Must be getting creds in Madrid - Day 1 - Parque de Attractiones
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Day 1 – Parque de Attractiones
After a late evening flight and a taxi to a hotel, Madrid’s parks beckoned. This trip was mainly done as a “Benin wants to get all open European B&Ms this year” trip, and it also combined with a birthday. So it happened.
After a morning of searching for a McDonalds that became sadly fruitless (and McMuffin-less), we hopped upon the Metro (of which a 3 day unlimited pass on all transit options costs €35) towards Batan station, where Parque de Attractiones lives.
Or at least it’s second entrance, which surprised me. But we were greeted by long queues we simply walked past due to online tickets, and found ourselves in the Nickelodeon area.
As such, the first coaster was to be Padrinos Voladores, one of those random Zamperla suspended kiddie wild mouse jobbies that Mingoland got recently. Themed to Fairly Odd Parents too if you’re into that sorta stuff. Either way, it was meh and juddery. Stupid Zamperla.
After vacating the kids area as quickly as possible, we found TNT Train de la Mina, where stacking was the order of the day (and a reminder of why I find Spanish parks that extra bit frustrating). We didn’t know the manufacturer of this, but turns out Gerstlauer can make decent rides if they don’t invert/launch/etc. Was rather good fun, certainly as good as the Intamin counterparts, with mixtures of airtime and some decent laterals to boot.
Not an easy coaster to get pics of though
The heat and busyness of the park was clear to see, and the next coaster was Vertigo, a Wild Mouse. It had the worst operations I’ve ever seen on one as well, which is EXTREMELY impressive. As opposed to running it normally (as per, every other park in the world), here we have 4 cars (ew), all loaded at once in the station (ew), dispatched, and once they’re all back in the station we load it again. So the queue would move a maximum of 16 people at a time. For a Wild Mouse. In Spain.
Ew.
Plus a group that queue jumped right before the ride decided to have a moan about something and cause security/managers to be called down. Further delaying everyone else. Why is going to a park in Spain so much more burdenous?
Hooray for themed supports!
After the Vertigo issues we decided to look into the Express Pass stuff, cos we still had 4 creds to go, and 3 of those have no throughput. For an unlimited Gold level at €29 (there’s a Silver which allows one shots for slightly cheaper), there was a resounding YES to that. Although this cannot be used for either Vertigo or Tarantula. Which is strangely well thought out considering the operations of the park.
Onwards we went to Abismo then, a Maurer Sohne Skyloop of the extended variety. I was rather excited for it, not sure why, given G-Force exists. But regardless, we skipped the entire queue and onto the front row it was.
The lift is insanely quick, and the hang-time on the top is immense and intense, and the inversion/drop back down are both a lot of fun. Indeed, the ride as a whole was quite fab, which was very, very surprising it must be said. Tonnes of airtime in the hill as well, which given that these restraints don’t try and sever you in half makes it a lot more enjoyable.
Next up was a ride I had zero expectations on, Tornado, one of only two Intamin Inverts in the entire world (the other in Finland). In my experience, rare Intamin rides are rare for a reason, which tends to be that they are utterly awful abominations of rides, so the was a fair amount of trepidation for this.
There was also no queue (the only coaster seemingly not to have one, even on one train), but we hopped in the back row of the train (the same as an Intamin Impulse, which slightly improved my mood as I LIKE those), and off we went.
As like most Intamins, it has a good first drop, and the rest of the ride was pretty good as well. Forceful loops and rattly turns essentially made up the ride, with a corkscrew thrown in for good measure. Overall it was pretty much on the average side of the scale, mainly due to the layout being a bit meh rather than the ride being crap. Intamin deserve props for trying a full Invert but this wasn’t going to trouble even the worst B&M version.
After a chill under Tornado, we elected to do some flats, starting with my first Huss Conder In Rotor, which was pretty dull it must be said. Next up was Tifon, a very long and spinny Zamperla Disko. Cooling off times were required, so Asseradero the Log Flume was done, which was of an acceptable wetness although it did indeed struggle to actually get us over the top of the first lift hill. Bit awkward.
To continue the spinning rides theme we had started, Tarantula was next. Billed as one of the best Maurer Sohne spinning coasters, I was quite hyped up for it. It uses the location on the side of the hill reasonably well, but it could’ve done a whole lot more with it. It didn’t spin a whole lot on our ride of it, but it was quite good. I think on a whole I still prefer Fury to it, just as it has a bit more in the way of final product and less pondering layout.
Up next was a Huss Frisbee in the name of La Maquina, which became our most regretted ride in the park. It was long, spinning and made me feel incredibly awful when combined with an extremely hot day. So ice cream was called for. After said ice cream, the Intamin drop tower La Lanzadera happened, which was a normal one to which I’m rather blasé towards as heights don’t do anything for me. Plus being at the bottom of a tall hill didn’t help the experience at the top to be any more scary.
We did Abismo again in the back, which was had some insane levels of rattle within that ruined the ride somewhat, before heading up the giant hill to investigate Fantasia, which turned out to be a Small World rip-off. It wasn’t very good and it wasn’t that racist either, though that might be due to riding Carnival Festival earlier in the year. We also did the Star Flyer just outside it, which was welcomed due to the cooling breeze that it provided on an awfully hot day.
The idea now was to get the final coaster and leave, because the day had been long and full of terrors. But first, Telesaurio, or the Spinning Dumbo ride as I called it, had to be done because it was quite fab. The final coaster Vagones Locos was then done, because +1, before we re-rode TNT again, had food and then left.
The park was nice, with some very good presentation and theming in some cases, but not in many others. The general high levels of heat and some poor operations/queue jumping did affect the day quite rapidly though. It was a shame we had to resort to Express Passes but they did in the end help get a lot more rides than we would’ve done. We were drained by 3pm and that was only after 3 hours of park opening. The park doesn’t really have anything truly stand-out amazing although I did like Abismo, Tornado and Tarantula, they were all pretty much above average, rather than insanely good.
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