JoshC.

I did this last week. And yeah, it's meh. There are two rooms you tackle, and they contain 2-3 puzzles. From what I can gather, the puzzles are simple or require silly logic to solve; no in-between. Almost half the experience time is faff with actors / pre show which doesn't really fit given its an escape room. I'm normally pretty positive to seeing actors in the attractions and think that, despite the obvious costs involved and the criticism Merlin come under for actor-led experiences, they normally do a decent job. This is not one of those experiences sadly. The idea of pitting two teams against each other is good, but falls flat given how unpopular that attraction is at the mo. So yeah, a shame this. It had potential, it still has potential, but there's not enough puzzles or escaping for it to feel like a good escape room experience.

Cohesion isn't necessary imo. I'd rather have a nicely themed ride than a half-arsed themed area. Admittedly, it's odd of the park to do this after focusing on areas a bit more (Maya the Bee land, Heidi area and K3 land in particular), but I don't have a problem with it. I'm still a bit confused why they haven't gone for an IP for the retheme, though not complaining!

Loggers building receiving some work. Imagine the meltdown if Thorpe hadn't announced it is dead...

Dino Splash is open. Keep in mind the theming still isn't finished: I'm not quite sure what's left (I believe more dinosaurs and more animatronics), but damn, yeah, this is impressive. And all for €5m. Source: https://www.looopings.nl/weblog/12514/Rokende-vulkanen-en-brullende-dinos-Plopsaland-opent-Dino-Splash.html

Seems to be you who's been smoking the funny stuff.. Saw has always been mixed, but it's been pretty damn consistent the past couple of years. Was my favourite of the bunch last year too. It's not gotten particularly better or worse imo, but it's just a well designed maze, with good sets and it's easy to get scares out of it. Means that regardless of quality of actors, you could get a solid experience. A shame to see it go. Wonder if the boat requires (more) money to fix up and the park aren't prepared to stump up the cost?

That potentially might be it in fairness. I've always been unsure on RMCs and whether I'd actually enjoy them. Some of their unique elements look simply unenjoyable to me. I've warmed to the idea more recently and it's hard to go 'I don't think I'd enjoy this manufacturer's rides when they're so universally praised'. So it's been a weird one in that context I guess. The thing is for the past 2-3 years in particular, I've seen RMC praised as this company that have revolutionised the coaster industry by creating world class rides and creating experiences that no other manufacturer could dream of delivering. That wasn't to do with their ability to convert rides or anything, I had seen time and time again that if you just go up to an RMC and ride it without knowing it's history (if it's a conversion), you will be blown away and get a ride which is completely out of this world. I didn't get that with Untamed. I got a very good ride, but it's nothing that changes the industry to me. It sounds crazy saying Untamed is 'just very good', but when I had seen for years that RMC creates rides that go beyond 'just very good', it's left me questioning where the hype is? Based off my experience, RMC just create good rides: that's great, but nowhere near the level of hype I've heard about it. Of course, one ride isn't enough to build a full opinion. And maybe Untamed isn't the best example of what RMC do when people say they've revolutionised the industry. But equally, I can only go on what I've done. Very good point, and something which is easy to lose sight of when these have become much more common. And yes, from this point of view, they have really revolutionised the industry, they've created something special, and they're just damn good at making good rides. But from the context of those rides themselves being industry-changers in their own right, I'm less convinced.

Let's talk Untamed then. It's really bloody good fun. It's glass smooth, has loads of really good airtime, some quite floaty, some really aggressive, and the inversions are great. The second half in particular is full on and relentless. It's truly fantastic and I reckon anyone who goes on it will enjoy it, even if that type of ride isn't your thing. What it did leave me wondering though, is: what is all the fuss about RMC? Yes, Untamed is fantastic, but this didn't feel like anything particularly groundbreaking? If you'd commissioned, say, Mack or Intamin to do this exactly same layout on a steel coaster, it'd feel exactly the same. There's nothing I saw our felt that made me think "wow, RMC are special" like half the enthusiast community seems to think. Obviously it's great they convert rubbish woodies to amazing rides, but that's it. So yeah, Untamed is fab. I love it. And I'm looking forward to trying similar rides. But it hasn't made me think 'RMC are gods' or anything crazy.

Fantastic looking addition to the park. And the park did a great job of realising the Lost Kingdom artwork, so I am confident this could be the same. Really looking forward to this developing further!

Annnnd it's open. Media event was this morning, and it opened at approx 3pm Netherlands time to the public.. I'll let you know how it rides Thursday (assuming it does RMC itself and die before then...)

Wicker Dude reopened today.

I can't seem to find where I saw this (I may have simply been told it verbally by someone who I found trustworthy so I always believed it), so take with a pinch of salt: despite Europa's and Mack's success, the company saw the development of a launch coaster as a huge make or break moment. They needed something new, fearing that as a manufacturer they would be left behind in the industry. And if this something new different work at Europa, it could hamper the development of the park in the long term, as well as damage the reputation. It was perhaps too fearful from them, but they certainly felt that if Blue Fire didn't work, it would have lead to a slump for them. As I say, feel free to take it with a pinch of salt. I get one guy saying one thing on the internet has little value, but I've never had any reason to doubt the story.

Tbf Merlin will have always been aware of what Europa Park are doing and their insane levels of quality. It's not something they've done overnight, it's been something which has happened over the past 20-25 years, at great levels of risk. If Blue Fire hadn't been as well-received as it was in industry, things may have taken a turn for the worse from what I've heard. Merlin will never be able to match Europa in any way, shape or form. Very few parks can or will. And that's fine. Just as long as no one is thinking that Merlin parks can magically fight the quality of Europa after one visit.

I think taking it at face value - 'offer accepted for Merlin to be bought' or similar - is perhaps misleading. As others have said, it is a case of existing shareholders buying more shares so they have the majority stake. Arguably the biggest and most important outcome of this is that Merlin are going back to being a private company rather than a public company. Of course the biggest problem with being a public company is that you have to answer to people who simply want profit: in their eyes, if something won't make profit, why should money be spent on it? A private company will have a more sensible outlook. Kirkby have said they've no plans to sell anything within Merlin and that there won't be substantial changes. It'll likely just be a different decision making process towards how to spend money. It'll be interesting to see if there's any changes to the hierarchy, be that by adding an extra layer (hopefully not..), a reshuffle/change of the top layer, or what. Not that this should need saying, but this obviously doesn't mean a switch is going to flicked and we're going to see huge investments every year at every park. However, I'd expect that if there's a different outlook and different decision making process, there might be more opportunities for money to be invested..

It is getting closer to opening; engineers have been working on it and it has been moving. Early next month shouldn't be too out of the question I guess.

From what I've heard, 2020 is the last year they benefit from the funding from the EU (ie - any rides which are getting funding from the EU money have to open by 2020). I believe the EU money has only amounted to about £40m since the park opened (including next year's investment). Given the size of the park and number of investments, I expect the amount they've invested is substantial. The owners of the park have a background in nightclubs, drinks and footwear, and are pretty stable financially. They know what they're doing, and whilst I expect the level of investment to slow down soon, they have a long term plan. They've talked about a Vekoma mine train similar to Colorado Adventure, a new-gen Vekoma tilt train, water park expansions, a hotel, replacing the tacky parts of the park and much more. They know where they are at the moment and know how to improve. And for some context, the park claimed to have 1.4m visitors last year. In early development they said they wanted to have 4m visitors by 2024, which I think is too ambitious. BUT I don't see why they couldn't be pushing for 3m by then; they have the size, they have the quality headliners and they're in a good location.

Annnnd the drop is complete:

Looks like we can expect an announcement of some sorts next Thursday!

Few more details about Crazy Bats from an interview with the park's project manager.. tl;dr - the park decided 2 years ago that they wanted to offer a VR experience, and a Temple upgrade had been considered for a while. However, due to the low quality of VR, they ultimately decided against. At the start of the year they were in a position to put together a good-enough quality VR experience, so jumped on it (hence the out-of-the-blue announcement). Early reviews are, perhaps unsurprisingly, mixed. The VR is very 'busy', in that a lot happens throughout the video. A first viewing would feel like a generic ride through lots of VR scenery and stuff, but multiple viewings can lead to you seeing a story with the Crazy Bats develop. There's been early issues with headsets not being in focus, etc, though whether that'll be a long-term problem remains to be seen. If you choose to ride without VR, the ride is in total darkness and no longer has audio. So yeah, it's a thing, it's not awful. Woo. What this means for the lifespan of Crazy Bats and Hollywood Tours is anyone's guess at this stage though...

I guess so yeah! In my experience with theme park rides that use them, they're used pretty interchangeably. Just depends on who you speak to. I guess since rides use cables and not ropes, there's not really any confusion So yeah, technical term would be cables, but it's not uncommon to hear them called ropes

They should be 'metal ropes', so ropes would be a correct word. And if not maintained properly, or used too often or whatever, they will snap just like any other rope. Though tbf, if it's a cheap / knock off ride, they could quite literally just be 'strong' ropes. An incident at a fairground in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where a girl fell out of a pendulum-style ride: (incident around 50s) The fairground didn't have appropriate permission to run, nor did they go through proper safety set ups / checks. Haven't found any word about the condition of the person.

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..

^Tbf there's been very good reasons why enthusiasts flock to Europa and Phantasialand. ngl I thought it was much closer to Paris.. #basic #JeNeParlePasFrancais

In this warm, muggy weather, the sheer thought of Chiapas is just brilliant Best ride, best soundtrack, best food. Just the best.

I wouldn't say it's underrated? It's got a reputation as a good park, with a good selection of rides which are well themed - essentially what the park is. I guess it hadn't attracted huge attention because the last major ride they added was Oz'Iris (Pegasus was a family coaster which missed the mark ultimately), and that's what draws the most attention for us as UK enthusiasts. Plus going to the outskirts of Paris is a bit of a pain compared to some of the other nearby European parks. So yeah, the park is rated fairly, and it'll come into the spotlight more when their big Intamin starts being built sometime next year. Points for the clickbait title though, fair play...

Meh, double post, but more details from the park via their blog... https://phantasialandblog.de/crazy-bats-facts/ The park have confirmed the VR headset will not use smartphones, but rather be 'proper' headsets. It also talks a bit about the quality of the images. So hopefully we should see something a bit better than previous VR coasters. And an advert: