she might like it, we decided to take a ride on there. The queue moved quite quickly, with the ride attaining a decent throughput of around 1,000pph or slightly under, and we were on within 15 minutes. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the front row, and similarly to yesterday, it was quite a fun mine train coaster with some fun bits of speed, albeit it was perhaps a tad jerkier than it seemed yesterday:

After El Diablo, we went for some lunch before my mum and dad left me to my own devices in the park for a bit before we entered Ferrari Land in the evening. As we’d eaten lunch in Meditarranea and it was on a relatively short queue, I decided to take a ride on…

Furius Baco

Furius Baco was on an advertised main queue time of 30 minutes, but as the single rider queue looked better than it had yesterday, I decided to chance that today. It ultimately took around 25 minutes, which I don’t think is too bad given some of the queue times I had seen for the ride at points. So, how was the ride? Well, I was once again seated in an inner seat in row 4, albeit on the right side rather than the left this time, and my thoughts were very similar to yesterday. The launch is excellent, but I’m not a massive fan of it as it’s pretty rough; however, it was not quite as bad as some of my worst fears and it wasn’t quite rough enough to be in contention for my “worst coaster ever” like I know it is for some. I have only ridden it in the inner seats, however:

After my ride on Furius Baco, I decided to hot foot it back towards the back of the park, taking a ride on another coaster with a short queue on my way there…

Stampida

Stampida was on an advertised 10 minute queue, so I decided to have a go on there. I picked the Red side, and the queue time board was true to its word, with me queueing exactly 10 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 6, and similarly to yesterday, I’m afraid I wasn’t the biggest lover of Stampida; the ride was pretty rough, and it also had very uncomfortable lap bar restraints that really dug in and constrained any kind of airtime potential:

After my ride on Stampida Red, I made a beeline for Mexico, as Hurakan Condor, which had spent pretty much all of my time at PortAventura on a ridiculous queue, was advertising only a 10 minute wait. When I joined, however, it became abundantly clear that this queue was longer than 10 minutes, and while I initially stuck it out thinking that the queue didn’t look too long, I decided to bail after 15 minutes of practically no movement:

After bailing on Hurakan Condor, I decided to head to Shambhala for another single rider queue reride. I waited marginally longer than the advertised queue time this time, waiting 35 minutes compared to an advertised 30 for the main queue, but when I got on, I scored the front car this time. Shambhala on the front was phenomenal, and possibly one of the best rides yet; the unencumbered sense of speed felt slightly stronger up front, and the sensation of getting pushed up into the hills was sublime:

After my reride on Shambhala, the single rider queue was unfortunately too long for me to have another reride and get back to meet my parents in time. As such, I instead decided to check out Hurakan Condor again, but the advertised queue time was back up to 1h 20m, so I gave it a miss for today and instead rerode El Diablo on a 10 minute advertised queue time as I was walking by. I was seated in row 3 this time, and it was similar to earlier:

After getting off El Diablo, I pondered doing a reride on Dragon Khan on my way back to Meditarranea to meet up with my parents, but it was already approaching 4:30pm, so I thought that the queue looked a tad too long for me to be able to ride it and walk back to meet my parents by our agreed meet up time of 4:45pm. As such, I decided to just steadily walk back to Meditarranea and close off my day at PortAventura Park there:

That was not quite the end of the day, however… when I met back up with my parents, we went to head into Ferrari Land for our one visit of this trip. We were at the entrance a little before the opening time of 5pm, so we had to wait for a bit before they opened the gates:

When we headed into Ferrari Land, we decided to join the masses and head into the pre-opening queue for…

Red Force

Red Force had a modest, albeit not small, pre-opening queue by the time we reached it, so as it was the primary draw of the park for us, we decided to join it and wait for the ride to open. We initially felt quite good about our prospects, as we were ahead of much of the pre-queue… but the ride unfortunately failed to open at the park opening time of 5pm. It was inactive for a while due to a technical fault, and 1h 10m of additional waiting passed before they started sending test trains around and a full 1.5 hours of additional waiting passed before the ride actually started operating with people on board at 6:30pm.  On a side note, I got to see them manually push the train slowly up the launch track and manually pull it slowly back along it, which I’ve never seen before; that was interesting, if nothing else:

Once the ride opened, we ultimately waited around 35 minutes for it, which we didn’t think was too bad given that the back of the queue when the ride opened was pegged at 1h 30m. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 2, and it was an absolutely fantastic coaster; it was incredibly fast with a phenomenal sense of speed, and it had some great airtime at the top of the top hat! I also felt that the overhead lap bars were much more comfortable than the old Intamin OTSRs! However, if I’m being totally honest… I perhaps controversially prefer Stealth, and given that Red Force is the tallest and fastest coaster I’ve ridden by quite some margin, I was maybe expecting a tad more. The launch was a bit rattly towards the end, notably more so than on Stealth, but the main critique I had is that I think this ride style does miss a little something without the hydraulic launch. Red Force is undeniably a very fast coaster and provides an awesome sense of speed, but without the rapid acceleration of the hydraulic launch, I almost felt that the ride didn’t feel quite as fast as it actually was. Nonetheless, Red Force was still an absolutely fantastic coaster that I loved, and I’m very glad I got to ride it (I was honestly slightly doubtful that I would even get to ride in the initial moments of our Ferrari Land visit):

After getting off Red Force, the ride had a 1.5 hour advertised queue and my parents had booked an evening dinner reservation in the hotel for later, so any notion of reriding it went out of the window. As such, I instead decided to try…

Thrill Towers

Thrill Towers was on an advertised 40 minute queue time, so being a fan of a good drop tower, I decided to have a ride on there. The queue ultimately only took 20 minutes, as a second tower that was initially closed reopened while I was in the queue; you can never moan about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was allocated the shot tower side, and it was good fun, with a fun launch and some fun floaty airtime, but I think I’ve ridden better examples of the genre elsewhere:

After I got off Thrill Towers, I met back up with my parents. I pondered doing something else, but our evening dinner reservation was looming, and Flying Dreams had a queue too long for us to ride it and get back to the hotel in time for dinner, Racing Legends was broken, and Red Force also had a queue too long for us to feasibly reride it, so we decided to call it a day there and head back to our hotel. Interestingly, we walked past the main entrance to PortAventura, which we hadn’t properly encountered previously:

So, that just about wraps up our second day at PortAventura Park and our visit to Ferrari Land! I had a great day; PortAventura Park once again delivered, with Shambhala rerides being sublime, surprises like Street Mission being awesome, and the park generally being wonderful, and it was great to get into Ferrari Land and ride Red Force! Crowd levels also weren’t nearly as high as I’d feared despite it being a public holiday in Catalonia; I didn’t feel that the crowd levels and queues were an awful lot different to yesterday, and I was still perfectly fine without any form of Express Pass.

In terms of Ferrari Land; I admit that my experience there was probably discoloured by waiting an extra 1.5 hours for Red Force to open and not spending an awful lot of time in there, but my opinions on it are very, very mixed. What’s there is excellent; Red Force is an absolutely superb headline coaster, and there’s also some lovely theming throughout the park. However… there frankly isn’t nearly enough of it. Ferrari Land is a very small park, and with only one real headline attraction, I think it is much too small for a stand-alone theme park; Red Force is basically the sole noteworthy attraction. It would have worked far better as an additional themed area of the main park, in my view. I also take issue with the way in which it is operated in some regards. I think the model of opening it in the evening from 5pm-10pm, while a nice idea on paper, causes issues because it causes practically everyone in the resort to converge on Red Force at once when the main park closes, which makes the queues for it very long and means that it struggles to handle the demand.  I also take issue with you only being allowed one visit to Ferrari Land in the package holiday deals; I feel that it would work better if they operated an unlimited 2-park park hopper ticket, similar to what Universal does, as then you could mix and match PortAventura Park and Ferrari Land more freely. Nonetheless, Red Force is excellent, and the park has some nice thematic foundations, so if PortAventura can expand and develop it in the years to come, many of these points will become moot.

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this report! Tomorrow, we’ll be heading into PortAventura Park for our final day there before heading home, so keep your eyes peeled for that report!