Another park that’s changed a bit since my previous visit, what with Plopsa getting their hands on it recently, Holiday Park would serve as our penultimate park purely because it was easier to head down to Europa Park afterwards. We turned up to find it rather empty and a sign stating that the Spinning Barrels and Holly’s Autofahrt would both be spiting us. Was only when I returned I realised what had actually happened with the Barrel ride, grim.

We dossed around in the Museum for a bit looking at the old stuff before the park opened and we headed for our first destination.

Expedition GeForce is over-rated. It’s that simple really. And like most Intamin’s has a good first drop but everything else is just so meh. What doesn’t help is that the lapbars are really uncomfortable on the thighs, so of course what happens on every airtime hill? It digs into the leg. What does the ride have a lot of? Airtime hills. Sigh.

It just isn’t the best thing ever, if it ever was in the first place.

After that disappointment we headed over to the new for 2014 Sky Scream, a weird Premier contraption indeed. The exterior which is now finished looks fantastic, unfortunately inside the building the only piece of theming was a spider, which had moved in rather than actually been placed deliberately. Oh well.

The restraints have a real burden to them as well, in the shin guards of WHY? Being a flat block of foam doesn’t particularly work well for shins, what with the curvature of the human body being as it is, so it’s another set of restraints that just did into you. 2 for 2 in the bad design choices.

The ride itself is actually quite good fun I felt. Quite intense and a fair amount of hangtime throughout, but the shin-guards prevent it from being really enjoyable, and they became more noticeable the second time around. A shame really, and I hope they get around the theming the inside, cos it’s utter crap currently.

Time for a rethemed ride next, and the first Plopsa themed ride in Wickie Splash, the Log Flume which was good fun, managing to do 3 reversing log flumes in 3 days was very weird though it must be said. We wandered past a random show on the way to the next ride Tabuluga Boat Ride, which was one of those slow boat rides with random scenes and no music in the boat. We put that down to the random unplugged component underneath the seat.

We faffed about for a bit wondering what to do next, and ended up on the Carousel before hitting up Donnerfluss the Rapids of reasonable wetness.

We had some food and decided as there weren’t many other rides we really wanted to do (due to a distinct lack of filler rides really at the park) we would watch the other shows. Starting off with the delightfully European Gooseparade, which is exactly what you imagine it to be, before the Festival der Tiere animal based stunt show. It was reasonably cute and involved a giant rabbit.

Finally we watched the Talking Dead Show, a jet ski show randomly themed to zombies due to the addition of Sky Scream. It was rather entertaining, with lots of interactive bits and stunts and general silliness abound, including a Wrecking Ball moment right above the crowd. Shame the finale explosion was a bit poor, especially for a German show.

We decided to ride the two coasters again, both being still rather meh before hitting up the House of Anubis Free Fall Tower, which clearly has the best queueline ever because you get to watch episodes of the show. It was a smaller version of Apocalypse (3 sides) and alright rather than spectactular.

It was then time to head for Europa. Holiday Park was a bit disappointing really, whilst what Plopsa have added so far looks really good (Sky Scream interior aside), it just seems to lack a lot of things to generally do. Lots of dead space around certain points in the park and a lot of crap rides to boot doesn’t really add up to much, given that the two major coasters are both disappointing (but at least for those who like GeForce, it is back on two trains).

Plopsa have a lot of work to do with the park I think.

After a drive, we started seeing the signs that make many enthusiasts very happy.

We parked up at the Bell Rock Hotel, ready to chill and get some dinner in the bar, but as we checked in the staff member said to us that because the park was open until 9pm, we could have some free entry for the final hour of operation. Of course the answer to this a resounding yes, so we dumped our bags in the room and headed to the Spirit of St Louis bar for a delicious Black Angus Burger before heading into the park.

Choices were of course at a minimum, what with only an hour to play around with, so we headed to Blue Fire because it’s amazing. Whilst Helix has of course overtaken it because of being bigger and better, Blue Fire is still a fantastic ride, smooth as glass with the odd bit of airtime and intensity throughout it. It still resides in that top 10 of mine as a result.

Up next was Wodan, which was its usual relentless self so late on in the day. I don’t rate it as highly as many others seem to do though, possibly because of experiences like the Beast at night being something that can very rarely be topped in the wooden coaster stakes. It’s still very good mind.

We had some proper night-time Blue Fire before we headed to the Colosseo for the Imperio Show, which was ok I guess. I dunno, it just didn’t click with me for some reason, all a bit too random and lacking much in the way of a progressive story for such a show. Why was the scantily glad lady dancing in a champagne glass? I’ll never know.

It was then time for bed, as the next day was going to be a long one.