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JoshC.

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  1. JoshC.

    JoshC. goes to America - Hersheypark

    By JoshC.,


    Hersheypark Trip Report
    I finally did it: I finally went to America for some creds. Before my trip at the start of June, I'd only done European parks, so it was hugely exciting.

    Before getting to it, here's a setting the scene sorta dealy.

    This trip had been a long time in the works. Early plans can be traced back to March 2021, which was going to be a Cedar Point + others trip. But that fell through. Still wanting to go out to the States for some creds, I looked at other possible ideas. I could do Orlando / California or similar, but not being a big Disney fan, their draws were weak, and I didn't really have a clue where to start with booking that sort of trip. Resorting to the easier-for-me-to-plan road trip, I quickly honed in towards flying to Philadelphia, and then hitting up some of the big parks there.

    The plan was to fly into Philly, have a day to get accustomed to the country, then do Hersheypark, Kings Dominion, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Six Flags America, Knoebels and Dorney (in one day) and Six Flags Great Adventure. There were some long journey times between the parks, but heyho, I've done long drives and was fine, so I'm sure this'll be fine.

    The build up to the trip was...hectic. The day after I landed, I was moving flat (for a new job I started last week). My mum is also in the process of moving flat, so I'd been helping her out too. I had finished my temp job only a couple of days before flying out too, which didn't give me much time to generally sort out everything in life.

    But anyway, I made my way to Heathrow bright and early...and headed to the wrong terminal. My flight was from Terminal 3...I got off the free shuttle bus at Terminal 2. D'oh! Fortunately, it's only a short walk between the terminals, and soon enough I was checked in and in a long security line. Small spoilers: the security queue was one of the longest of the trip! But soon enough, I was on the plane and ready for the 7-8hr flight.

    Long haul flying was fine for me. Wasn't quite sure how I'd find it, but my American Airlines flight was comfortable, the food was acceptable, and I was able to pass the time by watching Stranger Things 4. Soon enough, I'd landed in Philadelphia.

    And oh boy, it was hot. Midday local time and it was 35C (oops, I'm in America now, that's....95F). I'm not someone who particularly enjoys the heat (another reason why I was unsure about doing a trip to Orlando). But hey, I'd manage, America has aircon in most places, and I'd adjust soon enough...

    I collected my hire car no problems. This was actually the first time I'd ever hired a car, and my first time driving on "the other side" of the road. On top of that, it was my first time driving an automatic, and only the third different car I'd ever driven since passing my test 4 years ago. So just a few firsts. I took my time to get used to it before heading off to a nearby-ish Walmart to get some drinks and snacks. This 20 minute drive to Walmart didn't serve me well though. Driving wasn't difficult, but I made the odd little mistake and just didn't feel wholly comfortable whilst driving. I guess that's understandable and to be expected within context, but still, it played on my mind a bit.

    I carried on to my first motel of the trip and arrived in one piece. Woo, much success. But I still didn't get that comfortable feeling with driving. My excitement and elation for the trip and parks ahead turned to one of worry. "How on earth will I manage all the driving to come feeling like this?". Of course, I was hot, bothered and tired. And then thoughts came flooding into my head..."If I feel like this now, how will I feel after 8 hours outside at a park, then having to do a 1.5-2hr drive?", "How will I manage that for a week straight?", "I'm not sure if I can do this". I'm, err, not the most confident person, and I think this whole thought process shows that.

    I tried to cast these thoughts to one side and had a spot of dinner from a lovely little restaurant just opposite the motel I was at. But these thoughts played on my mind still. I tried looking at all the drives I had for the next couple of days to try and ease my concerns, but that did little to help me. The first two parks were to be Hersheypark and Kings Dominion, and they weren't a short distance apart. Knoebels and Dorney, parks much closer to Hersheypark, were shut the day after my Hershey trip, so I couldn't change the order to do shorter drives before doing longer drives.

    In the end, I got inside my head so much that I changed the trip a bit more dramatically. I hadn't booked park tickets due to my lack of organisation. Most of the motels/hotels I booked were free to cancel until 23:59 the day before arrival. So I wasn't going to lose any money.
    Gone were Kings Dominion, Busch and SFA, the three parks which were a huge drive away.
    The one motel I couldn't cancel was one which was between Dorney and SFGAd.
    So the trip changed into:
    Hersheypark: 2 days
    Knoebels
    Free day
    Dorney
    SFGAd

    It made the trip feel less daunting with the driving. It did take out a big chunk of creds, and I was particularly looking forward to Busch / Pantheon. But ultimately, in the moment, I just didn't feel I could do it. In hindsight, it all feels a bit stupid. I'm sure everything would have been fine. I got more used-to and comfortable with driving quick enough. Maybe I should have planned the trip better to build up to longer drives? Maybe I should tried hiring a car on a smaller like (like my recent Hamburg one, where I changed my mind late on about driving too)? Maybe I should have gotten out of my own head / slept on it? Maybe I should have booked everything earlier to force me to do these things? Whatever I should have done, it's done now.
     
    And now onto Day 1, which was my first day at Hersheypark...
     
    It was June 1st, and again it was hot. The drive from my motel to Hersheypark was about an hour, so I set off in good time. I passed Dutch Wonderland en route - a park which was closed on that day, but I made a note that I could possibly do it on my free day if I wanted. The drive to Hershey wasn't without stress, with my phone losing internet connection just before I was due to go on Route 283, making me very nervous I was going the wrong way. Fortunately, I rolled up at 10ish - huzzah, I was finally at my first American park!

    I really enjoyed the entrance plaza area: smart and well-presented, with the lovely view of a B&M hyper to boot. Plus, with the shop open, the hour before open flew by.

    Whilst waiting for the park to open, I realised I hadn't planned out my day at all. I knew roughly what creds the park had, but didn't know the layout of the park or anything. Candymonium was open for season pass holder ERT and right by the entrance, so that was a no-go. Skyrush is bound to be popular, so maybe not there. After a brain wave, I remembered about a particular ride which gets long queues. So whilst the masses made their way to the park's hypers and whatever else, I made a beeline to...
    Laff Trakk! Yep, my first American coaster was an indoor spinner. It was...okay. There's an attempt with theming and all that, but it just comes across as a bit tacky sadly. And the layout didn't really do it for me. So very much a one and done for me.

    Carrying on the theme of low-throughput, bog standard coasters, I ticked off the nearby Wild Mouse. It was bog standard. Jesus, I've flown 3500miles for some tacky rubbish I could have gotten at the British seaside...It's time to throw in something better. So it was time for Wildcat. GCI's first coaster - a fact I'd forgotten at the time - does have a decent layout, and is filled with some neat moments. At the same time, it does give off vibes of 'Our first coaster', but you can see what they wanted to do, and how they've refined their coasters with newer models. A decent family-thrill ride for the park.

    The park had only been open 15 minutes, and I'd ticked off 3 creds. The temperatures were soaring, so now felt like an appropriate time to ride Celsius.
    Wait, no, I'm in America. Let me try that again.
    It felt like an appropriate time to ride Fahrenheit.
    An Intamin multi inversion coaster with a vertical lift and beyond vertical drop - it's either going to be amazing, or bloody dreadful right?

    It was at this point I learnt to not trust the Hersheypark app too much. The app does give queue times for all the rides, but it said Fahrenheit was only 5 minutes, despite it clearly being more. I hesitated a guess at around 20 minutes, and an update came from soon enough advertising 15 minutes. Ended up taking a nice, round 40 minutes. Ooft. Thank goodness for the misters in the queue line though - they were a godsend!

    I'll channel my inner MattN now...how was the ride? Well, it wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bloody dreadful. It fell firmly into the "good" category. The layout is surprisingly fun, and the airtime towards the end of the ride took me by surprise. The cobra roll was extremely "vibrate-y", but not in a rough way, which was...odd. I wasn't a fan of the clunky restraints though. So it was definitely good, but this was also something that really needed a reride at some point to determine just how good.

    It has a pretty colour scheme too

    I then double-backed on myself to go to the park's duelling woodies: Lightning Racer. I hadn't done them earlier as they opened late, but now seemed like a good time to pick them up. And I have to say, I really enjoyed these. Quick-paced, nice interaction with each other and great coasters in their own right. I wasn't a fan of how it seemed like the Thunder side would win every single time; seems like a bit of a flaw there.

    Whilst I didn't want to make immediate comparisons, I make it no secret that I love Joris en de Draak at Efteling, so it was hard not to. And to be honest, Lightning Racer definitely feels like an attraction that walked, so Joris could run. Joris sees what Lightning Racer does, learns from its mistakes, and refines what it does well. Hersheypark is filled with "learning GCIs" it seems.
    Aside #1: I didn't take photos of Wildcat or LR. Clearly I have something against taking bad photos of GCIs.
    Aside #2: The Lightning (right) side of Lightning Racer was my 250th. Yay.

    With the creds in that area ticked off, I went a bit more centrally into the park. With stomach grumbling, I decided to pick up a snack. Oooo, finally time to try out some American park food!! A funnel cake standard was nearby, so naturally I gravitated towards there...
    It was blooming huge! Is this just American portion sizes? Are they meant to be shared? Did I buy a sharing one? I dunno, but I wasn't going to complain.

    After eating a bit more than expected, I decided another cred might not be best straight away, instead opting for the nearby shooting darkride, Reece's Cupfusion. I like shooters, and I was intrigued by this. I was taken back a bit by the layout going up and down; thought that was a bit quirky. But the best way to describe this (from a European's standpoint) is like a discount/budget Bazyliszek at Legendia. It has screens as well as 2D props (some move, some don't). But it all feels a little bit on the cheap side, and a little bit lazy. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, and I had fun, but really, for a park of Hershey's size and grandeur, I was expecting something a bit better.

    With that done, it was time for another cred. And I opted for hopeful quality over 'just a +1', and went to Great Bear, the park's B&M invert...
    Another 40-ish minute wait for this. And I didn't really enjoy waiting for this. Obviously queueing becomes more boring when you're alone, but with no sort of themed music (just generic pop music, which was fine, but meh all the same), and limited views of anything in a painfully dull cattlepen queue, it does drain you a bit. Wasn't helped further by the fact operations were pretty poor, partially due to slow staff, partially due to people being idiots and faffing. Oh well.

    Anyways, I was on and sat near the back. What followed was a decent, albeit unremarkable, ride. It very much peters out by the end though. Before this trip, I'd ridden 4 B&M inverts: Oz'Iris, Nemesis, Black Mamba and Nemesis Inferno. These are all fantastic examples of the ride type. Great Bear is an example which shows B&M Inverts are good rides, but can also be incredibly paint-by-numbers. "Let's chuck in a big drop, a vertical loop, a zero-g roll, a corkscrew and something else, boom, there's your B&M Invert". That's possibly a little harsh, but really, that's what it is. It doesn't have the location/terrain of Nemesis and Mamba, It doesn't have the scale and 'extra-ness' of Oz'Iris. The layout isn't as polished as Inferno. It just does every part well.
    It'd be interesting to know what my reaction would be if this was my first B&M Invert. Maybe I'd rate it higher. But for me right now, whilst I enjoyed it and don't have anything overly negative to say about it (ending aside), it just doesn't do it for me.
    Following the path along, I stumbled across another cred, the comically named Sooperdooperlooper. Obviously the historical nature of the ride shouldn't be ignored, but it very much feels like a ride which was designed to have the loop and nothing else. Literally after the loop, the ride feels like it was designed by RCT's "auto complete" feature, to get the track back to the start in a weird and funky ride.

    Next up was the big attraction of Hersheypark, the famous Intamin known by Skyrush.
    Since it had a surprisingly short queue (probably about 2-3 trains' worth of wait, if that), I opted for a front row ride. This turned out to not be the smartest idea, since after 3 cycles, it shut down for a bit. I decided to stick it out for a bit, and 10 or so minutes later, it came back up. And shortly enough, I was on.

    And WOW. This thing lives up to the hype and is insane. You get lifted / chucked out of your seat every couple of seconds. It's relentless. And yet it remains glass smooth, and even 10 years after opening, hasn't developed an infamous Intamin roughness. Yes, the extreme airtime does kill the thighs - and that does take away from the experience a little bit for me - but that's the point of the ride. Skyrush is clearly a ride designed to try its absolute best to fling you out your seat so you land into the lake, whilst not compromising and things like speed. And it makes a spectacle out of its elements: there's no mini airtime hills that you'd find on a RMC, say. It's loud and proud with what it does. There's no stand out element either, because so many elements are just incredible in their own right. I also liked the mini lapbar release it does whilst on the brake run - much appreciated.

    Given the lack of queue, I decided to run round for another ride, and got to do a back row ride. Again, bloody insane - moreso with some of the intense airtime moments too. I just about preferred the front, just for the pure thrill of getting the wind in your face, and it being slightly more comfortable. But damn, it's a bloody good ride.
    The lift hill is comically quick too

    Hopefully it's clear here that Skyrush is a ride I rate very highly. It's easily a "Top 10%-er", and even a "Top 10-er". For me, it slots nicely into the Top 5 too, slotting above Helix, but below Taron, Taiga and Untamed. Ultimately, the ride comfort is what stops it going above the others, but the craziness of the ride definitely cements its place.

    From one hyper to another, it was time to ride Sweetsmonium.
    Wait, no, I keep forgetting I'm in America. Let me try that again.
    It was time to ride Candymonium.
    (I'll stop with these terrible jokes now, promise)
    I'd been keeping an eye on the ride's queue time during the day - despite not really trusting the app - and it had seesawed between 20 minutes and 180 minutes. I decided to risk it on a supposed 20 minute wait.
    This was my first experience of a "no bags in the queue line" rule, which they were being strict on. Interestingly Skyrush has the same rule, but wasn't being applied. I'm fine with the rule and like the free lockers, but it felt like there weren't enough screens and lockers, and having to wait for a locker was painful.

    After about a 30 minute wait in the warm tin shed queue, I was on. Given how slow the operations were, I dread to think what it would be like if bags were allowed in the station. I'm understanding to how hard it is to work on rides in hot conditions, but when you have a coaster running 3 trains and you have the 2 out of the station stacking every single time, something ain't quite right sadly.

    Anyways, I'd managed to bag a back row ride for my first go on Candymonium. And this was my first B&M hyper too. I was quite excited for this. Andddddddddd....it didn't live up expectations. To be honest, all I really remember from this first ride is fixating on the two trims that are on the ride. They are extremely noticeable, and it disappointed me quite a bit.

    I'll leave my review of Candymonium there for now, but note I will come back to this later!

    There was now just over an hour left before the park shut. Despite having agreed with myself I'd be back tomorrow, I wanted to try and get all creds done in one day (just to see if my original plan was possible). So I went over towards Storm Runner - arguably the last major cred in the park. It had been closed all day, but I had noticed a couple of test runs. En route to the Intamin accelerator, I found Trailblazer, the park's Arrow Mine Train, looking very shut, and with fencing blocking off the entrance. Well, there's one spite.

    There were staff stood outside Storm Runner too, that was also shut, and they said it probably wouldn't open today. I didn't press for a reason, but I wonder if it was down to the heat - I know the likes of Stealth and Rita struggle in 30C+ heat, and at 33-35C, maybe it was just too much?

    To settle that disappoint, I decided instead to ride...
    Jolly Rancher Remix
    Previously known as Sidewinder, the park's Vekoma Boomerang received a makeover for this. Because of my immeasurable disappointment about missing out on 2 creds, I didn't take any photos of it on this day.
    The retheme is nice and vibrant, and the ride gives me 'Speed of Sound at Walibi Holland' vibes: they've taken a Boomerang, added some flashing lights and loud, thumping music. The presentation for it works. The ride itself is an above average Boomerang, which is still a below average ride.

    I then ticked off the park's kiddie cred, Cocoa Cruiser, and rode the park's old skool woodie, Comet. Really these were just a quick +2 and nothing more to me, though I guess Comet was pretty neat, and also my first taste of a Philadelphia Toboggan Coaster.

    With a bit of time leftover, I rounded Day 1 off with a couple more laps on Skyrush. Still a breathtaking ride.
    I possibly could have gotten a couple more goes in, but it broke down again. Intamin, ey?

    My hastily arranged motel was only a 15 minute drive from the park, close to shops and restaurants, and was reasonably cheap. Huzzah!

    So Day 1 Hersheypark thoughts: I enjoyed the park. It was busier than I expected, and the heat was a bit much at times. It immediately gets points for the amazing Skyrush, and even though there were some rides which didn't live up to expectations, others beat expectations, so swings and roundabouts. I was certainly looking forward to a second day, getting some rerides on the good creds, and trying some of the non-cred things I missed, all in a more relaxed setting.

    I have two bugbears about Hersheypark. One is their queue lines: they are all so boring, and the coaster queues don't give you views of the rides. Two is the lack of themed audio. Their newer areas (Chocolate Town and Jolly Rancher Land...not its official name btw) do a good job at creating a cohesive area with some neat audio bits. But really, the atmospheres in and around the stations for the likes of Skyrush, Great Bear, Fahrenheit would all be infinitely better with some loop of special audio. I know it's kinda an American thing, but still.  
    I returned to Hersheypark the next day. It was another hot one, of course, but it was a bit more overcast. I did a strange thing, and arrived at the park even earlier than yesterday though. Why, you ask? Well, to visit Chocolate World of course!

    Located outside the park, and I guess extending the exterior of their 'Chocolate Town' area, Hershey's Chocolate World is I guess the American answer to Cadbury World (not that I've ever been there, mind!). There's loads of stuff in there to do: a 4D cinema, create your own chocolate experience, plus tram tours and other things. All of that along with a huge sweet shop and a couple of food outlets. Chocolate World opens at 9am (2 hours before the park). I wasn't bothered by the upcharge stuff, but there is a free attraction:  
    Hershey's Chocolate Tour is basically a dark ride, taking you through the process of how the chocolate is made. After seeing the quality of the park's dark ride, it was nice to see how well-polished this is: lots of neat effects and animatronics, and all-in a fab little experience, definitely showcasing the place off well. The queue line serves as a walk through too, giving the history of the company. And at the end of the ride, you get a piece of Hershey's chocolate for free.

    Resisting the temptation to go round again for the sake of another freebie, I had a look round the shop to kill some time, picked up a Blueberry Muffin KitKat (which, sadly, wasn't all that nice), and then went back outside to get in line before the masses descended to wait for the park to open.

    Unlike yesterday, there was entertainment outside the gates. Well, I say entertainment, a single member of staff tried rallying some people up to get them excited, and got some kids to play a game. Or something like that, I don't know: he had a microphone, but it wasn't working. Anyways, at 10.45, he got everyone to do a countdown from 10 to 0, at which point.......nothing happened. A couple of staff behind the gates ran around panicking, wondering what was going on. I don't know what on earth was meant to be happening, seems like no one did. But in any case, this countdown to 0 did nothing, and the park opened bang on 11.

    Noting that the park felt a bit quieter, and not being in a rush to get creds, I decided to head to Candymonium first - maybe it's a morning ride? I got a front row ride and...
    Damn, that was impressive! Going in knowing a couple of the airtime hills had trims, I didn't fixate on them, and instead was able to just...sit back and enjoy. And it was just great fun: some nice floater airtime, but also some pops of ejector too. It was a class ride, and just really fun from start to finish.

    I'd've loved to jump straight back on and see what on earth was up with this hot and cold ride, but everyone was making their way over, so I decided to leave it and make my way to something new...
    Storm Runner was storm running (best pun I have, sorry), so made sense to tick it off before it got a potential long queue. This was a ride I was quite looking forward to, and it kind of lived up to the expectations. It was a nice, fast-paced ride which does what it sets out to do. It's short, but doesn't need to be any longer, as it packs in some cool elements. But at the same time, it doesn't quite hit the 'Wow' moments it should have for such a short, punchy ride.

    In part, I think it's because coasters have come along quite a bit since this was made, and so there's more modern, quirky elements out there. I can imagine that an RMC-inspired Intamin could make a much more fun Storm Runner today, for example. Also, the restraints are a bit restrictive, and do take away from the experience a bit.

    I then returned to another Intamin, Fahrenheit, for my much awaited re-ride. It provided a fun ride again, but was perhaps a bit weaker than my original ride. So it cemented it as a "good, but not great" ride for me, and probably not something I'd bother with again for the day.
    The "theme" (if you can call it that?) of Fahrenheit confused me. I get the idea of it being a 97 degree drop and using it as a temperature and angle (that's clever), but I thought the idea was it was also a 'blazing hot' ride? So why would the temperature be falling? And why am I overthinking this so much?

    Moving away from coasters, I went to something new and different:
    Mix'd Flavoured by Jolly Rancher, to give it its full name (sigh) forms part of the new Jolly Rancher Land, and is a Zamperla NebulaZ - one of these new rides which seem to slowly be becoming all the range. They're pretty neat to look at, and though I don't like spinning, I thought it looked tame enough to give it a go. Ultimately, it wasn't awful, but by the end of the cycle, I did feel queasy. The good thing is, though, is as much of a spectator ride as this is, it's still pretty fun to go on too!

    Turning my attention back to coasters, I then went for to take my reride on Great Bear. The big thing that stood out to me was that it had a much shorter queue, and I now realised how much quieter the park was compared to yesterday. Maybe not having to wait 40-ish minutes for the ride in blistering heat would make me more fond of the ride? Nope, not really. In fact, it just cemented my thoughts, and meant it was another ride I could tick off as "Don't need to ride again".

    I decided to get a snacky-American-sized lunch:
    The bucket of pulled pork chips gets my seal of approval

    Still adjusting to American-sized portions (or just eating sharing portions and not realising it), I opted away from creds for a bit. I ticked off the park's log flume, which was good fun - I particularly liked the calm looking section which was actually on a gentle slope, creating a fun few seconds, and the nice camel hump at the bottom of the drop. I then returned to Reece's Cupfusion, the park's dark ride
    I decided to try out a feature with the park's app, HPGO, which you can link up with the ride. Basically, it's a free wristband with a QR code. You can use it to load up photos, Fastpass things and all of that. But you can also scan it just before you board Cupfusion, and it then sends your score and on ride photo to the app for free.

    As you can see, I get very focused on shooters, even if their quality is patchy.
    Clearly not that good though, ranking 12th of all signed up players of the day, after only a couple of hours of park-opening.

    That's enough time without creds, so I went to GCI corner of the park to, well, reride the GCIs (ignoring the bog standard Wild Mouse and tacky spinner). A solid duo/trio of woodies there, and I found myself enjoying the Lightning side of Lightning Racer a bit more than yesterday; a good choice for 250 in the end!
    I even took a terrible photo of Lightning Racer, see!

    Something I had only learnt the previous day, and that had only truly dawned on me the previous night, is that Hersheypark has a zoo. And whilst it has its own separate ticket, you also get it included for free in your day ticket. So why not have a quick wander through I thought! It's a nice area, not too big, away from the park but not too far away, and a good way to break up the day. Didn't take any photos, but yeah, was nice.

    Anyways, it was time for creds again. And I surprised myself with how restrained I was in getting back to the one and only...
    Skyrush!

    Remember how I said yesterday they weren't enforcing the no-bags-in-queue rule? Well today they were. Eurgh, fine. Don't see the need really; the stupid station design means bags vs no bags is a mute discussion in my mind. Anyways, I got a couple more rides in, including at the back again, and it lived up to my memory from the day prior. Absolutely fantastic experience, and well and truly cemented itself as my #4.
    Not wanting to completely wreck my thighs one park in though, I left the yellow beast for now to return back to Candymonium, and see what on earth was up with this hot and cold beast. Fortunately it didn't have much of a queue, only 5-10 minutes, and I decided to mimic my ride from the previous day and go for the back row. And you know what? It was fantastic again! It was a ride that was just a ton of fun, and filled with neat airtime moments. Whatever disappointment I had yesterday had dissipated, and I truly liked this sweet ride. I went back round again and bagged another front row ride, which I guess shows my enjoyment of it.

    So now for my Candymonium review. It's a really fun ride, with lots of neat airtime moments. It's got good pacing with it too, which is great. And what I realised, most importantly, is that whilst it has trims at two different moments, those trims are needed. You still get some good airtime on them, and if they weren't there, you'd be getting airtime more akin to Skyrush's. That wouldn't be a bad thing for the ride really, but it then means you have two rides offering the exact same experience, which you don't want. The trims help differentiate Candymonium from Skyrush, and give the rides separate identities, whilst not taming down Candymonium. Huzzah!

    My one concern about Candymonium - I really enjoyed my rides where I didn't have to queue, but didn't get the same sense of fulfilment when I did queue. That could also be put down to first ride expectations. So whilst I rate Candymonium, would I be willing to queue for it? Honestly, I don't know.
    The Kisses fountain is a bit abstract, but I can see what they tried to do.

    As the photos show, the clouds had become a bit more ominous-looking after my rides on Candymonium. And sure enough, the dreaded "R" word followed....rain. It wasn't unexpected by me: the forecast did predict a short shower. But checking my weather app, it said this shower would last for a good 1-2 hours now. Bugger. Hersheypark close their big outdoor rides in the rain; certainly anything I wanted to re-ride was down. After a quick snack and think, I decided to do what a good chunk of people had done, and ride one of only two indoor rides on park. Not wanting to bother to trek to the other side of the park, I went for another go on Reece's Cupfusion...
    I got another delightful, free mugshot
    More importantly though...
    I claimed the current high score for the day...BOOM! Guy at the exit said he hadn't seen a score above 300k for a while too - whether he said that as a generic customer servicey comment thing, or if he was genuine, I don't know, but yeah. Take that everyone who visited Hersheypark on June 2nd! (I'm not competitive at all......)

    I had hoped the long wait and doing the ride would mean the rain would pass, but it didn't. It was still going strong. I really wasn't interested in doing Laff Trakk again, so I decided to wander over towards Skyrush, find somewhere undercover, and see what happens. For reference, at this point, it was about half 4, and park closed at 6. So I sat, and I waited. Rain still coming down. I don't mind the rain, but with little to do, I didn't see the point in wandering around too much aimlessly. In hindsight, now would have been a good time to do the zoo, and I could have used my earlier zoo time for rides, but oh well.

    The rain stopped a little after 5 - woohoo, the clouds have been kind! I didn't know what the rules would be exactly with rides reopening, but I hung back and waited patiently for Skyrush to come back to life. 15 minutes later, still no sign of life. Hmmmm, that's less good. Asked the staff at the entrance whether it would reopen - turns out it wasn't set to reopen for the day. Well bugger. Did it die before the rain? Was it a post-rain thing? No idea. Ah well, back to Candymonium then....
    Or not, that was also closed. And there was no committed answer as to whether it would reopen at this point.

    Other bigger rides were running around the park. But I didn't have much inclination to go on something like Great Bear or Fahrenheit again. The app listed Storm Runner as shut, though I wasn't wholly convinced. Equally though, whilst it would be nice to get a reride on it, I wasn't that fussed in tracking back and giving it a shot. So I decided to call it a day, with only 20 minutes of park time left.

    So though my visit to Hersheypark finished on a bit of a damp downer, it was still a fantastic couple of days. Skyrush and Candymonium are a great one-two punch for the park, and they have a wide variety of "good" rides too. There's obviously a solid selection of flats too, which I didn't really go on, and an included water park, which isn't my thing. So it's super well rounded too. I hope they continue going for the more 'themed area' approach, even if only lightly, as Chocolate Town and Jolly Rancher Land are wonderful, cohesive pieces. I'd also love to see them get another indoor ride - there's definitely scope and potential for something really cool.
    Wait no, I'm in Hersheypark.
    There's definitely scope and potential for something really sweet. 

    Coming soon: Knoebels, filled with nice food...and not-so-nice spites...
  2. JoshC.

    Storm Clouds Over Hamburg - Day 2, Hansa Park

    By JoshC.,


    Hansa Park Trip Report
    Lo and behold, Day 2 of 2 is here!

    After staying the night in Lubeck (in what was apparently a non-smoking hotel, but in a room which smelt strongly of cigarette smoke), I was energised for another day. The weather was cold and windy, but no rain.

    The journey from my hotel to Hansa Park was much simpler than the previous day: a direct train from Lubeck to Sierksdorf, and then a walk to the park. The walk was again very straightforward - pretty much a straight path which takes about 10-15 minutes. Unfortunately, by the time I'd arrived at Sierksdorf, the rain was kicking in, setting the tone for the weather for the rest of the day...

    I got to the park just before rides opened at 10, and walked straight on in after a quick security check. Dumping my stuff in a locker (1 euro for the whole day with unlimited entries - bargain!), I made a beeline straight to the park's main event - Karnan. I'd been keeping an eye on the park's app in days prior, which showed that it's availability had been...sketchy, at best. So ticking it off first was the safest bet.

    Arriving by the entrance, there was a staff member out the front, and a queue of people. Karnan was also testing, but filled with test dummies


    Shortly after I got there, the staff member said something in German I didn't quite understand, but about half the people waiting left. I imagine it was the usual "We don't know when it will open, hopefully soon, but try other rides and come back later". Realising the park would be very quiet and not wanting to take any chances, I decided to hang around and see. It was still regularly testing, still with dummies, so I remained optimistic.

    That optimism was perhaps foolish though. After about half an hour, and engineer came to queue front, after having emerged from "the tower" and said something and waved his hands, at which point everyone left dispersed. Uh oh, that didn't seem good. I asked the lovely guy out front what was what, and between my basic German and his basic English, I managed to piece together "We don't know when it will open, keep looking at the app".
    Bye for now

    The rain at this point was pretty consistent; not heavy, but not light either. I wandered away from Karnan, not quite sure what to do first. My first thought was obviously the park's other Gerstlauer, Flucht von Novgorod. But instead I walked right past their Wild Mouse, so thought why not...
    Well, it was closed, so that would be why not...

    Undeterred, I carried on walking in the random direction I had chosen, and eventually ended up the park's Beautiful Britain area, which included two creds. Let's go.

    First up was Nessie. The park's Schwarzkopf coaster, with basic lap bars and a vertical loop. Nice walk on too. The station for this is wonderful; really nicely themed. This was my first taste of what Hansa Park could do with their indoor spaces, and I was impressed. As for the ride itself, it was...fine? I was a bit disappointed in some ways, maybe because I set up high expectations thinking this might be like a mini Lisebergbanan (a cred I really like) with a loop. But yeah, it just didn't do it for me. Also, the aggressive brake run in the dark was not something I was prepared for (no nice warning signs a la Lisebergbanan!)
    I also didn't take any photos of it, which also highlights my lack-of-care for this.

    I wanted to tick off the other cred in the area, Royal Scotsman, whilst here. But lo and behold, it was closed. Entrance shut off with no explanation. Was it because of the weather? Would it open later? No idea.

    Instead, I turned my attention to the small matter of Highlander. You know, the 120m tall drop tower? I was very confused by this, because the gondola was not parked on the ground; it was instead about 10-15ft off the ground (like in some sort of maintenance mode?), but the entrance was open. I hadn't seen it go yet, but I decided to walk through and see. A staff member appeared from the op box, indicated to give him a moment, and then he lowered the gondola down. Huzzah!

    At this point, it was still raining pretty consistently. It was windy. My phone said it was 3°. Yet I was going near-400ft in the air. Cool.

    I love drop towers, but this did get to me a bit. The climb up is slow and suspenseful, and the accompanying music fits really well. It was going up and round that I also realised how close Hansa Park is to the Baltic Sea (spoilers: very close!). Going up just went on and on and on. And the wind and the rain was making me feel very cold. Nearing the top I got the tilt, which doesn't really do a lot for me, but I'm sure gets people. It was running the "super tilt" mode, where it stays like that for the drop, so it quickly went back to the upright position. Then, finally, it stopped. And I waited. And waited. And waited. There's no more audio, no countdown, nothing. Okay, this was a tiny bit terrifying, in the best possible way. How long was I up there, who knows? But soon enough, I was dropping down. That was fine...fun enough, but these larger ones give you more time to adjust to the sensation.

    In short, whilst the drop on Highlander isn't anything special, the whole build up and anticipation to it is. Really fun, and slightly nerve-wracking, experience!


    Now it was time to move on over to the much-praised Flucht von Novgorod. I knew the secrets this had (ie launch and vertical lift / beyond vertical drop), and that it had on-board pre shows. But beyond that, I was in the dark. The ride was only running one car, which meant the wait for front row took a bit of time. But I'm not complaining, as it gave me a chance to dry off in the indoor queue, and appreciate the theming around.
    I was told off by the operating for taking this photo...although maybe he was just telling me no phones on the ride. I don't quite know.

    Quickly enough, I was on. The pre shows before the launch are great. They set a really nice tone; creepy and spooky, with some neat effects in there too. That, however, it where most of my positives run out. You drop into the launch and it hits you. But at the same time, it doesn't feel that punchy? I know it is a quick acceleration, but it didn't feel like it was all that powerful. Maybe going in from the drop you already have a decent starting speed, so the boost doesn't come across that great? Maybe being in near-total darkness drains it of some reference? I don't know, but it didn't really do it for me. This was particularly sad, as I love Anubis' launch at Plopsaland!

    You then head on outside and the layout is...fine. Fine seems to be a word I'm using a lot for Hansa Park so far, doesn't it? It doesn't really do much, and it doesn't really give any notable forces / airtime. The inversion over the building is nice, but forgettable.

    Then you head on inside and reach the vertical lift. Oooh, back to Hansa indoor quality! Stopping on the vertical, you get some more "pre show". I guess if I could understand it more coherently I might enjoy it more, but it felt like a bit of a pace killer - the ride had just got going, now you're stopping me for this? The rest of the ride then takes place in total darkness, and is a bit rough and ready in typical Gerstlauer fashion, which made it hard to enjoy. It then ends with a projection of a crow on the wall (I've since learned about some scarecrow scare, which seems to have gone?).

    I did like how after the ride, you walk through a maze which has an actual potential dead end. That was a neat little 'post-ride' touch.

    Overall first impressions of Novgorod though: not that good. This is a ride I'd heard lots of good things about, and was something that seemed right up my street. Again, maybe I set my expectations too high? Maybe it was just a bit of a bum ride, which Gerstlauers sometimes give. It wasn't something I was prepared to write off just yet, but I was disappointed.

    By this point, the weather had improved ever so slightly - it was still raining, but it was a bit warmer. That, or I just got used to the cold. In either case, I decided to check out what was going on with this mystical Karnan thing. Still closed. Same poor soul stood outside. Fortunately by this point, the Wild Mouse, Crazy Mine, had opened. So I decided to get the +1 now. It gave me some nice Rattlesnake at Chessington vibes, and the singing animatronics were just on the right side of annoying to be charming enough. Ride is standard though of course.

    Sticking near Karnan, I then went for their Gerstlauer junior cred, Schlange von Midgard. This ride looks stunning, though sadly I didn't get any photos. In true recent Hansa fashion, it features a nice indoor pre-show section, with animatronics and some backstory. At the top of the lift, there's a screen with some stuff going on. Couldn't see what though as there was a huge warning message over the screen. Whoops. Ride itself is pretty fun; surprised there isn't more Gerst family coasters in general.

    Thanks to my slow wandering round the park, it was coming up to 12. Karnan had stopped testing, and the rain was coming down heavier again and it was becoming a bit colder. I took shelter under a nearby canopy to try and figure out my plan for what to do. I quickly decided that food would be the best option, even if it was a bit early. There didn't seem to be many indoor options except the restaurant at the front of the park, "Weltumsegler". This place looked really nice, and had a "canteen" style set up.

    This turned out to be a great choice, as demonstrated by this wonderful spicy currywurst and fries, and Oreo/grape dessert...

    This gave me a chance to warm up and take stock. I had managed all open creds, but there were still 3 closed creds and no clear indication if they would open. The park had a selection of water rides, something which I usually like but wasn't feeling because of the weather. There was some smaller rides which didn't appeal, and the Gerst sky fly, which again isn't my thing. So I decided after lunch to just walk around, despite the rain, see parts of the park I hadn't yet seen, and go with the flow. Here's some random pictures...
    Remember I said I didn't take any photos of Nessie? Well, I lied, I took this terrible one.
    Some water rides I did not ride

    I came across Novgorod on my wander round, and decided now was a good time to give it another shot. I had a back row ride this time. It still didn't do it for me. Disappointing.

    After this, I caught a glimpse of Karnan again (it's hard not to in the park!). And I saw a car moving. And it was empty - no test dummies! That had to be a good sign, right? So I made my way towards to it, and lo and behold, it was open!! Yes!

    So let's get to - Der Schwur des Karnan.
    The queue line is absolutely fantastic. Highly detailed, with great special effects. The indoor section has some TV screens explaining the story (with English sub-titles), in a Hex-at-Alton Towers like fashion. I know that some people don't like this style of storytelling, but the park have made it work. I got to see the full loop plus some repeat during this wait. Then I was batched into the first pre-show room, which again is told by TV screen and following the same character in the queue line videos. This features a wonderful reveal of where to store your bags; really liked that!

    Then comes the first special feature of Karnan; the row choosing ceremony. I'm sure most know what's what: you stand in a row, then a dramatic sequence occurs which randomly assigns you to a row. I'm sure that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I really loved the suspense this built up, and it's just a great deal of fun. Top rating from me.

    I was assigned into row 2, and was finally sat down in the beast that was Karnan. I've had previous experience with Gerst's clamshell restraints, on Gold Rush at Slagharen, and liked them then, and this was no different fortunately.

    I won't explicitly talk about the indoor section of Karnan. What I will say, however, is that I knew what happened, and still loved it, was still mightily impressed by it and found it truly exhilarating. Fantastic. If you know, you know, if you don't, don't look it up.

    As for the outdoor section of the ride - I can't sing its praises enough. The first drop is fantastic. The non-inverting butterfly element thing that follows is brilliant; filled with some weird moments and the exit to it is better than so many first drops on other coasters. The remaining parts of the layout are low to the ground, taking at high speed and feature great pops of airtime and lateral forces. And whilst doing all of this, it remains comfortable, and not too forceful. It truly is a masterpiece.

    Hitting the brake run leaves you processing everything which just happened. Annnnnd then, Karnan goes and spoils itself. There's a short indoor section to end the ride, including a verrrrrrrrry slow roll, which isn't particularly comfortable or interesting, followed by pitch blackness, bar the pointless on ride photo opportunity on a brake run (why?), and some heroic music to end off. This ends the ride on a low note for me; that whole section as it stands is either unnecessary, or needs some theming / effects to bring it to life. Or it would be better if you took the inversion at some speed; a final big hurrah.

    I don't want to 'do a Karnan' and leave its review on a bum note. So let's focus on the positives: this is a fantastic attraction, which looks visually stunning (even the weird supports for the butterfly thing work), has brilliant build up which is dramatic and serious, whilst still exciting. And it has a great roller coaster to back it up too. Definite Top 10% material and, for me, gets a Top 10 spot too.
    I know some people have said the tower is a bit boring, but I liked how intimidating it came across

    After my first ride, I was itching to get on again. I completely forgot about the rest of the park. I forgot I still had 2 creds to check on. I forgot that I would have liked another go on Highlander. There was Karnan and only Karnan. The wait this time was a bit longer; no doubt by now everyone had converged to the almighty Karnan. It took about 40 minutes this time.

    And here's where I have a bigger niggle about Karnan. It feels like a nightmare to run. It was only running one car, which means its throughput on that day would have been shockingly bad. But the staff were still struggling with timings. We were batched into the batching pre show room before people had left it. This left an awkward wait. I don't know why the ride was delayed for over 3 hours, but it's dodgy reliability seemed to be a common trend when I was looking in the days leading up to the trip.
    Is Karnan something bigger than Hansa Park can handle? Did they try to create such a fantastic, larger-than-life experience that they got carried away and lost sight of making sure it was easy to operate? I don't know, but that's certainly an impression I got.

    Maybe I'm being harsh here, since the park had only been open for the new season for just a few days, and they'd still be re-adjusting. But still, something which lives on in my mind.

    On a brighter note, Karnan still rode fantastic on my second ride, in the third row. And in literal brighter news, the storm had subsided, and the blue skies had appeared!

    As much as I loved Karnan, I wanted to take advantage of the good weather and be outside, and see what was what with the other two creds. Fortunately for me, they were open! Royal Scotsman was first, and this was a nice Vekoma junior ride. Nothing special, and you could tell this was an older ride which they've tried to retrofit into their newer, theme-heavy ideology. Then after getting briefly lost, I found the park's kiddie cred, Kleine Zar, and ticked off that +1 nice and easy.
    I also took this photo of a waterfall which features on a slow boat ride, which I quite liked

    With the weather still nice, I decided to wander round the park and appreciate it in the sun. I also got a glimpse of Baltic Sea too.

    I took a quick ride on Störtebekers Kaperfahrt, the WildWater West dingy boat ride, for the primary reason that these lift hills give you a nice foot massage, and I wanted a few minutes off my feet.

    That was enough time away from Karnan though - a third ride followed. Getting row 2 again, it truly cemented itself as a top tier ride for me here, and it had warmed up very nicely.

    After this, the storm had annoyingly returned, and it bought the rain again. It was now that I was left with a dilemma too, as time was now against me. I could squeeze in another ride on Karnan (maybe even two if the queue was nice), but then have an awkward wait after park close for my train. This would also cut my time fine for getting back to the airport, and a delayed / missed train would be very stressful. Or I could leave now, and have a more relaxed journey to the station.

    In hindsight, I probably would have chosen differently, but I opted for the latter of these options and called it a day. At the time, I think the new wave of rain had hit me, and even though I would be queueing indoors for Karnan, I didn't fancy getting wetter and colder later.

    So that was that for my day at Hansa Park. I had a good day, certainly helped by the excellent Karnan, but equally, I felt a bit downbeat about it. Hansa was a park that I had heard such good things about, but I just didn't get the same buzz from it. I definitely think the weather has played a part here. The little bit of cred anxiety too. But even then, I think you can enjoy the real top tier parks whatever the weather.

    I did really enjoy the park's theming attempts, and it's clear they have some real talent and drive behind them, wanting to make them a fantastic park. I'm not writing the park off, and I look forward to returning at some point in the future.

    ---

    The trains back to Hamburg Airport were simple enough, and no delays. The same couldn't be said for my flight home, which ended up being delayed by a couple of hours. Given the problems that Easyjet were facing at the time though, I guess it's better delayed than cancelled. It did mean I got home at like half 1, and had to be up at 7 for work. Not my brightest idea that.

    As for going to parks solo, was fine. I enjoyed it; none of my fears about it were founded. I'm looking forward to my solo America trip in a few weeks all the more now!

    ---

    I'll round of the trip with a little geek summary:

    New parks: 2
    New creds: 15
    Best new cred: Karnan
    Most surprising cred: Limit, for not killing me
    Most disappointing cred: Flucht von Novgorod
    Best non-cred: Highlander
    Highlight: Broad one, but actually going abroad again
    Lowlight: The bloody weather
  3. JoshC.

    Storm Clouds Over Hamburg - Day 1, Heide Park

    By JoshC.,


    Heide Park Trip Report
    Rewinding just over two years ago, I and a few friends had booked a trip out to Hamburg, which would include one and a half days at Heide Park - plus a stay in their hotel - and a day at Hansa Park. It would coincide with two of our birthdays too. What better way than to spend a birthday at a new park?
     
    At the time, this Covid-19 thing had just turned up on the British doorstep, and concerns were growing. But the idea of a lockdown was a far away thought. Obviously, come March, that all changed, and the trip cancelled (fortunately fully refunded). So instead of celebrating my birthday in some new foreign park, it was spent hunkered down in lockdown. "Ah well, maybe net year" I thought. Obviously I could go to Hamburg at other times, but I dunno, something felt kind of right about doing this trip over my birthday.
     
    But the world had other plans. Lockdown III was coming to an end, but foreign travel was out of the question, and the UK parks were out of the question. Instead, my birthday in 2021 was spent playing some outdoor mini golf (which was a big deal at the time tbf). 
     
    Early 2022 came around, and things seemed a bit more promising. Maybe I could spend a birthday out of lockdown for the first time since 2019!! And maybe, just maybe, I could finally get out to Hamburg. I tried to rally up those who I originally planned to go with, but after being met with radio silence, it became apparent if this was going to happen, I'd be going solo.
     
    Ooft. Solo park trips aren't something I've done for a long time. Well, I haven't really done them at all. I've maybe spent a couple of hours at a park alone when someone had to leave unexpectedly early, or a bit of time when arriving early. But never a full day, and never at a new park. But to be honest, it wasn't a difficult choice..."ahhhh, screw it, let's do it!" was basically my thought process.
     
    To keep costs minimal, this was going to be a short trip - fly in on a Tuesday evening, one park Wednesday, one park Thursday, fly home Thursday night. Ideally I'd've flown in Wednesday morning, but flight times just didn't work out. I had planned to drive too, but that was very costly (plus the rising fuel prices scared me), but I quickly realised both parks were pretty accessible by train. It increased the journey times, but it saved a lot of money really.
     
    Anyways, enough pre-amble ramblings. Time to get to it...
     
    Day 0
    This was my first flight since January 2020. Things have changed a fair bit since then, with both Brexit and Covid. Gatwick airport was pretty chill, and boarding on the Easyjet flight was fine. As Germany require FFP2 masks in certain places (such as planes, airports and trains), crew were freely giving out these masks to anyone who didn't have that specific type of mask. Pretty chill.
     
    A not-short queue through passport control followed. It was at this point where I expected to have to show my vaccine passport (the only requirement to get into Germany at the time), but I didn't. Oh well.
     
    My hotel was a 20 minute walk from the airport, and was surprisingly cheap and nice given the location. Boom, easy.
     
    Day 1 - Heide Park
    I was faced with two problems for my day at Heide Park.
     
    First thing, the weather. The weather had been pretty miserable the past few days prior; cold and wet with threats of storms. Having checked their park app in the days prior, that seemed to be affecting ride availability too. And the weather today didn't seem much better - cold and dark clouds, with high chances of rain. Just a tad concerning. 
     
    The second was more of an "operational" concern. The park say on their website that the nearest train station to the park is Wolterdingen, which is a 20 minute walk to the park. Annoyingly, when travelling from Hamburg, you can only arrive hourly, at 48 minutes past each hour. So I was left with a choice: arrive to Wolterdingen at 08:48 and awkwardly wait outside the park for ages, but be one of the first through the gate...or arrive at the park late.
     
    I expected the park to be quiet, so arriving late wouldn't be the end of the world, buttttttttt I like to get to parks for opening wherever possible. So I opted to get out of bed the hour earlier to get there earlier. Who needs a birthday lie in when there's creds to get?!
     
    Getting from my hotel to Wolterdingen was straightforward enough. U-Bahn from hotel to Hamburg's main station. 20 minute wait time for connection to a random place called Buchholz, then a 15 minute wait to connect to Wolterdingen. Easy enough.
    U-Bahn went smoothly. But then disaster struck. The connection was delayed...by 15 minutes. Ffs. The train pulled into Buchholz just as my connection left. And it was an hour until the next train.
     
    I came to really hate Buchholz. It was a large station which was very windy and cold, and there was no indoor waiting area that I could find. Fortunately, the rest of the journey was easy enough, and the walk from Wolterdingen to Heide was a straight line, and only took me 15mins. And so, a little after 10, I was finally here!

     
    Waltzing straight on through, with no whiff of security, my first port of call was the dump my stuff in a locker. I don't usually use park lockers (usually opting to visit light), but didn't fancy lugging all my stuff all day, especially with the ominous storm clouds hanging over. An all day, unlimited-entry locker cost 5 euro...not awful, but could be worse I guess.
     
    Checking the app, it suggested that of the "big" rides, only Krake, Flug der Damonen and Big Loop were open. All with 0 minute queues, fortunately. But not a great start, and already cred anxiety was kicking in. But let's not focus on that, and instead let's get some B&M-goodness...

     
    Krake wasn't particularly something that was on my radar. Drop, inversion, over, right? A fun +1, but I didn't expect any more. I was, however, pleasantly surprised. I walked on to front row straight away, and got a very nice ride. You seem to hang over the drop for a good few seconds (much longer than Oblivion and Baron at least), and the splash effect is really cool. The whole ride is filled with nice floaty moments, and even then those it's quick, it left me feeling fulfilled. Coupled in with the nice music and nice theming, I was quite happy. 


    It's nothing special, but it does what it aims to do very well.
     
    On an even more exciting note, I noticed whilst on ride that Colossos was running. And it looked like people were on it too! I checked the app and it said it was still closed. This left me with a choice...not head over and tick off the nearby creds, or trek to the other side of the park and see what's what. With Colossos being my most anticipated cred of the park, and with it's availability seemingly being sporadic over previous days, I decided to venture over. This turned out to be a very good choice; I saw it run again, and there were clearly people on it. Woohoo!
     
    Colossos
    Fortunately there was no queue, and even getting into the station, there was only a one train wait. The ride, like everything, was on one train, which gave me a good feeling about the level of busyness to expect. Opted for the back row for my first ride.
     
    WOW.
     
    I didn't really know what to expect from the ride. I hadn't heard much about it, and didn't know the layout. But having done Balder, I had high expectations for my second Intamin woodie. And damn, they were, pretty much, met. Climbing up the lift hill hearing the audio is a neat thing. The first drop is fantastic, lifting you out of your seat. The first airtime hill flings you out too. The second gives you nice really nice floater airtime too.
     
    Then you hit the turnaround. This kills the ride a bit. It doesn't make anything bad, but it loses its ability to give decent airtime. You get little pops, but it feels weak compared to what you've just experienced. And this feeling carries on until the helix, where the ride picks up speed and its aggressive nature again. The final couple of hills have some good, consistent airtime, and leave the ride ending on a high note.
     
    The "wicker monster", as I call it, looks really nice, and is a good first time effect on-ride as a near miss. It didn't have any fire effects going though, which was a shame.

     
    After my first ride, I was itching to get on again. And with no queue, that's exactly what I did. In honesty, there's not many rides where I've had that immediate feeling of "Damn, let's do that again, like right now!"; it was very much a 'Top 10%' ride for me from the get-go. Taking advantage of there being no queue, I went for the front this time. I was surprised at how consistent the ride was compared between front and back. And the pure rush going down the first drop on the front row is something I really liked too.



    Two rides in, and I decided - reluctantly - to move on. The park seemed like it was going to be quiet, but with the threats of storms still looming, I thought I should try to mop up the creds just in case, and then return to Colossos later if I could.
     
    With that, I went to the neighbouring Desert Race. It's basically a Rita clone. I like Rita, so expected to like this. However, it fell a bit flat for me, for reasons I can't quiet put my figure on. Maybe the bare-ness of the ride? Maybe the slow ops, where they waited for an entire full train before dispatching? Maybe the annoying announcements? Just little fiddly things. This also feels like a very Tussauds investment: plonked down, minimal theming, very tacky in general. I hope the park do something with this sooner rather than later.
     
    I then went back the way I came towards Big Loop

    Bog standard old Vekoma. Not much else to say.
     
    Then it was time to tick off the remaining B&M, Flug der Damonen. I had been intrigued by this, due to its tight layout and neat theming. Despite the app saying this had a 0 minute queue, there was a bit of a wait...about 10 minutes. No problem really though I guess. I really liked the station; had a real nice vibe to it.



    I got a front row ride on the right hand side. And the ride...was not that good. It starts off nicely, standard B&M wing. But then it tries cramming all its elements into a small space, and it just seems to make the ride a bit juddery, and it lacks any sort of flow. A real shame, and definitely the weakest one I've done so far.
     
    The app still listed Scream, Bobbahn and Limit as closed. These rides had all been closed any time I'd checked the app on previous days too. As they were nearby, I decided to check them out and see what's what. Scream had a sign outside saying it was waiting for a part, and should be ready to open for "Week 15". Sad times, as I like drop towers. Bobbahn had a sign outside saying it was too cold to open. Gah, spite
    Limit, however, had no sign. It wasn't open, but there was a solid handful of people waiting outside, and staff in the station. I overheard a conversation between guests which I loosely managed to translate to as "it will open soon". So I decided to hang around.
     
    To be honest, I can't believe I decided to willingly hang around and see if an SLC would open soon. Especially when it lunchtime, I was hungry, and I was in the same park as a walk-on Colossos. But heyho, a man's gotta get his creds. After about 10 minutes, it opened up. Yay...
    I managed to get on the second train of the day. Second train of the season. I got a middle row seat, and braced myself in usual SLC-fashion. But something strange happened. It wasn't...awful. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't good. But it didn't try to massacre me, and I left the ride without my head feeling like I'd been in the ring with Drederick Tatum. Maybe the ride hadn't warmed up enough, so it was running slowly and, somehow, less rough?
    So there we have it folks, if you want a not-awful ride on an SLC, make sure to take one of the first rides of the season on a cold and stormy day!

    I also quite liked the music - nice rock track.
     
    After a quick spot of lunch, I went to the other side of the park, where the water rides and a smaller cred lived. I did both the log flume - which had a long cattlepen queue you couldn't skip over thanks to Covid barriers still being in place - and the rapids in quick succession. They were nice; not too wet, not too dry, and solid, yet unremarkable, examples of their ride types. I ticked off kiddie cred, Indy-Blitz, too, getting a solo ride and a +1 for my troubles.
     
    Next up was perhaps my second-most anticipated ride of the day...Ghostbuster 5D. I make no secret that I love shooting dark rides. I'm not big on the Ghostbusters franchise, but I acknowledged that it was something that had huge potential with this ride type. The exterior is very Merlin, in that it looks good in context of what the theme of the ride is, yet still a bit bland for a theme park. And it's kind of let down by the dodgy shipping container entrance. 



    The mathematician in me feels obliged to take photos of any mathematical equations that work their way into theming within rides.
     
    As for the ride itself...I dunno. I'm not sold. The idea is cool, especially the working together to take down ghosts. But the pacing feels a bit off. Some scenes are far too long, others far too short. There's not one which is 'just right'. There's not really anything between screens, and the attempted compensation is "let's spin and jerk the car around quickly". This left me feeling a bit motion sick, which was a shame. A bit better pacing in the scenes, and some better breathing space between scenes, and this would be SO much better.
     
    On my way to the final cred, I took a nice slow wander round. On this random, meandering walk, I noticed a random fire effect, which was coming from the boat ride in the How to Train Your Dragon area. I don't particularly care for the franchise, but liking fire effects, I thought sod it, I'll give the ride a go. It was a nice little ride, with some neat effects and was largely indoors, protecting me from those pesky storm clouds (which were still threatening rain, but not following through!). Detour completed, I did the final open cred of the day, Grottenblitz, a Mack powered cred, with shared the same building as the previous boat ride. It had a nice layout. But I didn't get any photos (it was getting rather cold).
     
    Now it must have been around 2 / half 2, and I'd ticked off all the creds and all the rides I wanted to do. Yes, there were loads of flats, but none appealed. The park have a monorail and train ride, which I would usually do, but both looked slow and burdensome to do in cold weather. So I took the chance to do re-rides, and a do a fair few of them at that.
     
    Throughout the last couple of hours, I managed another two rides on Krake (on 2nd and 3rd row, both were nice, but not quite as good as the front, of course), and ride on the opposite side of Flug (which was even more juddery on the back row). I decided to give Ghostbusters another shot, but even being prepared for the spinning, I still felt a little queasy afterwards. More importantly, I managed another 6 goes on Colossos, including another front and back row ride. All in, it really cemented itself as a top ride for me. It had warmed up nicely, and the middle third was running better by the end of the day. Still a weak spot, but the first and final thirds more than compensated for it.
     
    I also took the chance to just wander round the park and take some more photos. So here's a little final photo dump on my least terrible photos...





     
    All in, I had a really nice day at Heide Park. The weather held off, the park was sufficiently quiet and it has a good selection of rides. It had quite a Merlin feel about it, and even moreso a feel of a park that's had three very different owners and directions. There's the older, classic rides which have a nice, integrated feeling. Then there's the Tussauds-era, plonking rides down and just rolling with it. Then the more recent Merlin-era, where theming and ride integration clearly plays a part, but can be a bit hit and miss. In saying that, I would happily go back again in the future - especially if they were to add a more traditional dark ride, and maybe replace Desert Race with something that uses the space better!
     
     
    The day ended off by taking the train to Lubeck. It was a good couple of hours journey along 3 trains (Wolterdingen to the much-hated Buchholz, to Hamburg, then to Lubeck), but simple enough. Sadly, the weather decided to finally take a turn for the worse, and the heavens opened. The 20 minute walk up the hills of Lubeck felt so much longer thanks to the rain and bitter wind. Cheers for the birthday present, Lubeck...just what I always wanted!
     
    Coming soon, day 2 of 2...a wet, cold and anxious day at Hansa Park...
  4. JoshC.
    And Day 5 brings an end to the trip, where we spend a few hours at Dennlys Parc, which is about an hour from Calais...
     


    Covid Measures
    Face coverings on rides if you're over the age of 11. Some queues had social distancing markers I think, and people kept at a sensible enough distance. The visit was the day after face coverings has become compulsory in shops again across the whole of France, so I expect that the idea of social distancing might have been on people's minds a bit if it was pushed a lot by the media.  

    A long meandering drive meant we arrived to the park about quarter past 10, and their first (smaller) car park was approaching full-ness, and a couple of coaches of young school kids were entering the park. A little bit of a worrying start, but it turned out not to matter as the park was pretty quiet all day, with basically no queues.

    First stop of the day was Nitro, a Mobius loop coaster where you do both sides in one ride. It's an okay ride, the concept of course being quite novel, especially with a hint of duelling (though I wish it was timed so that cars went over the air time hill at the same time). However, there's a really nasty turn half way through the 'left side' of circuit, which gave a really uncomfortable lateral jerk. Was not a fan. Plus there was little leg room in the front row of the car, making it a bit uncomfortable.

    We rode it later in the day too, so it's not horrendous, but that was more out of 'needing to drag a bit more out of the park' than really wanting to reride.  

    We did some of their family rides, including their new-for-2020 ride which was a pedal sky car ride called Xotic. It wasn't a very exotic experience tbh. Next stop was a ride on their figure 8 spinner for the +1 (made by a company called Gesotto, who I'd never heard of before - another one for the manufacturer count I guess!). All that led upto a ride on Furio, their Soquet coaster which was by 200th cred. Boom, achievement unlocked right - I'm slightly less basic now...

    I remember being a younger, very basic goon sitting on 20 creds thinking how cool it would be one day to have 200 creds; a 'bucket list' sort of thing. So it was nice to hit it, feels a bit more substantial than any other milestone I'll probably hit (unless I magic myself to 1000 one day)..  
    I even made a terrible sign and felt like a pillock getting my photo taken. Never again.

    Furio itself was a bit meh. Not the good level of wacky that some Soquets are.
     

    Looks nice though with the trees

    With creds done, it was just a case of ticking off rides. One intriguing ride was Squadron 33, which is a mix of an Enterprise and Gerstlauer Sky Fly..

    As I've said, I hate spinning rides, but I'm also a sucker for doing something a little different and unique (most of the time), and I don't usually mind Sky Flys (though I hate Enterprises..), so I gave it a go. But damn did I regret it. I was able to rotate myself at points - I think! - but the double spinning motion really hit me. It was much more difficult to judge when you'd be upside down. However, you can get some really cool 'drops' if you time your rotations right.
    Definitely not my cup of tea, but a really solid and different ride in fairness!  
    After recovering and doing gentler rides, we'd managed to squeeze to just past midday, so had lunch at the restaurant near the front of the park. They had "tacos" on the menu, with a variety of fillings (Mexican, doner, vegetarian, etc). I ordered a Mexican taco, and was somewhat disappointed to find that their version of a 'taco' is in fact a panini... Still, was alright for price.

    It turns out that after lunch I didn't bother taking any more photos, which probably says something about my feelings about the place. The afternoon was spent doing some of their other family rides on the side of the park that doesn't have creds and a couple of rerides. A particular highlight was their water boat ride, where you drive your own dingy around what's effectively a pool, which also has a water gun attached. You get a solid 3 minute cycle to just squirt people, including helpless people in the queue, and bump around. Pure, simple fun - but also very wet! And, in fact their rapids ride was decent as well - also very well, and actually built by, you guessed it, Soquet.. Oh that random French company, you're full of surprises.
     
    I lied, I took one photo after lunch...of this pistachio ice cream I had. It was tasty. So enjoy this final photo...

    The park also had a 'sitting on a rocking chair with a gun in front of a screen and shoot things' attraction, behind their spinner, but it was closed all day. No sign explaining why and nothing on the website, so not sure if because of Covid or if it's just buggered.

    We managed to drag the day out till just after 2pm, before ultimately deciding to move on. With no creds or nothing of particular fun en route between the park and Calais, where out half 7 ferry would eventually await us, we decided to divert to Cité Europe, the large shopping centre by the channel tunnel terminal, to kill a couple of hours before a stress-free journey home.

    Final Dennlys thoughts: My trips have a habit of sticking on a smaller park after visiting great parks to end it (my first major European trip saw me end with a visit Bobbejaanland after multiple days after Efteling and Phantasialand, for example). Unsurprisingly, Dennlys felt rather flat after an incredible day at Asterix. The park is nice and has a few cool rides for a family group, but felt a little weak compared to some of the other smaller parks from the trip.

    And so that's that - thanks for reading! 
  5. JoshC.
    And now the big one, Day 4 - Parc Asterix! And this was, in fact, my first visit to Asterix.

    I'll start as ever with the Covid measures
    Face coverings were obligatory on all rides and in queue lines. There were hand sanitising points at the end of every queue (just before you board the ride), as well as at ride exits and dotted around the park. There were social distancing markers in queues, but no one really followed them much tbh. However, park security had a major presence in queue lines, regularly walking through queue lines, making sure everyone had coverings on, and were covering their noses. This went to the extreme where I witnessed a security guard watch someone have a drink and not move on until they had finished their drink and put their covering back over their face. A little OTT in my opinion, but equally I can't argue with results: seeing everyone in queues masked up did give a good level of reassurance.

    Interestingly as well, the park were very hot on filling up every seat - single rider was still in operation, and they were happy to get smaller groups matched up in queues too. The only exception was on water rides, where they weren't trying to fill boats to the full. There are questions about the point of social distancing on rides in my opinion, especially if everyone is wearing a covering, but it did feel odd sitting next to strangers again.

    Anyways, onto the park. First time I've experienced metal detectors at a full on theme park (Ja-Dar isn't necessarily a 'full on park' imo), but it was done smoothly and easily. Anticipating it would get long queues, we headed over towards the back of the park, where the first stop was Tonnerre de Zeus..

    We were on in under 15mins which was nice. Zeus is a ride I'd heard a lot about for many years. Whilst I'd seen a lot of people say it's a bit of a love-or-hate ride, most reviews I'd actually read were that it was good, which gave me some quiet optimism. Sadly though, it did nothing for me. It's got a long layout, yet manages to feel like it does nothing with it. It's not rough, but doesn't have enough fun / classic woodie laterals to give it that sort of edge. I don't remember there being any air time either. It just sort of goes around for a while and ends?

    Even riding it later in the day, it did very little for me. I remember feeling a bit more positive about it, but not much. I just don't really get it? Why do people like this?
    Is it because of Zeus' underpants? I bet it's because of Zeus' underpants.
     

    I don't care if you're wearing floral underpants - your ride isn't that good

    A quick stop to the neighbouring Goudrix was of course in order. Similarly, this is something I'd heard a bit of a mixed bag of, but mostly negative reviews. In particular, @pluk's review of it from a few years ago stuck in my mind (spoilers for those who don't know: he's not a fan of it..). And, of course, it has regularly been near the bottom of several coaster polls over the years. So I wasn't looking forward to it. However, I was pleasantly surprised! The ride was smooth, the right level of intense and reasonably fun. It's not something I rank highly, as a layout of inversions is ultimately a bit meh, but it was fun enough.

    Again, a ride was had later in the day. And frankly, I don't know what happened - was a riding a different ride? It was rough and jerky and I did not enjoy it from the third inversion! Perhaps not as bad as some had described it, but still pretty bad. Really not sure how I could have such different reactions to it.

    My first ride was in the front of a car, and the second in the back of a car, so I guess that could have something to do with it. Could also be different trains too I guess. After that second ride though, I didn't want to risk a third to try and figure it out. But it's just crazy how different the ride experiences were.  


    A ride on L'Oxygenarium ("the good Storm Surge" I believe us Brits are required to call it by law) followed, en route to the next cred: Trace du Hourra. I've only ever done Intamin Swiss Bobs before, so it was intriguing to see how the Mack equivalent would ride. And it was alright. Layout is solid, theming around is good and the operations were outstanding. It'd be nice if it swayed a bit more, as it did feel very restricted, but I guess many of these rides feel like this.
     

    We collected the +1 of the Zierer bum rattler, SOS Numerobis (which has an excellent, almost B&M-like roar might I add), before arriving at the highlight attraction, which is of course Oz'Iris.

    Just looking at the area you can tell it's something spectacular. It just looks stunning, from the theming, the dive under the pathway, to even things like the track colour. Everything just blends beautifully. The queue wasn't too long, no more than 30mins, which was long enough to appreciate the stunning indoor queue line too. And once you get into the station, you see they've capped off the atmosphere perfectly. Even the little lighting sequence on dispatch is just great. Everything works. Also, fair play to the staff, who worked their nuts off loading and unloading the ride - jumping inbetween rows to unclip the seat belts whilst the train was still moving(!), and checking bars insanely quickly. Something like that is an art.

    As for the ride itself, it was brilliant. A lovely mix of forces, floatly moments, great inversions, decent length and perfectly paced. First drop is fantastic. My highlight has to be when you dive underground past the waterfall, and then come out into the inversion, which is wonderfully profiled. It's just fantastic all round.

    My issue with B&M rides, which may be a bit controversial, is that when their rides age, they seem to become more intense and forceful. I've noticed it particularly with Inferno at Thorpe, but even my experiences on the likes of Nemesis, Baron 1898 and even Galactica suggest this 'more intense with age' trend. They're like cheeses: they mature and get stronger flavour. As someone who's not a fan of high-G intense rides usually, it's meant some of those rides have gone down in my rankings as time goes on (particularly true with Nemesis).

    Oz'Iris was intense, but it was the right level for me. It'll be interesting to see how it feels in a few years (ie - when I go back for the Intamin), and whether it's experiencing the same 'growing intensity with age' thing! But for now: 4 rides throughout the day, including a wondrous front row ride, puts it as my favourite B&M, and slides into my Top 5..  

    I really liked this bit in the station, loosely showing the layout of the ride

    The random fountain show was fun too - never saw it in its entirety though!

    Another water ride was in order before lunch, and with the log flume closed for technical difficulties, Le Grand Splatch was the port of call. I'm not normally a fan of big boat / big splash rides (too wet too quick), but this was surprisingly decent, since the finale was more for show, and it was water effects which got you wet.
     
    In case you haven't been able to tell, I really like water effects

    With stomachs grumbling, lunch was needed. I'd heard not-good things about food options at Asterix, but ended up being pleasantly surprised at the quality of the restaurant by the log flume (Le Relais Gaulois). A canteen-style restaurant where all the food options looked really good, and ended up being great too. Reasonably priced too, so would recommend!

    Explored some of the kiddie area, including their decent boat ride, before heading to their Vekoma madhouse, Le Defi de Cesar. I'd heard wonderful things about this, including the pre shows, but knew before visiting that because of Covid, they weren't running said preshows. I was intrigued how it would operate, and the short answer is: badly. It didn't help we went on the ride just after a shutdown, but you enter the ride through the exit and just go straight into the ride. Sadly there was no audio and half the screens weren't on either, creating a really awkward experience. From what I've heard, it sounds like the complete experience is a good one, but this was just rubbish. Hopefully the lack of on ride effects was a blip, but I do wonder if they should just keep it shut whilst they're running the pre shows.  
    Boat ride in the kids land has loads of nice set pieces
    This chap gave me some serious moustache-envy...

    Keeping within the Roman area, we cooled off on the rapids, which look stunning but could do with being a bit wetter in my opinion, before braving Pégase Express. Unsurprisingly, this had a long queue pretty much all day, but I guess a 40 minute queue for the park's newest coaster in the middle of July isn't too bad. Again, queue was magnificent, giving great views of the ride and the rapids, and the indoor section was brilliant. The ride itself is solid too. The launch out the station took me by surprise, the section after the lift hill is good fun with some nice twists and turns. The shed is simple but effective, and the backwards section is the perfect length and style. So all in all, a fantastic family coaster.
    Also worth saying they weren't using the bag drop; don't know if that's just because of Covid (it seemed in an awkward space) or if they're just not bothering with it (let's face it, if you can keep your bags on Goudrix, you can keep your bags on this easily).

    The final cred was ticked off after this. Another +1.


    Something I'd been really looking forward to at Asterix was L'Aérolaf, the park's 'rotating bar'. You buy a drink, then take a seat at a table at the bottom of a tower. You then go up 35m and slowly rotate, taking in views of the park and surrounding area, whilst enjoying your drink for about 10mins, before coming back down. Awesome concept for a theme park, and I'd always wanted to do one of those 'have a meal in the sky' experiences - so this was very much a discount version on that. Great views, really nice and open (you just have a seatbelt in your seat of course), and was a great way to break up the day.

    It's on the pricier side - my mocktail was 7,90€ - but I'd say it's worth doing. For reference, a bottle of Coke was 6,90€, which I think was about a 3-3,50€ mark up compared to elsewhere at the park. So if you view it in that sense, you're paying about 3,50€ for the experience, which isn't bad. You even get to keep the themed cup your drink is served in!

    One weird quirk for this though: You had to wear a covering whilst the table went from the bottom to the top. You were then told you could remove it. When it was ready to go back down, we were told to wear a covering again. Felt very odd and pointless given everyone had their coverings off/down for the past 10 minutes and we were the same distance away as before.


    Excuse the feet, but yeah - it's high!
    Me trying not to look like I'm bricking myself and desperately afraid of dropping drink

    Ahh, the face covering hides that fear...but just makes me look like a confused middle-aged man who has no idea how the selfie mode on his phone works...

    Final major ride to do was Menhir Express, their log flume, which was back open and had a reasonable queue. It was a decent log flume, good level of wet and the surprise shed moment took me completely off guard and I loved it!  

    This took us to about half 4ish, leaving the final 2 and a bit hours for re-rides and just admiring the park. Things really died down in the last half hour or so; Oz'Iris was basically walk on for example! Really awesome way to end the day.

    Final thoughts: Asterix is bloody brilliant. I really enjoyed it and, all in all, it's up there as one of my favourite parks. I may not be a fan of two of their major coasters, but it's clear they serve a purpose and people do enjoy them. Their water ride selection is brilliant. And they have a good selection of other rides which will suit most people's tastes too (I never bothered with their flat rides for example, but they were always busy and look sublime). Their quality of theming is amazing as well, along with all the staff being top notch too! Would love to see the park get another dark ride or two, and can't wait till 2023 for the Intamin (or whenever it gets pushed back too..!)
  6. JoshC.
    "Day 3? What happened to Day 2 though Josh? Have I missed a magnificent report of a wonderfully obscure French park that most people don't care about?" I hear no one ask. 
    Well, it's been edited into my previous blog entry, to save me hogging all the blog entry space  
     
    When this trip was planned, it was prior to the Formule incident at Parc Saint Paul. For those who don't know: a woman fell out of one of their roller coasters (Formule1), dying. The ride has a poor history, also being the reason another person died at the park in 2009. It was later found out the ride should have had a seatbelt restraint as well as a lapbar, but the seatbelt had been removed by the park, by decision of the director. They have said the ride will be removed once all investigations are complete.
     
    I didn't know much about the park beyond their reasonably new woodie, but after the accident I'd read more on it. Needless to say the accident was shocking in itself, and the reaction from the park's director was even moreso. There was a point where loads of rides were closed, and even rumours the park may be closed as a result of the incident, so we had looked at alternatives to the day if that was the case. This turned out attention to Jardin d'Acclimatation - a small garden-theme park type area on the outskirts of Paris, somewhere which I had completely discounted / forgotten about.

    Ultimately, Parc Saint Paul had all rides bar Formule running, but we realised we wouldn't need a full day, so decided to do both parks. More creds! And "Jar-da" (which was much easier to say) also had 2 Soquets - even better! 

    Parc Saint Paul
    Covid measures
    Like other parks, they had signs saying where masks were obligatory. From memory, I think basically all the rides we did you had to wear one. There were a few hand sanitising points about, and social distancing seemed minimal. It seemed that some rides were having seats sanitised after every 2-3 cycles too.
     

    We pretty much arrived as the park opened at 10am, but most rides weren't meant to open till half 10. After some milling around, and a go on their slide, first ride of the day was the log flume. Credit to the staff member here who was brilliant too. Set an expectation that the park would be one of those ones where staff were the right level of friendly, whilst also being efficient. Turned out she was the exception - most staff were more focused on talking among themselves.

    Log flume was exceptionally wet though; took a solid couple of hours to get dry.


    We moved onto Wood Express, which I later realised was my first Gravity Group woodie. I was both surprised and disappointed by the ride - there's a good few moments of airtime throughout. Nothing major or really powerful, but a few moments which were nice. But the ride was incredibly rattly. For a ride that's barely 2 years old, it was really bad. Vibrating all over the place and really just not that enjoyable to ride. The restraints aren't the greatest either which doesn't help. So yeah, despite some nice moments, it's just not that good.
     



    A quick go on the spinning wild mouse (where we sat sensibly this time and had minimal spinning!) and drop tower (which takes WAY too long to reach the top), we moved onto their open Pax - Wild Train. It had the classic Pax uncomfortable-ness from going side-to-side, but the first drop was pretty damn fun at the back.
     

    We moved on quickly and collected the final 3 open creds (Wacky Worm - which actually had a queue, disgraceful! - the custom Vekoma Rollerskater which was meh and the Zamperla Mini Mouse). All creds done by 11am! Temperatures were soaring so we cooled down on their dingy slide, which has an impressive entrance feature, before heading to the infamous Telepherique. For those unacquainted, this thing...

    I'd heard about this a few times before visiting, and had forgotten on the day it was actually here until I saw it. For those who don't know - you stand on a little podium suspending under the track. You run off the platform and gravity goes the rest; with your platform swinging and spinning frantically throughout. I'm sure there's videos on Youtube showing it off better. Frankly, it's a bloody terrifying experience. I was hanging on for dear life throughout, and I spun an obscene amount through the second half, to the point I had no clue how to stop myself near the end. Took me a few minutes to recover too; bloody spinning rides making me feel old...

    To more or less round the day off, we did their indoor walkthroughs. In particular, Le Château Hanté was fantastic! A really well done, scary walkthrough in my eyes - some solid jump scares, really dark and good triggered effects. It does feel like it would be a bit better as a Ghost Train rather than a walkthrough, but I guess that any walkthrough done this well would be the same.

    We wandered round the park a bit more, opted to do a second ride on Wood Express, which was a little more uncomfortable at the back, which rounded off our time at the park, a little before midday.
     

    Entrance to the dingy slide was cool - love me a good waterfall!

    I rarely do Disk'os, and this was no exception - but it looks really cool!

    Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of Parc Saint Paul. Rides themselves weren't great anyway, despite some pockets of good theming, but the park just didn't sit right with me. From things like the seemingly circus-like lion show, which feels like an outdated principle, to them parading the fact they have extremely tall and extremely short staff members like they're an attraction in themselves, it just felt off with me. Along of course with the recent incident. With most (perhaps even all?) parks I've visited, I could at least envision myself revisiting them in some circumstances - but Parc Saint Paul, I really don't envision me wanting to return, without some larger changes.

    For those wondering what the state of Formule is...
    Some fences with fake grass draped over them. The cars are covered in tarp. No signage accompanying it.


    Taking to the road, an hour and a bit later we were at the outskirts of Paris, in 30C+ temperatures getting ready to enter Jardin d'Acclimatation...

    Entering was a bit of a faff. There was a small queue to buy entry/tickets, and since we were paying by card, we were directed to the automatic machine for buying entry. However, it wasn't till after we got there that we realised we couldn't buy the wristband (which gives entry and unlimited ride access) there, and instead had to queue to get to a booth, which took a long time.

    We were eventually in, and food was the first sensible stop. The first food place we went to was out of all lunch options, except for a few kids sandwiches. We eventually found somewhere that was open, albeit with a long queue and food options weren't the greatest. It was just after 2pm by the time we ate - meaning it took about 50 minutes to enter and find found. Not the greatest start, but given this was a Sunday on the outskirts of Paris with temperatures now peaking at 33C, perhaps not overly surprising.

    Covid measures
    Just another little word about that pesky virus. Masks seemed to be obligatory on all rides. Interestingly, they have also set up 'zones' whilst walking around where masks are obligatory, with the rest of the pathways only being recommended. Hand sanitising points were all around, and particularly just before you got on a ride, and social distancing was recommended to be 1.5m (though, as was rather common in France seemingly, not really adhered to much!).
     

    After eating, the first stop was Dragon Chinois, one of the park's two Soquets. It has a weird layout, with three "lift hills", if you can even call them that, and honestly not much else. Wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. I didn't even get a photo of it...though that was in part down to me eating my lunch, and having my ice cold drink, a bit too quickly I think..!

    We would have done Machine à Vapeur, their powered Soquet, next. But alas, it was closed, and has been for a while it seems. The first spite of the trip! Fortunately, having got the alpine cred the day before, I was still on track for hitting 200 creds, but I would need no more spites...  
    Spite 💔

    Instead, we moved over to Speed Rockets, their Gerstlauer bobsled. The ride had a long, almost full queue, and a little bit of downtime, but we were on quick enough. Given the park can't go above tree height, the ride does a good enough job with it's restrictions. But it's still probably the weakest one of these I've done - it just doesn't have much to offer. But the weird double down drop element is fun - would love to experience more of these!  
    Weird-but-fun mini double down!

    Carrying on with the cred-theme, Souris Mécaniques, their junior Reverchon spinner, packs a little punch. Due to the park's '2 adult per car' rule, I was in a car by myself. For such a short and weird layout, I got a surprising amount of spin in my car. Not something I particularly enjoyed, but if spinning is your thing, I'd guess that would be..

    None of the creds were worth a re-ride, and all had very long queues, so we took the opportunity to just wander round the place and do a few of their smaller rides, including their cute little boat ride. A stand out in terms of rides was Kinetorium, their shooter. Another 'sit on a saddle in front of a screen with 20 other people' experience, this had a pretty cool pre show (with not-perfect English subtitles) explaining the story: some biology thing gone wrong basically. The system was much better than Bocasse's one (it actually worked with a room full of people!), and the story and video were much better. A fun little experience; so much so that we did re-ride it.
     


    Originally, Jardin was meant to close at 7pm, with rides shutting at half 6, but clearly due to the weather and how busy it was, they extended both closures by an hour! However, by 5pm we were pretty much done - with nothing worth doing again and having explored around the non-ride side of things, along with the beating heat and little shade, it was time. Despite some areas only being 'masks recommended', I wore my face covering everywhere on site too, so this was my first time wearing one in hot temperatures - I was fine with it, but certainly appreciated taking it off after a few hours!

    Overall thoughts: whilst a nice-looking place, Jar-da didn't do much for me. They've done great to integrate a park into the surroundings, but yeah, it doesn't do it for me. The really hot weather probably didn't help either tbh. Glad to have gone and experienced it though. I was also surprised at how few English signs were about, and how little English staff seemed to speak. Given the location, I expected some more multi-lingual-ness. I guess it's not big with tourists given the location and what it is, but still, surprised me a little. Didn't affect my day as I was able to get by with my limited French, but yeah, surprising.

    Another Premiere Class Hotel awaited us, and this one was ever so slightly better than our previous one! Still not good enough to warrant spending an evening in it, so after another Buffalo Grill meal, we headed to a nearby bowling centre which was open. One of the group is a big bowling fan, but since he hadn't had the chance to bowl for a few months, I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to come close to his score...
      ...seemingly not!

    And with that disappointment, Day 3 drew to a close. Day 4 brings more disappointment, as there's no Soquets, but I'm sure being at Parc Asterix will compensate for that, right..?
  7. JoshC.
    With the 'new normal' in full swing and parks open again, I'd been itching for a European trip again. With my Heide/Hansa trip back in April cancelled, and my June Europa trip delayed before I booked, the Covid situation had dented some big plans for new parks for me.

    However, wanting to remain cautious, I didn't want to swing into big parks, and risk not visiting them in case something happened (having to self-isolate, a park randomly closing, etc). So something I bit smaller was needed. Back in 2017, I visited Bagatelle, and really enjoyed their two Soquet creds - Gaz Express (as I mentioned about here)and Spirale des Dunes, and had joked with my housemates in the past of doing a trip to hunt out more of their creds. And lo and behold, this trip was born!

    A few smaller French parks could be ticked off, boosting my cred count, and also a first visit to Parc Asterix, just to add some real quality to the trip too. And, if all worked out perfectly, I would end the trip on exactly 200 creds, becoming slightly less basic in the process.

    Keeping the costs down meant we stayed at Premier Class hotels whilst in France, and anyone who's visited one will know they're certainly not premiere in class (we fortunately knew that in advance)..More on that later though!

    Day 0
    We travelled over to Calais Thursday afternoon by ferry with P&O, which was sadly delayed by a couple of hours. As for their Covid measures, it was pretty simple: wear a mask on the ferry at all times (except if eating/drinking), and keep 2m distance from everyone. Keeping the distance was easy as the ferry was quiet, and I wore a mask all the time - little warm, but no issue. Lots of people did end up taking their masks off, but given how quiet it was, I wasn't surprised.
     
    To encourage social distancing, each table in the main seating area only had 1 seat, which made no sense when a group wanted to sit together...

    We arrived at our first Premiere Class, where we had upgraded to a room which gave us breakfast and a sea view for only a couple of Euros extra. We were intrigued, but the sea view was, well...
     
    A little lacking to say the least!

    Coincidentally, each Premiere Class we stayed at had a Buffalo Grill restaurant very nearby. An American-esque BBQ style place, we decided that Day 0 would be the perfect time to try it out, and it was pretty good! On the pricier side for a budget trip, but decent food, including amazing Mozzarella sticks with BBQ sauce!

    Day 1 - Parc du Bocasse
    Unsure of how Covid measures would affect park capacities and throughputs, we decided to give each park a day, and then do other stuff in the afternoon/evening if time allowed (spoilers: we regularly left parks early!). Parc du Bocasse was park number 1, we arrived a little before 10, with rides opening at half 10.

    Covid Measures
    The park had a variety of signs which said whether a ride/queue/building required masks or simply recommended them. The queues had social distancing markers, and there were hand sanitising points before going on a ride, and sometimes afterwards. There was no social distancing on rides. Masks weren't required in the park's walkways. Their 4D cinema was closed, but everything else remained open.

    Social distancing was largely respected in queue lines which was nice. I wore my mask everywhere except on water rides (where we always were in our own group anyway).
        A quick bag check and we were in, and wandered to the back of the park towards their pirate area.

    We ticked off the kiddie cred and some of the flats, along with their shooting ride - Pirate's Plunder. It's the first time I've done one of these types: where you are on a seat which tilts and moves and fire at a stationary screen. I quite enjoyed it, and liked the competitive nature it had throughout. We did it later in the day, and sadly it didn't cope when the room was almost full, with none of our guns registering properly.

    We worked through the park, ticking off their other family cred, and came up to arguably their major cred - Fort d'Odin, their Soquet. The ride looked fun from its rcdb entry, and it had been rethemed last year. However, I wasn't prepared for how extensive the retheme was:
     
    My photos don't do it enough justice - but it feels completely different compared to the rcdb photos!

    It was a fun ride. Whilst nothing special of course, it at least gave us some reassurance we hadn't planned a trip based entirely around a manufacturer which makes terrible rides, bar two at some random small park!

    We continued, doing their dark ride Apiland, which has a ton of animatronics, but goes on way too long, before arriving back to the front of the park, which is a Dinosaur / Jurassic themed land. I think a few years ago this was pretty unthemed and had a 'plonked in a car park' feel, but looks a lot better now. We did their Spinning Wild Mouse, which was vile due to us distributing the weight badly (I'm really not a fan of spinning).  
    We then moved to their log flume, which is also a Soquet, Splash-o-Saure. It features a backwards section and a vertical lift, and some nice theming. It was the right level of wet too. Little on the short side, but really enjoyed it to be honest.  

    This took us up the lunch time, and aside from the park's fountain show, which first showed at 2pm, we had done the park. After a spot of food and some rerides, we milled around and eventually queued up for Symphonie Aquatique, which was surprisingly hosted indoors. The show was about 10-15mins long, and featured a stage with some fountains which were just going off pretty consistently, whilst some lasers and music played. The concept is cool, but it misses the mark with the fountains being boring, and all the seats being on the same level, so being at the back meant we saw little.

    After milling around a bit more and a couple more re-rides, we called it a day just after 3pm. Parc du Bocasse was a surprisingly nice park, with some decent theming and a nice little selection of rides. It always seems like they're preparing to expand, with work going on next to their log flume. It'll be interesting to see what they do next!

    One annoying thing though - bugs! There were a ton around the park. I don't know what they were; tiny little fly-like things? I guess it's because of the park's location, but it was a little bit annoying after a while, especially since the colour of my shorts seemed to really attract them!


    We then headed into Rouen, which was en route to our next hotel. We popped into a Laser Quest, and the three of us played a game - just us three! Their Covid measures meant we still had to wear masks inside. And let's just say, if I can wear a mask for 20 minutes whilst running around indoors playing Laser Quest, I don't see why any normal person can't wear one!

    Our next Premiere Class would be our base for two nights, and didn't promise a sea view, being far away from the sea and all that, so we weren't disappointed. Fortunately there were lots of restaurants and shops nearby which meant we had plenty of options to keep ourselves entertained for the evening, before turning in for the night.

    Coming to a blog post near you: Day 2 - Festyland, and a surprise cred...   ---   Which, in fact, is right here!!
    Day 2 - Festyland...

    A quick mention of their Covid measures. There were social distancing markers in queue lines and a few signs about wearing masks.There didn't seem to be as many people wearing masks and social distancing in queue lines wasn't the best, but equally not the worst. Many of the operators at rides had unlabelled bottles of liquid, which they would spray onto your hands before going on rides. I can only hope it was hand sanitiser! Though I'm sure I could start a conspiracy theory somewhere on the internet saying it's some mind control liquid to stop us thinking about 5G or something....

    Anyways, onto the park. We arrived shortly after opening and headed straight to the back of the park, where the first of two Soquets awaited, 1066...
      The building looks cool, but the signage leaves a little to be desired!

    Unlike other Soquets, this ran two short trains, which was a little bit of a surprise. It's also nicely situated on the edge of the park towards a field, meaning it could make use of the terrain a bit more. The ride was a walk on so I went straight to the back for my first ride. And damn, this little cred packed a bit of a punch. Coming off the drop gave some solid ejector. The ride then turns around a bit before going into a helix which gave some really nice laterals. An airtime hill with a kicker wheel followed, which sadly meant not much airtime. Another helix and a jump up into the station followed, which again gave some nice laterals.
     
    So all in all, a really neat cred. It was the right level and mix of weird and fun that I had expected. The area still had no one else around, which meant another lap followed, with me heading to the front. The drop wasn't as good, but the laterals and side to side movement were still solid.

    Sticking to the back of the park, the next port of call was Kaskade, the park's rapids. It very much has a budget River Quest feel, with an elevator lift and intimidating (in context of the park) look. The drop lead to some of the craziest spinning I've ever had on a water ride, and the final splash gets you a good level of wet too. A solid ride, and a nice little gem in the park.   We moved over to the park's other cred, Drakkar Express. This is nothing more than a +1, but features a drop halfway through the layout where you somehow manage to slow down rather than speed up I swear. Oh Soquet...
     
    The park have a really neat, large and well themed Viking land, which features a few rides, including an Air Race-like ride, Rocking Tug and more. We ticked off these rides, as well as their standard dingy slide and drop tower rides, before a re-ride on 1066.
       

    Fun fact: I did get the standard photo of me holding this, etc. BUT this was shortly after Kaskade, and so I had a huge wet patch down half my body, which looked like a massive sweat mark, and so will never see the light of day...

    It was now midday and the park was filling up a fair bit (Kaskade had a full queue, which probably would have taken a good 30+minutes given the lack of boats). We did a ride on their bumper boats, which we didn't think adults would be allowed on, but they didn't seem to mind. One of our group fell into the water whilst getting out, much to the enjoyment of everyone in the queue!

    So after barely two hours, we called it a day at Festyland. It's a cute little park with some surprisingly well themed parts, and 1066 is a solid ride. But ultimately, it isn't much more than a stop on a cred run for us.

    Anticipating that this could well happen, we had made contingency plans the night prior, and thanks to leaflets at our hotel and coast2coaster, we found a couple of Alpine coasters near-ish to the park. Both were about a 40 minutes drive away, and 40 minutes away from each other. We ultimately opted to do just one, and so of we headed to the...

    Normandie-Luge
    Located in the valley of an old Viaduct designed in 1887 by Gustave Eiffel, this was a complex of activities. The Viaduc de la Souleuvre is the name of the wider, free-to-enter, complex, and has activities such as bungee jumping, giant swings and zip lining from the top of the viaduct, as well as the cred, a high ropes course and other things. Unsurprisingly the likes of bungee jumping were very expensive (149€!!), but the cred was just 4€..much more reasonable.
      After eating at the onsite restaurant, which was fantastic and well priced, we hit up the Luge, as they like to call the cred specifically. No need to wear masks, but you have to clean your hands before, as well as the 'car' being cleaned as well. The layout makes excellent use of the terrain, and features some decent sweeping turns and banked moments, as well as some pops of airtime. Fortunately was able to go full speed all the way down, and the ending was a particular highlight!
    The ending

    You can also buy a photo for 2€. Since it captured the exact moment a fly decided to try and get in my mouth, I couldn't refuse...

    After a little bit of milling around and watching people bungee jump, we moved on. Not a place I'd ever return to (as awesome as it would be to jump from a viaduct, I can't justify paying seven times what I paid for my bungee jump a few years back...even if it was off a crane in a pub car park). But I certainly would recommend heading down there for the alpine cred if you're nearby!   We left and headed to the commune of Deauville by the sea, which was only 15 or so minutes away from our hotel. It's a seaside place, but our only reason for going there was to play some mini golf, which seemed to be the only one anywhere vaguely nearby. It was a very open circuit, but had some decent courses.
    And that concludes Day 2. We eventually got back to our hotel at about 7 (how we dragged out an entire from Festyland, an alpine cred and mini golf I'm still not quiet sure..), before food and sleep.

    Day 3 to come in a new blog entry very soon, featuring the somewhat controversial Parc Saint Paul, and an unplanned park (or rather, an unplanned garden)...
  8. JoshC.
    It's been a long while since I've done a proper blog post, but I've dusted off my keyboard to do one I'd been thinking about for a while..
     
    Over the past couple of years, there's some rides I've done which are a ton of fun, but don't really seem to get the attention they deserve. Mostly for reasons that they're rides in parks that aren't high up people's lists, or there's better rides at those parks. So I figured I'd just throw a little list out there.
     
    This isn't going to be a list of "under-hyped" rides; I'm not necessarily saying any of these are top-tier rides which everyone should ride. But these are just solid rides which deserve a bit of limelight cast of them...
     
    5. Gaz Express, Parc Bagatelle 
    Situated about an hour from Calais, Bagatelle's ease to get to doesn't compensate for the fact the park is quite meh. However, Gaz Express is a shining beacon of light.
     
    Manufactured by French company Soquet in 1987, Gaz Express is a really fun family-thrill coaster which is situated largely over water. It's not particularly high or fast, but features a couple of nice pops of airtime, some nice helices, whilst also diving in and out of buildings. And you get to go round twice too! To top it off, there's loads of water features around the ride, as well as a really cool fire effect, making it a really nice-looking ride for spectators too!
     



     
    4. Discovery Club, Avonturenpark Hellendoorn
    It's no secret that I look shooting dark rides, and this one is really quirky. Sitting in outward-facing circular cars, the idea is that you're basically exploring a house with loads of spooky stuff that could come alive. It's a classic storyline which works, and with a fun soundtrack and sound effects, good theming and the unpredictable, and sometimes wild, spinning of the cars, it makes for a great experience.
     
    Hellendoorn itself is a decent park, a little under-rated in my opinion, but this 21 year old Mack dark ride is probably the crowning jewel of the park!


     
    3. Kyöpelinvuoren Hotelli, Linnanmäki
    This ghost train has no right to be as good as it frankly. For a city park like Linnanmäki which doesn't really *do* theming, it stands out really well. And inside, it's just immaculately themed and styled - it's creepy from the word go.
     
    The ride itself is pretty fantastic. Good length, no dead spots, lots of turns and plenty of surprises and special effects. It just hits the nail on the head at every point. I believe it was refreshed a few years back, which, along with the likes of Taiga, shows that when the park sets itself a target, they hit it perfectly.

     
    2. Popcorn Revenge, Walibi Belgium
    I've talked about Popcorn Revenge a lot on here, so another paragraph or two won't hurt.
     
    Popcorn Revenge is genuinely bloody brilliant. Early I said this list wasn't necessarily going to be about top-tier rides. Popcorn Revenge is perhaps the exception here. For those who don't know, this is a trackless, screen-based shooting dark ride, which takes around a movie theatre where pieces of popcorn have come alive and have taken over the film. You have to shot the popcorn with different flavoured sauce guns to take back control. The ride is non-linear and where you go depends on what car you get in. 
     
    The scenes on the screens are brilliant. The real theming is great as well. This all just comes together for an absolutely brilliant ride experience.
     
    I truly hope I'm not over-stating this and setting anyone who eventually rides it up for a disappointing, but this is genuinely one of my favourite rides and it's a damn shame it's not talked about more frankly.


     
    1. K2, Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Elstal
    This is also something I've talked about a bit before in the past. 
     
    Karls is, primarily, a strawberry farm business. However, they have branched out over the years to have permanent farmer markets, which have also integrated 'amusement park' style sections. The one in Elstal, just outside Berlin, is the most developed, and by far the crowning jewel is K2.
     
    K2 is an abc tube coaster, which also has wooden cars. The ride is themed to potato farming, and features an underground dark ride section where you see potatoes being grown, amongst other surprises. The ride then goes up 80ft high - which feels a lot higher when you only have a seatbelt as your restraint in a wooden cart! - before going round twists, turns and mini airtime hills. The ride is killed a bit by a MCBR, but is still great fun, and a real surprise. 
     
    The quality of the theming is amazing too, and wouldn't look out of place at the likes of Phantasialand (indeed, the queue is of a similar style and standard to Maus au Chocolat). Just in general, this ride ticks every single box and it's an absolute joy and treasure to experience. If you ever head to Berlin and want a quick theme park-like fix, this really is the place to go (certainly much better than the nearby 'proper' parks!).


     
  9. JoshC.
    It's only taken me 4 months to get around the posting this..
     
    Walibi Holland's Halloween Fright Nights is well respected in the scare industry. They pump serious amounts of money into their attractions, and have TONNES of actors to boot. They go all out. And that's one of the many reason it had been on my to-do list for so long, and why I eventually went last year.
     
    Now I actually wrote a trip report in Word a while back trying to cover the whole event. That report ended up being over 12 pages of pure text, and that was with me being concise. And that's just down to the sheer quantity AND quality of it all. The event is made of a family friendly daytime event (Spooky Days), with 3 scare zones and an upcharge scare maze, and an evening event (Fright Nights), with 6 upcharge mazes and 8 scare zones. So I won't cover them all, but I'll just instead pick out some particular highlights...
     
    The Clinic
    This has been mentioned on the forums a few times, most recently in my review of their VR experience, Neurogen. The Clinic opened in 2016, and is an entirely alone experience where - for the majority of the experience - you are strapped to a gurney and wheeled around a hospital and, ahem, associated areas. And in short, this attraction is genius - utter brilliance. It's definitely my favourite 'scare' attraction, and I'd say up there with one of my all time favourite theme park attractions. 
     
    I won't say anything that happens here, but whilst it's alone and marketed as 'intense', it's very different to the UK definition of an 'intense'/extreme experience. Psychological, theatrical and haunting are 3 good words to describe it. The experience stayed with me for days afterwards too; it was always on my mind. 
     
    Unsurprisingly, it comes in at a hefty cost - €17.50 if booked in advance. But it's worth every cent and so much more.

     
    Below
    The other of the park's 'intense' mazes. In groups of at most 6, you explore a set of sewers looking for vermin...though maybe the vermin are looking for you. And because you're in sewers, you of course go through the entire experience in waders, since you go through most of the maze knee-deep in water! Again, a genius set up, and felt super realistic! 
     
    Again, a hefty price - this time €15 if booked in advance. And it's super limited (1 group goes in every 15 minutes!).
     
    Below suffers in one major way though: it's very short. After getting the waders on and having a walk pre-show (by means of a guided tour), you're not in the maze for long. Arguably you don't want to be in there for too long: despite the waders, my feet were feeling a bit cold towards the end. But having said that, it's still a super immersive experience and a genius set up that I've never heard of anywhere else!

    (Image from Walibi)
     
    Psychoshock and Other Mazes
    Walibi Holland have 4 "normal" mazes, which you can buy individually or get a combo ticket for €24 (which I did). However, Psychoshock was the highlight of those 4.
     
    Before going onto describing Psychoshock, just a quick word on how the normal mazes operate. They're designed to have 1500pph (for comparison, that's about 3x what Thorpe's mazes manage on average), so usually have a continuous flow of people. Every actor has an accompanying 'effects button' which they press, which can set off an array of sound, lighting, smoke and/or water effects to go with their scare. And with a large number of actors, even if you miss one's scare, you'll be hit with another, and not lose any story either.
     
    You choose a 30min time slot for each where you have to arrive in the queue for it. Too early? Not getting let in. Too late? They'll see what they can do, but otherwise, tough.
     
    Psychoshock is a fairly standard maze in theme: your generic 'laboratory with something gone wrong' vibe. But it's themed exceptionally well (apparently, this 2011 maze was designed by someone who has since gone on to design the theming concepts for stuff like Baron at Efteling), with a very good - and long! - layout. And the group I was in did this maze about half an hour after it opened, which was clearly a quiet slot. As such, out group of 3 was sent in with no one else, before we were split up in the pre show and made to go through the maze entirely alone. The actors are clearly prepared for this and knew full well how to tackle me. A particular highlight was an actor with a syringe squirting water in my face, and then at my crotch making it look like I wet myself...and with no witnesses to say otherwise!
     
    My experience of Psychoshock is likely a bit bias because of alone treatment, but I really did love it. Even ignoring that, the set up of the maze is up there with some of my favourites. The other mazes were all set up so they could choose to either 'batch' groups at regular intervals, or to let in a continual flow, and the actors seemed prepared for any eventuality. Was really fantastic to see them by so reactive!

     
    Eddie de Clown
    Eddie is the headline character of Halloween Fright Nights, and has been for 13 years. He's been played by the same person every year. And he's very much synonymous with Walibi Holland across Europe. He's effectively your standard demented clown who likes to do evil things, and a quick look at things like his Facebook or YouTube pages show the style the park have gone for with him (seriously, watch some of the videos they've produced - they're amazing!!).
     
    In recent years, the park have gone all out with Eddie, slowly giving him a more fixed presence in terms of a show and a mini area. In 2019, one of the 4 new scare zones was entirely based around Eddie: Eddie's Festival of Freaks. Taking place in an area outside the normal park, just behind Goliath, it is effectively a mini Festival! Freak show acts akin to the Carnival of Horrors, roaming 'freaks' (bearded lady, strongmen, fire eaters, etc), sideshow games, street meat, a ghost train, etc. This is all complimented Eddie's presence, with him being a ringleader of sorts, and his show: Eddie's Roast Show, where he effectively invites audience members on stage, and roasts them as harshly as possible.
     
    The whole area was chaotic, but in a good way. So much fun, and very easy to forget you're actually at a theme park event. The downside is that it's all in Dutch (which sounds stupid given it's a Dutch theme park, but they're very good at being accommodating to English speakers, as well as German speakers too). But even with the language barrier, I really enjoyed the area. Like, really did.

    (Photo from Walibi)
     
    Firepit and Campsite of Carnage
    If one area highlights the stark difference between Walibi Holland's and the UK's Halloween events, it's Firepit. An American hillbilly area (and, as such, all the actors spoke with southern American accents), the area featured (unsurprisingly) a giant firepit, live music other stalls and roaming actors (most of whom had chainsaws), along with a couple of actors above the entrance arch to the zone. The tone, however, was jaw-dropping.
     
    Firepit was all about gross, inbred hillbillies who had no problem thrusting sexual comments in your face, swearing constantly and being on the funny side of rude (just). Nothing is scary; everything is there to shock you. Because of the context of the event, being strongly pushed as a dark, 16+ event, they can get away with it, but it's certainly feels like it's pushing towards "how controversial can we be without getting into trouble?". An example from the entrance arch characters: "Welcome to the f**king Firepit...oh, but we don't mean that how y'all think we do, we mean the literal...f**king...Firepit" (the couple then proceed to imitate having sex). 
     
    Personally, I found the area absolutely brilliant. It was designed fantastically. It's clear they had a vision, and they've realised it all the way through.
     

     
    A further surprise was Campsite of Carnage - marketed as a scare zone, but was in fact an outdoor (and free!) scare maze. A simple but clever layout, with a lot of chainsaws and sweary hillbillies. Again, it focused more on trying to shock than scare you. The ending, however, truly did scare me. You're chased into an enclosed section (which is effectively a corridor) by a chainsaw, and when inside, the actor plays a sound effect which makes it sound like you're surrounded by chainsaws. Chainsaws don't do anything for me, but when it sounded like I was in an enclosed space surrounded by 10 off them, it made me jump and I definitely picked up the pace!
     
    Amazingly, the area is also open during the day for Spooky Days (presumably to just help with capacity), with none of the sweary actors in the Firepit, and a shorter, less-chainsaw-filled version of Campsite designed for Under 12s!
     

    (Photo from Walibi)
     
    I think I'll leave it there. I haven't touched the park's FIVE other scare zones, which admittedly had varying quality, and could go into much greater detail about the other 3 mazes. Nor the stage by the entrance of the park with music acts. Or all the pop up stalls they have. But I don't want to ramble on forever. But suffice to say that, despite their lack of presence here, even the weaker experiences were still at least 'pretty good'.
     
    How expensive is it?
    Short answer: Very. To book everything costs about €90 on a quieter night. But even then, it could be tight to do all the scare zones and rides. If you go on a busy day and want to do rides as well, you'd maybe want to invest in their Fastpass too, which adds even more cost. The event is strictly pre-book only, but there are some good deals when they first release tickets.
    How busy is it?
    Short answer: Very. The park get up to a quarter of their annual visitor numbers in the 3 weeks that the event goes on for. Their quietest days still see them attract 10k people. I visited on a Friday, and it was reasonably quiet until about 6pm, but from then until close (11pm) it was rammed!
    Is it worth it?
    Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes. Yes! YES!
     
    tl;dr - Walibi's Fright Nights is, by a country mile, the best Halloween event I've ever attended. If you like Halloween events, go to Walibi Holland. You won't regret it.
     
    The park's 'aftermovie' for the 2019 event, showcasing most of what they offered..
  10. JoshC.
    Last week, I visited Movie Park for their Halloween event: the 21st anniversary of their Horror Fest.  The park has 8 mazes, 4 scare zones and a variety of other things to bolster the number of attractions up to 19, with the park claiming the event to be the biggest Halloween event in Europe. We visited the park on Thursday, hoping it would be quiet: the park is open 10am-10pm for Horror Fest, with most Halloween attractions opening at 6pm and closing at 9.30pm. So it was a LOT to do. So, without further ado, let's get to it (with light SPOILERS)...
     
    The Walking Dead: Breakout
    The park's year-round upcharge horror maze, and it turns out this year is its last year. I did it on my previous visit in 2017, and didn't rate it much. As it was still upcharge, I skipped it, but I hear it hasn't changed, so I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it any more.
     
    From here, it's worth pointing out how the park's mazes work. The standard setting is that they let groups of 20 in every 60-90 seconds, are free flow and don't allow touching. There's a couple of exceptions which I'll point out when I get to them. All of their mazes have age restrictions, which varied from maze to maze, and these are enforced strictly: they DO do ID checks!
     
    Hostel

    Themed around the Hostel series (more specifically, the first film), and rated 18+, this is the park's goriest maze. It starts off with a tour round Amsterdam - you even walk through the Red Light District, which once upon a time had screens showing some, ahem, rather explicit sex scenes on them, but alas no more. And the maze continues quite happily for the next few scenes, with a party atmosphere and everything seeming happy; the actors do nothing to scare you. But, like the film, it takes a very sudden, very dark twist. Scares come thick and fast, with very gruesome scenes all around you, and plenty of actors in every direction.
     
    The finale sees the group locked in a large white room stained with blood, with speakers blaring out chainsaw noises, and the room flashing between pitch black and red lights. It was a solid maze ending, though it felt like it needed an actor with a chainsaw in there to really amplify it. A shame, but still a very strong maze!
     
    Wrong Turn

    This is the park's upcharge Halloween attraction, at 5 Euros a ticket, and you go through in groups of 6, and is also based off the Wrong Turn series of films. And it also won Best European Scare Attraction at this year's ScareCON award ceremony. This also uses Haunted Lantern (like Skin Snatchers at Alton Towers), but literally gives the group a lantern rather than a helmet. The maze is based in trough of the park's old Ice Age dark water ride, and likely makes use of a lot of the old scenery from the ride. 
     
    Following 2 pre shows (which I didn't really understand because they were all in German with no way of offering English translations), the maze begins. Being in the trough, the actors regularly positioned themselves above you to get really good jump scares. There were some awesome effects around too, and some clever pieces of misdirection to add to the scares. The end was quite chaotic, with loads of actors and a huge sparkler / firework style effect as well which caught me off guard.
     
    My main issue with Wrong Turn is that, because it has such a huge space to work with, is that it sometimes felt a little too open and that you were a little too removed from the sets at times. This meant the maze felt like it was missing that final ingredient to make it truly exceptional. But it was still fantastic for the most part and I really enjoyed it.
     
    Insidious 2
    The park's final IP-based scare attraction. Amazingly, this is located underneath the seating area for the park's stunt show, which was a great use of space! Unsurprisingly, the idea of the maze was to be creepy and build up suspense to try and get scares that way. It also made use of lots of big open sets to build tension as well.
     
    For me, it was a bit hit and miss. There were some unsettling and creepy moments, but these didn't last long, and often the actors took away from the atmosphere. This is a maze which would benefit from less (visible) actors, but instead has quite a lot, making it difficult to truly capitalise on the atmosphere. A shame, but a good effort.
     
    Circus of Freaks
    An outdoor clown maze - a set up with a lot of potential. However, this missed the mark. The maze felt a lot like the outdoor sections of Do or Die (things draped over fences), although better themed in fairness. There was some good bits and nice bits of humour (and a nicely executed animal area with gorilla costumes and the like), but ultimately this was one of the weaker clown mazes I've done in my time. And when compared with the quality of the park's other mazes, it really does miss the mark.
     
    The Slaughterhouse
    This is a maze crying out to be a Chop Shop style maze but, surprisingly, it wasn't! This was some weird beauty development laboratory that had gone rogue and cut people up instead..or something. It was nicely themed and had some good set pieces, and a couple of nice jump scares.
     
    The ending was a real highlight of the maze. It took place in two rooms with incredible dense smoke (you literally couldn't see more than 30cm in front of you), with actors then appearing out of nowhere. It was confusing and clever and just really worked!
     
    Campout
    Another outdoor maze, but taking place in the woods. Very Blair Witch esque in story, but a lot more open and with more 'actual' theming. It wasn't exactly memorable either. A couple of neat special effects but nothing exciting or special. It's worth pointing out this is rated 12+ (and is the only maze with such a low rating, as all others are 16+ or 18+), so I guess it isn't designed to be scary, but it's a shame there wasn't more to this.
     
    Project Ningyo - NEW FOR 2019

    The park's big new thing for the year is Project Ningyo, and replaces a previous maze: Deathpital. They made a big deal out of this: this was the only maze where Fastrack was available (at 10 Euro a pop!) and was the only maze where actors were allowed to touch you. This was also the maze with - by far! - the longest queue, at 50 minutes. We realised this was because of a terrible batching system: the maze takes place in a build the other side of a service road; groups of people are batched to the service road every 5 minutes, but these groups were usually cleared in like 2 minutes, leaving long periods of time where no one was entering the maze!
     
    Anyways, onto the maze itself. It starts off with your group of 20 being given a guided tour of a medical facility which (from what I understood) was dedicated to creating a serum to make people happy. You're guided into a room all together and locked in. An actor in a hazmat suit appears from the other side and gets you out, and you then walk through the carnage of what's behind the scenes at the facility. There's some nice theming, and some good smells (in particular, there was an animal testing scene which really smelt of rabbit poo!), but there just wasn't enough substance. Despite there being a lot of actors, it still didn't feel like enough, and the scares were just non-existent. The touching was effectively 'medical staff' frantically trying to guide you along and out of the way of danger, which I always find dull. 
     
    In general, the maze was rather lacklustre, my least favourite of the night. A shame really, but hopefully it'll continue to grow.
     
    Scare Zones
    The park had four scare zones, which actually covered the majority of the park (the kids area, Nickland, is a "monster free" zone). Sadly, only one of them felt defined, so it made it difficult to understand what exactly was going on.
    Acid Rain: Some sort of nuclear apocalypse area, with sirens going off and a variety of weird stuff.
    Horrorwood Boulevard: A collection of famous Halloween characters
    Dead West: Wild West themed, but dead
    Fear Pier: No mazes round here so never actually got a chance to go there.
     
    Apparently all the actors in the scare zone are just given an individual budget and a loose story to stick to, and they then get to create their own costume. Really gives them ownership, but definitely adds to the disjointed feel. All the actors in the zones did 'roam' very well though, and many had shovels to bash against ground for jump scares, which was different to say the least!
     
    Other Stuff
    -The park apparently transform their drop tower into something scarier at night time. All we saw was a flashing light. Yay?
    -There's a hypnosis show which we didn't see.
    -There's kids stuff in the day (kids maze, face painting, etc) which looked nice.
    -New for this year was an IT 4D experience - basically highlights of the IT Chapter 1 converted into 3D with your standard 4D effects. Solid 20 minute show which was fun.
     
    There's also a closing show, which was originally meant to be fireworks, lasers and fire, along with a video playing on the screen in the entrance plaza. Due to noise complaints, the firework aspect of the show had been cancelled when I was there. The show itself was pretty neat (the lasers were cool!), but it's fair to say that fireworks would have added to it. I hope that they can find a way round it!
     
     
    So all in all, Halloween Horror Fest is a very solid, very full Halloween event. It's not something I'd go out of my way to do again, but it's got a lot of positives going for it, and the headline mazes really are something. There's clearly a lot of thought put into all the mazes and what level they should be at too. Hopefully some of my experiences were just bad runs rather than the norm, and I'm intrigued to see how the event develops over the next few years!
  11. JoshC.

    Linnanmäki Trip Report

    By JoshC.,

    Finland had never exactly been on my radar; it was more somewhere that I thought "it'd be nice to go there one day", as opposed to a "I'll go there in a few years". Then, Taiga happened, and all of a sudden, my interest popped up dramatically. And so Linnanmäki happened this weekend. I looked at trying to combine the trip with other Finnish parks (like Power Park and Särkänniemi), but given how widespread they are, Finland being the 8th most expensive European country, and time being limited, I had to settle for just the one park.
     
    The park was open 1pm-midnight, with it also being the first day of their Halloween event Iik!Week (weirdly, Finnish parks seem to do Halloween events in September, and it was very much a coincidence we ended up going to that too). On a Saturday like this, the park would normally be open 1-10pm, so still very good opening hours. The park is completely free to enter (not even a turnstile in sight), and a wristband for unlimited rides and attractions costs a slightly eye-watering €42. There's options to by 'tickets' for individual rides, priced at the even more eye-watering price of €9, or a 'bundle' of 6 tickets for...€42. Weird system but okay.
     
    Taiga
    I've covered most of my thoughts on Taiga here, but just to sum it up for completeness here too: Taiga is absolutely brilliant. It starts off the day well, and when it warms up, it's a relentless beast. Twists that throw you out of your seat, crazy airtime, ongoing speed. It's stunning. Just sheer brilliance, and POVs don't do the ride justice in any way.
     
    The ride has okay operations, with staff asking every single person as they check bars if their pockets are empty and, if not, making them empty them. A small thing, but annoying.


     
    Vuoristorata
    Finnish for 'Roller Coaster', this is a wooden coaster that's been going since 1951, and is a traditional brakeman wooden, with the brakeman at the back of the train. Also is heavily inspired by Bakken's woodie apparently.
     
    This is genuinely an utter joy. From the hilariously quick lift hill, to the fun drops and double downs and the pace it manages to keep, it's actually really fun. And at the front of the train, you get some VERY strong airtime. Between this and Taiga, it's a wonder I didn't end up with bruised thighs after this trip. We rode it 8 times during the day, which I think speaks volumes about the quality of this.

     
    Kirnu
    The first ever Intamin Zac Spin. Not a phrase that fills you with joy. I wasn't sure how I'd react to this, and ultimately I didn't enjoy it. The spinning is okay until the end, when it does it's only flip but drops you down head first. The rest of the ride is okay, but still not great. I hate to think what longer versions of this are like. In fairness, we did it twice, so it can't have been THAT awful, but it is significantly less pleasant when you board the station in the backwards facing seats. It's sad to think about how there are such contrasting Intamins in such close proximity.
     
    Staff were very insistent on balancing the cars too, which took some time, and we even saw some staff members having to ride it to ensure this balance happened. Those poor souls. 


    Ukko
    Oh dear. This thing. My first Maurer Sky Loop, and this definitely is up there with one of the most awful experiences I've had on any ride. Whoever thought that a vertical lift hill going back on itself and hanging you upside down was a good idea must have been a bloody sadist. We were sat near the front, which meant we had dreadful hangtime, and it was genuinely one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've had, along with the bad restraints of a Maurer too. Then you do an inversion, seesaw and get off, questioning your life choices. 

     
    Tulireki
    The world's only standing Mack E-Motion coaster. What's an E-Motion coaster, I hear you ask? It's basically a coaster where the cars are meant to 'tilt' as you go round corners, thanks to some springs and stuff in the cars. You notice this as you board the cars, as they bounce around a bit. But after that, you hardly notice it at all. Except for the fact that this coaster is uncomfortable, bordering on rough. There's a drop where you literally shunt and jerk back and forth, and I slammed my back pretty hard. Another not pleasant one.
     
    There's a couple of other coasters: Salama, a Maurer spinner that doesn't really spin, Pikajuna, a Mack powered coaster which, though not bad, has a long layout and goes round 3 times, making it boring, and Linnunrata eXtra, a custom Zierer built inside an old water tower. Linnunrata has optional VR goggles: I tried them on my first ride, selecting the horror versions (they had 3 choices). It was okay, nothing special, suffers from the same problems all other VR coaster have I guess, but since you don't have headphones, the atmosphere is hurt due to the lack of sound. Without the VR, there's some pretty cool space theming throughout the ride, and it's much nicer than the VR. Would recommend no VR.

     
    Outside of the coasters, the park has some really decent rides: Kyöpelinvuoren Hotelli, a very well done ghost train with lots of special effects and surprises, Hurjakuru, a rapids ride featuring some scary waterfalls, an ever-flowing sprinkler tower with fire effects, and a generally decent layout and Kingi, a 75m tall gyro drop tower, which gives good views of the park and Helsinki. 


    (their Enterprise and Ferris Wheel align beautifully at night!)
     
    But what about Iik!Week?
    It was impossible to know what to expect from the event; finding information and reviews online was difficult, and they seem to change everything each year. This year, the event included:
    -2 Halloween exclusive mazes, rated 13+
    -1 Halloween exclusive maze, for families/all
    -2 overlays of existing attractions, rated 13+
    -An outdoor attraction, which was basically a walkway, rated 13+
    -A zombie disco outdoor area; with live DJ, bar and actors, rated 18+
    -The area where most of the attractions are transformed into a scare zone, again rated 13+
     
    All attractions started at 4pm, except the Zombie Disco which started at 6pm.
     
    Despite the park being quite small, this did lead to a 'Thorpe effect' where only a section of the park felt like Halloween, and the rest of the park feeling pretty normal. Anyways, onto the attractions (with spoilers)..

     
    Laboratorio (Laboratory)
    Visitors to the park's harshest site are horribly awaited by the victims of failed human experiments who have been locked away at a research facility.
    The first maze we did and the one which was marketed as the scariest; this would set the scene for the event. Before entering the maze, you're given a rope for everyone to hold to keep you together; this seemed to just be an alternative to hands-on-shoulders in keeping the group together.
     
    A pre-show by a military person explains the backstory, and warns us to stick together, don't touch anything because of radiation, and to walk slowly. The maze itself was very well themed - a surprise from a city park where theming is sparse! Each scene is basically a room from the laboratory, where a failed human experiment is behind a window / cage. The actors themselves also looked great - amazing costumes and make up. But they weren't very scary. One experiment came out of their cage and chased us a bit, and another slammed a door. 
     
    After barely a minute of slow walk, a sign pointing you to the exit appears, but then there's a monster for one final scare. The monster costume looked stunning, and must have been over 7ft tall. The actor did a really good job given they must have had limited movement, but they were also equipped with what looked like 3 large hairdryers stuck together as a 'weapon', which felt...odd.  
     
    So yeah, a very short maze with little scares, but with great sets and great costumes and a good number of actors considering.

     
    Zombie Tunnel
    A zombie invasion created by a nuclear fallout haunts amateurs in an old nuclear silo tunnel. Horror lovers have only one way to protect themselves - the green radioactive light source causes the zombies to retreat. Step into the twilight corridor where horror-zombies scare away!
    The other Halloween exclusive maze takes place in a temporary structure in one of the kids lands in the park (with 2-3 kids rides actually closed for the event). 
     
    At the start of the maze, everyone is handed a green lightsaber (like a cheap pound shop one) to guide your way, with their in-story purpose being to scare away the zombies that await. These also serve a second, more obvious purpose though - to help you see. The maze itself only seemed to have one light throughout, and was otherwise very dark, so the lightsaber was essential to help you see.
     
    The maze was again very short, effectively a horseshoe shape. There were quite a lot of actors (again, all with very good make up), but all bar one of them were stuck behind fencing, and all they could do was slam and growl. It was a very jarring experience, as there's no fear there whatsoever (even a girl who was in our group who looked around 13/14 wasn't the least bit scared). And given the theming for the maze was effectively fences and black tarpaulin, there wasn't much too it. 
     
    Again, a short maze with little scares, but a fun concept and a good number of actors. 


     
    Kauhusirkus (Horror Circus)
    Do you dare to step into the Horror Circus of bloodthirsty clowns?
    This is an 'overlay' of the park's other dark ride, Taikasirkus (Magic Circus). The ride was open before 4pm without actors, and we tried it - it was a suspended dark ride that goes through different scenes at a circus, with fun animatronics and such. The gondolas turn/spin slightly at different points throughout the ride too, to showcase different points within each scene. There was no audio, though apparently there usually is, which was odd..
     
    After 4pm, the ride has actors (one in every scene, so about 6). The actors are allowed everyone - in the sets, in front of, behind and underneath the cars! The actors, were, unsurprisingly, clowns. This wasn't particularly scary (certainly a push to make this 13+..), but the actors occasionally hid and did (predictable) jump scares, making it a more fun/scary experience. Real highlight was an actor appearing in front of us, then as our gondola spun around, he decided to lay on the floor, as a fun way of surprising us.
     
    Again, the actors looked really good, and this was well done.
     
    Kammokuja (Abhorrence Alley)
    The dead spirits have been wandering in the corridors of Kammokuja. There is also a large butcher living in the alley ...
    An overlay of the park's 3D walkthrough (which was much like a spookier version of Hocus Pocus Hall at Chessington), which basically just included a couple of actors hidden around corners. It was fun, but the actors seemed very restricted in what they could do. For example, one actor literally just appeared from round a corner holding a tray of tea, said in a creepy voice 'Would you like some tea?', and then waited for us to move on with no further interaction.
     
    The ending featured a large and loud male actor bashing on a wall brandishing a knife. Probably enough to get younger kids out quickly, but again, this felt a bit tame for a 13+ experience.
     
    The outdoor walkway had some clown animatronics, the family friendly maze was just an outdoor labyrinth where the walls were spider webs (no actors) and the scare zone had a couple of sets of actors going round a couple of times.

     
    Zombie Disco
    The reason for this being 18+ was because of the bar; I imagine it makes it easier for serving drinks when you don't have to ID everyone when it's busy. As the park was very quiet, so too was the disco area, which meant it was lacking in atmosphere. However, the actors here did a great job; all interacting with every group personally, spending lots of time with any group there and staying in character very well. It was also nice to see zombies which don't grunt or growl at you, as many theme park mazes resort to.
     
    A shout out to the zombie footballer, who at one point started a kick about with people in the area, then proceeded to do several keepy uppies (whilst remaining in perfect character!), and then carried on as if it was nothing. That was impressive!


     
    So Iik!Week was a weird one. Clearly the park know their stuff when it comes to doing scary things: the costumes, set design (largely) and acting quality (mostly) were all very good in my opinion. Plus their ghost train is scary too. But it seems like they've held themselves back, like they don't want to create attractions which actually scare people, despite having everything there to do so. I really don't believe a park which has the creative levels they've shown wouldn't be able to get over the final hurdle of actually making something scary.
     
    It's a shame, because they've got enough variation to do even one actually scary experience, and then keep the rest more fun. I hope that whatever their reasons, whatever their thought process, they decide to change their mind and do something actually scary in the future. In saying that, I still enjoyed the event, so can't really complain!
     
    And that's that! Without Taiga, Linnanmäki would be one of those 'if you're in the area, visit' or 'if you've ran out of other parks to visit' types of parks. It's fun, but nothing standout enough. But with Taiga, they've got a truly exceptional ride, with enough of a supporting line up to be a really solid park which is well worth the visit!
     
    How busy was it?
    Surprisingly quiet! Thanks to some wet weather (which only lasted for a couple fo hours on and off), the park wasn't very busy, and we didn't queue longer than 15mins for anything. By about 8-9pm, everything was walk on.
    How easy is it to get too?
    The park is about a 30-40min bus ride from Helsinki airport
    Is there anything else nearby?
    Helsinki has a few bits; we did an indoor horror mini golf course, the Helsinki SkyWheel, Helsinki Flying Theatre and Helsinki SeaLife (which is joined onto the park)
    How expensive is it?
    Helsinki isn't cheap, and flying out there is a bit costly. We stayed in a hostel, booking a private room for 3 people which cost about €20pp, which helped reduce costs.

    (and as ever, excuse the horrid photos..!)
  12. JoshC.
    After visiting Walibi Holland last week, I got to do an attraction that I've been keen to try for quite a while now...NeuroGen.
     
    For those unaware, Walibi Holland is quite an..in your face park. They quite clearly are targeting the young adult market, and are unashamedly brash. Think of what Thorpe was doing in the early 2010s with the 'fatheads', except not quite as awful, and with the balls to follow through and stick with it. Their current slogan of #HardGaan (Go Fast) keeps in line with that, and you regularly see 'F#CK FEAR, HARD GAAN' plastered around the park. They're not a park to shy away from doing something extreme, as seen from the likes of Untamed. 
     
    In 2016, they introduced a new, critically acclaimed, alone-experience to their Halloween line up: The Clinic. The Clinic sees guests visit a hospital, before quickly being strapped to a gurney, and having the rest of the experience take place strapped to said gurney. In 2017, the park introduced a year-round spin-off of the attraction: NeuroGen. Here's how the website describes the 16+ experience:
     
    So far, all pretty standard wording and hype for any scary attraction. But equally, this is a good (albeit roundabout) way of describing the experience: it's like a 4D cinema, except with VR headsets (which is actually filmed and not CGI) instead of 3D glasses. Oh, and you do it alone.
     

     
    You wait outside the building and are taken in one-by-one. You're guided into a hospital waiting room, told to walk through a door and someone is waiting for you round the corner. A walk through a corridor with some special effects (loud noises, bright lights, mist) eventually leads you to a very bright, very clinical circular room, with a doctor to greet you. You're asked to select a treatment ('beach' or 'waterfall'), and then one of 12 doors around the room opens, which you're told leads to your treatment room. 
     
    Spoilers here just in case:
     
    For the tl;dr version: basically the VR film shows you taking drugs, tripping out, being in a car crash and drowning. And, what's remarkable is how realistic it felt. I haven't experienced any of those phenomena, but it certainly felt like this was as close as I could get to it without experiencing it. And that made it pretty hard-hitting. It's a very different type of scare experience, and one which I imagine could really affect some people. It's pretty dark, and pretty bleak, which I guess makes it all the more appealing for me. The fact this is a solo experience really adds to it as well.
     
    So yeah, easily the best executed VR experience I've done, and something really rather out there too. It's brilliant to see these sorts of experiences offered in a more mainstream setting, despite being for a very niche market.
  13. JoshC.
    For the first time in like 2 years, I've actually finished a trip report *dies of shock*
     
    Plohn jumped into my attention because of their new Mack Big Dipper, Dynamite, bursting onto the scene. We thought visiting in mid-May would be safe enough for the 'Spring opening', but sadly we were 6 days too early. Major spite. Nonetheless, it looks good and I'm sure it'll be a hit for the park. Onto the rest of the park:
     
    El Toro
    A GCI woodie that opened in 2009, El Toro was a curious surprise for the trip. It's tucked away in the corner of the park, and though you don't really see it, you can certainly hear it. And even when you do see it, you don't quite realise how long it is, and how much it packs into a small space. It has a fair few airtime moments, which are all 'nice' and 'floaty'. It twists around a bit and has a nice bit of interaction near the park's log flume too. But ultimately, there's nothing particular interesting about it: it's just a bog standard, run-of-the-mill woodie.

     
    Miniwah and The Secret of Gold Creek City
    Now this was a surprise! Miniwah is an indoor Mack powered coaster, with a custom layout. Set in the park's wild west / mining area, the entrance is tucked away and, thanks to the facade, it'd be easy to think that there wasn't a ride in there at all. The queue is really well themed and surprisingly atmospheric.
     
    The ride itself is fabulous as well. The ride does 3 laps: the first lap is taken incredibly slowly, and gives you a tour around Gold Creek City and it's mining area. The second lap speeds up as it becomes clear the mining area is about the explode. The final lap is then taken even quicker, with the mining area fully exploded and causing havoc throughout the city. It was beautifully done, and a really interesting way of using a powered coaster.

     
    As from that, the park have 3 other coasters: some Zierer over water which was painfully slow, a Wacky Worm and an SBF spinner, all of which aren't worth me trying to find the names for and simply were coaster counting.
     
    The park have a surprising decent dinosaur/prehistoric themed section of the park. It features a family spinning drop tower (themed like Tikal), a raft tow boat ride around a lake with some dinosaur and caveman-like statues, and some pedal rafts on the same lake. This part of the park is away from the rest of the park and in dense woodland, which really added to whole vibe. Looking at the park's website, some of these rides are named after the Flinstones too, though I didn't notice this, and I'd be very surprised if there was any official tie in...


     
    The park also features typically European stuff, like a random un-manned funhouse area with some really fun slides (and like 5 floors tall), and a Efteling-inspired Fairytale forest which was pretty rubbish tbh. There was also the 'Ghost Mill', which was a haunted walkthrough attraction which was basically hidden by the log flume. You would basically walk through the building and certain effects (loud noises, wobbly floors, etc) were triggered. It was odd and different.


     
    Probably the highlight of Plohn for me is the park's two water rides. Firstly, there's their log flume, Wildwasserbahn mit Geiserbahn (literally Log flume with Ghost Train). The ride starts off in a dark tunnel, which I guess is meant to be the 'ghost train' of the ride. It wasn't scary at all, just very random. The ride then goes outside and just does standard log flume stuff, interacting with the woodie, itself and the surrounding area, and features a couple of fun drops. It's nothing special, but just done well and a ton of fun, which gets you the right amount of wet. Log flumes, great rides ey?


     
    And finally, the highlight of the park: Fluch des Teutates. This is a ride very similar to Storm Surge: you sit in a raft, climbing up a low lift hill, and spin down a slope. It's obviously by a different manufacturer (no idea who), as the boats are like rapids boats rather than dingies, and a slightly different layout for the drop. In particular, during the drop, there are 'mini drops' which give little extra pops to the ride, and splash you. Simply put though, this ride is crazy: the boats spin a ridiculous amount on the way down, you get a good level of wet and it's just a ton of fun. It's a really unassuming ride, and just a fantastic surprise package of a ride.


     
    So yeah, that's pretty much Plohn in a nutshell. The park wasn't busy at all (it was Mothers Day in Germany, so I can't tell if that should have made it busier or quieter). But we never saw El Toro have a full train. Staff at Miniwah seemed genuinely surprised when they saw us arrive in the station. The park felt really dead, and even going slow and doing lots of rerides, we barely managed to stretch the day out to 5 hours. The park felt very fairgroundy in places, which was a shame as well, given they've got some nice theming scattered about. It's in general a shame, as I thought this Plohn could be a park I'd really like, but I ended up feeling very flat because of it. And, even worse, that means I probably won't ever return to get Dynamite...gah!
     
     
    And yeah, that ends the theme park side of the trip. We spent the Monday exploring Berlin, and tbh, it was a very meh city for me. It felt very 'European' and not very 'German', which is totally fine, but as someone who likes Germany and wanted to explore more German-feeling stuff, it was a bit disappointing. I did try a Berliner though, which is sort of doughnut, hence the imaginatively named trip report..
     
    So yeah, Berlin isn't the best trip for a theme park run right now. Belantis and Plohn are very meh and offer little. It says a lot when a strawberry farm is the best place for coasters near Berlin (though the strawberry farm is brilliant and should be visited if you're ever near Berlin..). But yeah, ticked off a few creds at least..
  14. JoshC.
    After a day spent doing some random stuff in Berlin, the weekend was the main reason for the trip: the two random small parks just outside Leipzig. The first one was Belantis; a medium-sized park owned by Parque Reunidos (who also own the likes of Movie Park Germany, Bobbejaanaland, Mirabilandia,...). It was sadly an extremely wet day, with showers pretty much non-stop from about 8 in the morning. Fortunately, it meant the park was dead, and the park didn't close anything major in the weather. So, moving on...
     
    Huracan
    Arguably the park's headline attraction is Huracan, a Gerstlauer Eurofighter which opened in 2010, but was largely retracked this past winter. It rides as you'd expect a Eurofighter to ride really: fun, little bit uncomfortable, but nothing extremely intolerable. It has a nice unique layout, but doesn't really have any stand out moments. So yeah, in short: a fun enough but somewhat bland experience.

    Fun fact: Belantis also opened up a kiddie coaster called Huracanito, a ride where you have to be less than 1.2m tall to ride! tbh, it looked too intense for me.
     
    Cobra des Amun Ra
    The park's newest coaster is a Gerstlauer family coaster. Themed around a snake belonging to the Egyptian god Ra, this had a surprisingly nice indoor queue which was rather well themed. The coaster itself was actually really good: nice and whippy, well paced and you get two circuits on it. A nice surprise coaster!

     
     
    Drachenritt
    The park's final coaster is a Gerstlauer (see the trend?) bobsled, and actually a mirror clone of Paultons. Having not done that yet, I didn't know what to expect, but it was a ton of fun, with lots of fun pops of airtime, and a nicely themed experience! Again, a really fun ride.
     
    On paper, the park has a nice selection of non-coaster rides too. The true highlight has to be Fluch des Pharao, a log flume ride with Stormforce 10-style boats, which takes you into a 31m high pyramid. Though not very wet, the ride has a few quirky tricks, is nicely themed inside the pyramid and caught me off guard a couple of times. Very much a typical 'wtf' ride you'd find in Europe! The park also has a Gerstlauer sky fly in Götterflug, though I didn't see anyone manage and flips (hard to tell how much the weather played a part in that) and a random pirate drop tower that sways side to side which was equally very fun. There's a lot more too (including a random mini zip line which is free), but it's all pretty bog-standard and not worth mentioning..

     
    The park has one major dark ride in Verlies des Grauens (Dungeon of Horror): a madhouse ride which very much feels like it could be taking place in a dungeon. Of course, madhouses in a foreign language can be difficult to grasp, but this hasn't stopped me enjoying some out there, and with my basic German knowledge I was able to get the gist (some sort of crystal had been stolen and it relates to the wizard Merlin and only we can get it back or something). But even with that vague context, the madhouse portion was weak: very little seemed to happen, and it was all rather unimpressive, and probably the worst madhouse I've done. Even if I'd fully understood the story (I think the madhouse section is something to do with guests being tricked by the supposed good-guy in a massive plot twist), I doubt I'd have enjoyed it much: everyone around us looked rather unenthusiastic. 
     
    This is probably making Belantis sound like a pretty alright park, but honestly, it was very mediocre. No doubt the bad weather didn't help, the lack of people on park and the fact I bruised my ribs the days before and was in a reasonable amount of pain probably detracted from my fun even more. But really, the park just didn't feel like it had much to offer. The Eurofighter isn't something anyone will really be clambering to re-ride. The family rides are fun but pretty standard. And whilst some rides are nicely themed (in particular the newer ones), the park as a whole is very devoid of anything fun and interesting to make you feel like you're at a theme park. When the park has such an average line up, that doesn't help.
     
    One final thing though: the staff on park were fantastic. All very friendly and helpful and super upbeat despite the weather. They were all really chatty, most spoke good English too (handy when my German failed me!), and just in general made the day a tiny bit brighter. So that's always nice to see.
     
    The park closed at 5 (though staff were telling us they were considering closing early due to the weather and lack of people), but we ultimately left at 3ish to dry off and prepare to spend the evening in Leipzig. Before heading into Leipzig, we stopped off at the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, which is a monument to the Battle of the Nations, and stands at an impressive 300ft tall. You can pay to enter, but we just had a look around the outside. We wandered around Leipzig for a bit, had some food, then ended up going to a bowling alley near our hotel on the outskirts of the city centre. The city was heaving following a football game, and we quickly found out that Leipzig was quite a 'hipster' city, leaving us with little to entertain us really.
     

    Völkerschlachtdenkmal
     
    So yes: Belantis left me ultimately unfulfilled but equally, I wasn't surprised. Leipzig is a bit meh too. Could Freizeitpark Plohn save the weekend? Find out soon...
     
    NB: all pictures stolen from online as my phone hated the rain
     
  15. JoshC.
    Last weekend, I visited Berlin and Leipzig for a quick cred run and culture trip. I had originally planned to go to Finland and hit up Linnanmaki this month, but since Taiga opens next month, we opted for something a little different..

    After arriving in Berlin Friday morning, the first port of call was Little Big City. Owned by Merlin, LBC is one of their newer midway brands, and is basically a miniature village which goes through the history of Berlin. This one opened up about 2 years ago, and one opened in Beijing late last year, so it's struggled a bit so far. We had free tickets thanks to a member of the group being a Merlin-worker, and hit the attraction up at 11am.

    We were the only one in the pre show room (which is basically a projection explaining the concept), and there was probably only about 10-15 other people in the attraction whilst we were there. It's not a large attraction, and all the exhibits take place in one large room. However, it is well done: there's lots of interaction points, you can get very close / touch basically all of the models, and it's really informative and relaxed. It handles the more sensitive parts of Berlin's history well too. We spent about 50 minutes in there, but a family / more interested group could easily spend closer to 90 minutes I'd say.

    So yeah, it's a shame this isn't doing better and the brand isn't taken off. It has potential, but feels poorly marketed and in an awkward location. At about 13 euro for entrance, it's perhaps a little steep in price and I probably wouldn't have paid to do it personally, but I reckon for those who are interested in learning a little about a lot of the history, it's perfect.
     



     
    We then made the 45 minute ish drive down to Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Elstal. This came onto my radar last year when they opened up the abc tube coaster K2. For some more context, Karls is a massive strawberry farm brand, and we saw a few strawberry stands in Berlin in our brief time there in the morning. The place itself is a bit weird: it's like a garden centre, mixed with a market, mixed with an adventure playground, mixed with a small theme park in the making. Over the past couple of years they've added more rides and more to the theme park side of things.
     

     
    Entrance to the place is free, and includes a few attractions (mostly adventure playground stuff, like climbing frames, outdoor maze, etc), and the rides are pay per ride (1-4 euros per ride), or unlimited rides for 12 euros, the latter of which we opted for. After a delicious and reasonably-priced lunch, we moved onto the rides.
     

     
    K2 is one of the biggest surprise coasters out there, given it's unassuming location. The ride is themed to potatoes / harvesting potatoes / a crisp factory. The queue line (which is exceptionally long), is beautifully well-themed. It's like walking through a crisp factory, going from the harvesting of potatoes to the prepping of them into crisps. For those who have been to Phantasialand, it's similar in style to Maus au Chocolat's queue line. And it is themed amazingly. This is honestly one of the best themed queues I've ever been through: in the same league as Maus, Flying Dutchman at Efteling, etc. Which in itself is a feat.

    The ride itself is great fun. The cars have a lot of room and only have a seatbelt to lock you in. You go through an indoor pre-lift section which shows the harvesting of potatoes, before climbing up the 80ft lift and going round. There's some nice little pops of floater airtime, and it's just a fun, speedy coaster. It hits a MCBR which kills a lot of speed, before going through a couple of helixes and hitting the brakes. We did it multiple times and it's just as fun every time.

    Another quick thing to add: the throughput. This ride was running 4 cars, on a Friday afternoon when the place was super quiet. It occasionally had a queue, but it was running really well and cars were constantly flying around. Was really great to see!

    The rest of the park is fairly standard fodder. There's a Zierer water carousel thing (like Squid Surfer at Legoland), a water drop thing (the first one I've done: it was terrifying), mini drop tower, tractor ride, etc. All were really well styled and worked really well. And in saying that, we had a really good time. The place is really relaxed and a lot of fun, and has plenty to do, especially factoring in the non-park stuff. The place is usually open 10-8 as well, so it's easy to visit whenever you want. 

    The place clearly has a bright future, financial backing and a long-term place, since they're planning on adding some form of hotel / camping / resort experience in 2021 too. Definitely one to watch!
     

    That's all for now. We drove down to Leipzig (a couple of hours away), ready for a..erm...fun day at Belantis tomorrow...
  16. JoshC.
    No creds or parks to report on in this blog post, but there'll be a few visitor attraction things. So yeah, still give it a read...
     
    Monday morning came and, for whatever reason, no parks seem to open on Mondays in Poland during off peak (Legendia only opened Friday-Sunday, Energylandia closed on Mondays). So, in an unusual twist for my trips, we planned a full day of non-theme park stuff and culture.
     
    The first stop of the day was Auschwitz, which was just over 30mins away from Legendia. We didn't go for a guided tour, instead opting to tour the area ourselves. I won't really go into any more details, as I don't think I need to explain just how harrowing of an experience that is. We spent a couple of hours there.
     
    We then made the hour long drive into Krakow, where we were going to general touristy stuff, bit of sightseeing, eat at the Hard Rock etc. A bit of research the night before gave us some really interesting-attractions to visit:
    Lost Souls Alley - a horror maze / escape room style experience
    Krakow Pinball Museum - a 'museum' where, for a small fee, you can play over 40 different pinball machines and classic arcade games as much as you like
     
    After a bit of wandering round, we found a third attraction of interest - Exit Room, an escape room.
     
    Exit Room
    https://www.exitroom.pl/
     
    We stumbled upon Exit Room whilst trying to find Lost Souls Alley, and decided to book a room. They had 8 to choose from, and we opted to go for the Wolfenstein themed room. Not related to the video game series, bit sharing the same story. You are locked in a room, have an hour to escape, and the way to escape is to find the pieces of a gun to shoot an animatronic Hitler(!). It also started out quite nicely, as we were blindfolded at the start to disorientate us, and one of us was locked in a separate room to escape from as well. We didn't escape, and sadly there was no timer to give us the encouragement, but it was a very well presented escape room, and staff spoke excellent English!
     
    Krakow Pinball Museum
    http://www.krakowpinballmuseum.com/aboutus.html
     
    This place is a real fun little gem! For about £8, you get unlimited access to lots of machines and arcade games (some classic, some new). It's a really chilled out, relaxed atmosphere, not busy, etc. Drinks were also cheap as well (everything in Poland is cheap, but in comparison to the rest of a city centre, the drinks were cheap too!). The best part was you were given a wristband, and could pop in and out throughout the day. We really got our money's worth!
     
    It's a little bit geeky, maybe a guilty pleasure for some, but it's definitely something I'd recommend looking into if you're spending the day round there.
     
    Lost Souls Alley
    http://www.lostsoulsalley.com/index-en.php
     
    I don't even know where to start with this. This is an experience which will probably stay with me for the rest of my life, and not in a good way. I didn't want to write a dedicated thing about it, but I think I'm going to have to. It requires so much explanation and set up to truly understand what this attraction is, and why it haunts me so much.
     
    So yeah, suffice to say I didn't like this. Standby for more details; I'll link the thread when I've written it...
     
     
    Krakow was a wonderful city to explore in general though. Lots of pretty buildings, the people were brilliant and the food was ace. The day we visited happened to be the anniversary of the Soviet Union invading Poland in the lead up to WWII (1939), which is also when the country's President and Prime Minister fled the country. There were memorial services throughout the day in various locations, which again were pretty hard hitting.
     
    Another standout feature of Krakow, which sadly I didn't get a decent photo of, was a fire-breathing dragon statue by the river. Completely random, but very cool.
     
    We left Krakow in the evening to go to our nearby hostel, which was very nice and simple. As I've said, it's a wonderful city, and it was nice and different to for me to spend a fully doing non-theme park stuff on a theme park trip...
     
    Coming soon, Energylandia, with it's 10000000 creds, and other random stuff.
  17. JoshC.
    It feels like half of the European coaster community has decided to venture over to Poland this month, following the opening of that small coaster Hyperion, and with rapid expansion taking place at the two major Polish parks - Legendia and Energylandia. But how do they actually fair?
     
    We flew to Katowice on a Saturday evening, arriving at our hotel late, giving us the perfect opportunity to arrive at Legendia Sunday morning. Legendia is based in Silesia, an old mining district of the country, and now in the process of truly being redeveloped into a tourism hot spot (indeed, around the area are plenty of mining headframes which have been turned into prettier sites!). With Legendia being bought by a new owner a couple of years back, it's clear the park aim to capitalise on this.
     
    To our surprise, Legendia is very much a city park, literally just based off a main road through the city, and all the surroundings just being standard city stuff. Interestingly, the park operates a one-price ticket system, for 99 zloty (about £20). However, you're only allowed to leave for 15 minutes, and if you want to return after that, you need to buy a new ticket. Clearly a tactic to keep people in the park as long as possible, eat on park, etc. The park also has VERY good opening hours (minimum 10am-8pm, with park gates opening between 9 and 9.30), meaning people can pop in at various hours of the day.
     
    The park opens with a little show, where kids are handed out free sweets and balloons and encouraged to take part, whilst adults are given free fudge!
     
    The park has 4 coasters - two Zyklon Galaxis, a Soqeut looping coaster, and Lech, a new-gen multi-looping Vekoma. The Zyklons are bog standard, with some okay facades, and the Soqeut was closed due to it being rethemed for next year (plus the track looked in HORRID condition). So let's get down to Lech...
     
    Lech Coaster
    Lech is mental. The layout features a very steep drop (maybe even beyond vertical, I couldn't really tell), 3 inversions (one going through the station), plenty of airtime, twists, turns, and is partially over water. It flows so well, is incredibly smooth, the airtime is fantastic, and the vest restraints are surprisingly comfortable (and feel almost necessary with the amount of airtime you get!). And, finally, the first drop and inversion is intense. Extremely intense. I greyed out on every ride I did. We did 2 rides back-to-back, and that was a mistake as I felt quite wiped out afterwards. It's at a point where it's arguably too intense, as it put me off wanting to re-ride it too much. Nonetheless, it's still a fantastic ride, a truly brilliant investment (just over 4m euros) and something which has put Vekoma back in people's attentions, and rightly so.
     

     
    Bazyliszek
    The park's new for 2018 ride is a shooter dark ride. Themed around a house with lots of monsters, where a Basilisk has escaped. Trackless, and a combination of work from ETF, Alterface and Joravision, this is actually something very special. The queue is spectacularly themed. The ride features interactive sets and screens, which is transitions between very well. The shooting aspect isn't the only focus of the ride, with some story driven points too. It is genuinely astounding. There are a couple of minor issues though - it's never really explained that you have to hit targets multiple times before they are destroyed (I only realised this mid-way through my second ride!), and some of the real theming looks quite basic, and thus tacky and out-of-place compared to the other. 
     
    Aside from that though, this is a true winner of an attraction, a real gem, and one of my favourite dark rides!
     

     
    Dragon Riders
    Dragon Riders is bloody mental. I have no idea who designed this ride, how many of these there are in the world, or any general clue really. But I imagine anyone who's thought "this is a good idea" has been on some hardcore drugs.
     

     
    To try and explain the ride. You sit in your pod, with nothing more than a - rather loose! - lap bar to keep you in. You then start going round in a circle, like you would in a carousel. Your pod then starts to spin / roll continuously. Think of Slammer, but faster, in a smaller radius and for a lot longer. You do this for a while, then go in the other direction. And this lasts for about 3 minutes. Due to the loose lap bar, you bounce around in your seat, getting slammed every single way, and it's just general sickening. And unlike with many spinning rides, this doesn't have a 'warm up' period - it just seems to go straight to max speed!
     
    I felt queasy for a good few hours afterwards. I'm not a huge fan of spinny rides, so I knew it would leave me feeling meh. But with something this insane, you have to try. You may regret it after, but you have to try it.
     
     
    The rest of the park is pretty average to be honest. They have a log flume / boat ride thing which has terrible throughput, has staff specifically instruct you to brace yourself on the drops so you don't slam into row infront, and is generally a burden to ride, but has decent splashes. There's a few other funfair style rides, run incredibly well, but nothing that stands out.
     
    We ate at one of the newer restaurants by Lech, and the food was decent and well priced (I believe I had a main meal, drink and dessert for about £7.50). And you do get wonderful views of Lech too. Speaking of food though, one thing which really stood out was how they didn't serve any snacks or bottled drinks at any of the shops - they were only at the food places. And the food places had very long queues from 1-5pm. The park, surprisingly, has lots of shops with lots of ride merch though!
     
    Two things really stood out to me with Legendia. 
    1) This park isn't a full day park. The park was, admittedly, very quiet when we visited, but even when busy, I can't see you needing more than a 10-6 day at the park. Given how the park's ticketing works, this is a bit disappointing, as it means you can't enjoy the park at it's opening and at it's closing (ie - night rides) without either buying two tickets, or having a very boring lull mid-way though the day.
     
    2) Legendia has a future, and a very bright one at that. The park has a fantastic infrastructure and is clearly set up to hold a lot of people (Lech and Basilisk's queues were HUGE too). All the staff we interacted with spoke perfect English (and they even have flags with what languages they can speak on their name badges). They've got a fantastic entrance area. They know who it is they want visiting, and they know how to attract them. The thing that's missing at the moment is quality. Lech and Basilisk fill two very obvious holes, and have done so quickly and reasonably cheaply. A new water ride is coming in 2020 (hard to know what it could be based on the location, but a proper log flume or rapids would suit the park perfectly right now). And with the new ownership, they've clearly got the money to be able to bring in the new, high-quality additions.
     
    So yeah, give this park 5 years, and I have no doubts they'll have a solid line up with some great filler attractions. In 10-12 years time, though, I really do see this having the potential to be one of Europe's most charming, most fun parks - a real gem in the making!
     
    We left the park at 5-6ish in the end, after really dragging out the day. We spent some time exploring Katowice (and sadly, basically nothing was open because the Sunday we visited, EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED), and then got ready for a day of Polish culture...coming to a blog post near you soon...
  18. JoshC.
    So, I figured I may as well give a bit more insight about my views on The Walking Dead - The Ride.
     
    I know plenty of people have pretty much written it off already, and it's almost trendy to hate the idea, but I do think it's worth going into this with an open mind.  The overall experience is good, well themed, and does justice to what the ride and building was designed to achieve.  
     
    The entrance portal is nice.  It is standard run down Thorpe style, but it is still good.  The queue is, again, standard Thorpe in that it's "how much queue can we fit in one space", with just little nuggets of theming - in the way of themed signage and Easter Eggs to the show - to go with it.  There's no extensions or anything, so on quiet days, you will have to walk through the whole thing, which is a pain..  Audio in the area is nice and creepy, and the watchtower looks alright to be fair.
     
    Bag room is now outside the building, and is clearly unfinished at the moment.  Hopefully it can be themed up, especially to the standard of the inside of the ride.  After that, groups of 20 (so 2 trains worth) get batched into pre-show.  The pre-show is extremely basic - a minute long video featuring a character talking to you, encouraging you to make your way through the building because we're under attack.  It's well done, and I don't think it will get tedious during re-riding, but I feel like they could have done more here.  Some big special effect, to give you the personal reason to get moving, rather than some guy on a screen telling you...
     
    The walkway to the station is exceptionally well themed.  You go through different areas of 'the safe zone', and as you go through them, audio is triggered saying how those zones are under attack, encouraging you to keep moving.  The tone is perfect here, and really sets up the experience well. 
     
    The ride itself is themed to a 'transit system' in the safe zone, and is being used to transport you to safety.  It's clever, and gives you a reason to be on the ride.  From there, it is just X, with special effects, and I don't think that can be stressed enough.  I really hope that people have ended up being ignorant the OTT "it's the scariest thing ever" marketing approach, or are able to just look past it, else it sets the ride up to fail.  In saying that, the special effects that are there are good, and really do enhance the ride experience.  There aren't any animatronics, just zombie mannequins (which aren't the greatest, but to a casual rider will more than do the job).  There's also screens, smoke, audio and lighting effects, all of which are used very well.  The one stop during the ride is a real highlight actually, fitting in with the story perfectly, and just being a lot of fun!
     
    The ride ends with us still being under attack; everywhere in the safe zone is overrun with zombies.  The post-ride experience happens, in the form of a loud noise, and is...just a bit naff?  There's terrible noise bleed from there to the waiting bit before the station, so if you've been unfortunate with timings, it does spoil it somewhat.  There is more to it, but I believe that tweaks were still being made, so I don't know what to say / expect from that for now.  There is a lot of potential there, but it needs a bit more direction.
     
    So yeah, to round it all up...
    +Fantastically themed experience
    +A fun ride experience, with good special effects
    +An experience that stays true to what the original X:\No Way Out aimed to do
    +A cohesive story which is easy to understand
    -Pre-show could do with a bit more oompf
    -Post-show needs a bit of clarity / more direction
     
     
    But before I go - One final thought.  
     
    I like this, I won't deny that.  I also liked X.  I haven't decided whether I like this more than X or not, but that's neither here nor there for now.  Personally, I think X is the better thing for Thorpe now; it had potential to be a fun ride which was accessible to all.  
     
    I can't help but wonder what Thorpe could have done with X if they had the budget this had.  Or even half the budget.  They really could have created an attraction where you rode "on a wave of light (and sound)", went through tunnels of light, etc.  I imagine that having the trains 'chase' lit up track, with lasers and smoke effects around, along with an extended original soundtrack would have been more than possible, along with some fun lighting effects in the entrance and exit walkways.  I reckon I'd have loved that, as would a large majority of people.
  19. JoshC.

    Liseberg

    By JoshC.,

    So I visited Liseberg back in July, and I just wanted to share a few thoughts on the park...  Majority of my photos were like so bad so I'm just stealing photos from the park's website to break things up.
     
    Ultimately, I was left a bit...unfulfilled? by the park.  I don't know how to describe it.  The quality of some of the attractions at the park is really good, but the park itself just do 'it' for me.
     
    Helix
    Let's get this out the way.  Helix is truly fantastic.  It's got everything - a lengthy layout, inversions, speed, airtime, a nice style and good audio...everything.  And it all works, which is more important in some ways.  I really loved the style of the ride - the slightly futuristic / game feel just works SO WELL.  It's a bit of a shame that the queue is a bit worn - it needs a good clean and spruce up really.  But aside from that, I have no real flaws.  The ride is fantastic wherever you sit.  The back is fab.  The front gives you the force and speed.  And at night is great <3 It's just great!
     

     
    Balder
    Balder was a wonderful surprise.  So much airtime, a really decent layout, that's nicely concealed, and just really good fun.  It's glass smooth which makes it feel weird, but a good weird I s'pose.  It's easy to see why it's so highly rated, and it's high up on my list too - my favourite woodie for certain!
     

     
    Lisebergbanan
    This classic Schwarzkopf is perhaps a bit of a hidden gem in the park now.  Which sounds weird to say given it's not hidden at all.  But in a park with Helix, Balder and soon Valkyria screaming in your face, it's perhaps something which will slide out of view.  Lisebergbanan was the only coaster where staff didn't bother stapling me in on every go (the staff on Helix and Balder seemed determined to split me in half...), which resulted in some awesome airtime and being flung about in every direction.  We also had a couple of rides in the rain which really added to the experience.  Just a shame about that final brake...
     

     
    Rebalder & Stampbanan
    A couple of small creds finishes up the coaster line up.  Nothing special, but Rebalder ended up being my 100th cred - woohoo!
     
    AeroSpin
    I'd always wanted to try a Gerstlauer Sky Roller since I first saw them, so I was excited for this.  I rode is 3 times over the course of 2 days - I struggled on my first go to get any spins, but managed a solid 27 on my second go, which made me very queasy...  Goodness knows how people cope with 50+ spins...

     
    Uppswinget
    So this is basically Rush on a hill.  It has loads of potential, but it just didn't deliver.  The ride cycle was disappointing, and the location just didn't work - instead of making it more intimidating, it makes it less.  It meant the ride experience was rather lacking all in all.

     
    AtmosFear
    A really tall drop tower with Stealth-style restraints.  It was alright, gave nice views of Gothenburg, but that's about it.  I think after Detonator's forcefulness and brilliance, other drop towers feel lacking for me..

     
    FlumeRide & Kallerado 
    The park's log flume is a nice scenic tour really.  It's also gives a good pop as it starts down the drops.  Nothing special, but good fun!
    The rapids were great - they start quite slow, but gradually builds up and up and it just works really well!

     
    Liseberg Wheel
    Oh god.  This was blooming awful.  It's a ferris wheel, but the loading procedures were bad.  It got every pod emptied / filled (which naturally takes ages), and then cycles round 3 times, and then starts the unload/load process again.  It's just so boring.  It didn't help the views were poor because of rainy weather, but even with clear weather, there's not that much you'd see again a second. third or fourth time round...

     
    Loke & Mechanica
    The two newest rides at the park; unfortunately they didn't appeal to me.  Loke, an Intamin gyroswing, is a ride that makes me feel awful after riding these days, so I didn't fancy it.  And I didn't want to waste time with Mechanica when there was other stuff I could do..
     
    Majority of their other attractions are all standard stuff, and they weren't that great really.  A bit of a shame.  Their dark ride (which is closing soon / might already be closed?) was truly awful though.  However, one final noteworthy attraction...
     
    Gasten Ghost Hotel
    An upcharge scare attraction (priced £5/£7 depending on what ticket you have).  Themed around a spooky abandoned hotel which is over-run by spiders.  I hate spiders, which naturally put me on edge.  The maze was very good; a good length, VERY well themed, and some fantastic use of special effects (smell and feel were particular scents that were attacked!).  The only downside was that it lacked in actor numbers, which is a bit of a shame.  Nonetheless, a good scare attraction which did leave me cowering at some points...
     
     
    On a more general note, operations at the park were generally very good and quick.  I'm not a fan of their shutdown policy (Helix shutdown when we were near the station, and it resulted in a full queue evac.  It opened about 10 minutes later and must surely have only been a small problem), but I guess that's a small grumble.  I love all of the sideshows and games they have - so many of them were themed which was fantastic, and they just had such a good atmosphere about them (it was also good that staff weren't pressuring people to play).  
     
     
    So yeah, Liseberg was a weird one.  I enjoyed their 3 major coasters, and they have a couple of other good attractions.  But the park feels lacking in...something to me.  But I don't really know what.  Despite wanting to go back and ride Helix, Balder and Lisebergbanan, I don't really feel compelled to visit Liseberg as a park any time soon (even their new coaster isn't that tempting).  It's disappointing in some ways, as I want to like the park, but I just don't as much.  I think it's at least partially down to the fact it's more or less an amusement park, rather than a theme park, and I'm more of a theme park guy.
     
     
  20. JoshC.

    FreBelGerAnd - Efteling

    By JoshC.,

    Only taken me 3 and a half months to finish this TR...
     
    We spent 2 and a half days at Efteling this year, and there was bucketloads of stuff going on during that time.  We stayed at the newly opened Loonsche Land Hotel, experienced Symbolica on it's opening day (along with all the pomp and faff to accompany it), and had a 14 hour day on park thanks to their summer festival event starting.  So I could probably pad this part of the trip into 2 or 3 blogs itself (and I kind of have already with my Symbolica review, but heyho...), but I'll just do photos and quick explanations so I can get it done...
     


    Symbolica's opening day (which was also the park's first Summer Festival day of the year) wasn't as busy as we expected.  The park opened at 9am, Symbolica opened at 10am.  During that time void, the park's mascot Pardoes was out and about, press were interviewing staff and guests - one Dutch news company tried to interview us, but funnily enough they wanted Dutch speakers.  There was a fun countdown when the ride opened, and we a mad rush occurred, put fortunately we were in first group of the day in.  Good thing too as I wouldn't have wanted to queue this...


     
    The park's summer festival they ran was incredible.  For no extra cost, the park opened till late (11pm), and held tonnes of extra side-shows, events, extra food stalls, and general fun stuff.  This was all from 6pm, which started off with a parade of all the acts:

    OJ Punctuel from Symbolica

    A living statue from Flying Dutchman
     
    In the 5 hours from when the parade started, we did a few rides (I can't remember what exactly off the top of my head, but fairly certain we did Joris a couple of times, Baron, Bob and maybe Flying Dutchman?), we saw a ton of the acts, including...

    Random singers

    Raveijlin fayre - the whole area was transformed into a mini Warwick Castle.  They had sword fights, random actors spinning yarn and goodness knows what else to create an atmosphere.

    Random singers / marching band.  They were a massive laugh - a lot of their sets can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDSnv09tVMQ

    South American dancers

    Comedians

    1001 Nights area, include magic performances, 'snake charmers', sword swallowers, a guy giving away free ice cream if you can get it from him, and someone trying to sell rugs...

    3 different versions of Aquanura
     
    And much much more, including live music performances from plenty of other acts, randoms pianists, some kids radio station, loads more dancers and plenty of other things I've probably forgotten now and didn't get a chance to take a photo of it.  It was truly a fantastic atmosphere, and it was a wonderful day.  14 hours on park flew by, and though it felt long enough, a couple more hours would no doubt have helped us see even more the acts, and sneak in a couple more night rides.  Speaking of which, some Efteling at night photos...
     

    Dragon wasn't blowing fire during our trip unfortunately



     
     

    I got a photo with the wonderful OJ Punctuel.  I think I insulted him with my commonness and unshaven face.  Though serious note - I love how copious the costume characters are in numbers and appearances - always created such a good, fun atmosphere.
     
     
    In terms of rides...
     
    Baron 1898 left me disappointed this visit.  After riding it 2015, I truly adored it - it was fun, floaty and just really enjoyable from start to finish.  Unfortunately, it has aged liked B&Ms seem to do, becoming slightly more forceful and punchy.  This is normally a good thing, but in Baron's case, it means it loses the floatiness which made me love it so much, making it less enjoyable.  It really slid down my Top 10 as a result - if it wasn't for the amazing theme and surrounding, it certainly would have fallen out.  
     
    Joris en de Draak stood the test of time however, and I still really love it.  I still prefer Fire slightly over Water, but it definitely cemented itself as my favourite Efteling coaster.  Flying Dutchman remained fantastic, Python remained slightly painful and generally disappointing, whilst I enjoyed Bob significantly more this time!  My opinions on many of the park's other rides remained the same - I still don't quite get Dreamflight, I enjoy the park's other dark rides and their filler selection is nice.  I also got the chance to try the park's 3D cinema, Pandadroom, after it was down for technical difficulties in 2015.  I actually quite enjoyed the premise and the real effects it has, but the 3D itself was terrible, and the awkward wait before the show needs some serious attention.  I also enjoyed my time in the Fairytale Forest, with this new addition since my last visit being the highlight...

     
     
    All in all, I enjoyed Efteling again this year, for what was my second visit to the park.  After my original visit, I did class it as my favourite park.  However, since then, Phantasialand has grown on me all the more, and Efteling just misses the mark for me a bit now.  It's still a fantastic park and I really enjoyed my time there (even though 2 and a half days is a bit too much for the park), but it's not really a park for me I guess..
     
     
    And so that concluded FreBelGerAnd.  We left the park slightly earlier than planned so we could get allow plenty of time to drive back to Dunkirk for our evening ferry, and as per, travelling home posed no issues at all...
     
    Next up - my Liseberg review; it's only 2 months late fortunately!
     
     
     
     
     
  21. JoshC.
    Following the recent-ish announcement of The Walking Dead coming to Thorpe, I thought I'd share a review of TWD: Breakout, Movie Park Germany's 5 Euro upcharge scare attraction.  And also share some expectations I have for Living Nightmare and Sanctum as a result..
     
    I have to say, I was really looking forward to this.  Movie Park are well known for this Halloween event, and they continually bring in big name IPs as well as original concepts (this year, they've got an 18+ maze themed to the Hostel series which looks to be at least partially an alone experience for example), so that sets a certain bar.  The maze itself was really pushed hard, on the website, on leaflets, on the park map and on park too - it was almost like it was a crowning success for the park; their gem along with their big new ride.  They advertised "the latest technologies" which helped achieve special effects, along with the standard 'intense, scary' jargon that most mazes get.  And even though I haven't watched the TV show (and still haven't yet), I knew how much scope the franchise has.
     
    Breakout Review
    Warning - spoilers
     
    After doing some queueing in some shipping containers, you reach the entrance of the maze, which is themed around the Harrison Memorial Hospital (apparently from the first series).  You could hear lots of banging to the right of the wall, which I thought was a bit of a spoiler, since an actor was bound to appear.  
     
    You get batched in in groups of about 8, and encouraged to stay together, but it's not a conga line maze.  The first scene just ends up being a standard safety scene (delivered on TVs in multiple languages), and then an actor appears from a hidden route to your left (despite the loud noises you hear outside coming from what should be your right).  It was a clever bit of misdirection, and though not scary, showed some promise.  The actor then chases away to go down the corridor on your right, banging the walls to encourage you to leave..
     
    Unfortunately from here, things go downhill.  You walk past the famous 'Don't Open, Dead Inside' doors, with no sort of effects or actor or special lighting or anything; a particularly disappointing thing since that was so widely pushed in advertised.  An actor appeared, shouting 'Boo', and doing some general arm waving to try and invade our personal space.  No context to the scenes, and I realised that it was actually the same actor as from the first scene, which begun to ring alarm bells as to the number of actors.
     
    You continue through more scenes, which are very well themed, but had little sound effects and no special effects.  Occasionally an actor appeared, but they all did the same thing - shout 'boo' and walk like a zombie who'd an accident in their underwear...  Though the theming was nice, you weren't given any chance to really interact with it - you were always well away from anything of note, and given tonnes of space with nothing filling it.  It was the worst thing a scare maze can be - boring.  
     
    The ending was cliche to say the least...  Large open space, couple of barrels and a door at the end of the room.  Oh, except a big burly man with a chainsaw appears out of nowhere by the door.  Been there, done that.  However, a tiny ray in the ending was the fact that the actor kicked down a barrel onto the floor, creating a huge, echoing thud - easily the biggest scare in the maze, and shows that there was at least a glimmer of thought put into 'how can we actually scare people' when designing the maze.  
     
    So yeah, TWD: Breakout was a very poor maze.  Few actors, little-to-no use of standard scare tactics introduced and nothing exciting or interesting to go with it.  Maybe having done a few good mazes over the years has hardened me up a bit too much, but there was just nothing of note.
     
    Thorpe Expectations
     
    Something which still sticks in my mind about Breakout is how well themed the maze was, and how well designed the sets were.  Looking at photos of the maze and looking at images from the show, they are very similar down to the small details.  So I expect that AMC / Fox have quite high expectations and demands about the theming of the maze that have to be met.  Given the Paragon Creative have been spotted on park (the company who also did a great job when making Saw Alive!), I expect that those expectations will be met, especially with Living Nightmare.
     
    From the brief description that Thorpe have released, it sounds like Living Nightmare will be in a similar vain to Breakout in that there are a variety of scenes from the show in the maze that you go through, except that they are including Season 7 in there.  Also, as we're told that we can "choose your path and decide your fate", there might be the possibility of multiple routes akin to Cabin - a nice touch which works nicely with the 'assorted scene' vibe.  
     
    I must admit I'm concerned about what sort of scares we're in for.  Thorpe have gotten a reputation that their style of scare is 'growl in people's face, brush against their arm and slam against a wall' and move on.  Though I don't strictly agree with this (and we've seen them move away from that with the likes of Big Top, Blair Witch and Platform 15 in my opinion), I certainly see where people are coming from.  And it feels almost inevitable that we could be in for that treatment here.  I'd really love to see some effects that play on the senses more here - smells are something which are particularly under-used by Thorpe.  And I feel like having a hospital scene, for example, which is literally 'cold' would work well.  Couple in some other effects here and there, and it would work really well.  But I'm just not sure we're in for that.  
     
    As for Sanctum, given it's said to be an outdoor maze, and from the little we've seen of it, I get a feeling like it will be a bigger, better, more-coherently themed version of Dead End.  The general story seems to be 'death and destruction wasteland, you enter a safe bit, but oh wait, it's not safe' - something that Thorpe can do well.  The containers could act as means to create a long route to walk around, and be used for impact scares.  Chuck in a couple of set pieces and bits and bobs and it'll be a fun little maze.  I'm not expecting anything groundbreaking, but it has the potential to be a perfect filler maze, as well as helping spread the crowds around.
     
     
    tl;dr - Germany's Walking Dead maze is on the whole, naff, but the theming is good.  I expect good theming at Thorpe and hope they can produce something different in terms of scares.
  22. JoshC.
    So I'm skipping Phantasialand because everyone knows I think it's the best and I'm behind on writing TRs and stuff.  So yeah, do excuse the delay and what will be rushed TRs, which will largely just be reviews of rides in no particular order of riding them...
     
    Movie Park was a park I had reasonably low expectations about.  There wasn't many raved about, and any reviews of the park I had read always mentioned long queues, that their Fastrack was a saviour and people always having a sour taste in their mouth at the end of the day.  In fact the only real positives I had heard about the park was about its Halloween event.  These fears weren't helped when park close was extended from 5pm to 6pm, suggesting the park would be quite busy.  But for late June, it wasn't that busy, everything was manageable and it was a decent day.
     
    Star Trek:  Operation Enterprise
    The new-for-2017, triple Mack launch coaster was the big draw for finally deciding to pay MPG a visit.  Figuring it would have long queues, we headed their first - annoyingly the ride is basically the first thing you see at the entrance, but the ride entrance is in the middle of the park.  Fortunately we were first in the queue.  There was a few minute delay as we waited for a couple more test runs, but no issue.
     
    The indoor queue line is nice, but a bit too clinical.  I get that this is the theme, but it just feels a bit uninteresting, even after a short while.  What follows are 2 pre-shows, with screens which give a back story from characters from the show (spoken in Germany, but with English subtitles), as well as a staff member guiding you through.  They are nice, and the rooms are nicely themed, but they do go on too long for my liking.  
     
    We got to the station and were on the second train (being first in the pre shows doesn't guarantee first in the station).  The ride itself is fun.  The traverser taking you to the launch track is in another very white room, which again feels quite boring.  The launches are nice and smooth; they're certainly not fast but that's not really the point I feel.  The inversions are taken quite slowly, giving a brilliant amount of hang time.  Towards the end of the course there's an amazing bit of airtime which really got me.  It's over quite quickly, but doesn't leave you feeling short changed fortunately.  You do seem to spend an age waiting on the break run though, which feels even longer as there's not much to look at.
     
    After our ride, we noticed there was no one in the station (people were being held up by pre show!), so we were able to get a re-ride immediately.  Though this didn't happen later in the day when we rode again, it makes me wonder how sustainable the pre shows are in their current format.  Staff seemed to have iPads showing where groups should be, radios to communicate to each other and god knows what else.  Seemed like a very faffy system for not a lot of pay off!
     



     
    Van Helsing's Factory
    This was perhaps the only ride I'd heard good things about before visiting.  And I can see why.  The theming is fantastic, the layout is fun and works well with the theming.  The general mood and atmosphere is brilliant.  Just everything about this ride works well together.  Even the queue line, exit and shop just feels so right and complete.  It's a fantastic example showing that a ride as a whole starts the moment you enter the queue (and even when you just see building!), and finishes the moment you leave the shop.  This was a true gem and possibly the biggest surprise of the trip.  The fact that our first ride we queued about 40-45 minutes (basically the longest queue of the trip) and I loved it right away shows its quality.  Plus things quietened as the day went on, meaning several re-rides.
     



     
    Bandit
    We did the park's wooden coaster in the afternoon, and the queue time was displayed as an hour.  Fortunately it was no where near that (15mins); seems Movie Park just update their queue times to the longest they get all day and leave them like that..  The ride looked like it had potential, but unfortunately fails to deliver.  Every time it looks like it can pick up speed, or produce a decent moment of airtime, it just...doesn't?  And that's the worst thing about this - excitement builds and builds, and it never delivers.
     
    It was so uninteresting, I didn't get any photos..
     
    MP Express
    This was a Vekoma SLC.  It was like any other Vekoma SLC - naff.  The first half of the ride was actually not awfully and shows why SLCs can get decent rides.  The second half was extremely painful, and right down there with the god awful El Condor at Walibi Holland.  
     

     
    The Lost Temple
    Tucked away near the front of the park, Lost Temple is an immersive tunnel themed around finding a lost temple - shock horror - and uncovering dinosaurs and stuff.  It features several burdenous pre shows (one of which was a real lift which we thought was fake!), and lots of faffing around between pre shows.  The 'experience' as a whole took about 30 minutes, so thank goodness the park wasn't too busy otherwise that would have been a huge chunk of the day gone.  The tunnel itself was meh; the Bobbejaanland one was a bit better really.  The exit pathway and queue to the ride is decent though.
     


     
    Bermuda Triangle
    Another ride tucked at the entrance to the park (and easily missed!).  This dark boat ride was literally walk on.  I really don't know how to describe this.  The ride starts off outside, before taking you into a volcano.  There were times inside when I didn't know if I was dropping, going up or what.  The theming inside is good, but obviously quite dated - along with the theme itself.  The finale is being taken up a lift in a very misty, very warm part of the volcano, before dropping outside and splashing down.  There's usually a huge amount of mist before a boat drops down, and there were occasional fire effects from the top of the volcano.  It's a really good, yet really bizarre, ride.  I'm gutted I didn't actually take any pictures of it.
     
    We tried to get a reride at about 5:20, but when we got to the entrance the entrance board said it closed at 5:15 (even though it definitely said 5:30 when we went there earlier).  There was no queue, and I'm pretty certain the ride has stopped running shortly afterwards.  A frustrating situation.
     
    Nick Land
    Nick land featured some randoms kiddie rides, some family rides and some coasters.  One coaster, the Jimmy Neutron themed Vekoma SFC, was closed all day.  Annoying spite.  One coaster was a Vekoma rollerskater "themed" to the Backyardians.  We more or less got straight on.  It was meh.  There was also a Spongebob "themed" Wild Mouse, which was alright.  We also did the Dora the Explorer "themed" log flume, which got me drenched to the bone.  
     
    I don't really have much else to say.  Nick Land looked quite out of place compared to large proportions of the park.  It felt very run down, the theming was minimal to non-existent, and I really feel like the park could do a lot better.
     

     
    Mystery River
    This Neverending Story esque rapids ride is tucked tight at the back of Nick Land, and turned out to be a neat little surprise.  I'd say it's in my top 3 rapids rides; it has a good length, decent amount of theming and an acceptable level of wetness.  It's also helped by the fact that you basically can't see the ride at all from anywhere on park, so you really have no idea what is coming.  The biggest disappoint is that you have to survive walking through Nick Land to get to it.
     

     
    Crazy Cops Stunt Show
    I love a good stunt show, and we wandered into this show not really knowing what to expect, aside from screeching tires and loud noises.  This ended up being really good, featuring a decent level of stunts featuring cars, bikes and falls, as well as some decent effects, slapstick comedy and an easy-to-follow 'story' of sorts.  It was just great fun to watch, and a great way to break up the day.  It's a shame things like this aren't as common in the UK any more..
     
    The High Fall
    A tall drop tower with nice views of the park, a bit of suspense and tilting seats.  Pretty good fun all in all.  
    Tip - if anyone ever visits and sees a long queue for this, just do a double check.  The indoor queue is a cattlepen where one wall is a mirror and makes the queue look double in length.  Caught us out first time..
     

     
    There was some other stuff around the park, including a simulator featuring massive sets and John Cleese, which was meh, a few nicely themed or styled flats that we didn't bother with (Top Spin, Disk'o, Rockin' Tug, etc).  But the final thing of note I want to mention...
     
    The Walking Dead - Breakout
    A year-round horror maze with a 5 euro upcharge, Walking Dead - Breakout felt like it had a lot to live up to, since the park was apparently good at Halloween and with its scare mazes.  Plus the fact Walking Dead is a huge brand and has mazes at several locations, it felt like it had to be good for Movie Park to be a deserving park to have it.  
     
    The maze is open 1-4pm, and we bought out tickets online and booked for 1pm.  Unfortunately the time slot system is non existent and you turn up whenever you want.  
     
    Even more unfortunate is the fact that the maze is terrible.  It's themed nicely, but there's no real scares, no opportunity for scares, not enough actors, no real scary atmosphere.  It's just terrible.  It terms of actual frights, I'd say it's comparable to Platform 15 (a maze notoriously known not to be able to offer many scares last year).  This really was a crying shame, a huge disappointment - possible my personal biggest disappoint at any park across Europe.
     
     
    And so that's that.  Movie Park Germany is perhaps a little underrated, though Star Trek definitely improves the line up.  They've got a couple of solid coasters, a decent dark and water ride collection and the odd sparkle across flats and live entertainment.  Certainly not a park I'd call a must-do, but definitely worth looking into at the very least.
     
     
    Next up (and hopefully before Christmas...) - Efteling!
     
  23. JoshC.
    After another refreshing night at our hotel, we trekked on over to Plopsaland de Panne for Day 2.  I'll keep this brief as I've babbled on about this loads before...
     
    We arrived at the park to be greeted by loads of school kids swarming about, so we headed straight for Heidi - The Ride, the park's coaster which was meant to be open last year but had loads of noise issues.  It's a lot of fun.  It holds its speed for most of the ride, features nice pops of airtime and the odd intense.  It's practically a clone of White Lightning at Fun Spot America, so anyone who's ridden that will no doubt know what to expect.  It's a bit on the short side, and it's a shame they didn't do more sound tunnels during the ride given all the extra fencing required. but it's still a very, very good family coaster and just what the park needed.
     
    We rode it 3 times during the course of day, including front and back, and it remained equally fun at all points - woohoo!
     
    One sad thing was how the ride opened on one train (fortunately we arrived just before all the school kids arrived to the coaster), and I imagine any sort of queue would then be painfully slow.  Not to mention the queue is just a wooden, indoor cattlepen.  It was also a 1-man op job at the time (like most of Plopsaland's rides!).  However, it did go up to 2 trains later on, and at one point had 3 staff working on, easily the most I've ever seen working on 1 ride at Plopsa.  
     


    Area looks nice

    They play the Heidi TV show in the queue, which has hilarious screenshots.
     
    We also finally got to do Vleermuis, the park's twin suspended batflyer coasters, which had been SBNO on our previous 2 visits.  These had become a bit infamous for me, as they always looked 'fun' and odd, but their life at the park had come under question several times over the past few years.  They're fun enough little coasters, even if they do kill you legs thanks to to tight restraints - worth a try if you ever visit I'd say.  (I didn't get any good pictures, so check out RCDB for photos - https://rcdb.com/932.htm )
     
    With the new stuff ticked off before 11, we then had 7 hours on park to just go around and enjoy the park, which has a solid selection of rides.  Their Gerstlauer launch coaster Anubis proved great fun again, though I've noticed it can give uncomfortable rides on the back row which is a shame.  Their Vekoma rollerskater, Rollerskater, had received some new theming which was nice to see.  And despite all the school trips, and warm weather, we never really had to queue that long for anything, which is always a Plopsa plus!  
     
     
    We then left and made our way to Leige, where we stayed in another hotel which looked like a prison on the outside, but was nice enough on the inside.  We went to McDonald's for dinner, which served macarons as a dessert - good ol' Europeans!
     
    Day 3 then arrived, and it was time for another new park - Plopsa Coo!
     
    Plopsa Coo is situated in a very hilly (and picturesque!) part of Leige, and getting to it felt like going to a more complicated version of Alton Towers.  The entrance to the car park appears out of nowhere, so the park is very well hidden amongst the countryside.  
     
    Since we arrived super early, we had a wander around the car park and surrounding area, and accidentally stumbled upon the park's bobsleigh - literally the 'ride area' could be easily accessed from outside the park...
     

     
    Deciding not to venture any further to make sure we weren't kicked out before we even got in, we headed to the entrance, where the park promptly opened at 10am.  Unsurprisingly, lots of school kids were about, and most headed straight to the park's headline spinning coaster, Vicky - The Ride (more on that later).  The bobsleigh hadn't opened due to the rainy weather, and it didn't look like it would open any time soon (with rain and thunderstorms predicted for the whole day!).  So we headed to the park's charlift...
     
    The chairlift was built long before a theme park existed on the site, and takes you 220m (~722ft) high (and the park itself is 240m above sea level!).  At the top of the chairlift is a tower, which allows for some fantastic views of the surrounding area...
     



    You can vaguely see the park here.  To the left is their measly 60m tall star flyer.  The small hill on the right is where the bobsleigh is located.
     
    All in all, our time on the chairlift and tower took us about 45 minutes, which was a great way to start the day.  Unfortunately the weather was still drizzly, so the bobsleigh still hadn't opened, and the front part of the park was swarming for kids, so we trekked to the back of the very small park.  We ticked off a water slide and log flume, which were nice but nothing to write home about, before moving onto Halvar, the park's oldest coaster.  It's a bog standard Vekoma coaster, but basically completely hidden behind loads of trees and such, which made the ride a bit more fun than it otherwise would have been.  I didn't take any photos unfortunately, so check out RCDB - https://rcdb.com/931.htm
     
    We then moved onto the nearby Labyrinth, which was a big surprise of the whole trip really.  It's an outdoor maze, made out of really tall wooden fences...with a twist.  Throughout the maze are a series of locked doors, which you need a code to open.  The code to each door is found by answering a question at a dead end of the maze.  We had no idea what was going on until half way through the maze (thanks to us just following school kids through unlocked doors).  Once we knew what was going on, it made the maze very interesting, and it's certainly a concept I'd like to try again!
     

    A question with 3 possible answers and corresponding codes.
     
    After a spot of lunch and some general wandering around the very small park, we headed over to Vicky - The Ride, which still had a very long queue.  This Gerstlauer spinning coaster opened in 2011 and was pretty much our main reason for knowing the park existed!  It looked pretty interesting, and had potential.  After going through the very slow queue (we were essentially right next to the station and it took a good 30-40 minutes...), we were on, and were left disappointed.  The layout doesn't lend itself to much spinning.  The huge cars with inward-facing seats makes it difficult to get a good weight balance.  And in general, it just felt a bit bland and meh.  Maybe expectations were a little too high, but it was disappointing...
     


     
    Because of the constant on-off rain (though fortunately no thunderstorms!), the bobsleigh still wasn't dry enough to do.  So instead we ticked off the star flyer (which felt so tiny thanks to our views from the chairlift), and the FREE mini golf, which was surprisingly decent with a variety of interesting holes, including this one which had no hole...
     

     
    It was now just after 3, and the park closed at 5.  The rain had held off for a long time.  We headed back over to the bobsleigh, where plenty of drying of the track was going on - things looked promising.  After some lurking about, our prayers were answered - it opened!
     
    The bobsleigh was set on a really tall hill, and featured a random backwards incline to take you to the top, and 2 slopes to take you down.  I've no idea how tall the hill was, but the slopes were 600m each and it was reasonably steep at some points, so it was quite cool.  There's some awesome turns and fun spots, and some neat points to really gain speed.  Unfortunately on my first go there was a crash in front of me about half way down, which really killed the experience.  Fortunately we did a second run later on, and I got pretty much to the end before encountering a kid who had stopped on the tracks - joyous.  Nonetheless, these were truly a huge highlight of the park and one of the biggest hidden gems of the trip!
     

     
    Between our rides on bobsleigh, we did a second go on their waterslide, but also did their FREE go kart track.  Unsurprisingly it had a long queue, but you got 3 circuits on a decent length track in some cars which picked up an okay enough speed for what they were.  Was certainly a pleasant surprise to be able to do something like this for free.
     

     
    After park close, we made our way into Germany and the wonderful city of Koln.  Our beautiful hotel was situated nicely between two very explicit adult shops, our room offered a lovely view of the bin storage area of the hotel, but the beds were super-comfy and the room was huge, which was 2 things the previous 2 hotels didn't have.  Woohoo!  It was also a 10 minute walk from Hard Rock Koln, not that the restaurant chain interests me that much.  
     
    So all in all, Plopsa Coo is a very nice and quaint little park.  At one point we were concerned we wouldn't have enough to do, and then seeing all the school kids we were concerned we would be stuck in queues all day.  But the park offered a great balance for us so we were able to comfortably do everything in the 7 hours the park was open, without rushing or feeling bored.  Sure, it's not a must-do park, but it's certainly a nice park and definitely worth considering if you're anywhere nearby and want a little theme park fix. 
     
    Next time, Day 4 - Phantasialand!
     
     
  24. JoshC.
    So Adam has once again beaten me to starting up the massive Trip Report, but hey, you know what they say, first the worst, second the best...
     
    Once again, we went for a nice 8 day long road trip, hitting up some new parks and some old parks with new stuff.  Day 1 was the wonderful French park Parc Bagatelle...
     
    Bagatelle is about an hour away from Calais (which is where we were conveniently staying after arriving by ferry at 2am), and a reasonably straightforward drive.  The set up to get into the park is weird, with the car park being one side of a road, and then you have to go through a bland tunnel and security check to get to the main turnstiles and entrance of the park.  It's all very dull and you basically just stumble into the park.
     
    Pretty much our main reason for visiting the park was to try out Triops - a Vekoma inverted boomerang, which also happens to be the first one made (though it's moved about a few times).  So once the park opened, we headed over there, only to find a flimsy chain and a small A4 sign saying that area of the park didn't open till 11am.  Whoops.
     
    After meandering around for a bit, we headed to Gaz Express, a Soquet (nope, no idea either) mine train which looks very Vekoma.  It's partially set around a pond, featuring waterfalls and splash-down-esque features, has 2 random fire effects and a random indoor section (with a very cool fountain!).  The lap bar restraints were also very concerning to look at, as they featured a large divider right where a gentlemen's groin area should go - any airtime would stop me from having children to say the least..  Fortunately, there was no airtime, and the ride itself was enjoyable enough!
     

     
    With it still being before 11, we opted to do the park's dodgems, Trafic Jam.  Thee are by far the craziest dodgems I've done; the cards skid and drift, go fast, anything goes, and you got a really long cycle (felt like a good few minutes).  Couple that along with the French just don't seem to car who they ram, it made a great ride!
     
    11am came, and Triops wasn't open.  So we joined the queue for the park's nearby spinning wild mouse (also scheduled to open at 11), Famous Jack, but, somewhat unsurprisingly that wasn't open either.  After 15 minutes in the queue, we gave up, and saw Triops testing and got over to it just as it opened.  Yay.  It wasn't as awful as I was expecting, in fact the cobra roll was surprisingly smooth, yet intense whilst going forward.  The vertical loop was horrid though, and the whole ride going backwards wasn't great.  So in other words, it wasn't awful, but it's far from great.
     



     
    Some more meandering around the park's boundary eventually took us to the pirate ship, the 'Bag Pearl'.  Unlike all other pirate ships I've done, the tire only drove the ride one way, meaning the ride took twice as long, leaving my stomach feeling a bit lost.  It had a nice setting though, next to a lake, and nice enough theming.
     


     
    After doing their water slide and having some lunch at a canteen-style restaurant (which was alright bar the fact the glass pot my custard came for dessert was chipped), we did some of the water rides.  The park has 2 log flumes, one really random one at the park's edge, giving a lovely view of a basketball court, and another decent one that gets you nicely wet.  Neither were memorable enough for me to waste space on my phone to take a photo though..  We also did the park's rapids, which featuring a fun whirlpool element, and some good spots of theming...but not a lot else.  
     
    After doing the park's car driving ride and some other general rubbish, it was back to the creds, doing Kidz Coaster (a Wacky Worm) and Spirale Express (another Soquel coaster, but a more junior variety, featuring a random sideways turn of fun).  Spirale was a bit of surprise, and the Wacky Worm was a Wacky Worm.  We did some more general junk that the park offers, including a monorail that shows you less than Safari Skyway did, and then headed to the back of the park again to do what we missed out on earlier...
     
    Famous Jack ended up being my first spinning wild mouse.  And to be honest, it was great fun.  I literally got tossed, turned and spun in every direction and it was just a bit mad.  Sure, it was uncomfortable at parts and I wanted it to be over sooner rather than later, but I can't deny I didn't enjoy it.
     

     
    We then did the neighbouring Eccentric Bikes, a side attraction where you can ride bikes with off-centre wheels, flat tyres and more around a circuit.  It was a good laugh, and also nice to finally experience what the Broncho Bikes at Thorpe might have been like all those years ago...
     
    The last major ride to do was Silver Wings, the park's new thing for 2017, a Zamperla Air Race.  It suits the park well, has some nice theming, and adds nicely to the line up.  Hopefully the park can continue to add investments like this.
     

    Each arm is named SW1, SW2,...,SW6.  The geeks in us all enjoyed this.

    The neighbouring restaurant.
     
    After some re-rides, we ended the day at Cine Dynamik, which was a simulator.  We knew nothing of the story, and once we got in the building, we were greeted by a giant clown face, florescent paint and a general wacky atmosphere.  This seemed good.  We then walked past a pre-show area (which a building layout saw suggested was once used to hand out 3D glasses), and entered the simulator.  The story ended up being about you being shrunk to small size, and entering the human body as part a vaccine.  Oh.  Then the simulator ended up being HORRID, very jerky and generally just awful, and made us all feel dreadful.  I guess the film has been changed recently, but it is genuinely the worst thing at the park and should be burnt down.
     
     
    So yeah, all in all, Bagatelle was as I expected really.  It's a small park that has the odd flash and good things, the odd general wacky European feel and a lot of generic rubbish.  But it was a nice enough day out, got a few coasters for the count, and was a nice easy day for the road trip.  
     
    We headed back to Calais and had a nose around the local area.  We ended up finding a nice little place which did pub grub and had fab service.  After that, we then went back to our dingy hotel (it genuinely looked like a prison on the outside, but was fine on the inside), played some pool, then had a reasonably early night to prepare us for Day 2, featuring Plopsaland de Panne...
     
     
  25. JoshC.

    Symbolica Review

    By JoshC.,

    To me, Symbolica was the biggest new European attraction for 2017 for theme parks. It's not exactly a difficult feat to achieve, with little of note actually happening this year. But I found the prospect of Efteling, a park known for creating highly detailed and love dark rides, investing their biggest sum in a ride ever, much more exciting than Port Aventura sticking Ferrari Land at the edge of their park and adding a taller and faster Stealth to their line up.
     
    It's difficult to review a dark ride without giving spoilers, but I'm going to try my best to not spoil anything. Knowing as little about Symbolica will, of course, be advantageous if you come to ride it - though if spoilers are really your thing, just check out Efteling's YouTube...
     
    For some context, the storyline of Symbolica is simple - you're have a feast with the King, but Pardoes, the King's jester, has other ideas and takes you on a behind the scenes tour of the 'Palace of Fantasy'. The pre show sets this story up brilliantly, is easily understood in any language, includes 2 incredible animatronics and a real piece of magic which bought a huge smile to my face.
     
    After the pre show, you make your way down the cellars of the palace towards the station. Symbolica has 3 slightly different routes you can take (themed as 'tours' - Music, Knights and Treasure), and you choose these after the pre show but before you board. After doing all 3, they're all of equal standard, and don't differ THAT much, but each one has its own special little feature.
     
    The ride itself is trackless, with 2 rows of 3. You go around the palace, exploring several different rooms, whilst Pardoes makes an appearance and does some magical stuff. Each scene is very Efteling, in that it's just whimsical, magical and doesn't quite make sense (in a good way!). Most importantly to me though, there are no dead spots and no wasted moments. Each transition between scenes is themed and makes sense. Each scene is themed 360 degrees. Everything flows in its own weird sort of way. This was a huge issue I had with all other Efteling dark rides (and indeed many dark rides in general) - they either have dead spots where nothing happens, other there's some part of the rooms which are unthemed and make no sense with what's going on. Symbolica, in that sense, is perfect to me.
     
    An interesting feature is that the front row has 2 touchscreens. These screens allow the front row to choose their language (it doesn't affect any audio, it's just a message at the start and end of ride), make some of the animatronics do 'things' during the ride, and make your vehicle 'dance' during the finale. It's an interesting idea, but doesn't quite work - I found it more of a distraction during the ride, and it never really added much. Also, it leaves the back row a bit left out - why they couldn't have one screen per row confuses me.
     
    So yeah, in short - Symbolica really is a fab attraction. It's clear to see where the 35 million euro budget went, it looks and feels great, it's interesting and immersive to be in and, most importantly, it is fun. Efteling are onto a winner of an attraction, and definitely worth a trip!
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