Benin

http://www.altontowers.com/contact-us/

It's ALMOST as if the video is just a quick visual representation of the ride rather than real life...

Ring the switchboard and ask to be put through to someone... Emails can be ignored/forgotten... A phone call cannot be...

I can't help but feel that opening a ride late, taking lots of time to load/send it and close it briefly for checks every day does not consitute as running a ride 'well'...

I don't see the point personally... Why do you need virtual reality on a ride when the ride in question exists? I'd rather experience the ride proper instead of a fake environment/imagery whilst wearing a large visor...

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.

Depends if they've realised that the term 'unique' doesn't mean 'take an idea already used by a smaller independent scare event' don't it?

Wasn't the incident last year only really escalated cos Chessie took so long to sort it out someone managed to phone the fire brigade? Or did I imagine that...

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).

Europa Park can get 3 trains ready for Blue Fire for 8:30am, why can't Thorpe expand their budget to ensure that their guests can have full capacity rides first thing in the morning?

Insane was really, really awful... I wouldn't hold my breath on a S&S version being any better unless it actually holds you tightly in and reduces bodily movement...

Ermmmmmmmm, I think many people will beg to differ on that statement...

The constant closure reminders remind me of when Towers started up ridetimes and all we had was constant "lol Nemesis is down for 5 minutes" posts... A ride being closed for more than half a day is news, not half a hour...

Six Flags are seemingly trying to out-generic Cedar Fair then... Am glad sometimes that we are in Europe, if only for the majority of parks having some unique aspects rather than being cookie cutters...

Always hard to compare rough wooden coasters to steel ones, but even so, Mean Streak, Coaster Express and Bandit make even Baco look smooth...

If this is the case, perhaps Thorpe needs to look into improving the engineer situation to ensure that they can begin the day suitably prepared for the crowds, instead of having to delay queues as they do currently...

American Adventure - Can it be saved?

Well, this was certainly the unexpected result of the RMC reboot... Great concept it must be said, even though I'm not a fan of the dullness of Six Flags' choices of additions recently...

Yep, such a waste to have a wonderfully themed station building, silly Europa...

I'm 100% sure if you visited any other park in the world which had a ride closed at the start of the day and was testing there would be a queue developing for it... Definitely not just a British trend to queue outside closed rides in the hope it'll open soon...

*cough*stationexterior*cough* Some form of object/building in the Staffs Knot pit wouldn't have gone amiss, but Smiler's layout doesn't really lend itself to having lots of theming elements dotted around... The station building is the issue, rather than the ride, theming wise...

I think that's what needs to be considered, currently, the scheme is operating with BOTH the normal standby queue AND Fastrack in operation... As a result, those who are using it get to have Fastrack for free as has been mentioned, being able to skip 45 minute queues for free will of course create some bias towards the scheme's point and overall existance... As a result, the next trial needs to follow the conditions that are planned to be set out and not involve the standby queue existing at all... Only then can we truly judge the success of this scheme...

Wouldn't say it's lazy, as the product certainly wasn't selling (as evidenced by the two that were built worldwide) and both of them were extremely unreliable... S&S's decision to essentially cancel any further work with the Sky Swat project makes a lot of sense from the business perspective...

S&S still exist and trade, they just completely gave up on producing parts for the Sky Swat because it was a burden on their resources...