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.

The loss of the free maze being replaced by a Scarezone (or as I like to think of them, Scaremazes in the light by UK spec) is an absolute blow it must be said... I find it interesting how Scarefest is being cut to pieces budget wise, perhaps Thorpe's performance this year is a big indicator as to why they're going all out for Fright Nights... But Thorpe for all the flashy movie stuff last year still couldn't provide an atmosphere outside of the mazes... Whilst the roaming actors (mostly the Director character, as the You're Next people were very dull) added something, it was sheer dumb luck if you actually encountered them over the day if you were actually doing stuff... I'm sure when Studio 13 opens we'll find out how similar it is to Asylum... The PR description for it is quite amusing though, they always are for scare events cos it's always the same stuff from every park... Never heard of the American author... It would be disappointing to just have more "RAR I'M AN ANGRY SERIAL KILLER" roamers though... Still think that the UK parks still have much to learn though in creating a truly big Halloween style event mind, my visit to Walibi last year pretty much had the atmosphere, numerous scaremazes and zones with some family aimed stuff as well...

The New Orleans Batman relocation wasn't really out of choice though it must be said...

Whether it be via modification or removal, it'll be better than it existing in the current format... Stand-Up coasters are hideous...

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.

Our seasons are still better than every single American park that doesn't open all year around... It's always amusing to see Americans going "OMG new season starts tomorrow!!11" in May...

Didn't Towers' pass have a bit more bonus Fastrack thrown in though?

IMAScore > Midnight Syndicate Besides, since it's not going to be Asylum anymore, why should they have the same music? They need to make the new one it's own identity, so new music should really be a given...

What's the betting that the package is for one visit and one go on all the mazes? That package will probably be the decider for MAP holders, especially Premium, since that's the only available benefit...

Can visit for all 16 nights and you get a (from wording, it was singular) Fastrack package... Not great value unless you visit at least half the amount of days the event is actually on... Defo not worthwhile for a Premium holder since the only real benefit is the Fastrack...

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.

Wouldn't say a maze that has the theme of "you're in a snuff film" isnt particularly imaginative nor unique... Must have some form of filming element so you can buy a DVD of your experience...

If the visiting reason is night rides then Towers does win though...

Because it's the worst Wing-Rider (primarily because it bounces throughout the entire course in every row/side/seat), is pretty rubbish from a theming aspect as a result the cool looking layout is just made pretty redundant... Also it's so, so slow and cumbersome to boot... Plus Daemonen is so cute and adorable

Here's the definitive list of all the European B&Ms you've all been waiting for! 1 - Nemesis 2 - Katun 3 - Oz'Iris 4 - Shambhala 5 - Dragon Khan 6 - Oblivion 7 - Raptor 8 - Silver Star 9 - Superman la Atraccion de Acero 10 - Batman La Fuga 11 - Air 12 - Krake 13 - Swarm 14 - Black Mamba 15 - Nemesis Inferno 16 - Monster 17 - Daemonen 18 - Flug der Damonen Quite amusing how I've rated half of the B&M Inverts at the top AND the bottom of the list, with only the Demon themed rides being dead last... Of course, just being bottom of the B&M list doesn't mean the coaster is bad...

According to Towers Street the ERT lineup for the rest of the season (discounting Scarefest dates) will be: Nemesis Air Blade RMT CBeebies Land Needs more Mutiny Bay tbh...

The MAP is fine for value (as long as you pay for the premium of course)... The parks are where the actual value for money fall utterly flat...

Bobbhan was as bouncy/rattly as Flug was... Just one of those ride types that just seem to be poor on a consistent basis (like B&M Stand-Ups)... No Front Row Queue on Flug, presumably due to the SRQ and Q-Bot (which you get given a card for, because some people try to queue-jump at that point for no reason then get denied in an amusing fashion) now existing instead... Another logical sense of organisation that exists only in European Wing-Riders...

In an ideal world both Thorpe and Towers wouldn't be any paid extra in regards to mazes or whether you're a MAP holder... It does seem however that all the truly best rated Horror events have the extra ticket situation, although that's primarily because they treat the event completely separate from a normal day, akin to how Thorpe do Summer Nights... Also the majority of people going to those events just go for the event rather than the day at the park, presumably helped by the ridiculously long opening hours they get given as a bonus... If Thorpe could produce an event worthy of a £10 fee for MAP holders in a similar vein to Disney/Universal/etc (DLP's event is €30 this year), then it would be worthwhile... However that would involve a lot more effort on the park-wide aspect as opposed to just focusing on the mazes...

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.

Just wait till they put a fence in front of the rockwork

Tully's Farm is probably the biggest one in the country... Plenty of non parks are developing scare attractions for Halloween now...

Don't want to pay the MAP fee, don't visit... Don't want to buy an extra pass, don't do it... That's my plan at least, especially given I don't care about the mazes in the slightest and the only park that really seems to bother anymore is Chessie...

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...