Benin

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...

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...