Must be getting creds in Madrid - Day 2 - Parque Warner
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Day 2 – Parque Warner
Here was a park I was rather excited about, with 2 B&Ms, a Vekoma GIB and some gorgeously themed areas, how could I not be?
The journey to the park was slightly longer than the other, purely because it’s seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so first step was get the Metro:
Then the RENFE train to Pinto:
Then a bus straight to the park entrance:
Rather simple in the end, who needs to spend lots on hire cars?
My excitement also truly got the better of me when I noticed Stuntfall testing, and then my interest was piqued by the entrance/main street area.
Whilst the quite often unforgiving Spanish sun has faded the paint somewhat, I adored the entrance area; and the theming in general. Though the theming didn’t extend to Stuntfall, our initial first destination, we were denied due to some good old fashioned Spanish operations, where some rides open 45 minutes after park opening. Weird.
Undeterred, we followed the straight path with our goal directly in sight, Superman – de Attraction de Acero.
I have heard LOTS of good things about this. And whilst the ride was on one train operation, I felt that it didn’t really need it, considering the queue was only down the stairs that led into the station. Naturally the first decision was to sit right at the back row, and we were quickly sent out on our journey.
B&M straight drops are brilliant. It’s probably that simple, of course you rarely see them on any bar a Hyper Coaster or Raptor at Gardaland. This is a real shame, as there was tonnes of airtime to be had in the back row of this. The rest of the ride was rather standard in the classic B&M fashion, loop, Immelmann, zero-g, cobra roll, intwined corkscrews, but with the slight difference of a small airtime hill and some good final helixes through in for good measure. The positive of this being that without a MCBR, the ride doesn’t lose pace, which considering it’s on the boundary of when B&M started going ‘safe’ is perhaps the best bit about the ride.
I wouldn’t say it blew me away, but it was still a brilliant ride.
The plan was to ride Batman next, but that was also opening late, so I popped onto La Venganza del Enigma, the shot/drop tower, which was good fun and very whooshy. The drop from the top was probably the standout of the ride, as the shot up was rather gradual. Again, taller drop towers quite often lose the real thrill in comparison to the shorter ones.
Finally, Batman – La Fuga was open. And it probably has the best queueline in the entire park, and should certainly be considered as one of the top ones in Europe. As soon as you enter through the entrance gates of Arkham, it becomes a fair representation of the place. A long and winding indoor queue past noisy gates (hello Sub Terra), abandoned cells and random other bits and bobs was very enjoyable. Unfortunately the theming just stops at the stairs to the station as well as the station itself. Which is a bit weird it must be said.
The ride of course, is a Batman clone, which are varied in their own world as per most clones. Some are good, some are bad, etc. Another run into the back row and away we went.
One of the best parts of a Batman clone is the opening salvo of inversions, loop, zero-g, loop, is pretty much a real push on the senses without doing that much. Of course La Fuga has the added incredible near miss in the zero-g to the station building. Whilst it was still early in the day there was a definite feeling that there was a lot of bite to the latter half of the ride, but it was indeterminable after 3 or so dispatches in.
Still, between this and Superman, this park has two fantastic rides.
Back to Stuntfall it was then. 7 years since I rode Déjà vu at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and I was rather itching to get on it because a – GIB’s are pretty fab, and b – it spites regularly. Unfortunately it wasn’t running the back or front rows, which was a bit burndenous and slow, but the queue moved reasonably quickly. Until…
The dreaded engineer appeared. Fortunately he did some things and the ride tested and he moved on. Huzzah! Before long we were ready to ride (and destroy ‘the burdenous buzzer of unnecessary loud times’).
The lift is fast and actually quite scary, if only for the fact these trains don’t have much in the way of space between cars, and my feet kept touching the giant metal thing in front of me. The drop though is just outstanding. Fortunately due to the large inversions there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Vekoma rattle on it either, though I was in the fable Vekoma-Brace-Position™ which probably helped. Even backwards it was reasonably smooth and definitely enjoyable. A shame that not many of these exist in the world really.
After that we needed a long sit down, and by luck, a nearby indoor show was starting in the Scooby Doo Musical. Featuring songs from the hit live action film of a decade ago, and of course, the Great Dane himself (the actor of which deserved the most credit, being in that suit and being involved in a very high tempo show). The story seemingly followed a similar tale to that of the Buffy musical episode, where the Romanian 2013 Eurovision entry was causing all the fuss. It was enjoyable and pretty basic theme park show affair for continental European parks. I wish we had more like these in the UK.
After a quick break for lunch (at least when we wanted lunch at British times the places were empty), we headed into the Cartoon Village in search of more coasters.
We were distracted by the Scooby Doo Adventure, a Sally dark ride, which had a lot of burdenously broken targets. A shame but the cars were so, so cute <3
Further on we heard the rumblings of a Zierer Tivoli, Tom y Jerry. Nicely themed to a classic episode involving a picnic, we also had burdenous queue-jumpers in this one, who we actually ended up walking past anyway because of being a two and the staff filling up the car. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Not much to report on it tbh, ridden one Zierer Tivoli, ridden most of them.
We meandered around the area looking for the next coaster, where we stumbled into the character house area. We elected for Bugs (because who wouldn’t?) and after walking through the house/queue were greeted by a rather scary scene of Bugs stretched out in his chair waiting for us. It was terrifying. But we had a good bit of banter with him and the photographer. Shame it’s one of those bits where you have to buy a photo over taking your own. Stupid Picsolve </3
Finally we eventually found the entrance to Correcaminos Bip Bip, a Mack Youngstar that had a rather awesome themed queue/station combo. Why aren’t there more of these? As they are clearly better than a Vekoma Roller Skater. I especially like kid’s aimed coasters that don’t really patronise the kids in the same way as Wacky Worms and the like. Good old Mack.
LOL VEKOMA STRAPLINE
That done, we headed into a very rare European Wild West themed area. And headed for Coaster Express.
It’s god-awful.
Not only does it bounce its way around the track, it’s DULL. Being dull is a bigger sin than being rough, and this was BOTH! In addition to the fact that the trains are rather limiting to who can actually ride, this was by and far the worst part of the overall trip. And we can blame two companies for this, RCCA for existing and building the ride, and Intamin for the trains. This was Mean Streak levels of bad, and I’d much rather ride Baco than this. THAT’S HOW BAD IT WAS <////3
After some further faff, we headed to the Police Academy Stunt Show. Which involved 15 minutes of dull chatter involving picking audience members, and then one does the same thing that’s done in every show and starts driving the car because he’s a [sHOCK] part of the show lineup! [/sHOCK]
The actual stunt part of it was cool, but there was truly too much faff going on to enjoy it.
A quick escape led us to Hotel Embrujado, a Vekoma Madhouse, and quite possibly one of the best examples of one I’ve ridden.
The internal theming is amazing. I felt like it was ripping off Tower of Terror, but in a good way, because the quality wasn’t really THAT far off it. Add in the numerous effects in the library, the ride LITERALLY hidden behind an ancient bookcase, and an equally amazing and terrifying animatronic in the ride made it a wonderful experience. Naturally it suffers from the whole language barrier as most Madhouses do (the story seemed to be Phantom Manor in a hotel), but the thing was so gorgeously themed I didn’t care. Definitely better than Villa Volta.
All this needs is 1930s music and it’s Tower of Terror
To continue our dark ride tour, we headed towards Batman: La Sombra del Murciélago, or ‘Knight Flight’. Again the quality of theming within this attraction was rather good, and again the language barrier was there. This simulator also went into full CHEESE mode, so whilst it was a very low quality film/simulator, it entered into the good category because it wasn’t that good. Ironic eh?
Naturally, I NEEDED a pic with the Arnold Mr Freeze <3
We decided to end the day with another go of both Batman and Superman. In the end I would say I preferred Batman, as the second go on Superman was full of old B&M rattle. The kind that doesn’t make the ride bad, but it’s just, there. Batman unsurprisingly had warmed up considerably and was thumping around the track wildly. With that we headed back for tat based times (which were disappointing) and ventured back to Madrid.
I ADORED this park. Whilst I didn’t get to do the water rides and Coaster Express is better off being burnt to the ground, the park is very well themed, and a good range of coasters, flats and dark rides. It perhaps misses a really big world class dark ride in that list, but beyond that I can’t really thing of what else this park needs (aside from a GCI replacing Coaster Express).
It’s truly amazing how a Six Flags park was so well themed. It could probably do with a few touch-ups here and there, and perhaps the entertainment has been scaled back a bit (there were two arenas seemingly unused in Gotham and by Stunt Fall). But the park has a good level of quality theming throughout, and is beautifully designed by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. I definitely want to return in a few years.
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