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Benin

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  1. Benin

    It's been a long, long time...

    By Benin,


    Trip Report
    2 years. A lot can happen in that time, and for me that has involved a baby. So that has also meant 2 years without theme park trips (unfortunately a 2021/22 New Years Trip to Europa Park got spited by Covid rules changing) and it's been a interesting time.
     
    So behold a trip report to Chessie. My first theme park many a year ago, felt only right to continue such a rite of passage to my own spawn who will be forced to endure terrible football (already done) and varying quality theme parks. Chessie has changed a lot since my last visit over 7 years ago, or has it?
     
    First stop (after many toing and froing from the entrance to Guest Services), was the new hot thing in [b]Mandrill Mayhem[/b]. I've posted some brief comments on this in the relevant topic, but will do a little bit of deeper looking here. 
     
    The area is... lacklustre. Obviously not helped with the small area upon which it resides, completely encircled by the cred itself and security fences, nor is it helped by the jungle theme and distinct lack of actual jungle currently present. The single pathway around also seems to be a problematic bottleneck, since the central area is cut through with planting and activities, it's certainly a design choice and not one that particularly works for a dead end area hosting the first coaster seen since 2004. The jaguar centrepiece is typical Merlin fair, and due to the layout of the coaster itself lends to great views of it.
     
    The coaster itself is just, ok. It is a good addition for the park it sits in, but as the new headline coaster fails to solve the issues that have plagued the park over the years. The queue looks god awful (presumably why the virtual queue system was put in place), and not being able to stand in the air gates until the train is coming into park confuses me. Remember when many were claiming the John Wardley said they had solved the throughput issue? Still waiting for the answer there, as the ops are still fairly slow and not helped by the single train (also, they sent RAP queuers to the right side via stairs, which is just... no guys). The actual experience is fun, but doesn't stretch much further beyond that. The launches are surprisingly punchy (yet the beginning backwards one has zero fanfare?) and it's very floaty. The helix spike is uncomfortable as predicted.
     
    It's a missed opportunity. I think a clone of the Wing-Rider built at Lego Germany would've been just as good an addition, with potential for decent throughput. I guess Swarm's existence put paid to such a thing, but there's so many potential options out there these days that whilst it's fab to see a B&M at Chessie, why did it have to be this one?
     
    Anyway, up next we headed over to [b]Gruffalo[/b]. Big old change from Bubbleworks and baby's first ever ride, so a big milestone that. She enjoyed it, and actually I did too. Almost cosy I think is a good description of it, even if it's fairly basic in terms of things to look at (compared to the older days of things EVERYWHERE). Cutesy and twee and the moved ORP makes far more sense than the original location. Have the middle fountains been taken out in the finale section as well?
     
    In traditional fashion, followed up with [b]Vampire[/b]. Running 2 trains but the operations were slow. Running fairly well though so that's something at least? Also what have they done to the station music? Awful.
     
    Went to  Pizza Pasta for lunch. Doesn't seem to be a great deal of options for proper sit down meals at Chessie if you don't want to get poisoned at Burger Kitchen and I got out-voted for Smokehouse. God the prices are obscene for food there now, but guess it's just a reflection of modern life now. It was acceptable.
     
    Wandered around the zoo for a bit. Forgot how much got spited by the addition of the second hotel around Amazu which is a bit depressing. Zoo hasn't really changed beyond that though, though Wanyama's area is poorly designed in terms of pathway width and the ridiculous walk to Zufari. Which I sat out of to babysit but apparently is even more of a Depressing Cave these days. Went to see the Tigers and whilst out that whole area seems really oppressive with the giant fencing now. Didn't do Tiger Falls either cos weather.
     
    Decided to go on [b]Tomb Blaster[/b]. My gun didn't work but jeez the ride is in a bit of a mess. Another shoed-in storyline which... Yeah. The boulder seems to be missing completely and the areas around the Anubis statue and Snake are just... lacklustre without the old soundtrack. Feels like it would need far more than the Alty Mans treatment to make it somewhat more acceptable.
     
    Bit annoyed that they've changed the cars on [b]Jungle Truckers[/b] to reduce the number of adults. Toadies used to be a staple in the day! It was fine and the Capybaras were out. Also did [b]Sea Dragons[/b] which made me nostalgic and [b]Dragon's Fury[/b] where had just 2 adults and it was spinning like mad. Cemented as the best coaster in the park by miles. Did the [b]Carousel[/b] and [b]Jumbos[/b] as well to up the baby ride count as well, but very little to really say on those.
     
    Back to other new things, [b]Room on the Broom[/b], where the ride host got plus points for keeping us separated by the awful group of teens who were going on it. This was a real surprise here, especially compared to what Hocus Pocus Hall used to be. Lots of interaction for the kids and didn't feel like it was put together for about £5. Sure baby would enjoy it when older should it still exist in the future.
     
    Did Sea-Life where the staff were very chatty, then hit up [b]Blue Barnacle[/b] after some did the Vile Villager walkthrough which was apparently good. The best thing about the new ship (which looks really small) are the goats that watch over you. After some drinks it was back over to Gruffalo and one more spin on Mandrill Mayhem. Must note here that the booking vanished for me the second time around but the staff member was able to find it so at least was solved. Would've put a really bad spin on the day if hadn't been able to ride it. Second time round was really bouncy which is concerning for a ride not even a year old. 
     
    And that was it. As we were very out of the theme park mode called it about 6:30 and went to Monkey Puzzle for dinner. I've certainly missed the theme park experiences over the years and going around with the additional mindset of baby (on top of the wheelchair using aspect) makes things a bit different. Chessie was always good for a meander and giggle though over the years when visiting and at least it still is in that respect. Although I must admit the park is very hit and miss in terms of the quality. Croc Drop wasn't spinning and generally didn't bother with it, and don't even think we went into Mexicana more than just to walk through it. Areas like the old Alpine Cafe which is now extended depressing cattlepen land and others are just really weird to look at in terms of a distinct lack of decent thought processes to make it look half decent. The two Julia Donaldson rides are really sweet but even on a quiet day the operations were little to be desired.
     
    Jumanji probably should've been a big step for the park in the right direction. I mean it's the biggest addition since Zufari (maybe even Wild Asia) and yet it does little to solve the flaws of the park. The reliability also didn't seem great as Kobra was dead all day, as well as Griffins and Scorpion Express. Rattlesnake opened late as well.
     
    I dunno, it's itched the theme park bug and hopefully next year will be a bit more substantial in terms of numbers. Though having to go to Thorpe does depress me somewhat.
     
    We shall see.
  2. Benin

    Benin's Park Awards 2015

    By Benin,

    Back again with more definitive decisions on whatever I've visited over this year. And it's been a VERY busy year, with trips far and wide (as far as the Netherlands at least), as once again Europe called to me on a much more regular basis than anywhere in the UK. Indeed, I only visited Towers once, and only because I would've been upset with that red dot on my Coaster-Count profile. Perhaps next year I'll look to complete the leftovers of the UK.
    How does one define 60 odd park visits into one list of things? With a bit of difficulty, but here we go:
    Best Park – Efteling
    Yep, not really a difficult one, the quality shines through Efteling completely. Effects fixed over the course of a few days trip, things added for no real reason, and just generally a nice place to be. No matter the season, since there's seemingly ALWAYS something going on.
    Best New for 2015 Ride – Baron 1898 - Efteling
    I was going to give this to Cu Chulainn, honest. But, yeah. Baron does everything I want from a ride. Theatrical, theming, classy music, fun ride, projection mapping. Ticking all the boxes for a good ride, but what makes it great is the details involved, there are plenty that are easily missed. They've also changed the outdoor batch and made it slightly better, still a weird system though, but it seems to work a lot better now. Baron sums up Efteling very well in everything with it, and I wish there were more like it.
    Best “New for Benin” Ride – Troy (TROY!) - Toverland
    In hindsight I'm not sure how many stand out rides there were for me this year. Too much mediocrity clearly. However Troy (and Toverland in general) was a rather bright spot this year. Troy is excellent quality and showed why GCI coasters are in general, great additions to a developing park.
    Best Water Ride – (H)el Rio - Bobbejaanland
    A surprisingly fab Rapids ride, the Halloween décor they had added to it improved it a fair amount, even if the ridiculous Ferris Wheel lift seems to be lifeless these days (would’ve been interesting to experience that), it made up with it with the whirlpool of death as also featured at Bagatelle’s rapids. But the Halloween music, theming and smoke made it so much better than I’m sure it would normally have been.
    Best Flat Ride – De Waarbeek’s classic selection
    Cheating I know for this one, but quite frankly the couple of classic flat rides available at De Waarbeek were great fun. From the self-propelled Whip to the unrestrained Caterpillar with added cover, a really nice surprise to discover.
    Best Dark Ride – U-571
    This is how you do a simulator attraction, a real standout from Movieland and sums up the place nicely. Effort and insanity go hand in hand from the naval base theming, the great staff members, to the fact that you have to run down metal steps as water bombs go off. The simulator feels real too, and the lack of restraints adds to the fear. I was fortunate/unfortunate to not experience the WET version too, which apparently ups the ante further. Which sounds insane.
    Best Show - Romanes vs Gaules, The Match
    New for this year, and Asterix really pulled this out of the bag. This is an amazing show, with a great setup, spoof adverts on the screens, great references to pop culture. Just the effort put into it makes it one of the best shows in a theme park today. Also gains points for having a real dog involved.
    Worst Park – Duinrell
    A bad atmosphere and even worse rides, there was just something about this park that didn’t end up sitting right with my positive side. Pretty much started downhill with the stupidly long queue to enter the place, followed by a massive walk around a caravan site. At least most of the other parks I visited this year had some positive elements.
    Worst Seaside Park – Hemsby Fun Park
    Decided it would be unfair to put Seaside parks in with normal ones this year, Hemsby was a clear winner for this though. The place is an absolute dump.
    Worst Coaster – Sequoia Adventure
    I had the misfortune of riding this again this year. It cemented its place as the worst coaster I’ve ever been on. No wonder they can’t sell it.
    Worst Water Ride – DiVertical
    It was closed and spiteful. Tbh, there were no real water rides I went on worthy of this award, so the chance to jump on some Intamin rubbish cant be knocked.
    Biggest Surprise – U-571, Movieland Studios
    Best dark ride, and biggest surprise in general. The unexpectedness of the attraction is what makes it so unique.
    Biggest Disappointment – The Forbidden Caves
    I loved Lost Temple in Germany. I really did. So I thought Bobbiejobbie's effort would be as good, but it was lacking a fair bit if I'm honest. The pre shows just felt faffy, as did the long walk to the ride. The story also didn't really work to the ride type. Shame.
    The “I forgot actually how good this ride was” Award – Oz’Iris – Parc Asterix
    A new award, purely for Oz'Iris if I'm honest. Its so good! Better than Katun in my book now, and shows that just because B&M don't go ridiculously intense anymore doesn't stop them creating real gems.
    The “WTF was that?” Award – Revolution, Bobbejaanland
    Just... I don't even know tbh... From the 30 car train in the curved station, the weird seating arrangement, the underground train sounds, the massive round lift hill room with the screen to the tiny descending drops in the outside. Revolution was certainly an enigma.
    Why is this under-rated? Ride - Goliath - Walibi World
    This is better than Expedition GeForce. There I said it. Where GeForce I found lacklustre last year, Goliath this year was seemingly a breath of fresh air for me. Perhaps the layout, perhaps the lax ride ops meaning no stapling, but it's just something about Goliath that made it a better overall ride than it's highly rated German counterpart.
    Strangest Park – Movieland Studios
    I've already mentioned U-571, but the rest of the park deserves credit too. Magma 2.0 is a fantastic experience, whereas things like Terminator (interactive shooting gallery) and Kitt Superjet (waterjet attraction) seemingly add to the insanity. The Rambo stunt show was also fab, and involved ACTUAL volunteers. It really is just a random and entertaining place.
    Best Park related Experience – The Plopsaland Backstage Tour
    A whole morning finding out about Plopsa and a full on tour of the backstage. It was informative though really, and worth it was the cred anxiety that took place. I wish Plopsa would open something in the UK.
    Worst Park related Experience – Gardaland’s Express Pass Problem
    Oh Merlin, even when barely going in the UK you still curse me. Providing AP holders with unlimited Fastrack for €80 for the year was never going to end well, and it pretty much ruined the day at Garda as a result. If they ever bring it over to the UK, their fan won't be able to move.
    Best Ride Experience – Sky Drop Tower – Tivoli Friheden
    Kinda pushing the definition of ride, but I'm glad I did this. Summed up you go up a tower, winched up and then free fall into a net. The tower is tall. The experience of literally free falling attached to nothing is something no other ride can fulfill. Well worth the money (£5).
    Milestones – 450th (Hembsy Caterpillar), 500th (Formule X)
  3. Benin
    The most important* awards are here! It’s been one hell of a year for me, and as a result rather than review things on a whole (it would take a very, very long time to go through each park) I’d prefer to just give out awards to the best and worst rides and parks I’ve experienced this year. So let’s get cracking:
    Best Park – Efteling (Honourable Mentions – Phantasialand, Europa Park)
    I fell completely in love with Efteling this year, everything that I want parks to do oozes from the place. It stinks of class, care and thought throughout the place, with one of the best park atmospheres around, you can tell why it’s one of the biggest theme parks in the world, and why 90% odd of all Dutch people have visited it. Quality over Quantity is clearly their ideal, as the dark rides there are Disney tier good, and the coasters fulfil the family fun market perfectly. The Fairytale Forest is the biggest attraction and it’s gorgeous to wander through for 2 hours and not feel like time was wasted. The hotel is also lovely and continues the feeling of care and attention, whilst Aquanura is a fantastic end to the day.
    To be honest, this won the award for the Pancake House alone, so the rest of the park didn’t actually matter.
    Best New for 2014 Ride – Helix (HM – Chiapas, Ratatouille, Lost Temple, Alpina Blitz)
    This was predictable eh? Yes Helix was clearly the best new ride for 2014, though there are plenty of rides that did their best to entice me otherwise. Unfortunately Helix is pure perfection, from the comfortable trains, to the adventurous track, the amazing airtime and interaction with both other rides and mountain. Mack and Liseberg struck gold with this, and there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to praise it enough.
    Best “New for Benin” Ride – Maus au Chocolat (HM – Van Helsing’s Factory, Twister, Superman Madrid)
    Probably one of the most trickiest awards to hand out, there were several rides vying for this award, even more than the Honourable Mentions that got into the list. But the winner in the end had to be Maus au Chocolat for being a fantastic interactive dark ride with tonnes of theming and details from the entrance to the exit. Bonus points for being one of the few rides that made me feel hungry through the deliberate mixture of imagery, recipes and piped smells.
    Best Water Ride – Chiapas (HM – River Quest, Nautic Jet)
    There was only ever going to be one winner here, Chiapas being the best modern day water ride around. Theming, interesting layout, the soundtrack and rave room all add up to provide a fantastic overall experience.
    Best Flat Ride – Gerstlauer Sky Fly (HM – Talocan, Spin Spider)
    Not too many choices here, but the Sky Fly (ridden at Nigloland and Legoland Deutschland) was a real stand-out in the category. Possibly because I have the knack for it which is an issue with the ride type for many people rather than it actually being good though, regardless it provides a level of interactivity that shouldn’t be ignored, even if the throughput is dreadful.
    Best Dark Ride – Fata Morgana (HM – Droomvulcht, Bla Taget)
    There are plenty of boat rides that take inspiration from Pirates of the Caribbean, and this one is no exception, but is one of the few that could probably be seen as a massive step up. Using the tow boat system is possibly one of the biggest advantages to the ride, as it allows the sets to be more intimate/smaller and yet still grand in scale. Whilst it is probably full of clichés, it does everything so well, it’s certainly deserving of this award.
    Worst Park – Fantasy Island (HM – Walygator, Heide Park, Movie Park Germany)
    It’s no wonder this place ended up in administration this year. Location is an issue, as Skegness is probably one of the most seedy of UK Seaside Resorts, combined with the arcade Pyramid and the giant market results in clientele that make Blackpool look classy. It’s tacky but not in a nice way, and for a place that does consider itself a major park (rather than a sea-side funfair most similar parks do such as Bottons or Joyland), it just feels awful to be around for more than a few hours. Plus the rides are crap bar Millenium Coaster. I felt glad to leave.
    Worst Coaster – Bandit (HM – Odyssey, Coaster Express, Temple of the Night Hawk)
    I rode a LOT of duff coasters this year, ranging from the dull to the obscenely rough to sometimes a mixture of both. I’ve also now discovered why people detest anything made by RCCA, for the two coasters that I did were both terrible, but Bandit was by far and large the worst. You’d think a modern take on Coney Island’s Cyclone would improve it, but you’d be wrong. Bandit is obscene pain from start to finish, and would be better served as a pile of ashes then a ride.
    Worst Flat Ride – High Fall (HM – Huss Condor, Huss Frisbee)
    Stand-Up Floorless Drop Towers are a marmite ride type at the best of times, but High Fall is one of the worst examples available to experience. The fact that upon every drop a scream of all the riders was followed by cries of pain as it came to a stop makes this the top of the class in being bad.
    Worst Water Ride – Wakobato
    A Splash Battle that has zero interaction between boats and theming? Utterly pointless, handing this the title quite swiftly and without much need for deliberation.
    Biggest Surprise – Van Helsing’s Factory (HM – Tranan, Twister)
    This is probably the biggest surprise because of how crap the rest of the park’s attractions are. This ride completely stand-outs amongst the dregs and is definitely one of the best examples of how to do a dark ride coaster. With good theming and a layout that takes full advantage of both the building and the Gerstlauer Bobsled’s tight turns and drops, it deserves recognition for being an unexpected gem.
    Most Over-rated Ride – Expedition GeForce (HM – Colossos, Balder)
    Controversy time, though the Honourables are just as controversial, GeForce is deemed one of the best rides in the entire world, but it’s an uncomfortable mess in reality, where each airtime hill throws your thighs into the lapbar. Once again an Intamin with a great first drop, but the lack of comfort makes the ride unenjoyable. Also Intamin’s just seemingly appear over-rated when I ride them, but Balder is the one I most enjoyed out of these 3, but wouldn’t say it’s one of the best in the world.
    Strangest Park – Schloss Beck (HM – Klotten, Parc Saint Paul)
    There were a few parks looking at winning this award, but Schloss Beck wins for the weird placement (round the corner from Movie Park), having an old building centrepiece and some strange assortment of rides and woodland sky walk thing. Whilst many other parks have the manual operation rides, this one had my first and as a result, it wins.
    Best Park related Experience – Nigloland Personal Tour (HM – Departing Liseberg with Ride of the Valkyries)
    Thanks to my friend John playing the goon card, we managed to meet one of Nigloland’s project managers who gave us a complete tour of the park, from the hotel to backstage. It provided some great insight into the industry as well as how the park in particular takes itself to a serious degree in regards to theming and experience (from theming plant rooms to moaning about visible concrete blocks in the water).
    Worst Park related Experience – Peugeot 206 dying in France
    On the way through France my car decided that she’d had enough with life and the gearbox died on a random French motorway. As a result she was left in a small town and the panic of having to sort out a hire car and continue our journey wasn’t the most fun thing I’ve done on a trip.
    Best Ride Experience – Helix at night
    As we all know, night rides tend to make rides even better than during the day, so unsurprisingly this also affects Helix. Though I loved it from my first ride, the night-time ride was nothing sort of astounding, especially through the airtime hills and the hill-side helix. With the views of Gothenburg surrounding you just showing that even inner city parks can have moments of beauty.
    Most Hilarious Ride Experience – Anaconda at Walygator’s brake issues
    Walygator was one of the worst parks I visited this year, but one incident that stands out is the problems its Wooden coaster had with the brakes. To put it simply, they weren’t working properly, resulting in a varied level of stopping position, be it too early or late. On our ride, the brakes stopped us halfway in the station, resulting in the front end pretty much on the lift-hill. So bad, it was hilarious (the park was still awful though).
    Milestones – 350th (Odyssey), 400th (Twister)
    And there we have it, the most important* awards of 2014. Thanks for reading, and bring on 2015!
    *Note; the actual importance of these awards may be contestable.
  4. Benin
    Day 13 – Return of the Macks Part 1
    A bright and early morning led us down to a nice breakfast before the 8:30 ERT on Blue Fire.






    Afterwards we decided to hang around and wait for Arthur to open, however when we did get to the entrance it was having issues and was playing the closed game. As a result we went back to Austria and did Alpenexpress and the Wildwasserbahn for the Cave of fantastic smells before a quick whirl on the Chairswings







    Heading back and Arthur was open, so we joined the main queue which spends most of the time outside the building at the moment (although there were many unused cattle pens within). It’s quite an interesting ride to watch from the outside, especially when it stacks and a train just randomly stops on the final helix. The queue moved quickly inside to the locker area, which is a weird system, as you get batched into small groups into a coloured area, scan your park ticket and get given a locker before moving on to the station.
    The seats are comfy as per the norm and quickly we’ve off into the world of the Minimoys, through a cool enough transition but not hidden from view so you see it constantly prior to riding. The scenes are quite well done (although the second major scene didn’t work at all on our first ride), and have plenty to look at, loosely following the story of the first two films. Paradise Alley is clearly the best scene in the dark ride portion, before the Winjas inspired fly around the area (made better by the Inverted nature of the ride) and one last random scene before a quick flight back outside and into the farewell scene.
    From a coaster point of view, Arthur isn’t the best, but as a dark ride it’s pretty much the best one they have there. Which is of course not saying much, as Europa’s dark rides are pretty much the epitome of cheap rip-offs, especially Piraten in Batavia. But still, it’s a very enjoyable ride and the kids seemed to really love it, and that’s who it’s aimed that really, not us weird English people who didn’t like the film (because the English version is dire, the uncut European one has an actual storyline).










    We then did the other two rides in the area, Mul Mul Carousel, a mini Dumbo type ride and Poppy Tower, a kids drop tower that looks like it should have two of them rather than one. Perhaps the delays affected this as well? There are also a few slides and other things for kids to do around the area. We then used Arthur’s single rider queue which is quite effective, and doesn’t mean you have to leave your bag in a locker either. The second scene also worked that time, which was at least something, usually a broken scene would be broken all day over here.










    Up next we got some Crepes, and joined the Silver Star queue, which summed up Europa in a nutshell. All the extensions open, even outside, the queue is stretching up towards EuroSat, the total waiting time? 50 minutes. Considering the park did a 12 hour day that day as well, it’s an unbelievable testament to how Europa very often do things right.
    As for Silver Star, it’s still a decent enough coaster, after riding Shambhala it didn’t reach those heady heights, but I still think the s-bend finale is a brilliant finish to the ride.



    A quick hop on the EP Express to Spain led us to some shows. Firstly the Flamenco Show, which was actually really good, especially when the man and his balls on a string brought up a volunteer from the audience and proceeded to terrify her. Viva Ventura was next, which was relatively entertaining again, but I don’t think it was as good as the show I saw two years ago. Felt a bit more serious rather than the tongue-in-cheek shows of before.


    We caught some lunch and watched the parade go by before heading off to our next ride, Crazy Taxi, purely because we were walking past it and there wasn’t a queue. I do like the Demolition Derby rides though; just find them a good laugh.
    We continued onto EuroSat, which had a 30 minute queue but randomly stopped running for a short time. Not sure why, but the queue was still it’s fast paced self when running. The ride was also relentless and fast-paced, another ride I really enjoy, especially the lift hill rave times it provides. We then did Universe of Energy, because again I like it’s cheesy and crap dark ride existence, and it also didn’t have a queue.










    A dark ride which DID have a queue however was Abenteur Atlantis. Yep, the park was so busy that even this, a ride that has never seen a queue in many people’s visits had a queue coming out the door. This was a complete travesty really, as why should I be expected to wait 8 minutes for this? I also like Abenteur, one of the better interactive dark rides even if a lot of it is just 2D cut-outs, it suits the childish theme it has around it.



    Pegasus was next, the two train operation making the queue move really quickly, shame that idiotic families couldn’t do the same thing and have the entire group queue in one row. Idiots. EuroMir then happened for more lift hill raving times and that randomly intense helix from nowhere. We hopped on the train all around the park for an extended sit-down before popping into the rather fab Historama, so many filler rides so little time at Europa, and Historama is just fab because it’s the park saying how amazing they are, but with the evidence to back up such a claim.








    The final cheesy dark ride of the day was Piraten in Batavia, which had some new effects in a water curtain after the drop into the show building. It’s so crap, especially after experiencing Fata Morgana, but it also has this charm because it is so crap. Very weird indeed. We hopped onto the Island Monorail for a stop off at the Kaffee Hus because cake was required, before briefly watching the Dive Show. Then we beat the crowds onto Atlantica Supersplash, where the most interesting thing was that we saw them take the 5th boat off into storage because there was no need for 5 on the circuit anymore.






    It was slowly coming towards the end of the day so another spin on Blue Fire was required, before the last ride of the day was Wodan, which again was running spectacularly. Why can’t a UK park just build one of these already?



    And that was it, 12.5 hours spent at Europa Park, and what a day it was too. Well worth the tiredness at the end of it all, because the park just hits all the right notes. It was strange to see it so busy and packed out yet queues only topped over an hour on 3 of the coasters, Arthur, Blue Fire and Wodan, so it just goes to show what happens when your park considers throughputs and providing several other things to do for guests over the day.
    And we still had another day at the park to go.

    Day 14 – Return of the Macks Part 2
    Day 2 at Europa was planned to be a very easy day, with lots of chilling about after the long day beforehand and also that we had to head off early to catch the flight back home from Basel. So after another breakfast and checking out we headed off for another dose of ERT.
    We once again started on Blue Fire, with some added front row times to wake us up a bit, before waiting for Wodan for open and getting front row on that as well. There doesn’t seem to be that much difference between the relentlessness of it first and last thing either, which is good.





    A quick spin on EuroMir followed as it had no queue before we decided to do some attractions we’d never done before, starting with Silverstone, the random car ride which wasn’t suited to those with long legs. Before the Queens Diamonds laser maze, which had a disappointingly low amount of lasers for a ‘maze’.



    We wandered over to Arthur which hadn’t opened by this point, so we quickly popped into Die Quipse Show, which was some random cinema style show featuring baby versions of the Europa mascots. Was very strange since it shares the same building as the Brothers Grimm attraction. By the time we had exited Arthur eventually opened so we single ridered it twice.





    It was the time for the Ice Show which had some fab pre-show antics before some random ice-skating stuff that always happens in these shows. Then a man with some parrots came out and flew them around which was quite cool. Up next we did the Castle Balthasar 4D Show, which is clearly one of the best (and most original) 4D shows around.


    Silver Star was next before we sat down for another show, Euromaus in Brazil, which had lots of dancing and even had a guest appearance from Rustis (the Europa Park mascot band). A quick break for lunch and it was then time for Arthur 4D, which had an annoyingly large amount of leg tickler action and French people. URGH.



    Eurosat was then ridden before a bit of Abenteur Atlantis, followed by the infamous Bench the Ride. We then headed over to the Grimm Fairy Tales Show which I do enjoy as it’s an excellent attraction for the target audience and is generally a little hidden gem I feel.





    The day was running short it was time to single rider the main 3 coasters again, so Arthur, Blue Fire and a final run on Wodan finished off the day. The Blue Fire single rider queue didn’t go particularly well, as the batcher was really crap. So crap in fact that the other platformers insisted that a switcharound take place so the guy could be put on the exit where no harm could be done. Good work guys.










    And then that was it. We bid farewell to Europa and Germany as a whole as we headed to Basel to fly home. What a ridiculous trip this had been as well, with lots of driving each day, a park every day and very little time in between to rest, fortunately the parks weren’t always busy and the ones that were we had QBot/Express Passes for, and that really was only 3 of the parks that were truly busy and would have been hellish if not for the queue jumping.
    The stand-out park of the trip was Phantasialand, as I had forgotten how fantastic a park it actually is; filled to the brim with stuff to do and some of the best area theming in Europe, with some fantastic rides to boot. Some mentions have to go to Van Helsing’s Factory and Force 1 for being surprisingly good rides as well.
    Thanks for reading!

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

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





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





    After that disappointment we headed over to the new for 2014 Sky Scream, a weird Premier contraption indeed. The exterior which is now finished looks fantastic, unfortunately inside the building the only piece of theming was a spider, which had moved in rather than actually been placed deliberately. Oh well.
    The restraints have a real burden to them as well, in the shin guards of WHY? Being a flat block of foam doesn’t particularly work well for shins, what with the curvature of the human body being as it is, so it’s another set of restraints that just did into you. 2 for 2 in the bad design choices.
    The ride itself is actually quite good fun I felt. Quite intense and a fair amount of hangtime throughout, but the shin-guards prevent it from being really enjoyable, and they became more noticeable the second time around. A shame really, and I hope they get around the theming the inside, cos it’s utter crap currently.







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












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






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




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


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







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

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



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





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



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





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





    It was then time for bed, as the next day was going to be a long one.
  6. Benin
    Another day, another park, but this park was more of a stop-over to break up the monotony of driving all the way to Stuttgart. The original plan was to actually hit up the Nurburgring, however once Ring Racer was confirmed as spited, Klotten was chosen as the park of cred run.

    Whilst it is in the middle of nowhere, it cannot be argued that the location on the mountainside with valleys all around is pretty amazing.


    The first port of call was Heisse Fahrt, the Gerstlauer Bobsled. I’ve always found these quite fun, rather than the boredom of constant turns on a Wild Mouse, and this one itself seemed very forceful and full of bountiful airtime too. Whilst the unfinished castle is a bit of a blot on the landscaping aspect of the ride, the rest of it does fit into the park rather well.






    Slightly interacting with the coaster and lying in the unfinished castle is Zum Rittersturz, a very peculiar ride indeed. Certainly takes the arguments of “is it a cred or not” to new heights, but what is very surprising about it is the random dark ride section that takes place prior to the rotating elevator lift (which provides a question of, why design it to need an elevator lift that needs to rotate?). Was also rather wet which was not particularly welcomed.





    We then wandered around the park’s Zoo; it was alright, with most of the enclosures sitting on the hillside.


















    Another quick go on Heisse Fahrt was had after some food before we had a quick mess about on some swings before continuing our journey along to Stuttgart.



    Plenty of potential lies within the park. Hopefully they can finish that castle and then push on with a few bigger rides, be they flats or another coaster. They have some space, not much, but defo enough for two decent sized coasters.

  7. Benin
    To celebrate my birthday there was only one park out of all the ones we visited that made sense to visit in the area we were in, and that was of course, Legoland Germany. With German MAP in hand, we headed in, though their gate organisation is a bit burdenous, as you have to use certain gates if you have a MAP, but this is a lottery when you’ve never visited before and you can’t see the signs to direct you when the main gate is down.

    The opening ceremony was cute though, with the Ollie the Dragon character coming out in a wizard costume and using magic to open the gates. Neat little touch really. We grabbed our QBots for the day and went for the first coaster of the day.


    One of these rides is not like the others…
    Jr Dragon isn’t actually on the QBot system, so it made sense for it to be our first ride as it had all the hallmarks of a One & Done, being a Junior Gerstlauer. It decided it didn’t want to work just as we were about to board for some reason, forcing the engineers to turn up and fix it. It was an acceptable kiddie cred, but there were bigger (for Legoland) rides on the horizon.



    Fire Dragon is pretty much the staple of any Legoland park these days, and this one started interestingly in the queue, as some American woman decided to yell loudly at the person at the batch point to go through to spite us QBot people. It’s a shame the ride host didn’t come back earlier as he looked very confused as to why people had been entering the airgates area without his permission. I felt sorry for the woman at the front who clearly didn’t want to go in because Germans are sensible people, but the loud woman was very horrid. I had hoped we’d spite her later on in the day, but we never saw her again.
    Onto the ride, it starts like all the others, with a dark ride section before a hidden drop under the dragon leads you to the outside portion. I think this was a Zierer, so it’s like a weird variant of a Vekoma Roller Skater. It was alright really, with again a bit of surprising force hidden within the ride, and again it’s not a kid’s ride that patronises that target audience, which gets bonus points.




    Up next was Hero Factory, the Kuka arms things that Lego also seem to like (apart from Windsor). I adored the ones at Billund, so it was disappointing to discover that you couldn’t build you ride setting on this one. Coupled with the awful throughput as half of it has been spited it was a good thing we had the QBot. Setting 5 was good though, and it does have a ride photo, but I just missed the brilliant very Lego concept of making your own cycle.





    New for 2014 and the spiter of the other half of Hero Factory is the X-Wing Exhibition a huge Lego recreation of the Star Wars ship. It looked amazing to be fair to it, though I do hope that when it eventually moves on they’ll replace the Hero Factory stuff back (most of the circuitry is still there).






    It was then time for Flying Ninjago, a Gerstlauer Sky Fly, which I loved at Nigloland, and this would get the same reaction. Probably because I have a real knack for getting the spinning aspect of it right (dat BEng degree). I’d like to see more of these built, just wish they had a higher throughput.




    Walking back to the entrance I grabbed a birthday badge cos I’m cool like that. We also had a snack and a sit-down.


    The final coaster of the day was Project X Test Track, a crappy Mack Wild Mouse. We were once again glad of the QBot as the queue for this was awful, certainly worth the purchase of the MAP on this trip. We did the Teacups afterwards because they were also on the QBot.



    Off to the Adventure themed area, which started with another staple of Legoland, Temple Expedition, the interactive dark ride. Again this appeared to be an omnimover, so I have no idea why they stopped building them for Sally variants. It wasn’t great though, so perhaps the change was to produce a more immersive theme around the ride, rather than big mostly lifeless rooms.



    Next on the agenda was the Jungle Expedition flume ride, which was actually fab, and yet another reversing section was found within the heavily themed indoor bit. There were also Lego dinosaurs, which always gains extra favour with me.



    Finally we hit up the Safari Tour, having never done the one at Windsor, it was good to actually do one. The animatronics were ok and we produced an entertaining (but not enough to purchase it) on ride photo.






    We then did the Observation Tower, which really showed how tiny the park is and how far away the resort area is from the park. Time for a show, and this time it was brought to us by the Cuban Circus, who were rather entertaining it must be said, with some decent acts and some great crowd interaction which the Germans do seem to love. It also seems that Lego here gets loads of different acts over the year to come along as part of a touring section. Good idea really.












    We decided to go on Flying Ninjago again, upon which the ride op gleefully yelled out Happy Birthday (indeed, there were lots of staff being all interactive with me, guess they’re not used to adults having a badge and just automatically do it all) before I proceeded to go absolutely mental sitting in the front. It just started spinning and then got FASTER, hence I aborted and ended up having extended upside down times as a result. Ew.
    Lego Frabrik followed because I needed to get my head back in one place, so a fake Factory Tour was exactly the ticket required. Had a cute little video to start it off then a ‘tour’ of a ‘working’ ‘factory’. Still informative and had the actual machines that they use giving practical demonstrations, which got the engineer in me all excited.










    After our informative mini-tour we re-rode Hero Factory before heading to the Boating School, which was actually fun to ride one again since I haven’t done it for YEARS! I think Windsor’s was a lot better though, but I literally cannot remember it.





    We then had some ice cream as we explored Miniland, time for a photo attack!






























    A quick run on the Lego Express happened, which essentially showed us most of Miniland again and some backstage sheds before we hit up the Kid’s Power Tower, which was full of manual labour and effort.





    We re-rode Fire Dragon and the Boating School before heading over towards the Pirate Ship, which was a Heave Ho clone and a bit meh. We also had an epic meal at the Dino Grill, which was basically a mixed grill of various meats, it was so nom I wish we had one over in the UK.








    We re-rode Jungle Expedition and Hero Factory again before doing the Spinning Knight Ride, which was surprisingly intense for a Legoland ride and went both forwards and backwards for extended periods of time. We finished the day off on the Fire Dragon once more before heading to the shop and heading back to Stuttgart.






    I really did enjoy my day, although this was heavily helped by the QBot being in my possession, as the park was very busy. But like most Legoland’s is has a decent lot of theming dotted around and this one probably has some of the better ride options around it, particularly Jungle Expedition and Flying Ninjago. Though small, there’s a fair amount of stuff to do but I think it needs something like Viking River Splash (which I honestly thought they had in the first place) and another high throughput cred just to keep things fresh.

  8. Benin

    Helix - The Review

    By Benin,

    Helix, Liseberg and Mack’s 2014 project has been at the forefront of many an enthusiast’s mind during the past year or so. With Blue Fire being reasonably rated by the community, hopes were high for Helix when it was announced. Two launches, multiple inversions, a terrain based layout and the odd airtime hill meant that this ride was ticking all the right boxes for enthusiasts around the world.
    The real proof though, was in the pudding of actually riding it. And this is a more detailed review on the attraction, so spoilers beware.

    Helix lives at the top of Liseberg’s hill, sharing a building with Atmosfear, the Intamin Gyro Drop, and a few other bits and pieces. Indeed, it feels more that Helix is budging in on the pre-existing attractions in the building, as the Helix ‘side’ as it were is rather small and under-stated. Perhaps it was designed this way, but it is a slight shame that for all the rest of the ride’s majesty the entrance is literally a door in a wall.
    However, from entering the queue, such understatement is forgotten. The queue-line itself is reminiscent of Westminster’s Jubilee Line area, with Escher references and the odd Goon-Window for goons to pry into the mechanical workings of the ride. It’s also a great example of how to do a concrete themed queueline, with lighting and rockwork complementing the style of the ride, as opposed to a theme.



    There is also a Helix game app available on Apple and Android devices, which is actually a live competition amongst those in the queue. It’s a random set of mini-games with a loose theme to the ride itself, but great fun to play and watch others. Certainly an ingenious way to pass the time in the constantly moving queue.


    Like Blue Fire and Alpina Blitz, the seats are incredibly comfortable; however the stapling from the ride ops is unfortunate to say the least. A considered warning for those planning to go in the future.
    The understated dispatch of changing lights as the ride drops down with some considerable airtime in the back before the slow corkscrew to ease us into the ride before we turn a corner and into the first launch. Whilst not the most powerful or fastest launch ever, it fulfils the need of the ride’s mass market ability, and is still an incredibly fun launch anyway, as it whips you into the first zero-g of the ride.
    A quick turn and airtime hill lead us back down to the base of the hill, and into the Snorwegian Loop, which was blatantly better than Speed Monster’s, mainly due to the speed at which it was taken here. Diving under Lisbergbanen’s lift-hill, we rise back up into a fantastic airtime hill. I’d adored Alpina Blitz’s ones, and Helix certainly topped them off for the level of quality, they’re even better when instantly followed by a zero-g. The final part of the first half of the ride involves a sharp overbanked turn into a diving helix, which ended up being my favourite part of the ride it must be said, because it again combines a sharp bit of airtime and transitioning in a way that Intamin can only dream about (unless lap-bars are involved).





    The second launch which provides an extra boost of speed if nothing else into the inverted top hat, which featured some hangtime towards the front of the train. The best airtime hill of the ride follows, as the drop out of it seems to go on forever, before we turn out into the most terrain bit of the ride, the rising s-bends. Which are again fun for an element of a pure design to just enforce the train to lose speed. The typical Mack finish of the inline is just as good as Blue Fire’s, even without the near miss theming.





    And that’s it. Although my first ride was in the middle, I still found that Helix fulfilled the hype for me. It does lots of things, and whilst it may not do any of these things in an overtly ridiculous fashion (say like, how Intamin do great first drops but everything else is poor comparatively), everything is done well. The pacing is pretty seemless, even with the second launch as the train still has a fair amount of speed going into it. And the use of interaction with the terrain (as little as there might be in the final form) and other rides (Upswingett and Lisebergbanen) allow it to gain extra brownie points.
    Some people think it needs on-ride music, but I disagree, as I find on-ride music on anything but indoor coasters tend to get lost with the wind and general being outside times, however awesome the ride’s music is. The only true negative of the ride is that the merch is crap. I loved it from my first ride, and a front and back row ride afterwards pretty much confirmed it was top 10 for me.
    At night, it’s a different beast as well. The lighting package with head and sidelights produces a different experience both on and off-ride. It makes the ride look even more beautiful.





    Mack and Liseberg have truly struck gold with Helix. And I hope that more parks start to pick up this attraction (Towers can replace Rita with one going into the valley).

  9. Benin
    Our start to the day did not go well. On our way to Tripsdrill, there was bountiful traffic on our motorway exit, which delayed us by an hour, arriving at the park just after 10 when the thrill rides opened instead of the 9am arrival time hoped for.


    As a result, the first ride of the day was Karacho, Smiler’s German lapbar wearing cousin who’s actually still not finished at all (and won’t be fully completed till at least next year). So this was to be an interesting one anyway, as people are always seemingly up in arms over Smiler not having lapbars, would they have ‘saved’ the ride from being rough?
    I think the answer is no. The lapbars aren’t particularly comfy in the first place, and of course don’t limit the upper body movement, which would be fine if you weren’t riding a Gerstlauer full of tight transitions and inversions.
    As for Karacho, there was something about it that just didn’t click. I’m not sure to be quite honest what was wrong with it, but something was off about it. Perhaps it was the odd judder here or there, but the layout should be fine. Perhaps it was the unfinished nature of it that put me off. Either way, I was neither enamoured nor hateful towards the ride, perhaps after Smiler’s intensity levels a lack of it resulted in bland indifference towards it. A shame really, as it has the potential to be fantastic, but I would say Smiler will probably be done as the bigger success of the two in the future.






    Second on the list was Mammut, the Wooden coaster where the man roller-bladed on for some reason and the queue had loads of English paper clippings about it (including the Metro). Since I rode it last they’ve finished the cool pre-lift tunnel and added dispatch music. The tunnel was fairly similar to Blue Fire’s, only with a sawmill theme. It’s still a fun enough coaster; if a little bit slow around most of it compared to the sheer relentlessness of a GCI. Wonder if the price difference between the two speaks the volumes of why no-one else seems to have purchased one.



    The coaster trio finished with G’sengte Sau, which felt awfully familiar after visiting Klotten the other day. It’s probably the best themed Gerst Bobsled about it must be said, with the castle near misses adding a lot to the overall experience, and it’s still the fun layout you come to know and enjoy.





    Water ride time was next, with Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen and Waschzuber-Rafting both on the menu as the Log Flume and Rapids respectively. Badewannen is the infamous nude models dark ride section, and it also had a surprising (to me) backwards drop in it. It was alright. The Rapids were pretty dull after doing River Quest though, but I do love the random theme it was given.






    After a quick random veggie burger (language barrier issues), a Zierer Tivoli known as Rasender Tausendfüßler completed our cred count. It was just like every other Tivoli, but with some awesome landscaping, so it was ok in the end.


    One of Tripsdrill’s major selling points is the random attractions they have spawned to continue with their theme of normal life. Whilst the likes of Mammut, G’Sengte Sau and the Rapids push this point quite well, it’s in the ‘old’ part of the park where every ride fulfils this theming quality. The rides are immensely well themed as well, so we began our adventure on the Spinning Soup Pots. It was like an Onion Boat Ride but on a track and more spinning, it was weird.



    Continuing the weird ride trend were Flying Wash Baskets, a strange Enterprise style ride. The final piece of the spinning ride puzzle were the Spinning Wine Barrels, which were the same as the Soup Pots but on a longer track. They were also a lot more spinny to boot.





    We then found a random Model Walkthrough, which was typically creepy due to the designs of the models found within. This was followed by the epic slide that lives within the Old Mill, the park’s oldest attraction. Next was Doppelter Donnerbalken, the tilting drop tower, which was only running one side unfortunately but it was still the epic crap yourself moment that isn’t really repeated much.








    We entered the Goat Farm, where you could both feed and groom the goats, as per usual, when food was around, they went crazy, which is always entertaining. After I spotted it I really wanted to go on the StockCar Race, Tripsdrill’s answer to Autopia with a racing element to it. It was definitely weird as my car was seemingly really quick; I managed to go past the people who went off in front of us. Would be great fun in a group. Finally the Maypole Tower was ridden, which was another weird flat ride akin to those kiddie drop towers Lego love so much.









    After that, we were pretty much bored of the park, so we left.

    Around an hour later, we had arrived at park number 2 of the day, Schawben Park. In yet another weird location next door to a village in the middle of nowhere.

    The first thing you spot is of course the recently new Force 1 from Zierer. It does tower above the car park and indeed the rest of the park due to its location at the tippy top of the hill, which can only be considered a good thing for a family coaster. I definitely prefer those that don’t try and treat the younger riders with contempt and patronisation (I.e. Wacky Worms), and Force 1 really doesn’t disappoint actually, providing an intense (I greyed out) and fun ride with just a spot of airtime here and there. I hope these new-fangled Zierers are becoming a lot more common, because they’re fab.






    Walking down the hill we arrived at the next two creds; starting with Crazy Worm, a random contraption that was at least not a Wacky Worm. Second up was the Schwarzkopf Himalayabahn, complete with smoking ride ops and minimal safety standards. Love Germany. Neither ride are particularly worth discussing any further.






    Next door to the creds was a real shining star at the park, Bobkart. For those who have been to Oakwood and done the Bobsleigh there, imagine that but with an electrical circuit attached. This allows a more faster and forceful ride as a result if you go flat out on it, it was brilliant.


    We wandered past another Goat Farm which promptly produced some of the funniest antics of the entire trip. For we realised upon entering that a goat had managed to make it into the containment zone between the park and the yard. Some random girls were trying (and failing) to get the goat out so we helped by purchasing a tub of carrots for a Euro to lure him. This didn’t work of course, as all the other goats (and there were many) realised that there were carrots around and charged in, causing mass confusion and hysteria about. Eventually we did get the goat in the yard but then some stupid people left the gate open again and he once again made a break for it, assisted by another goat headbutting him.



    We decided to leave it as it wasn’t worth the time and we had a show to watch, but as we left a mum and her small child went in with another tub of carrots. The goats surrounded and attacked, promptly causing the little child to fall over and become engulfed in a swarm of goats, with the mum holding the tub of carrots in one hand trying to pull her child back up with the other. Absolutely hilarious.

    We headed into the Chimp Show which was as expected, a bit dodgy for the sake of ‘entertainment’. At least the trainers showed some love and attention to all the animals involved and weren’t too forceful when the chimps got scared. But still I can’t imagine it would sit well with the Blackfish bridage.


    It was then time for the manual rides again, with another Nautic Jet which got me surprisingly wet down the back and a Zip Wire, which wasn’t as good as the one in Schloss Beck. We also randomly did the new for 2014 Boat Carousel, because I’m a goon.







    It was re-ride time, and there were only two things we really wanted to do again, so another turn on the Bobkart at full speed was required before three goes on Force 1, which was certainly more than enough, so we headed for the hills.



    Overall, it was a weird day at two weird parks. Tripsdrill I feel is better in a big group, though it’s not helped by the rides being a bit below par, especially Karacho which was a bit of a disappointment it must be said. Schwaben on the other hand wasn’t as run-down as I was anticipating it to be, and the random zoo enclosures weren’t that bad either. It’s a family park first and foremost so there’s not a lot there, but Force 1 is actually really fab.
    Maybe Tripsdrill is just a marmite park; I just cannot put my finger on it why it doesn’t get along with me. Because it probably should as it’s weird and European. It will forever be a mystery.

  10. Benin
    Day 7 – Phantastic Part 1
    My last visit to Phantasialand was 6 years ago, which in some cases doesn’t tend to mean a whole lot has changed. However, here, pretty much every single area had something different about it, be it from an addition of some flat rides in Wuze Town, to replacing some tatty old Flumes, or in several cases, the rides simply don’t exist anymore. Lots of change, but would I still like the park?
    We parked in the China car park (due to limited space, there are several car parks, one for each area), purchased our two day ticket for the awful price of €75 (a day ticket is €45) and entered the park.


    Phantasialand have one of those weird staggered ride openings, with the park opening at 9, some rides opening at 9:30, then more at 10 before the remainder (water rides) open at 11. So the first ride of the day was some B&M goodness in Black Mamba.
    Totally forgotten one of the best things in Phantasialand are the queues (unless it’s Winjas’). Mamba’s goes on such an adventure with some decent ride based interaction, and the station is so well themed and beautiful. The ride itself starts fantastically but ends poorly, always has done to me, because I just don’t think the helixes are powerful enough to finish up the ride in a constant fashion. I partly think that they could’ve chucked in the final inversion at the end (a la Nemesis, the clear inspiration for the ride), rather than just turn after turn. Prevents it from being a real top tier B&M, but it’s still a fantastic ride.




    We headed over towards Wuze Town to wait until it opened, whilst I marvelled at the (new to me) entrance area. We were greeted by a dragon which proceeded to do silly things and even drop the rope to open the area. Great piece of interaction.



    So off we went to the Winjas coasters. Starting with Force and then Fear, I do enjoy these two a lot, with Fear clearly being the better of the two coasters. The interaction when both are running properly (which they weren’t unfortunately) is brilliant, and the trick track sections can be very surprising for first time riders. The queue has changed nowadays so not only can you take your bag with you, but also the queue splits on the stairs down into the station. Of course this does mean a massive waste of queue space nowadays, but oh well.




    After both were done, we quickly did the Tittle Tattle Tree, because it’s secretly fab.





    Next door is Temple of the Night Hawk, a Vekoma MK-200 which has had its entrance moved since my last visit, and it involves a steep hill. The ride itself is long, arduous and boring when there are no effects working on it, coupled with 3 slow lift hills. Give me Vogel Rok anyday.

    We then headed back towards the entrance and Maus au Chocolat, the immensely themed and fantastic Midway Mania rip-off. The theming right from the door is top standard, like most of Phantasialand’s stuff, but it just keeps getting better and better. I’ve never known a ride queue to make me so damn hungry just by queuing for it, probably helped by the wafts of chocolate scented through.
    Hadn’t done a Midway Mania ride till now, and I do like the concept quite well, especially when it’s as heavily detailed as this. A big bonus is the theming between scenes, which from POVs appears to be the biggest flaw of MM. Overall it’s a really good dark ride, and probably the best dark ride we did over the course of the holiday.






    A giant waffle happened.

    Now it was time for Chiapas, to which I was quite hyped up for. Chiapas looks to be the perfect modern variant on the Log Flume situation, and whilst the issues with the ride system were plentiful (year long delay for opening, because Intamin), would it provide an excellent experience?
    The answer is yes.
    Although the boats are pretty claustrophobic and small (combined with the lapbar), the ride system itself is intelligent and insanely fast at sorting things out. The drops are all good fun and provide a suitable level of wetness and of course the best part of the entire ride is the Backwards Disco scene. IMAScore’s music perfectly fits the adventure vibe the park were going for as well, especially as the music constantly changes note and style throughout the ride, and the catchy tune gets into EVERYONE’S head. Would love to see Towers look into this as a viable replacement for their Flume, it’s that good.









    It was then time for Talocan, which is still one of the more intense Top Spins around. Still fortunate to always get the front side of it as well, so no rubbish wall for me, always go for the water and the fire effects of awesome. It’s a shame really that the modern ones don’t seem to have taken off for Huss, perhaps because every park in the world already owned one of the originals? There might be a park in the UK that could do with one of these mind.



    It was show time, and we started with Seiben, which was a pretty awesome magic show with weird gothic plot and stuff. Magic is always in the showmanship I feel, and the guy was very showy with the work, and some of the tricks were pretty much “HOW?!” aside from the time when he knocked on the fake mirror in two places and they made two distinct sounds. Still fab.


    We then had lunch whilst watching the Chinese Acrobats, to which we’d kinda had our fill of already in the trip. Ah well, we learnt that Currywurst is actually fab, a far more interesting thing indeed.
    As the weather was reasonably rubbish, it made perfect sense to go on River Quest. Probably the most unique Rapids ride in that it just features special sections rather than anything resembling actual Rapids. It’s quite similar to Bagatelle’s rapids in a way, in that on an overall scale they are brilliant rapids rides, but on a water ride scale they’re both very good. Terrifyingly wet to boot as well, mainly due to the old cheese wedge boat design, allowing water to appear from pretty much wherever the hell it wants to.



    Drying out times required, a task which fell to Mystery Castle, one of the best drop towers around as well as one of the best themed queuelines. The bonus addition of random actors is also quite a cool thing, especially when they’re making full use of the fact that the ride was a walk-on. The ride is still great fun too, with the long climb and descent mid-way through the cycle being the real highlight of it all. Shame that there’s not too many of these ride types around as a result to be quite honest.



    The final dark ride was Feng Ju Palace, a Vekoma Madhouse that’s not very good. Whilst it removes the whole language barrier issue, the plot is very boring, the pre-show takes forever and the effects in the ride section aren’t very good. Big old meh.


    The final cred of the day was Colorado Adventure, a Vekoma Mine Train of many lifts and many sheds. It’s still good fun mind, though it’s weird that the first shed is very much in pieces due to the Silver Mine removal, so half of it is now in the light. The mountain drop by Black Mamba is excellent as well, probably only beaten by Paris’ BTM in the Mine Train stakes.





    Within Colorado’s final helix these days lies Tikal, a double bill of kiddie spinny drop towers which are always a good laugh. These ones also had an epic detail in their theming, as they are themed to water pumps and every time the ride drops, a water pipe is activated. Love details like that.


    We headed back to the Entrance Plaza, catching one of their mini street shows along the way, before it was time for Hotel Tartuff, a Fun House. It was amazing, the theming was generally fantastic throughout, lots of random stuff going on, random live actor and topped off with a giant slide (though it lost points for needing to take shoes off). So, so fab.









    Wellenflug, the Chairswings were next with their epic fountain related times before we watched another street show which was brilliant. Some random dog kept barking at one of the actors and they kept losing it as a result, I like shows that allow for a bit of added actions as opposed to always being the same.






    Some re-rides were called for, so we Chiapas as we’d just finally dried off from River Quest before heading back to Black Mamba. Whilst we were in the station boarding the ride however, someone decided that it was time for rain of the heaviest variety. Resulting in a very painful ride and a very busy exit pathway as a result. We eventually broke out to make it back to the Berlin earlier, watched the storm develop for a bit, before joining lots of people in Maus au Chocolat. By the time we’d exited the rain had fortunately let up.







    The day ended with Drakkarium, their major end of day show by the main entrance. It’s very weird it must be said, with several of the dragon characters turning up in massively epic designed floats/chariots with supporting costumed characters. Then it has random stunt people doing generic stuff. I cannot help but feel this is a really big missed opportunity overall, though I doubt it was helped by the rains descending upon us once more and forcing the show to finish early, so we took our leave and made a break for it ourselves.










    Phantasialand is fantastic. It has the theming; it has a solid ride line-up and it’s generally just fab. I’d really forgotten how good the park was originally, and the changes they’ve made over the past few years have been completely for the better. Hopefully they’ll keep pushing forwards with redevelopments (so excited for the Mystery area one) and replacing the older rides in addition to that expansion they’re aiming for.
    A top tier European park.

  11. Benin
    The second day at Phantasialand started similarly to the first, parking in the China car park and straight off to Black Mamba. A front row ride was in order since it was unlikely another chance would raise its head, front rows are very useful wake-up calls.



    Over to Wuze Town, and as Fear was having the morning off, Winjas Force was ridden, followed by another go on Tittle Tattle Tree. We then rode lots of the new Wuze Town stuff that has been added over the years, starting with the Monorail, Wurmling Express, which could do with a bit of a touch-up already with its rather dilapidated owls. Wakabato, the pointless not so Splash Battle was next, with dodgy guns, broken targets and unreachable boats meant that the point of them was missed. A quick run around the Hedge Maze led us back to Wuze Town by which point Winjas Fear had opened so we rode that. Tittle Tattle Tree followed again and we managed to sit in a side we hadn’t done before, hooray!










    We walked past a Balloon Show on our way to Chiapas. Still fab and welcomed in the nicer weather we had that day.


    It was show time, starting with the Eis Show, which was the typical Ice-Skating show until they decided to SET THE ICE ON FIRE! Love Germany and their obsession over it.
    JUMP was next, and it was basically Stomp but with MORE Trampolining, it was ok but not really a theme park show in my opinion.



    We then headed off to Mystery Castle, only to be bitterly disappointed by the cut down ride cycle, as it launched straight to the top with no faffy bit prior to it. Upset by this, Tikal was ridden again to fulfil the drop tower fix.




    Back in Mexico, it would feel wrong if we didn’t ride Talocan and Chiapas again, especially since Chiapas has the wonderfully useful single rider queue.


    We were back in the plaza to watch the street shows again (mainly as one of the three they run wasn’t on the day before) and have some snack time, which presented itself via wonderful Kinder Ice Cream. Extremely tasty and nom. The shows were all once again very good and all enjoyable. After the third show we went on Maus au Chocolat again.



    Rode Black Mamba once more before a quick run on the Carousel for a sit-down and rest before we discussed what our last ride on the park should be. It was agreed that Winjas Fear would win the coveted role before we would watch Drakkarium and marvel at the dove that tried to kill itself during the finale by trying to fly into the nearby building.









    Two days at Phantasialand is certainly enough if you time your trip just right. It wasn’t actually that busy over the two days, even the Saturday wasn’t horrendously bad, although we did have some show based times as well as getting all the Dragon character photos. As I said before, fantastic park and well worth staying for beyond the coasters.

  12. Benin
    Another day and this time it was off to the first random small park of the trip in Serengeti Park, which is Germany’s version of West Midlands Safari Park. But this one had two fantastic attractions which were worth the entrance fee alone.

    Unlike everyone else visiting, we weren’t doing the safari portion of the park, as a hire car and an animal safari would probably not combine well in my mind, so we walked into the ride area to find absolutely nothing open. Presumably because they assume that all the sensible people will be driving around looking at animals for hours first.

    As a result, we waited for the AquaSafari to open. This is one of those hoverboat things you tend to see in Florida, so it was an interesting concept for this random park in Germany to have. No seatbelts or lifejackets for the riders to boot (children needed lifejackets), classic H&S there.
    It starts off like Jungle Cruise, with dodgy animal animatronics doing dodgy actions, before an open lake reveals itself and the boat bombs around it a few times, before it leaves for one last random thing to happen and head back to the dock. It’s insanely weird but I really liked it because of the crappy Jungle Cruise rip-off aspect to begin with before the fun of darting around a lake.








    Next up we decided to head towards their other safari attraction, DschungleSafari, which can only be described as “This is what Chessington wanted Zufari to be, only tonnes better”. Two ways it does this from just boarding the vehicle are being able to see out the front of the vehicle, and having a driver that interacts with the riders.
    You begin with a quick dart out into the real safari area on an off-road track not accessible to normal visitors, passing the usual array of Savannah animals until you head back into the jungle/woodland. This is where things get REALLY interesting.
    Once in the woodland, you go on this long trek through them, encountering various scenes of more dodgy animatronics, a danger cave, trick track and many other things. It’s hilarity at its finest, with the stand-out moment being some talking ostriches about half-way through. You begin to think after every scene that it has to be over now, but another corner leads into another scene. Absolutely brilliant and this should make people want to visit.










    After that we wandered around the monkey zoo they have, was quite good actually, with some proper walkthroughs dotted around.










    It was time for the two creds on the park. Firstly there was a Zierer Tivoli, Froschflitzer, which was meh. This meh was followed up by more meh as we rode the Huss Condor. Finally we rode my first S&MCo coaster (actually the company title) Die! Wilde Maus, which was a mental kiddie coaster with lots of scary airtime.








    We had a dodgy burger for lunch and settled to watch some shows, including another Trampolining Show, then the show after that got cancelled, so we hopped on the train and did their Wanyama Village style area. The huts pictured are actually part of the on-site accommodation.










    More wandering happened and we visited another walkthrough before seeing a Dive and Acrobatics Show.




    Then we headed back to the hotel. Serengeti is actually quite a decent park considering that the safari park is the main aspect of it. Interestingly the land it’s on is also huge and there is plenty of space for future expansion, be it for more animal enclosures dotted around (there weren’t THAT many aside from all the monkeys), or for some actual ride expansion. I’d like to see both personally but I’m greedy like that.
    A nice surprise to have from a park with quite low expectations.

  13. Benin
    Movie Park Germany was the park of the day, having been a stone’s throw from it the day before, so it was a bit weird to drive to it for a second day in a row.

    Upon arrival I grew frustrated by the park not opening up the turnstiles prior to the official opening, mostly due to the lack of space available to the large crowd building up outside and the low number of actual turnstiles available. Does annoy me greatly when they could instead let people into the park, get some early sales from a cold and miserable rainy day and reduce the crowd issues.
    Oh well, first port of call was a shop to pay an Express Pass. For €25 you could buy an unlimited one for all but two of the rides in the park (Jet Ski ride and the 4D Cinema), a ridiculous value that either the Germans don’t buy into because they don’t like the concept or they sell barely any of. Either way, judging by the early crowds, this was to be quite an intelligent investment.


    So to the rides and the first on the list was Van Helsing’s Factory, the indoor Gerst Bobsled which I had heard many good things about. We entered through the side door of the massive shed and quickly onto the ride, the station and ride cars are both nicely themed, and I do wish I had actually seen the queue line proper.
    The ride starts with some faff before the first lift hill, still quite well themed before the ride begins proper. The usual stuff really from this ride type, with swooping drops and turns, and naturally the wild mouse style turns in the dark (with no brakes) made an appearance before the second tyre lift hill. Some dodgy animatronics later we’re launched up into the rest of the ride, which I have no real recollection or knowledge of as it was all dark. Eventually you hit the brakes after defeating the evil vampire.
    This ride is good, very good. It’s fun, enjoyable and quite well themed throughout, with some decent effects to boot. Solid coaster to their line-up.



    Unfortunately, the horizon for coasters didn’t particularly look great, so we had a quick go on the Jet Ski Patrol because of the wish to delay the inevitable. It was time for MP Express, a Vekoma SLC.
    Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t very good. But the worst was still yet to come.





    The next coaster wasn’t open yet, so we decided to go on High Fall, an Intamin Stand-Up Gyro Drop Tower. Oh boy was that a mistake. Combining the tilting motion with the drop and the brakes and all of a sudden the entire ride is screaming in pain and agony. The most entertainment the ride presented was the subtle change in noise as the ride hit the brakes. Again, awful.

    Then it was time for Bandit, my second RCCA Wooden in the space of a month, and this was a clone of Coney Island’s Cyclone. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
    Turns out, everything.
    Bandit is by a far, far margin the single worst ride I have experienced. It’s that simple. Worse than Coaster Express, worse than Baco, worse than a Volare, worse than a Screaming Squirrel. It was violent on a constant basis, shook around at every corner, juddered about and for good measure did the odd slam into the side. It was at this moment exactly that the Express Pass value came into being, as I didn’t have to queue up for the worst coaster experience of my life. I wish I had been able to burn it down; it would certainly be worth the arsony racket.


    Another go on Van Helsing was needed to experience what a good coaster was, before we headed over to Nickelodeon Land to grab the kiddie creds. Starting with Backyardigans – Mission to Mars, a Vekoma Junior, Ghost Chasers, a Wild Mouse and the infamous in German Top Trumps Jimmy Neutron’s Atomic Flyer. They were all as to be expected, though Atomic Flyer was easily the best coaster of the three.







    Next up was Ice Age Adventure, an indoor dark-water ride combo. It followed the plot (loosely) of the first film, with some typical dodgy animatronics and theming throughout. The interesting part came with the drop, which essentially made it a cred. Was pleasantly surprised by it.

    Time for a random crappy flat ride in Splat-o-Sphere. Had never done an Aileron before, probably won’t ever again since it was pretty dull. We saw a couple of shows around this time which were all pretty standard theme park affair (at least, with those who care about shows, not UK park level). Then it was time for the Van Helsing Show.

    Impressive set aside, the show fell quite flat. Lots of dialogue, weird plot and a really bad werewolf costume mixed in with some rather poorly done fight scenes made it quite a disappointment. Points for trying/effort, but not much else positive.


    As we were walking past it would have been rude to not ride Van Helsing – The Cred again before heading back to the main entrance where (strangely) two big rides sit.
    First up, was new for this year The Lost Temple, to which I was very excited about, and it was probably my most anticipated ride of the entire trip. And whilst it is not a flawless dark ride, it is still entertaining, and above all well themed.
    I think the major flaw with it is the actual ride system. It lacks throughput and if you’re sat in the very front (like myself) then you lose quite a lot of what is actually going on around you. That being said, the theming within the queueline and pre-shows are brilliant, and it has an actual lift rather than a fake Sub Terra style one (indeed, the ride does share some similarities with Sub Terra in some aspects). Good addition to the park and hopefully more a sign of things to come from them.









    Next door was Alien Encounter, a quite randomly themed water ride with extended dark ride (and backwards) sections. It was quite cool it must be said, with an awesome Pepper’s Ghost effect, but it is also very dated at the same time.


    We caught the parade (which was generic) before having a go on Time Riders, featuring John Cleese speaking German. It had an obscene amount of pre-shows that ended in a random tiny simulator. I remarked at some point that it reminded me of the Batman simulator at Madrid, turns out it WAS one once upon a time. It found itself in a similar position to the Batman ride in Madrid, so crap it was actually funny. Though it felt so wrong hearing Mr Cleese speaking German.





    We rode Van Helsing again before seeing the Crazy Cops Stunt Show, which was alright and typical of your basic stunt show. The guys did well in the very wet conditions mind. Least there wasn’t any audience participation faff this time.

    Van Helsing was ridden again before some food and show times again. Afterwards we did Van Helsing again (a pattern emerged very early on in the day it must be said, not helped by the central location of said cred).
    We had a look towards Lost Temple again but unfortunately it was shut (it’s been having LOTS of problems this year), so Jimmy Neutron was ridden again (for some reason, I’m still not sure why) before we did the Fairy World Spin Teacups, which were generic as well. Van Helsing was ridden again before we rode the Crazy Surfer Disko Coaster (which had a lot of bounce to it) and the Santa Monica Pier Carousel, which was actually a Chairswing. The hope was to finish the day on Van Helsing but unfortunately they had seemingly closed it early. Sad face.





    We stopped off at the Happiness Station for epic ice cream before heading home.

    Movie Park is ok, just full of utter, utter crap for the most part. The layout doesn’t help it much, since half the park is pretty much dedicated to Nickelodeon (Ice Age and Mystery River aside), two major attractions at the entrance is also a weird design choice. The major issue is that only one of the coasters is actually good, with the two big draws being crap, some future choices would be served well into getting some good adult rides, as the park is pretty well served for families/kids. Removing Bandit, High Fall and MP Express would be an excellent start and getting some heavily themed coasters that are good could help put the park on the map a little bit more.

  14. Benin
    We were done with Hamburg, so today was a day of driving as we headed to our next base of operations in Dortmund. We decided that because there wasn’t much option of things to do in Dortmund as we were staying in a soulless industrial estate and Dortmund isn’t known for having much in the way of touristy stuff (Football stadium aside, but it had a game on that if I’d known about I would’ve gone to), we would visit Schloss Beck instead to pass a few hours.
    Schloss Beck is a tiny little park a stone’s throw away from Movie Park, so close in fact, that they will use their own car park as an overflow to Movie Park, and offer guests money off their parking fee of €5 onto paying to enter the park. The man who greeted us in the car park was very bemused that we had come to visit the park itself rather than Movie Park, but that was for tomorrow.


    First stop was the cred, another Zierer Tivoli ingeniously named Family Rollercoaster. It had an enclosed lifthill but that was about as unique/interesting as it got.




    Now it was time for the stuff that really excited me, the manually operated attractions. These are really common in the small German parks, but I’ve never been to a park that has them. I was able to pretend I was a ride operator again!
    First up, the Nautic Jet, surprisingly terrifying when you realise all that’s holding you in is a flimsy bar and that jump hits you. The reverse climb as well has a wonderful sense of trepidation to it as well.





    Next was some Zip Wire style attraction, which (in another flimsy seat) raised the wire up to send you backwards on your way across the river. You’d then return and do the thing twice more. I had to yell at a German kid as he tried to jump on in front of us, little git.


    Then did the Pirate Ship next, which was a swinging cage with a dangling rope for riders to control the amount of swing available to them. Naturally, went the whole hog on full swing. Utterly terrifying.



    There were also some slides which were done. The death slide was a lot steeper when you got to the top.

    That was pretty much the ride selection exhausted (bar a dead spinning manual ride, a Dragon flat and some Dinghy Slides), so we grabbed some Dippin Dots and headed towards the nature walk that sits within the park grounds. Comparisons to Towers (what with the old house at the entrance) were quite high on the agenda, though not many parks where you can hear another major park’s show taking place.







    We found a play area and messed about in it before having a nose around the old house thing. Not quite the ruins of Towers, but still nice.










    Then we left, for what’s available (and for an entry price of €12 a head), it’s quite nice. Plenty of things for kids to do rather than adults but that’s what the target is. There was a nice atmosphere within the park and the raised nature walk was quite cool. Doubt it has the ability to expand further but it’s a nice enough place to visit regardless.

  15. Benin
    Ah Heide, the weird red-headed step-child of the Merlin machine from my last visit, with its strange mixture of music and atmosphere seemingly stolen from other parks. It lured me back with the prospect of completing the European B&M collection (of course, until Garda and Efteling’s ones open next year), and an attempt to ride Colossos again to see if I can actually like it.

    First thing was first though, and that was to collect our German MAPs. The reasons for this were for the free entry to Gardaland and the complimentary Q-Bot at both Heide and Legoland Germany. Considering how busy Heide was looking prior to opening, this was a good choice.



    Passes and Q-Bot acquired, we moved straight over to Flug von Damenon. Unlike Swarm, this has a sensible queue-line, the splits just before the batching point, has enough space in the station for 2 trains worth of people AND most importantly has a rotating bag holder at each row. How this logic never made it to Thorpe I’ll never know, because it runs a lot more efficiently.
    However, the ride itself is unfortunately lacklustre, and I’m still not sure if I place it above or below Swarm. The layout is quite good, and with a bit more speed might not have the sort of dead spots that you see in Swarm’s over-sized flat turnaround and the finale. But it is quite slow and lumbering, and even worse, has an awful, awful bounce already. The bounce is what ruins the ride really, it’s so strange that a brand new ride can have that so early in its life. Perhaps the design of the ride and the layout being quite tight (Raptor and Swarm are both drawn out) means that there are higher levels of force acting upon the train, and because of the vibration that naturally happens anyway on these train styles, it just becomes more noticeable under heavier force.
    Either way, a bitter disappointment, and Raptor is still quite easily the best Wing-Rider I’ve experienced.










    One positive for Flug is the single rider queue, which when combined with a reasonably epic batcher man, went quickly. After the second ride it was time to ride Krake with the finished boat section. I still liked it a lot from my first rides, especially as it amazed the Germans from the visual perspective. It still does that, and it delivers a fair whack of airtime after the inversion nowadays. They’ve also added a dedicated front row queue to it, which is a slight improvement, but a real improvement would have been to batch it all in, especially given how Q-Bots enter the station building in an awkward fashion.





    We had some Crepes whilst we waited for our next booking, Colossos. I distinctly remember being completely non-plussed about this ride on my previous visit, soul-less rubbish I called it. After my recent enjoyment of Balder I thought however that this viewpoint could well change, and to see if it was accurate the back row was chosen.
    My viewpoint on Colossos has not changed. The first drop is wonderful, but everything else just seems poor. Just found it extremely difficult to actually enjoy the hills, the corners are duller than Balder’s and that long helix is really rattly. It just simply doesn’t do anything for me and I doubt it ever will.





    Grottenblitz was next, one of my least favourite Mack Powered coasters, before we broke for lunch at Pizza Pasta. I forget how much it was, but the pizza slices are quite simply ridiculous. I spent some time afterwards taking photos from the terrace outside.








    Straight after lunch was time for Desert Race, the slightly better version of Rita (again, damning with faint praise), before it was time to see the Madagascar Circus Show.






    Unlike Chessie’s version, this one is indoors, and as a result you need to acquire a ticket for the next showing. A good idea really, as it prevents mass crowds building up and then having to close off the building and disappointing guests. Also unlike Chessie’s version, this one is actually good, as it more appears to be a circus show that just so happens to have a Madagascar related storyline to tie it all together. It also had fire.
    It was time to whore out the Q-Bot some more (although Heide have a rubbish tier system of either having select rides depending on your choice, but a decent idea in limiting the amount of times you can use it on each ride, so we had 2 goes on every major coaster but Flug). So we rode Krake, Flug and Schweizer Bobbahn, which wasn’t very good, before riding Desert Race again.






    There was a long gap for Colossos so we used it riding the two water rides in the middle of the park. They were a well deserved rest in amongst the constant cred riding it must be said. Colossos was still a disappointment.





    The random Pirate Show was next, which was extremely weird and random. Didn’t really get it so we ran away early for our Krake time slot before two last goes on Flug to finish off the day.


    Heide is such a weird park, I don’t really know if I like it or not. The rides don’t really do that much for me (Krake being the best, Scream was closed all day) and the park is a weird mish-mash of half-arsed theming attempts and some completely closed off areas. They have started to get an unique identity to themselves with the addition of several IMAScore music dotted around the park to remove old Tussauds themes, but there’s still a lot of flaws around the park. Their ents budget has also seemingly been slashed to bits as one arena stood empty.

  16. Benin
    The first day proper of the trip led us to Hansa Park, a place which I really enjoyed on my previous visit 3 years ago. Unfortunately, not much has really changed to the park overall since my last visit aside from the entrance area being tarted up. But when you have one of the best Eurofighters around (potential damning with faint praise comments here), that sits in my top 10, of course a revisit was in order.


    Upon arrival a group of enthusiasts were spotted, evidenced by their gooniforms and badges. I didn’t even realise Hansa Park was big enough to have a full on fansite, but they do.

    Into the park and in a similar fashion to my visit 3 years ago, the first rides were once again Nessie and Rasender Roland. Both rides are starting to feel out of place in comparison to the more recent ride additions within the park, as they lack a real theme (Nessie has slightly more of one granted). However their interaction with each other is actually well done; and Nessie is still quite forceful and full of airtime. The ride on Roland involved Nessie going around the loop right above our heads, which was equally terrifying and brilliant.





    After riding those, it was time to join the queue for the main attraction at the park, Fluch von Novgorod. Those who know me know my love for this ride is pretty big, with a wonderful theme, it tells a story and the ride itself is very good fun. My main worry with it this time around was how bad it might have aged over the past 3 years, as most other Gerstlauer Eurofighters are well known for becoming rough as hell after a year or two in operation. Fortunately for Fluch, it hasn’t aged badly at all, with maybe one moment of roughness included in the layout. The launch and all indoor sections are still fab too. It’s just a shame that Gerstlauer’s other efforts seem to have had lots of problems and roughness issues over the years, as this is probably the best version of the ride type around.
    Depressingly however, the exit slide was not in operation. Booooooo.






    A quick second go on Fluch was had (hooray for no-one using the mid-queue single rider) before we went off into the rest of the park. Starting off with the apparent cred but not a cred El Paso Express. I didn’t do this last time around, and this weird contraption is very, very weird. It has constant back and forth motion within the track layout, and uses that mix of gravity and powered coaster. Weird but enjoyable. We also walked through the random Path of the Mayans interactive attraction, where you solve puzzles in order to progress past water features.



    As we walked to our next destination, we saw the Hansa Park Goons getting a tour of Karnan. At the time of our visit it was only dirt and a giant pit, so nothing too interesting to see, so we continued to Die Glocke. Again we missed out on this last time due to the horrid throughput it has (6 people per ride), but as it was still early went for it this time. It was good fun, very spinny and had FIRE. Next door was the still well themed El Dorado Storm Surge alike, minimal wetness ensued which was relatively welcomed in the hot weather.






    It was snack time!


    After the delicious snacks, we headed towards the (FREE) High Ropes Course of terror! It was pretty amazing tbh, with two options for each section, each more confusing and terrifying than the last. The height factor combined with some of the rather unsturdy aspects of it led to some issues, however I made it all the way around like a boss. Huzzah!



    Needing a rest after that, Schlange von Midgard was chosen as the next ride. As it was unfinished 3 years ago, I was intrigued to see what was new about it; it had some cool effects added into the lift hill, but not much else could really be done about it. I’m still confused as to why some batching rows weren’t added in the first place though, and the dragon thing wasn’t working either. Still a fun kids coaster though.




    Torre del Mar was next, because a Starflyer next to a construction site is ALWAYS a good idea. Then we went on Fluch again because it’s fab before breaking for some Steak-on-a-Stick, which was extremely nom.



    A random Variety Show was next, which included Trampolining people, dancing, and a man who flew a remote controlled plane around the auditorium, he was the fabbest of them all. Afterwards there was some investigation into where Karnan is going, and the weirdness of the layout needs to be confirmed, considering it’s seemingly going to go all the way down past half the park.






    Space Scooter was next, which were some Dodgems with lasers to shoot at random targets around the arena. It wasn’t fun because my gun seemingly didn’t work and people actually got annoyed with you if you bumped them. Extremely rubbish, but at least it exited into a play area.

    We left quickly to see the Parade go past before collecting some Crepes for some quick boost of energy, enjoyed the Magical Flower Boat Ride before another go on Fluch to finish off the day.






    I like Hansa, and the stuff they’ve been doing with the entrance refurb does make it have a fantastic entrance area. Hopefully they’ll continue refurbing the park whilst developing it with the likes of Karnan because a lot of it does look slightly worn and run-down in comparison to the actual themed areas (I.e. Nessie vs Wild West area). I’ll certainly have the park back in my sights in 2016 when Karnan is finished.

  17. Benin
    I’m already regretting this decision for a massive 2 week holiday featuring 12 parks, mainly because this is gonna be a long as hell TR, and I don’t want to spend ALL my time at work typing it up either. But, the show must go on, so here we go, Germany.
    A pleasant flight in with Germanwings (budget Lufthansa) led us to Hamburg and our Volkswagen Polo for the fortnight, and we drove off to the hotel. Quickly it was discovered that roadworks would be the bane of the holiday, as the Sat-Nav’s path to the hotel was blocked by some, causing circles to be completed. Eventually we arrived to the hotel, and promptly left it to go into Hamburg proper, and more specifically, the SommarDOM.



    I was excited to go to a German funfair, especially excited that you didn’t have to purchase tickets but paid with cash upon entry to each ride, a rather novel idea when you think about it.
    We did a lap of the massive area, tending to watch rides rather than actually ride them, two week’s worth of Euros couldn’t be spent all on madly run Breakdances and the like. However we did ride Rock & Roller Coaster, which was one of them Wildcat type rides, without anything interesting cred wise (Wilde Maus XXL and a Wacky Worm, yawn), we elected to play the Fun House game instead.









    I can’t exactly remember how many were done. I think 4/5 odd, each reasonably different from each other, and including the Winter Wonderland visitor of Alpen Hotel. There was also a fab City themed one which had a water room and plenty of other random effects. The final one was topped off with a classic German death-slide too, which was amazing death-like as I kept getting stuck in it.






    As someone who doesn’t really care for fairs too much, this place was still amazing and pretty much even puts the likes of Winter Wonderland to shame. Didn’t stay too long but I can imagine at night it would look absolutely incredible. Defo worth a visit if you’re into fairs because of the mental settings the flats are run on (the Shaker was vom-worthy just via watching it).

  18. Benin
    Day 2 – Parque Warner
    Here was a park I was rather excited about, with 2 B&Ms, a Vekoma GIB and some gorgeously themed areas, how could I not be?
    The journey to the park was slightly longer than the other, purely because it’s seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so first step was get the Metro:

    Then the RENFE train to Pinto:

    Then a bus straight to the park entrance:

    Rather simple in the end, who needs to spend lots on hire cars?
    My excitement also truly got the better of me when I noticed Stuntfall testing, and then my interest was piqued by the entrance/main street area.







    Whilst the quite often unforgiving Spanish sun has faded the paint somewhat, I adored the entrance area; and the theming in general. Though the theming didn’t extend to Stuntfall, our initial first destination, we were denied due to some good old fashioned Spanish operations, where some rides open 45 minutes after park opening. Weird.
    Undeterred, we followed the straight path with our goal directly in sight, Superman – de Attraction de Acero.
    I have heard LOTS of good things about this. And whilst the ride was on one train operation, I felt that it didn’t really need it, considering the queue was only down the stairs that led into the station. Naturally the first decision was to sit right at the back row, and we were quickly sent out on our journey.
    B&M straight drops are brilliant. It’s probably that simple, of course you rarely see them on any bar a Hyper Coaster or Raptor at Gardaland. This is a real shame, as there was tonnes of airtime to be had in the back row of this. The rest of the ride was rather standard in the classic B&M fashion, loop, Immelmann, zero-g, cobra roll, intwined corkscrews, but with the slight difference of a small airtime hill and some good final helixes through in for good measure. The positive of this being that without a MCBR, the ride doesn’t lose pace, which considering it’s on the boundary of when B&M started going ‘safe’ is perhaps the best bit about the ride.
    I wouldn’t say it blew me away, but it was still a brilliant ride.


    The plan was to ride Batman next, but that was also opening late, so I popped onto La Venganza del Enigma, the shot/drop tower, which was good fun and very whooshy. The drop from the top was probably the standout of the ride, as the shot up was rather gradual. Again, taller drop towers quite often lose the real thrill in comparison to the shorter ones.



    Finally, Batman – La Fuga was open. And it probably has the best queueline in the entire park, and should certainly be considered as one of the top ones in Europe. As soon as you enter through the entrance gates of Arkham, it becomes a fair representation of the place. A long and winding indoor queue past noisy gates (hello Sub Terra), abandoned cells and random other bits and bobs was very enjoyable. Unfortunately the theming just stops at the stairs to the station as well as the station itself. Which is a bit weird it must be said.
    The ride of course, is a Batman clone, which are varied in their own world as per most clones. Some are good, some are bad, etc. Another run into the back row and away we went.
    One of the best parts of a Batman clone is the opening salvo of inversions, loop, zero-g, loop, is pretty much a real push on the senses without doing that much. Of course La Fuga has the added incredible near miss in the zero-g to the station building. Whilst it was still early in the day there was a definite feeling that there was a lot of bite to the latter half of the ride, but it was indeterminable after 3 or so dispatches in.
    Still, between this and Superman, this park has two fantastic rides.





    Back to Stuntfall it was then. 7 years since I rode Déjà vu at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and I was rather itching to get on it because a – GIB’s are pretty fab, and b – it spites regularly. Unfortunately it wasn’t running the back or front rows, which was a bit burndenous and slow, but the queue moved reasonably quickly. Until…

    The dreaded engineer appeared. Fortunately he did some things and the ride tested and he moved on. Huzzah! Before long we were ready to ride (and destroy ‘the burdenous buzzer of unnecessary loud times’).
    The lift is fast and actually quite scary, if only for the fact these trains don’t have much in the way of space between cars, and my feet kept touching the giant metal thing in front of me. The drop though is just outstanding. Fortunately due to the large inversions there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Vekoma rattle on it either, though I was in the fable Vekoma-Brace-Position™ which probably helped. Even backwards it was reasonably smooth and definitely enjoyable. A shame that not many of these exist in the world really.





    After that we needed a long sit down, and by luck, a nearby indoor show was starting in the Scooby Doo Musical. Featuring songs from the hit live action film of a decade ago, and of course, the Great Dane himself (the actor of which deserved the most credit, being in that suit and being involved in a very high tempo show). The story seemingly followed a similar tale to that of the Buffy musical episode, where the Romanian 2013 Eurovision entry was causing all the fuss. It was enjoyable and pretty basic theme park show affair for continental European parks. I wish we had more like these in the UK.

    After a quick break for lunch (at least when we wanted lunch at British times the places were empty), we headed into the Cartoon Village in search of more coasters.




    We were distracted by the Scooby Doo Adventure, a Sally dark ride, which had a lot of burdenously broken targets. A shame but the cars were so, so cute <3



    Further on we heard the rumblings of a Zierer Tivoli, Tom y Jerry. Nicely themed to a classic episode involving a picnic, we also had burdenous queue-jumpers in this one, who we actually ended up walking past anyway because of being a two and the staff filling up the car. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
    Not much to report on it tbh, ridden one Zierer Tivoli, ridden most of them.


    We meandered around the area looking for the next coaster, where we stumbled into the character house area. We elected for Bugs (because who wouldn’t?) and after walking through the house/queue were greeted by a rather scary scene of Bugs stretched out in his chair waiting for us. It was terrifying. But we had a good bit of banter with him and the photographer. Shame it’s one of those bits where you have to buy a photo over taking your own. Stupid Picsolve </3
    Finally we eventually found the entrance to Correcaminos Bip Bip, a Mack Youngstar that had a rather awesome themed queue/station combo. Why aren’t there more of these? As they are clearly better than a Vekoma Roller Skater. I especially like kid’s aimed coasters that don’t really patronise the kids in the same way as Wacky Worms and the like. Good old Mack.






    LOL VEKOMA STRAPLINE
    That done, we headed into a very rare European Wild West themed area. And headed for Coaster Express.
    It’s god-awful.
    Not only does it bounce its way around the track, it’s DULL. Being dull is a bigger sin than being rough, and this was BOTH! In addition to the fact that the trains are rather limiting to who can actually ride, this was by and far the worst part of the overall trip. And we can blame two companies for this, RCCA for existing and building the ride, and Intamin for the trains. This was Mean Streak levels of bad, and I’d much rather ride Baco than this. THAT’S HOW BAD IT WAS <////3



    After some further faff, we headed to the Police Academy Stunt Show. Which involved 15 minutes of dull chatter involving picking audience members, and then one does the same thing that’s done in every show and starts driving the car because he’s a [sHOCK] part of the show lineup! [/sHOCK]
    The actual stunt part of it was cool, but there was truly too much faff going on to enjoy it.

    A quick escape led us to Hotel Embrujado, a Vekoma Madhouse, and quite possibly one of the best examples of one I’ve ridden.
    The internal theming is amazing. I felt like it was ripping off Tower of Terror, but in a good way, because the quality wasn’t really THAT far off it. Add in the numerous effects in the library, the ride LITERALLY hidden behind an ancient bookcase, and an equally amazing and terrifying animatronic in the ride made it a wonderful experience. Naturally it suffers from the whole language barrier as most Madhouses do (the story seemed to be Phantom Manor in a hotel), but the thing was so gorgeously themed I didn’t care. Definitely better than Villa Volta.


    All this needs is 1930s music and it’s Tower of Terror
    To continue our dark ride tour, we headed towards Batman: La Sombra del Murciélago, or ‘Knight Flight’. Again the quality of theming within this attraction was rather good, and again the language barrier was there. This simulator also went into full CHEESE mode, so whilst it was a very low quality film/simulator, it entered into the good category because it wasn’t that good. Ironic eh?


    Naturally, I NEEDED a pic with the Arnold Mr Freeze <3
    We decided to end the day with another go of both Batman and Superman. In the end I would say I preferred Batman, as the second go on Superman was full of old B&M rattle. The kind that doesn’t make the ride bad, but it’s just, there. Batman unsurprisingly had warmed up considerably and was thumping around the track wildly. With that we headed back for tat based times (which were disappointing) and ventured back to Madrid.






    I ADORED this park. Whilst I didn’t get to do the water rides and Coaster Express is better off being burnt to the ground, the park is very well themed, and a good range of coasters, flats and dark rides. It perhaps misses a really big world class dark ride in that list, but beyond that I can’t really thing of what else this park needs (aside from a GCI replacing Coaster Express).
    It’s truly amazing how a Six Flags park was so well themed. It could probably do with a few touch-ups here and there, and perhaps the entertainment has been scaled back a bit (there were two arenas seemingly unused in Gotham and by Stunt Fall). But the park has a good level of quality theming throughout, and is beautifully designed by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. I definitely want to return in a few years.

  19. Benin
    Day 1 – Parque de Attractiones
    After a late evening flight and a taxi to a hotel, Madrid’s parks beckoned. This trip was mainly done as a “Benin wants to get all open European B&Ms this year” trip, and it also combined with a birthday. So it happened.
    After a morning of searching for a McDonalds that became sadly fruitless (and McMuffin-less), we hopped upon the Metro (of which a 3 day unlimited pass on all transit options costs €35) towards Batan station, where Parque de Attractiones lives.

    Or at least it’s second entrance, which surprised me. But we were greeted by long queues we simply walked past due to online tickets, and found ourselves in the Nickelodeon area.



    As such, the first coaster was to be Padrinos Voladores, one of those random Zamperla suspended kiddie wild mouse jobbies that Mingoland got recently. Themed to Fairly Odd Parents too if you’re into that sorta stuff. Either way, it was meh and juddery. Stupid Zamperla.



    After vacating the kids area as quickly as possible, we found TNT Train de la Mina, where stacking was the order of the day (and a reminder of why I find Spanish parks that extra bit frustrating). We didn’t know the manufacturer of this, but turns out Gerstlauer can make decent rides if they don’t invert/launch/etc. Was rather good fun, certainly as good as the Intamin counterparts, with mixtures of airtime and some decent laterals to boot.


    Not an easy coaster to get pics of though
    The heat and busyness of the park was clear to see, and the next coaster was Vertigo, a Wild Mouse. It had the worst operations I’ve ever seen on one as well, which is EXTREMELY impressive. As opposed to running it normally (as per, every other park in the world), here we have 4 cars (ew), all loaded at once in the station (ew), dispatched, and once they’re all back in the station we load it again. So the queue would move a maximum of 16 people at a time. For a Wild Mouse. In Spain.
    Ew.
    Plus a group that queue jumped right before the ride decided to have a moan about something and cause security/managers to be called down. Further delaying everyone else. Why is going to a park in Spain so much more burdenous?




    Hooray for themed supports!
    After the Vertigo issues we decided to look into the Express Pass stuff, cos we still had 4 creds to go, and 3 of those have no throughput. For an unlimited Gold level at €29 (there’s a Silver which allows one shots for slightly cheaper), there was a resounding YES to that. Although this cannot be used for either Vertigo or Tarantula. Which is strangely well thought out considering the operations of the park.


    Onwards we went to Abismo then, a Maurer Sohne Skyloop of the extended variety. I was rather excited for it, not sure why, given G-Force exists. But regardless, we skipped the entire queue and onto the front row it was.
    The lift is insanely quick, and the hang-time on the top is immense and intense, and the inversion/drop back down are both a lot of fun. Indeed, the ride as a whole was quite fab, which was very, very surprising it must be said. Tonnes of airtime in the hill as well, which given that these restraints don’t try and sever you in half makes it a lot more enjoyable.






    Next up was a ride I had zero expectations on, Tornado, one of only two Intamin Inverts in the entire world (the other in Finland). In my experience, rare Intamin rides are rare for a reason, which tends to be that they are utterly awful abominations of rides, so the was a fair amount of trepidation for this.
    There was also no queue (the only coaster seemingly not to have one, even on one train), but we hopped in the back row of the train (the same as an Intamin Impulse, which slightly improved my mood as I LIKE those), and off we went.
    As like most Intamins, it has a good first drop, and the rest of the ride was pretty good as well. Forceful loops and rattly turns essentially made up the ride, with a corkscrew thrown in for good measure. Overall it was pretty much on the average side of the scale, mainly due to the layout being a bit meh rather than the ride being crap. Intamin deserve props for trying a full Invert but this wasn’t going to trouble even the worst B&M version.




    After a chill under Tornado, we elected to do some flats, starting with my first Huss Conder In Rotor, which was pretty dull it must be said. Next up was Tifon, a very long and spinny Zamperla Disko. Cooling off times were required, so Asseradero the Log Flume was done, which was of an acceptable wetness although it did indeed struggle to actually get us over the top of the first lift hill. Bit awkward.

    To continue the spinning rides theme we had started, Tarantula was next. Billed as one of the best Maurer Sohne spinning coasters, I was quite hyped up for it. It uses the location on the side of the hill reasonably well, but it could’ve done a whole lot more with it. It didn’t spin a whole lot on our ride of it, but it was quite good. I think on a whole I still prefer Fury to it, just as it has a bit more in the way of final product and less pondering layout.




    Up next was a Huss Frisbee in the name of La Maquina, which became our most regretted ride in the park. It was long, spinning and made me feel incredibly awful when combined with an extremely hot day. So ice cream was called for. After said ice cream, the Intamin drop tower La Lanzadera happened, which was a normal one to which I’m rather blasé towards as heights don’t do anything for me. Plus being at the bottom of a tall hill didn’t help the experience at the top to be any more scary.




    We did Abismo again in the back, which was had some insane levels of rattle within that ruined the ride somewhat, before heading up the giant hill to investigate Fantasia, which turned out to be a Small World rip-off. It wasn’t very good and it wasn’t that racist either, though that might be due to riding Carnival Festival earlier in the year. We also did the Star Flyer just outside it, which was welcomed due to the cooling breeze that it provided on an awfully hot day.









    The idea now was to get the final coaster and leave, because the day had been long and full of terrors. But first, Telesaurio, or the Spinning Dumbo ride as I called it, had to be done because it was quite fab. The final coaster Vagones Locos was then done, because +1, before we re-rode TNT again, had food and then left.




    The park was nice, with some very good presentation and theming in some cases, but not in many others. The general high levels of heat and some poor operations/queue jumping did affect the day quite rapidly though. It was a shame we had to resort to Express Passes but they did in the end help get a lot more rides than we would’ve done. We were drained by 3pm and that was only after 3 hours of park opening. The park doesn’t really have anything truly stand-out amazing although I did like Abismo, Tornado and Tarantula, they were all pretty much above average, rather than insanely good.

  20. Benin
    Day 3 – Walygator Parc
    So the final day led us to Walygator, more known for its financial issues and random 2nd hand B&M than for being any good, and we were heading there for their first operational day of the season!

    However, the day certainly started poorly as the tickets you pre-book online through the website CANNOT be picked up on park.
    You have two options, pick it up at random shops dotted about the country (none near where we were though), or delivered to home. But NOT at the park? Not wanting to waste time having already turned up attempting to find some random place in Metz ended up paying for tickets on the day as well as in advance. Needless to say I was very unimpressed by this situation, not helped by the fact that they have turnstiles they don’t use and a generally bad entrance procedure (let’s have the park gates open into the ticket booth queues!)



    Eventually in, we headed straight to Monster, the B&M Invert. We waited for people to turn up to reach the minimum amount of riders and after about 20 minutes into our already limited day we were finally on the front row (first ride of the season though).
    I didn’t really like Raptor at Cedar Point, so I wasn’t particularly excited for this one. However it was quite decent, with a good bit of force about itself. It’s certainly not at the top of the Invert pile but it’s not at the bottom either. The RCT plonked nature of it does demean itself somewhat though, especially as the ride just exists off in the distance with no interaction with the rest of the park at all.





    We hopped on the Disney themed Chenille (the 3rd Wacky Worm of the trip) before heading towards Anaconda, their (Morgan apparently) Wooden coaster, which had just this year had some retracking done by GCI. As we were in the queue, we noticed that the PLC on the brakes was behaving rather erratically, with the trains stopping at excessively random and unknown times; nevertheless we were on the back row of the half loaded train (we discovered the entire park was in this queue because of the front rows being sand-bagged).



    Rides can be awful for many reasons, violent, juddery, rough, but the sole worst reason for a ride to be considered awful to me is for it to be boring. This is what Anaconda is, incredibly dull, forceless and slow. It bounced along the track at a lull, struggling to climb over every hill and not doing anything remotely interesting with the layout. So imagine how surprised we were that the brakes decided to become the most interesting part of the ride and partially fail, causing us to stop half-way down the station, and me breaking out into a fit of hysterical laughter at just how pathetic the situation was.



    Eventually the engineer sorted it by opening and closing the gates to reset the rather confused ride system, and we got another go around. It was still dull, even with me laughing my head off.
    We were hungry, so giant waffles were had because they were out of pancakes. Fail. We went to see the new Dive Show, with a slight (read – minimal) Wild West theme, and pre-show entertainment by clowns who did EPIC balloon animals and a FBI agent. Confusing times.
    Either way, the show was a pretty standard High Dive affair really. The guy who did it whilst on fire was good though, but these shows aren’t THAT interesting enough unless they have a story going on behind it. At least it was better than ITV’s SPLASH!

    We wandered into their recently rethemed Space area with the new Air Race which wasn’t open yet (mainly as it had actually arrived EARLIER than planned), however it does look very awesome, and even has a viewing platform which was also unfortunately closed. The 4th and final coaster of the trip was Waly Coaster, a Vekoma ‘Hurricane’, or ‘Loop and 2 Screws’. Again 1st day syndrome hit us, as the ride op sent the train out having missed an open restraint on his side twice on an empty seat, which resulted in an E-Stop (personally, I would’ve either ignored it or pushed it down as it went out). We were sat in the station once again waiting for an engineer.
    Unsurprisingly, the ride was not worth the wait, short but smooth, but didn’t really do anything interesting, feeling like a lesser version of their old Bayerncurve Corkscrews really. Meh.










    We walked past the abandoned Haunted House towards the Rapids. These have an ingenious design of which the boats are too big to fit inside the station, so have to be manually pulled in by the staff to park up in a group of 4 for loading. Holy bad ride designs!
    Again, the ride itself was a mixed bag, with some good bits but an excessively boring ending. Methinks half the park would be better demolishing half their rides and starting over from scratch; which is what they’re doing with their Huss Topple Tower in fact, poor boring things that they are.






    After some faff and decision making we elected to go on Waly Boat, which had been slightly revamped for the season. The Tow Boat ride system is incredibly popular in Europe, and I’ve been on a few, but none as slow as this one. It was 25 minutes long and half of that was slowly floating towards the next nice looking but rather uninteresting after seeing it for 5 minutes scenes. It was just completely unnecessary for it to be so damn slow.









    Cave of nothing

    Once our insomnia had been cured, we had a few minutes to kill before the Dancing with Waly show, so promptly rode the Mistrel Chairswings next door, which completed the collection of dull and slowly run rides. The show itself was rather decent, with pop songs through the ages being played and kids allowed to interact completely with the WalyGator family, rather than sit down and watch. I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing a dancing giant alligator doing Gangam Style too.





    And that was really it. We had to head up to Calais for our ferry back to the UK since the hire car couldn’t really be taken all the way home, but I wasn’t particularly fussed about leaving early as we’d done the major rides and I don’t think the park had anything much else to offer. It has SOME potential, but for the most part it’s really tatty and the rides there are just DULL, which is probably worse than the rides just being rough and awful. I had no desperation to ride anything again, and I even gave Baco the honour of a second ride.
    However the new area theme and the brand image both look very good, especially the new branding which is very solid (and the plushies are just so adorable). There is plenty of potential in the park but it’s a long way to go to reach the likes of Nigloland, and hopefully the new management (only their second year of new ownership it must be said, so it looks slightly long term) will learn from the park’s past mistakes and look elsewhere to see how to improve things, such as a station building for Monster, and some actual good rides to support it.


    The journey back up to Calais was at least, uneventful, and being a foot passenger on the ferry means you get first dibs on seating. Overall it was a good trip, if a bit mental for all the wrong reasons on the first day, and it was certainly worth it for Nigloland and Alpina Blitz.

  21. Benin
    Day 2 – Nigloland
    To say that Nigloland is in the middle of nowhere would be quite the understatement, with the signs telling you the park is Xkm away, and no visible sign of it until you are literally on the local village’s doorstep. The village itself is on the park’s doorstep itself, with some front gardens literally a road and hill away from the actual entrance building.
    The way the park is accessed feels slightly Towers like, with country roads, a small village and a descent into a giant valley with a forest backdrop providing an interesting opener to the day.


    A busy day awaited us




    As part of the EU “Parks should open rides after the park has actually opened” law, we had 30 minutes to spend having breakfast on park. Eventually the rides opened and we headed towards the dead end of the park (themed to Canada), where the Gold Mine Train lives.
    As we were to discover, Nigloland has a ridiculously healthy relationship with Mack, as half their rides are built by them. This is powered Mine Train that kind of sits between that gap of Chessie’s and Towers’, in that it goes off on a little adventure (with a decent drop into a tunnel) but isn’t too long a ride time. However since it actually goes off into the woodland and interacts with the Log Flume next door, it gets a lot of points on that front.




    Next door was the aforementioned Log Flume that interacts with the Mine Train. With just a singular drop it was rather short, a basic figure of 8 layout I think actually, however with an extended amount of interaction with the Mine Train it improves the meander around somewhat. Certainly a sign of a ride built from a park slowly building its reputation, and as the park’s only real water ride it’s one of the flaws the park has. Hopefully they plan to rectify this soon.


    Next up was our first non-Mack ride, Grizzli, a Zamperla Disko Coaster, which was as standard as the rest of them are. However it was cool to finally ride the one that appears in practically all of Zamperla’s advertising of the ride, and it was also rather well themed (apart from the clash of shed).



    We started to head further into the park, and chanced upon The Travels of Jacques Cartier, which was a non-spinning boat variant of Seastorm. It made up for this by having decent animatronics in the middle of the ride and being surprisingly intense.


    Further in and we found a ride many of us were anticipating, Air Meeting, a Gerstlauer Sky Fly. These are essentially an intense version of the old Flying Scooters, and are fantastic if you want a solid work-out, lots of confined spinning, and enjoying physics. The seats rotate based on the position of the wings and your own momentum, it’s a rather difficult method to describe and there certainly is a knack to doing it, just got to get it right, because once you lose the momentum mid-ride, you never get it back.
    I wouldn’t mind seeing one in the UK, but the throughput would be an immense issue.


    Themed staff and stadium announcers



    Next up was the Space Experience, located in the 50s area of the park. So naturally, it was some good old fashioned cheesy space times, essentially it was EuroSat light. It was rather good fun, especially in the back row which promoted the tight turns and decent near misses with the scenery, although the change from pounding techno music in the queue and exit to classical was a bit curious to say the least.





    After this there was a toilet break, which I took the time to watch the construction taking place around Alpina Blitz. Again that EU Law of “Rides cannot be completed on time, but can run later in the day”.




    As I was watching, a man came up to me and asked if I was John. This was a result of John getting in contact with the park prior to our arrival and asking if he could chat to anyone about Alpina Blitz and the park in general. He had received an email the night before asking if we were still visiting and Rodolphe had clearly developed a goon sense having worked at the park (and Madame Tussauds and Pleasurewood Hills), having noticed people talking not only in English but in possession of a Walibi hoodie. Needless to say John’s reaction when he vacated the toilet was quite amusing.
    Rodolphe explained he’d had a busy morning doing stuff for a kids TV show, so needed a drink, promptly treating us all to something as well. We had a good natter amongst ourselves over our drinks before he suggested he take us on a mini backstage tour of the park. What kind of goons would we be to turn down such a chance? So off we went.




    Even their engineers are goons
    Having seen the entirety of the backstage (including the bakery, locker room and a very teasing Alpina Blitz sign they didn’t need anymore and would obviously resulted in a fight to the death over if my Peugeot had been alive), we decided that as most of the rides were closed for lunch (a system they use for very dead days, like this day was), we would also do that. And once again we were treated to a local delicacy which can be described as pork bolognaise, which was rather good and certainly in the upper limits of theme park food.

    After more tales of Rodolphe’s exploits at IAAPA and EAS, we decided that it was time for Alpina Blitz. After finding out the various reasonings as to why Nigloland went with Mack over Intamin (cheaper to build (ride alone costs €4.5m), great working relationship, better trains/restraints and many more), we were all pretty excited to ride it, if only to compare it to the Intamin version.



    Of course, as we were Rodolphe’s guests in the park, we went via the exit and stood on the offload platform as the ride was going around. Eventually the back two rows were held off and we were on.
    The first drop and turn are a fantastic start to this ride, and any qualms people had of it losing speed throughout due to the high second hill can be discarded as rather unfounded. I was greying out everytime on the first turn, which arguably makes it more intense than Piraten, and the second hill when sitting in the front involves a rather special bit of ejector due to the transition. The rest of the ride is filled with airtime of both the floater and tonnes more ejector variety, and I can but hope our reactions as we returned to the station made Rodolphe very happy indeed.



    We were allowed to fill up some empty seats (the park really was empty), before being allowed to use the bridge of randomness to access the front row. It’s just as good if not slightly better than the back purely for the second hill turn.
    Later on that night we found that the Mitch Hawker polls had come out, with Kawasemi 7th and Piraten 12th. If these are relatively accurate depictions (though why the Mega-Lite clones are separate I have no idea), then Alpina Blitz is quite clearly superior then Piraten at least. The Mack trains take a rather good layout (with some changes it must be said, it’s as much of a clone as Cinecitta World’s 10 looper is a clone of Colossus) and make it something even better. This ride alone makes me believe that Helix could easily be Europe’s best coaster, and hopefully with lots of parks visiting Nigloland to ride Alpina, we’ll be seeing plenty of these in the near future. Which can only be a good thing.



    After that, Peter enquired if we could have a nosey at the park’s hotel, a small 32 room affair but with 4 stars. So off we went. It looks rather unassuming (or bland) from the outside, however inside is a different matter. Beautifully themed from the bar to the restaurant, and the rooms are pretty decent as well, we all liked it so much that when we inevitably return to the park we’ll be booking a stay in the hotel for certain.

    It kinda shows the difference that a good family run park can provide compared to a corporation run park, as the attention to detail not just in the hotel but also throughout the park (themed staff uniforms, etc) with a focus on providing a great experience with a long term plan over monetary gain in the short term. Nigloland really does tick all the boxes brilliantly.
    Back in the park, we decided it would be a good time to grab the rest of the coasters as they were all nearby. Starting with La Chenille, another Wacky Worm, before Schlitt Express, a Mack Wild Mouse which was a lot better than Bakken’s equivalent (probably because it wasn’t at Bakken), and finally Bobsleigh, a smaller version of Black Hole which was quite heavily themed it must be said. The two major coasters were both very enjoyable and themed to a very good standard, with the Bobsleigh standing out as looking rather brand new for something rather old, upkeep eh?




    After Bobsleigh, Rodolphe showed us the hydraulic room for the Chairswings. Which on the inside are nothing out of the ordinary, however the theming effort put into the outside is something I’ve only really seen at Europa Park in the pump rooms for Atlantica. The fact that the piping linking the shed and ride together is buried under themed rail and mining cars is that next level set of detailing that sets great parks apart from good parks. To quote Rodolphe “Theming, theming, theming”, and he’s damn right.



    After another drink we headed back onto Space Experience, where Rodolphe went off and got the lights turned on for us. It was quite cool to see the level of detail hidden amongst the theming that is dotted around the building. We then had another quick go on Air Meeting, where I did a couple of spins and thought better of it.



    Rodolphe then urged us to do “their Zufari”, in Africa Cruise, which is basically Jungle Cruise on a budget. However the home-made rocks looked really good, and the commentary of such issues on the ride like “we need more greenery to hide the mechanics” and “I was told we wouldn’t be able to see the concrete” showed a real honesty and enthusiasm about the park, which seemed to flow through the entire place. Very refreshing indeed.





    After this we ventured into the Haunted Mansion, which was practically Disney-light. You do have to love a good old-fashioned Disney knock-off, although the independent spinning car and the lighting of the load vehicle was pretty awesome it must be said. Give this ride an upgrade with brand new effects/animatronics and it’d be even better!


    After this we headed over to the King of Mississippi riverboat, where Rodolphe had to leave us to do some real work (rather than show some dodgy English folk the park), so we went around without him. It was quite nice really; nothing too special around it, but one of those rides filed under “for a long sit-down”.




    With the rides closing shortly we decided it was time to whore Alpina Blitz a bit, with various rows experienced and the last ride of the day. It truly is a fantastic ride and hopefully we’ll see a lot more of them in the future, especially for a base price of €4.5 million, it’s SUCH a bargain! We met up with Rodolphe at the hotel for a quick drink but unfortunately dinner in the hotel (which he invited us to) had to be cut off as Peter had clearly ridden Alpina Blitz too many times in the heat of the day (turns out you CAN have too much of a good thing). So we bid farewell and promised that we would return to the park in the future.






    And that we shall, because even without Rodolphe’s tour of the place we would have loved it anyway. The park itself is presented well, with lots of rides dotted about with some immense theming (I fell in love with the Tractor ride as an example), and just an overall look and atmosphere to the place that few parks can achieve. Alpina Blitz is a brilliant landmark coaster for them to be put on the map in the wider world of the industry, and hopefully that will kick-start them into pushing for a lot more guests not only this year but in the years to come.
    I send a lot of thanks to Rodolphe as well for giving us an even more fantastic day and really going above and beyond the levels of park hospitality for us, the sort of stuff that in my experience is only reserved for those huge groups who pay for it, rather than 4 random people. His tales and honest opinions on the industry, the park and his own experiences and future were both fascinating and insightful throughout the day. And his enthusiasm about the park (and his career in general) certainly rubbed off on us.
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  22. Benin
    Day 1 – Parc Saint Paul
    A rather early morning of 3am was the choice made to venture to a selection of rather un-known French parks, and after a McDonald’s service station breakfast and a quick jaunt on the Eurotunnel we were firing down the French motorway with not a care in the world.
    Unfortunately, disaster would strike us. We began to hear noises from the car, and decided to pull over on the hard shoulder to investigate. After some initial checks, we agreed to move the car forward slightly to see if there was truly something wrong, and it refused to start up.


    Many calls were made and eventually a mechanic (who of course, spoke no English) turned up, and made that classic intake of breath noise that all mechanics do that tend to signify that the car/vehicle is completely buggered.

    We were taken to a nearby garage, and made the decision that €2000 for a new gearbox was not worth the money at all, so we would leave the car forever in France, grab a hire car and continue with our adventure post-haste. The garage were very helpful to us especially given the language barrier, however Demi Lovato’s version of “Let It Go” was not particularly appreciated by myself.
    We got a taxi to a hire car place and after many a hasty phone call from the guy working there we were eventually given a Volkswagen UP! So after a delay of about two hours we continued on our adventure to Parc Saint Paul.




    Upon arrival, our expectations of the place were not high, especially as their new Vekoma Junior coaster was being spiteful and not open. Nevertheless we headed to our first coaster of the trip, a Wacky Worm. Joyous! This one however was very well themed, with lots of statues, a very giant apple and even astroturf. Of course, it was still a Wacky Worm.



    Next up in the actual coaster department was the Wild Train, my first Pax coaster (who aren’t exactly known for being good). And the slight launch out the station worried us greatly as to how awful this ride might be, so to say it exceeded all possible expectations would be rather accurate. It was certainly wild, with a fair amount of airtime and reasonable Gs about, with a hint of re-rideability, which is always a bonus in my book.




    We meandered further into the park, and decided the spinny mouse could be done later because it had an awful queue (which didn’t get any better unfortunately) and went onto the next Pax coaster, Formule 1. Unsurprisingly, it’s themed to Formula 1, with the different cars based off different manufacturers, and a scary statue of Schumacher at the entrance. It’s also a slight rip-off of the Gerstlauer Bobsleds, with a much steeper lift and a more insane experience, with over-banked turns being the main culprit of this. Again it was rather enjoyable ride, if slightly terrifying.





    We wandered a bit further into the park, discovering that it wasn’t all quite run-down as we expected it to look within. There was a fair amount of woodland, lakes and even some buildings taken straight out of Lightwater Valley. It’s very family set with more for the kids, but we saw tonnes of BBQ sets for people to come and cook their own food, and it did have a rather lovely atmosphere.



    Back to the rides, Mini Mouse Cartoon was next, which is a Zamperla Mini Mouse or something. It makes a Wacky Worm look interesting that’s all I know. +1


    Next door to that was Telepherique, which was by far the most amazing thing ever created by a French person. It’s a platform led zip line, only in (such a) cred format. It involves a lot of spinning, swinging and swearing (and even crashing in some cases, like with me). Part of that old “Never in the UK” ideal, I thought it was brilliant, but the others not so much.






    We headed back to the Souris Verte Spinning Wild Mouse of boredom, having endured the queue of burdenous times. I’m so bored of these now it’s not true. Again, +1

    We then decided to go and see the Tiger show, to which those who visited Bagatelle and seen their Lion show had “I have seen things” moments as a result. However only two of the tigers looked like they wanted to eat the fat French man who was flicking them with a whip. Fortunately there was no maiming of the fat French man (or unfortunately, dependant on opinion of such animal shows), so we were able to continue on our journey via a Giant Slide.




    As John and Peter did the horror house thingy, we meandered around the House of Mirrors, which wasn’t very entertaining. After they returned, we went into the 3D Walkthrough, which was actually quite epic and looked tonnes better than Hocus Pocus Hall even did. We then marvelled at the themed bins and doors as we had some ice cream.




    We had another go on the Formula 1 coaster, before me and John did the Drop Tower of Forever – Extreme Edition, which decided it would go from slow to fast to slow again during the trip up the tower, which was equally hilarious and burdenous. I don’t think my laughter was appreciated by the randomer next to us though who was unsure about the whole thing. When it did get to the top, the drop was instantaneous, so it was all a bit weird. Good though. We finished this with another go on the Wild Train before heading off for a long drive down to our hotel, but not before a quick character photo!
    Overall, the park exceeded our (admittedly lower than low) expectations of it. It’s very much like Lightwater (but tinier), and whilst it had a fair amount of rides dumped in places, they did make an attempt to make them look really nice. Hopefully the park can continue on a positive trajectory in the future, because we certainly enjoyed ourselves.

  23. Benin
    Day 3
    The final day on park started with a character breakfast, as Pardoes did lots of interaction at an extremely peaceful level never seen at Disney. Once again our first port of call was Vogel Rok with 2 straight goes on the front before having to move back. Burdenous people!


    And again like the day before, Joris was our next venture. We got there slightly before it was due to open, so I watched the engineers play around with the sensors on Flying Dutchman. Upon opening we got 4 goes, including front and back seat action. It’s always good when rides like this run extremely well first thing in the morning, and when there’s no queue whatsoever, even on 1 train operation.






    Bob had a fair queue so Single Rider was called upon this time, and resulted in minimal (read, none) waiting. Was still rather enjoyable if a bit awkward being slammed into a random Dutch person on some of the corners. Took some pictures of the Pirana refurb that’s currently taking place as well, it feels like being at Chessie.





    Fata Morgana was next, I actually took photos this time round instead of being gobsmacked; here they are.










    We then wandered the park aimlessly for a bit, taking in another Puppet Show before another go on Carnival Festival before grabbing another hotdog and hat combo and watching yet another Jokie Show.

    Straight out of RCT Coffee Shop!

    We walked into the Museum again to have another look, and got given free badges for it, yay! Back in the Fairy area, it was time for more Dreamflight and Villa Volta. Because why not? The Train had just come in so we decided to hop on for a ride.






    Much safety









    It was then of course time for MORE Pancakes. Much further nomming was had, and we purchased some pancake mix to sneak past customs on the way home, and with Shrove Tuesday next month!


    We once again rode Carnival Festival and watched the Jokie Show, before one final go on Vogel Rok of the holiday. Bless it. Next were the Gondolettas, which are the fastest Tow Boats I’ve ever seen, yet still take 20 minutes to go around the huge lake.








    Heading into an area we had barely visited, it was time to mop up the rest of the unridden rides, starting with the Vintage Cars, which were long but nowhere near as good as Asterix’s, the Pile of Ship Halve Maen and it’s 14 rows of WHY were next, which was pretty awesome. Then the final piece of the puzzle was the weird cousin of Seastorm, Moby idiot, which doesn’t go backwards and just goes around in circles at walking pace. Very weird.






    It was time for the final rides, and what better option to have fulfil this than Joris? A ride on each side for the final determination of which was ‘better’ (the winner of which was Water), but both are winners, as they’re both good. Now when will someone in the UK build a GCI?








    After Joris, we walked back to the entrance, encountering some cats and buying some sugary as hell doughnuts before settling to watch Aquanura one last time.




















    Upon which it was back to the hotel room to rest before heading home.
    Efteling is a truly fantastic park. Whilst it may not have a giant assorted of rides, and half of the park is taken up by landscaping or a Fairytale Forest of Forever, it fills itself with charm and colour throughout. And the rides that do exist on the park are all good at the minimum, which is rare for a park to have no truly bad rides (although Carousel land confused me greatly, why have 3?). The staff were all very pleasant and the characters very interactive. The hotel is rather basic in the rooms but even then have little details dotted in them.
    I could just say it’s my favourite park because of the Pancake Kitchen (which may have helped my opinion formation), but there’s so much more to the park than that. The Disney quality dark rides and the ‘dead’ areas allow you to relax across your day (though I’m sure the full cattlepens would combat this feeling), and with the Fairytale Forest it has one of the most well designed and picturesque areas in a theme park.
    A truly good theme park is one that doesn’t feel like a theme park. And Efteling fits that bill to a tee.

  24. Benin
    Day 4a – Carlsberg Brewery
    Today was a day split between culture (or as cultured as you can get when visiting a Brewery) and coasters. As Bakken didn’t open until 2pm (closing at 11pm), during my research of things to do in Copenhagen I came across the Carlsberg Brewery Tour, and needless to say it didn’t take much convincing of people to partake in the 70DKK tour.
    In order to get there however, we had to brave the local transport. As we right by the train station this was simple, and we walked over, grabbed our tickets to the next station (a massive TWO stops from Copenhagen central) and we were off.





    A short 10/15 minute walk from the station was next, and it doesn’t look great as you go along, due to massive construction and then walking through an industrial park to get there. However, shortly before 10am, we arrived.





    We each paid our entrance fee (N.B. the 70DKK also gets you two drinks of alcoholic or non-alcoholic tastes) and we set on our quick tour of the old brewery. It was relatively interesting, mostly focusing on how Carlsberg grew up into the internationally recognised brand it is today, and had some statues, vehicles and the world’s largest collection of beer to look at.












    So… Much… Beer…

    We ventured into the new brewery building which unfortunately wasn’t in operation when we were there, but there were some smell testers and Table Football, which Mark and Holly eventually won after a very tense and nervy finish of next goal wins.







    Another drink followed and that was that. It’s a small place granted, but easy to get to and for Denmark, cheap, especially when you consider how much a pint of something costs in general. I would recommend it as a visit if you have time and a vested interest in alcohol.

  25. Benin
    Day 2
    The day started with turning on the TV and watching the Making of Documentary Efteling did for Joris, because it’s never too early to be a goon. After some breakfast it was time to join the queue of people waiting for ERT on the poorly laid-out paving slabs.




    You had one job!
    Eventually let in, we headed straight to Vogel Rok for some back row times, and since it was completely empty, hopped on again further up the train because we could.
    We quickly moved on as it was nearly opening time towards Joris, waving at the normal guests as we passed.



    Themed vending machine
    We were greeted by the extended queue being open and 2 train operation. Even though they were only loading one, it’s amazing how so many parks plan ahead for busier days by having both trains on and ready to go, rather than adding more trains later in the middle of the day. Oh well, a front row ride on each side and a more edging of preference towards the Water side.








    A quick go on Python followed before heading over towards Spookslot, and it’s incredibly dark queue of darkness. This show attraction is similar to Twister and features a lot of animatronics and pepper ghosts dancing along to Danse Macabre (or, the theme to Johnathon Creek), which was pretty cool tbh. The quality of the huge set was again to an excellently high standard too.




    Next up as it wasn’t as windy as the day before was Pagode, my first Flying Island. Certainly not the most interesting of attractions, but it provided a good view of the local woodland and the park as a whole.








    It was lunch time, and that meant finding a Unox stand. Why? Because WINTER HATS OF AMAZING WARMTH!

    Left-overs from their Winter event, €3.50 got you a hotdog and hat, whilst €4.50 got you a large soup and hat. Excellent value and an excellent idea, as LOTS of people were wearing these things.
    We watched the Jokie Show by Carnival Festival which was weird, and featured more slightly racist times, before heading towards our next destination via a nice Diorama mini train room.




    And now it was time for the Fairytale Forest of Forever. Efteling’s main attraction, being a walk through the woods with several set-ups of various fairytale stories based off Anton Pieck’s drawings. We spent 2.5 hours in this one area, as there’s plenty of show scenes and interesting animatronics to keep you wandering through. Favourites included the infamous pooping Donkey, the Indian Waterlilies and the Chinese Nightingale. Again, the high quality and upkeep of these things were there for all to see, especially for things mostly exposed to the elements. There was even a proper show in the middle of it all which still had a Christmas theme and unfortunate Dragon puppet placement.


    Certainly this is the reason why Efteling is so popular in its country, not because of the rides, because of how they have created an area accessible to every age-range available that can be enjoyed by all. I’ll let the pictures speak for it.





    Dancing red shoes



    Speaking Parrot that would record loud children








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    Pooping Donkey!

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    50 cents gets you this out of the Donkey
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    We took so long in getting out that the Puppet show had moved to outside the entrance/exit, so we watched that before heading back to awesome dark ride land, riding both Villa Volta and Dreamflight again.
    Wandering back to Carnival Festival we caught the Jokie Show again, and then was time for the racist Teacups in Monsieur Cannibale.
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    2 more rides on Joris before it was Pancake time again!
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    We then legged it to Aquanura, and I took some pics of it this time.
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    And that was Day 2. The Fairytale Forest does sum up Efteling in several ways. The beauty and presentation of it, with fantastic upkeep and updates to it on a constant basis keep the interest of guests of all ages. Tagging in a free hat with food purchases because its winter is also another perk that’s worthy of mention, especially when they don’t have to do it.
    After this point, it had certainly shot up to the top of my favourite park list ever.
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