Benin

Day 2 – Liseberg So this was what the trip was all about. Liseberg, and by extension, Helix. Having been driven past the park by our airport bus and seeing everything for the first time is amazing. The design of Helix damn near perfect with its location and pops away from the terrain, but more on that later. As it was the first official day of the meet, we all arrived outside the main entrance to the park, said our hellos and introductions as we waited for the management to come pick us up for the ERT on Helix. We were taken through the park away from the plebs towards the back entrance of the Helix/Atmosfear building, and left to our own devices until 11. The ERT was shared with other people (I think hotel guests, but never found out), but none the less with 3 trains running at a decent efficiency, there was no real queue to speak off aside from at the airgates themselves. 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. 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. Long story short, the ride is fantastic. I adored it from the word go (many were rather meh towards it after the ERT), and it’s straight into the top 10. It does all the things it does well, including the airtime hills and inversions, it has good pacing, it has a lovely style. It is a coaster made by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts. And Liseberg and Mack both deserve applause for it. After 3 goes during the ERT, the park had opened and we received our wristbands for the day before heading off to our next destination, Balder. I’m not a fan of Colossos at Heide Park, I found the ride dull and lacking a soul 3 odd years ago, so I wasn’t particularly excited for Balder like many were around me. However I found myself pleasantly surprised from the experience. Perhaps it was because I thought the layout was akin to an old style Scenic Railway, with airtime hills going in and out of tunnels, or just because it was full of airtime. The corners are dull as though, which to me is what prevents it from being a real top ride in itself, there were also others who were not enamoured with the ride at all, so it certainly seems to have a divide about it. It also has a theme regarding the local football team, who play in red and blue, like all the best football teams in the world do. Bonus point there for random theme that needs to be explained but is randomly hilarious. Right next door to Balder is Kanonen, the tiniest Intamin Accelerator you ever did see (unless you’ve been to Italy). It includes a launch into brakes/BROMS, a top hat it barely makes it over, painful Intamin style turns and the inspiration for Blue Fire’s finale inline. It seems a strange addition to the park, as it’s quite clearly been plonked into available space with no real rhyme nor reason, being located on top of a building over dull lifeless concrete. It was rubbish. Slow, dull, painful turns. Stupid Intamin. After Kanonenenenenenenen, there was call for the Rapids, but they were busy so some people went to the scare attraction. The rest who didn’t had drink/ice cream/dancing times in the pavilion. There were also photographic opportunities to be had to show how gorgeous Helix is. After all had returned we headed into the kid’s area for the two coasters there. First up was Rabalder, which had an awesome Roomba thing that mowed the lawn for it, as well as the fabled “Tree of Silence” in the queueline. The ride itself was pretty plain and uninteresting, although the ride ops were pretty fab and interactive with everyone on the ride. There was also a bucket of water dripping over the station entrance which was more burdenous than praised. Next door was Stampbanen, an even SMALLER kids coaster which did even less. It was however well themed and had comfy seats (indeed, most Swedish kids creds seem to have wider trains to accommodate two adults/goons, must be deliberate). We passed the time in the queue watching the nearby show and having character times. Lunchtime was called, so after trudging through the heaving park trying to find somewhere we headed back up the hill to take Helix based photos. Meeting back up with the group, some elected for more Helix times whilst others went on Atmosfear, the non-rotating Gyro Drop Tower. It was dull for me as I find the taller towers just lack much in the way of thrills after the initial drop, and I’m not scared of heights. The lack of rotation was also disappointing to me. Queue was themed quite nicely though and you could watch people’s reactions whilst queuing, which is ALWAYS entertaining. After that we ventured back down the mountain towards Lisebergbanen. The queue moved quickly but alas, not quickly enough, as when we reached the station the heavens open and a fierce storm raged. This closed everything major and we were left to evacuate down a fire exit into a game stall. Conor managed to win a massive box of KEX chocolate which was then used as shelter from the rain. We eventually moved out towards the Fairy Tale Castle attraction. It was a cheap European dark ride and included music from Efteling’s Droomvulcht. It made me want to be at Efteling, but we weren’t. After the rains officially stopped we headed back to Lisebergbanen, and got to see some hot transfer track action. The Swedes were bemused by the cheers as the 5th train appeared slowly into circulation, causing the ride op to give a little bow as he finished. The ride itself is excellent fun, as it treks up and down the hill in giant swooping drops and turns. It features some faff before and after the triple helix action and has BROMS. Fab. It was then called that we do Balder again because of the storm. It was done and it was certainly faster, but still had dull corners. Ah well, it was still good though, with wilder airtime than in the morning. Some people opted to do the Rapids at this point, before food was called for and Sue and I played the Balder themed racing game. Sue won and was incredibly proud of this. Many people also did the Log Flume whilst I elected for tat times, though the selection was quite poor it must be said. We started our venture back to Helix for night ride times but were distracted by the Space Shot of Halfway Up. It was silly because it didn’t use the entire tower, which is why they also have another S&S tower ride, because S&S are crap. And so we were to finish our day where it began at Helix. We spent the queue investigating the Helix game app, which is incredibly fab and is incredibly goony. Free to download on Apple and Android devices now! The ride itself was good in the morning, and at night it got even better. It was pushing around the course like tomorrow was not on the horizon, and the overbanked turn drop was fiendishly whippy. It shot Helix above Blue Fire in my top 10 as a result (which I think it might have done anyway, but the night ride confirmed it), and it was just utterly fantastic. The lights along the train provide an even better viewing experience for non-riders, especially given the relatively lack of brighter lights in the surrounding areas where the ride goes (as opposed to Swarm’s brightly lit plaza). Honestly fantastic. If I could I would sit on it all day (and it’s a ride where that is actually doable as well). After some more tat faff it was time to leave, Liseberg is a nice park I’d say; probably prefer Tivoli Gardens to it on a presentation point of view, but it’s still of a very good quality. Helix is an outstanding ride, whilst Balder and Lisebergbanen provide some suitable support to it, with a fantastic kid’s area to boot as well. It perhaps misses a big dark ride out of the mix, but for an inner city park to look as good as it does (the harbour themed area is top tier quality), it doesn’t matter too much. Random night shots because pretty park is pretty. We left the car park to Ride of the Valkyries booming, thoughts of Helix still fresh in our minds. We can only hope that a major company rides it and realises the potential of it further still.

Think Varney has always seemingly be for a wooden coaster being built, but they always hide behind the "Public don't want one" wall whenever it gets brought up... As for a rise in profits, well there should be, considering they keep building things... They've expanded the Mehway market to ridiculous levels in recent years, so one would hope they'd get some form of profit from them (though apparently a 5% odd rise is a poor performance)...

I think at the current time with Margate all the work is being focused on getting the rides they have gathered up to a safe standard of care... No point doing up the area if the rides aren't ready to be put in...

Wonder if you'll be able to ride things at night this year? Must be said, their mazes last year were excellent...

If Saw Alive could be turned into an arena for a waterskiing show, when do they need me to help tear it down?

It's definitely doable I'd say, I really liked Huntik and that was pretty much the same style as Thor but with shooty aspects and animatronics... Thor just had that odd flaw here and there that would be easily fixed (and probably will be at some point)... So I woudn't trust Merlin to build one of the same quality at all... The park though is owned by Parque Reunidos, so perhaps their budget is of a decent size compared to other parks in the region? It is the biggest park in Norway though...

That is one example though, there's not much on that site that also backs up the claim you're making (not that I know what it actually is tbh)... For that Noah Ark place, there's also a few 'traditional' theme parks being built across the world... Hell even Poland opened a new one recently... 'Theme Parks' is quite often a misnomer when used in press situations as well (Harry Potter Theme Park being used a lot when Hogsmeade was being built at Florida)... Themed attractions and Themed parks will both continue to exist as separate entities on the whole...

Drenched apparently had a lift-chain issue (I.e. it snapped)... Think that's a sufficient excuse for it to be closed imo...

It's more the lack of really pushing the theme forward, so we've ended up with a bland concrete exterior and poorly executed explanation to what's going on... The theme itself, is a fantastic original idea, but it's just put forward in a haphazard way...

N.B. The Blog seems to dislike the majority of my pics, so have a pic-heavy topic instead! Day 1 – TusenFryd The hype for this jaunt to Sweden had built to unbelievable levels. A massive group of coaster goons, 3 Swedish parks, with Helix at the forefront of this trip, meant that the flight to Gothenburg went pretty quickly. We start our report in Norway though, as a few of us turned up for the weekend trip early for cultural times (of which there are no photos, but Gothenburg is alright), and Norwegian creds. First thing you do notice about TusenFryd is the location and surrounding area. Its hill-side forest setting gives the park overall a lovely bit of presentation, however in a fair few areas this doesn’t extend to the park internally, which is disappointing (Speed Monster’s area being a real bad example). Up the entrance escalator and straight towards our first ride of the trip, Speed Monster, an Intamin Accelerator that created the Norwegian Loop. We took over the 12 seater train and we were off, with the launch feeling quite weak in comparison to other bigger variants on the Accelerator, the loop was quite decent though, but in typical Intamin fashion as soon as it did any form of tight transitional turns (2 in a row as well </3) the restraints ruin everything. A ride of two halves really, as the start until the first twisty hill is quite good and enjoyable. But then it all goes to pot. Shame really. Minimal theming is, minimal We then headed further into the park to find our next coaster, the world’s smallest one in fact, Den aller minste. Coaster enthusiasts generally have little shame in getting kid’s creds, and usually ones of this size generally frown upon adults riding without kids. Indeed, the man operating it took one look at our group and clearly knew why we were here; his exasperation wasn’t hidden in the slightest. At least the seats were comfy and spacious, a rare thing amongst kids creds. There’s little else to say about a ride which is literally a flat oval. Up next was Thundercoaster, the first wooden coaster of the trip, and it was to be a Vekoma. Yay? Actually I did like Loup-Garou back at Walibi so this one being slighty bigger and using the terrain slightly more intrigued me. The burdenously long queue that we walked through did not impress me though (I.e. no shortcuts </3). It’s certainly a ride that when you come off you know you’ve been on one. Which might be a bad thing for some people; it was certainly flinging itself around the track in a wild manner. I found it neither awful nor amazing really, just a reasonably decent ride in the end of it all, with some good airtime about, with the irony that the recently retracked section was probably the roughest part of it all. https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/q71/s720x720/10417707_10154455377210220_4140049616716512199_n.jpg?oh=6e867f81457b3371fddc86f9e81621e5&oe=54560BFA[/img] Cows on a cred! There was a bit of faff as the area at the bottom of the giant hill where the Supersplash and Thor’s Hammer are located (think Legoland Windsor style) opened at 12. We eventually headed down the long walk which was awful due to the weather, and headed straight into the cave of Thor’s Hammer. This was probably the second ride I was most excited about on this trip. A dark ride themed to Norse mythology using a cheap version of the Spiderman ride system set in an actual cave (no sheds here). The theming within the ride is gloriously beautiful, unfortunately not everything comes up to that same high standard they set themselves. It was really, a disappointment to me and others who were hyped for it, for the ride has a few small flaws that prevent it from being amazing. This are namely down to broken screens; a lack of urgency from the speed of the ride car; a lack of ‘extra’ effects (such as water sprays/heaters) and the odd bit of non-sensical positioning from the car (Why are we still falling on the screen before continuing? Why are we flying?). This was probably the biggest shame of the weekend. Sue was excited because there were rocks Next door to Bore’s Hammer was Supersplash, which I think was actually the first Mack Supersplash in the world, hence why it doesn’t have any turntables or funky lifts or stuff. I also think it basically has the whole “if you’ve ridden one, you’ve ridden them all”, it’s still fun though, but not really reaching the spectactular. We then broke for some lunch, before heading back towards the entrance to pick up another stray goon. I watched a Spongebob themed show at this point, which made zero sense to me, having neither watched the show in the first place and it also being in Norwegian. We rode Speed Monster again which was still yay to meh in 10 seconds, before popping over to Loopen, an old Vekoma Tornado (I just looked it up, apparently 3 were built). It had a curved station, of which there need to be more of them because reasons, and the ride itself was mercifully short, though also one of the more smoother classic Vekomas in the world. One and done. The heat of the day was getting to all of us, so the Toomerstupet was done. It was a singular drop Log Flume with mincy bit in the trees prior to the drop, and one boat got stuck in the dual loading station of random necessity. Was certainly required though. We started the long walk up the main hill (more hills than Towers this park) and diverted at the SpinSpider, a MASSIVE Frisbee ride that has a Danish cousin at Bon-Bon Land. It was (like Bon-Bon’s) a brilliant ride, where the ridiculous height prevents a large level of intensity from being built up, and it just becomes completely enjoyable. At the top of the hill, antics were had, as was a character photo! We then continued to the Western themed area to hit up the last coaster, Western Expressen, which had been moved from Mirabilandia in Italy a few years back for some reason. It was meh and unexciting. We headed BACK UP the hill and rode Space Shot, their S&S Launch Tower which was ok. Some people did SpinSpider again on the way back down the hill before we went through the Eventyrstien kids playground, which helped us get back to where we wanted to go in a much more enjoyable (and shaded) fashion. We found ourselves back at Thor’s Hammer so a few of us re-rode it, where it still suffered from the same issues as earlier. We then went back to Thundercoaster, which was running a bit rougher than it was earlier in the morning, many of the group did not approve of this factor in the ride either, but it didn’t bother me too much. MEATBALLS! Some people wanted to ride Nightmare, which was an apparently better version of Vengeance with a long wait in a hot pre-show room. Some of us didn’t, and we discovered a brilliant way of cooling down in the weather. Finally Speed Monster was done once more, and we headed back to our cars for the long drive back to Gothenburg. Overall TusenFryd was a mixed bag of a park. It had an ok line-up of attractions, some awful ones, some mediocre areas in amongst the woodlands and LOTS of hills. I wouldn’t necessarily be running back desperately to the park it must be said, although that might be an opinion spoilt by other rides that were done later on the weekend. Good, but not great really, and some areas of the park need a LOT of work done on them.

A well presented park would get more people willing to return though... Parks should be ALL about the presentation/look/state of the park... A run-down looking park with rust, peeling paint and poor design choices won't get people directly coming back to it...

Dreamland is also a completely different kettle of fish... Especially given it's 'falter' was mostly down to dodgy businessmen... Found a pic of the planned Paramount Park for Spain btw: That's a theme park, and is potentially what we in the UK could get... But we might not... Paramount might design a park based upon our crappy normal weather, perhaps even providing a park that is able to open all year around... But we might not get even that...

Well if one cable breaks, all of them need to be checked to ensure none of the others will do the same thing...

The concept art would've resulted in another dull destroyed dystopian ride theme from a Merlin attraction... Whilst Smiler's existing theme is flawed in many ways, I prefer the originality...

I think some people should look towards the Spainish Paramount Park that's also in plans (and stalling fast)... If they did that in the UK version, it would certainly fulfil the traditional theme park stereotype people have...

They do have a base of operations just down the road from Chessie though... Dunno what though, since never go down that way...

I've never seen staff be horrible to kids about being too short, indeed it is arguably one of the worst aspects of being a ride staff member, as you can regularly see the change in excitement to disappointment to utter devestation, especially worse on the close calls... Perhaps a staff member would be horrible to the adults if they've acted in a stupid manner to the idea that their child cannot ride (hell, I've seen one parent physically hit their child after being denied by myself, which shocked me immensely)... Now of course, I've looked onto the forum and noted that seemingly they DID do the right thing and go to GS and get the wristband measurement, but where then denied even with that... That is perhaps the aspect that he should have focused on, rather than the whole "she's done these rides already", which is the most classic ruse played by parents in the whole thing to a staff member when attempting to convince them that the child can clearly go on when they cannot... The way Alvey is known to deal with park issues though is too well-known however, and the way he has presented his arguement is slightly ridiculous... How is height-checking a child a route cause of a "money-grabbing" park? What level of physicality were the park staff using in the whole "pushing her head down" situation? Perhaps that was due to ensuring that the child wasn't on tiptoes or whatever, I don't think a person pushing you down on top of your head can actually make you shorter... He's gone about this complaint completely the wrong way... But as according to someone on TPR, "Well, Robb isn't one to stir up drama when it isn't needed"...

Don't think we're laughing at the child, moreso at Alvey and the inevitable tirade of abuse he will send the park's way as a result of it... Though, as Goliath and Viper have the same height restriction, it's a peculiar situation... Perhaps it was an enthusiast who had been banned from TPR for disagreeing with Robb once? Surely he should know full well that the best course of action would be to go to GS, complain there and get the kid height checked officially? Moaning on the internet and (assuming here) getting your forumites to send abuse to the park isn't particularly constructive and is pretty childish... I can't imagine people would boo a child not tall enough for a ride though... That element seems far-fetched to me, having had to reject many children off rides, I've never seen it happen... Unless they were booing Robb for kicking up an enormous fuss over the situation...

Just did Trananananananananan at Skara Sommarland this weekend... It's secretly fab and more parks should build them, but bigger and better!

Helix is utterly fantastic, they took the greatness of Blue Fire and multiplied it by 10... At night as well <3 Straight into the top 10 when I rode it first thing, cemented itself into the top 2 after night happened...

An 'extravagant ride' could be a dark ride, which of course on concept art of the park would just be a giant shed... Coasters were on the concepts as well...

Nice to see B&M expanding their own horizons...

I wouldn't say a staff magazine is the same as the public domain though...

A step back in terms of the number of rides available, but a step forward in having those with the highest levels of popularity open...

OMG SOMETHING IS HAPPENING AT CHESSINGTON! Just updates on the hotel extension restaurant though... Can't tell if the wall is actual stone or one of those awful new vinyl things...