Benin

The true factor is that the public love it, possibly because of the more inversions = more fun mindset, because they see the rattle as part and parcel of the ride, or because they just do like it... Smiler, as an overall attraction, was and still is the best thing the UK has seen in years... It's visually impressive and the ride (rattles included) does leave an impression for better or worse... Then consider the branding that was thrown in and it's no surprise that the public lapped it up... As enthusiasts, we know everything and nothing at the same time...

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.

If Hartenhof at Efteling ever gets built it's likely to breach the 40m mark... But I think this is quite correct, closest park is probably Efteling because they love to spend money (because they're a charity)...

The 2 people I know who've ridden it didn't have much to say in a negative light about it must be said... Plus things like Mystery Mine and Fluch are very enjoyable and smooth, so I guess it's just an easy thing for many people to shun Gerst when their two closest 'big' rides are marmite rides...

To be fair, a B&M SLC would actually be fantastic, as the layout of SLCs is actually decent...

I would say it's a mixture of both (can't really blame Intamin for the legless man being thrown out of the coaster, as it was the staff who eventually let him on as he was a war vet and should be treated like royalty even if he couldn't follow the ride rules/regs)... But there has to be alarm bells when lots of incidents are happening on a specific manufacturer's rides... List of all Intamin related incidents (not just deaths, but things like the EGF derail or Xcelerator cable snap) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intamin#Safety_incidents No, it's just Intamin don't have an great safety record, which is pretty much fact... Don't recall many other manufacturers having rides that fling people out on a regular basis...

Only 15 rides over the course of the day? Oh the huge manatee... Like, yeah, it's a burden, but getting 15 rides would probably be something to be celebrated by the regular guest...

Or they could've saved all the monies, not had a baggage hold and just had bag cubbies in the station... Twas a solution for a problem that didn't really exist...

Gerstlauer Sky Fly then... http://www.gerstlauer-rides.de/products/flat-rides/sky-fly-en-US/ Even Niglo's is displayed on the website as well I would not be opposed to one being built... Even if it would be at Blackpool...

Tell you what, I'd love to be there today... For the ability to whore the hell out of Revenge of the Mummy

RCT3 was crap though... The first 2 were a LOT more 'realistic' when it came to making the trains heavier with an extra car or two...

24 years ago, Vampire was a technologically advanced ride and probably one of the most thrilling rides in the UK (indeed, most Arrow Suspendeds were very, VERY intense rides, look at Eagle Fortress and Big Bad Wolf)... Whilst it's looked as a family coaster now, I doubt it was seen like that 24 years ago...

They've closed Baco as well as the other Zac Spins (which is to be expected)? Making Baco more of a laughing stock than it already was... Classic Intamin... In the "Benin being self-centred" side, I hope they clear Insane at Grona Lund post haste, I do want to ride one...

Therein probably lies the issue... Saw's being at the start of the ride makes the rest of the entire thing seem awful (then again, the dive loop transition is awful anyway)... Smiler's is at the end (well, only 2 zero-gs afterwards), so it has the opposite effect of making the end of the ride a lot worse...

Old trains were a lot heavier, and if RCT taught me anything, heavier trains = fastest ride...

Was always weird that B&M were building this at the end of the day... It's not the WORST family coaster ever made though...

Saw is the worst Gerstlauer going... Though many of their rides do have rattles/jolts (Anubis on the launch in the back row as an example, and of course Smiler's Cobra Roll) throughout... That said, considering the Merlin Gersts are the bad ones, you have to ponder whether or not it's because of the groundwork, rather than the manufacture...

I have no idea what they're meant to be getting, you mean the same ride type as what Drayton got this year or what we rode at Nigloland?

Then you can consider that this coaster is going next to a drop tower... Classic Merlin...

Based on the continuation of the Fright Nights brand, dont think they'll be aiming at families on that front... Besides, Chessie have fantastic family Halloween attractions, Thorpe probably wouldn't better them...

There's assorted generic kiddie crap and a Zierer Tivoli... 2 animal shows too, so the kid might find some enjoyment in the playground...

Shiny new queue time TARDIS boards! (TowersStreet Facebook)

You could grab tickets in the middle of the day when I went last year... It would just seem though that people tend not to think intelligently when they visit theme parks... Dunno why the park would only give a ticket to Summer Nights rather than a full day return to a moaning guest though... It's a bit strange... Although it must be said suggesting that the engineers simply rock the car back and forth onto the catch car gave me a right old chuckle this morning... Cheers...

Flume site incorporating some form of water based coaster would probably be my pick of the bunch (thinking logically, who wouldn't want a woodie/B&M Hyper in the valley?)... Coaster Corner would be great for an indoor one mind... Let's get Revenge of the Mummy in!

NEWS BUMP! http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2014/07/02/4031258-giant-new-coaster-gets-goahead-at-tayto-park/ *books trip to Dublin*