JoshC.

Comedian Chris Rock, for some reason

Taiga promo video: ?

And if you like POVs... https://www.facebook.com/173148719393593/posts/2773396009368838/

The Saw IP was very recently renewed and will be at the park for the foreseeable future. And given there's another reboot of the franchise next year, the park would be stupid to get rid of it this year.

It's testing! Looks rather slow tame..

https://planningregister.ryedale.gov.uk/caonline-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=PRWA8YNOK8S00&activeTab=summary Planning has been submitted - it's happening!

I'm under the impression the park are still planning on doing it. Why it's been delayed is anyone's guess..

POVs of Dual Dragon, the duelling sit down/inverted Intamin swing launch coasters... And yes, they're in sync! Fair to this this is a complete experience: two very solid looking coasters that look brilliant, along with a fantastic off-ride look too!

I mean it's a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. People want high quality Scarefest mazes with lots of time put into them, and they want the Towers open as much as possible. But you can't have both. Granted, it's a situation of the park's own doing, but really, they don't have many other choices.

Gosh so trying to keep up with this park is hard. 2020 the park are of course putting in the new themed area Dragon's Castle, which will have Zadra, a kiddie coaster (made by Preston & Barbieri), dark ride and some other stuff. They're also getting the Vekoma double launch in a separate area. Few weeks back I posted about purple Vekoma track being at the park for the double launch. Turns out I was wrong... Surprise! A new Vekoma family coaster in the Dragon's Castle area, which is in addition to the already announced family coaster. And now, we have light blue Vekoma track at the park, which is presumably for the double launch. But with this park, who bloody knows... So come next year, Energylandia will have 16 open and operating coasters; the most in Europe (not counting Wonderland Eurasia in Turkey since like only 9 of their 17 are currently open). The long term plan has also indicated that they're looking into getting a Vekoma mine train and the long-rumoured new-gen Vekoma tilt coaster in the next 4 years. No doubt they'll sprinkle in some other stuff too. Totally expect the park to be aiming for the highest coaster count in the world, and that certainly seems possible within the next five years. Though there are rumours that the park are already considering removing some of the weaker attractions that are poorly themed, including some of their kiddie creds. So yeah, watch this space.. And whilst I'm here, let's chuck in some Zadra photos.. Source: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=159449439&postcount=19044

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

Not open yet, but I am under the impression that it has had at least one test cycle. Progress!

POV of Mystic at Walibi Rhône-Alpes.. Loving the music and looks like a neat ride!

So Mack and Walibi Holland have been doing drugs together it seems.. Mack approached Walibi about turning Lost Gravity rows backwards, something the park were intrigued by. So far, they've turned the back row on 1 of the 4 trains backwards (the ride can only run 3 trains) and are testing it with staff. It's not clear whether the park will ever open this to guests or if they're just trialling it on Mack's behalf. There's no denying that Lost Gravity backwards would be a ton of fun though..

Yeah, just to confirm, BounceZilla was not in planning for two years. 2 months before it was announced is probably more likely.. Tbf though, the park was quiet, and BounceZilla barely had any people there. No more than 100 people were in the queue and thing itself at any one time. So it's hardly soaking up the queues right now. Will be interesting to see if it's actually successful come summer..

Luna Cinema had its first of two nights last night, Saturday 25th May. Or was it Friday 25th May? Guess we'll never know..

NB: I did not partake in the press event.. Most people seem to love the awful soundtrack though, so what do I know? Another point I'll throw out there: I'm surprised something like this has been passed by H&S. Loads of people I spoke to had grazes, friction burns, etc. Stuff like that will eventually get blown out of proportion or end up leading to something serious. Equally, it's a tiring course. When you get people doing this in 30 degree heat and blaring sunshine, how will they cope after? Could see quite a few people fainting / being unwell during or immediately after this.

I did it today. It's fun. I mean it's a bloody bouncy castle course, of course it's going to be fun. But it looks awful, the soundtrack is cringey (think cringey pop songs mashed together poorly and an annoying American-style voiceover), it isn't what Thorpe need right now (or ever tbh), feels out of place... I guess it's a guilty pleasure type attraction. You'll come out smiling, but everything about it is so bad.

Fury at Bobbejaanland is finished... https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=374030699905139&id=193988604576017 And a look at the train, which is now on site. You can see the simplistic voting buttons..

I did the Dungeon this week. It is what you'd expect - a mini version of any other Dungeon. And I enjoyed it. ?‍♂️ There biggest issue is black walls between scenes. You literally leave one scene, go through a black corridor, and into the next scene. Didn't even hear any audio. There's no atmosphere there and, for me, it just didn't work. The scenes themselves are great though. As mentioned above, a couple of scenes do have black walls behind you (ie away from where you should be looking), but that only detracts from your experience if you're looking for things to detract from your experience imo. All scenes were well acted and the boat ride as good fun. So yeah, this is literally as you'd expect: a lite version of the Dungeons which is nicely themed and well acted. In itself, it's a solid, fun experience. Of course, this isn't what Towers needed right now, and I question how successful it'll be. I know there's been plans to add a Dungeon to the resort for ages now, and this is in some ways a test of the water. But it's still the wrong time and arguably not necessary anyways. As a side note, the Dungeon opening hours have been shifted back, meaning it opens later (noon) and closes later (I believe it still operates for the same amount of time). As a result, the actors roam outside the Towers in the morning, interacting with guests, encouraging them to visit, etc. And as they're in character, they work perfectly for roaming characters - the right amount of dark humour that the park should be aiming for!

BounceZilla will have Fastrack. Fastrack, for an inflatable course. Lol

^Interesting experience. When I visited last year (on a Tuesday outside holidays). The coasters were on a reduced capacity, but they were very good at adding (and albeit removing) trains when demand dictated. Thought operations were largely good, so a shame you didn't get something similar! In other news, Zadra looks good: From Testing Attractions Facebook

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...

I'll just throw it out there that I genuinely think this will be fun. Who doesn't love a giant bouncy castle? But, this still shows the state of the park right now. They've chucked in an inflatable course that wouldn't look out of place at a summer fair as a quick fix. If this is all they can afford, what does that say for the future? I genuinely can't think of any other park in the world which is so desperate for new stuff on such a restricted budget that they have had to resort to adding a bloody inflatable.

Latest Making of video: Track is now finished (with a random ceremony including fire to celebrate, cos why not), with a train on the track ready for testing from June 1st. It confirms the 4th (out of 5) inversions will be a 140 degree stall, and there will be a single rider queue.