Benin

Think one of the original ideas behind Air was to be a military style thing (inspired by the original Arrow Pipeline plans), but of course dumped for the decent idea of an oasis of calm (suits the ride itself more tbh)... Shame about the tunnel/station theming though...

Sounds like the best way to visit Thorpe tbh... Or any park tends to be better when empty, a park's true quality can only be seen on the busy days, which Chessie certainly struggles with on a regular basis... Also the differing opinions on the perceived quality of Scorpion Express are very over the place, think the issue lies with a relative drop of expectations in the quality levels Merlin provides, but at the same time the likes of Market Square and Transylvania look a lot better... A consistent level of quality is missing from Merlin parks, which is probably the most frustrating thing...

Rest in peace Slammer...

Cedar Point closes rides in a slight drizzle, let alone anything else... Shocking really...

Wouldn't go so far to call such operations insane whilst on two trains, but it sounds like an improvement at least... The only way they could go was up really...

If there was a storm with potential lightning, of course Stealth would be closed... Indeed, most rides close in stormy weather, it's nothing new...

That both are at different parks does make a difference... Any DM at Thorpe would have to be very substansial (I.e. SheiKra/Griffon length) to promote the focus away from Saw... And even then, with Saw's steeper drop and what-not, how can you promote a DM as being better to the masses?

Shame about the rusted supports for it... Then again, the Dome hasn't been reference as Atlantis for ages by the park has it? Makes sense really...

Maybe we will, maybe we won't... Mack Mega-Lite pls...

I'd rather castrate myself than see a new Stand-up coaster built (and tbh, in order to do that I'd just have to ride the thing)... Worst, ride type, ever...

Could give free food vouchers or discounted entry ticket (depending on AP situation)... Stuff that won't affect other guests day in a park that already oversells the product it gives complaints for free...

If a Flyer with an 'intense' layout (I.e. not Air's 'floaty free' layout) was built, it'd probably get a more positive reaction from the public than Swarm as well... Still think the next logical step is an airtime filled machine though...

Day 3 – Walygator Parc So the final day led us to Walygator, more known for its financial issues and random 2nd hand B&M than for being any good, and we were heading there for their first operational day of the season! However, the day certainly started poorly as the tickets you pre-book online through the website CANNOT be picked up on park. You have two options, pick it up at random shops dotted about the country (none near where we were though), or delivered to home. But NOT at the park? Not wanting to waste time having already turned up attempting to find some random place in Metz ended up paying for tickets on the day as well as in advance. Needless to say I was very unimpressed by this situation, not helped by the fact that they have turnstiles they don’t use and a generally bad entrance procedure (let’s have the park gates open into the ticket booth queues!) Eventually in, we headed straight to Monster, the B&M Invert. We waited for people to turn up to reach the minimum amount of riders and after about 20 minutes into our already limited day we were finally on the front row (first ride of the season though). I didn’t really like Raptor at Cedar Point, so I wasn’t particularly excited for this one. However it was quite decent, with a good bit of force about itself. It’s certainly not at the top of the Invert pile but it’s not at the bottom either. The RCT plonked nature of it does demean itself somewhat though, especially as the ride just exists off in the distance with no interaction with the rest of the park at all. We hopped on the Disney themed Chenille (the 3rd Wacky Worm of the trip) before heading towards Anaconda, their (Morgan apparently) Wooden coaster, which had just this year had some retracking done by GCI. As we were in the queue, we noticed that the PLC on the brakes was behaving rather erratically, with the trains stopping at excessively random and unknown times; nevertheless we were on the back row of the half loaded train (we discovered the entire park was in this queue because of the front rows being sand-bagged). Rides can be awful for many reasons, violent, juddery, rough, but the sole worst reason for a ride to be considered awful to me is for it to be boring. This is what Anaconda is, incredibly dull, forceless and slow. It bounced along the track at a lull, struggling to climb over every hill and not doing anything remotely interesting with the layout. So imagine how surprised we were that the brakes decided to become the most interesting part of the ride and partially fail, causing us to stop half-way down the station, and me breaking out into a fit of hysterical laughter at just how pathetic the situation was. Eventually the engineer sorted it by opening and closing the gates to reset the rather confused ride system, and we got another go around. It was still dull, even with me laughing my head off. We were hungry, so giant waffles were had because they were out of pancakes. Fail. We went to see the new Dive Show, with a slight (read – minimal) Wild West theme, and pre-show entertainment by clowns who did EPIC balloon animals and a FBI agent. Confusing times. Either way, the show was a pretty standard High Dive affair really. The guy who did it whilst on fire was good though, but these shows aren’t THAT interesting enough unless they have a story going on behind it. At least it was better than ITV’s SPLASH! We wandered into their recently rethemed Space area with the new Air Race which wasn’t open yet (mainly as it had actually arrived EARLIER than planned), however it does look very awesome, and even has a viewing platform which was also unfortunately closed. The 4th and final coaster of the trip was Waly Coaster, a Vekoma ‘Hurricane’, or ‘Loop and 2 Screws’. Again 1st day syndrome hit us, as the ride op sent the train out having missed an open restraint on his side twice on an empty seat, which resulted in an E-Stop (personally, I would’ve either ignored it or pushed it down as it went out). We were sat in the station once again waiting for an engineer. Unsurprisingly, the ride was not worth the wait, short but smooth, but didn’t really do anything interesting, feeling like a lesser version of their old Bayerncurve Corkscrews really. Meh. We walked past the abandoned Haunted House towards the Rapids. These have an ingenious design of which the boats are too big to fit inside the station, so have to be manually pulled in by the staff to park up in a group of 4 for loading. Holy bad ride designs! Again, the ride itself was a mixed bag, with some good bits but an excessively boring ending. Methinks half the park would be better demolishing half their rides and starting over from scratch; which is what they’re doing with their Huss Topple Tower in fact, poor boring things that they are. After some faff and decision making we elected to go on Waly Boat, which had been slightly revamped for the season. The Tow Boat ride system is incredibly popular in Europe, and I’ve been on a few, but none as slow as this one. It was 25 minutes long and half of that was slowly floating towards the next nice looking but rather uninteresting after seeing it for 5 minutes scenes. It was just completely unnecessary for it to be so damn slow. Cave of nothing Once our insomnia had been cured, we had a few minutes to kill before the Dancing with Waly show, so promptly rode the Mistrel Chairswings next door, which completed the collection of dull and slowly run rides. The show itself was rather decent, with pop songs through the ages being played and kids allowed to interact completely with the WalyGator family, rather than sit down and watch. I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing a dancing giant alligator doing Gangam Style too. And that was really it. We had to head up to Calais for our ferry back to the UK since the hire car couldn’t really be taken all the way home, but I wasn’t particularly fussed about leaving early as we’d done the major rides and I don’t think the park had anything much else to offer. It has SOME potential, but for the most part it’s really tatty and the rides there are just DULL, which is probably worse than the rides just being rough and awful. I had no desperation to ride anything again, and I even gave Baco the honour of a second ride. However the new area theme and the brand image both look very good, especially the new branding which is very solid (and the plushies are just so adorable). There is plenty of potential in the park but it’s a long way to go to reach the likes of Nigloland, and hopefully the new management (only their second year of new ownership it must be said, so it looks slightly long term) will learn from the park’s past mistakes and look elsewhere to see how to improve things, such as a station building for Monster, and some actual good rides to support it. The journey back up to Calais was at least, uneventful, and being a foot passenger on the ferry means you get first dibs on seating. Overall it was a good trip, if a bit mental for all the wrong reasons on the first day, and it was certainly worth it for Nigloland and Alpina Blitz.

It's better than half the park playing that dull Battle Galleons music that's for certain...

I put it down to him not actually have riding Blue Fire, though of course many rides look excessively dull from POVs (Nemesis included)...

Best made up crap ever <3 That truly would see Merlin scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas... Amazing scenes... Besides, an inversion on a Mack Mega-Lite wouldn't be much of a gimmick (or very good), as Storm at Etnaland did it... And it would be more suited to Chessie as a ride type (because they NEED something more desperately than Thorpe do)... Again though, the IP obsession isn't great... How about we just build a ride that is good Merlin? That'd be nice to see... No gimmick, no world's first, just something solid, reliable and a ride that people throughout the UK and the World can be excited by... Smiler was close but is a bit of a laughing stock... Pull your fingers out your collective bums and do a good job for once, not the bare minimum... [/rant]

That's the issue with ride music, sometimes out of context it sounds crap (Blue Fire), but then when you actually experience the full product, it makes sense...

Wooden Aquatrax?

Up to the many people they ask... If Saw was anything to go by, they'll present the concepts to various lots of visitors and get reactions on each... Indeed, most parks do this... Makes business sense (in a way), but it's done to those few who get randomly selected...

Whilst that is true (I got a package from Towers last year because Smiler was closed and I was staying at the hotel, at the time though they were just fobbing off the day guests because the closure was on the website), the parks still shouldn't effectively use them as a bribe for guests to turn the other cheek about park problems... The initial post though was a literal "I complained and got free Fastrack!" brag though it must be said... There is seemingly no real solution to the current issue of congestion to get out of the park (or indeed, ANY Merlin park), so has the initial complaint actually been solved? It doesn't seem to have been...

The problem was bottlenecks in the car park though... Have the park done anything to solve it? If not, then the problem hasn't gone away... If the problem hasn't gone away, more people will complain... More people complaining means more Fastrack handed out as compensation... More Fastrack handed out means slower queues in the long run... So in short, a solvable problem is solved NOT by fixing the actual problem but by ushering it away... That is not great customer service, that is just bribery so people turn the other way and feel more important/better because they now have free Fastrack...

Good customer service shouldn't equate to handing out fastrack as a solution, as it just creates further problems down the line... Then again, Merlin are quite happy to put fingers in their ears and yell loudly when clear issues with their parks rise up...

The play area should not be confused with the Wild West area refurb...

Yeah it really is in the middle of nowhere, you could probably get a train to Bar-sur-Aube and get a taxi or sommat but the park doesn't have great connections via public transport... Another Towers parallel

Day 2 – Nigloland To say that Nigloland is in the middle of nowhere would be quite the understatement, with the signs telling you the park is Xkm away, and no visible sign of it until you are literally on the local village’s doorstep. The village itself is on the park’s doorstep itself, with some front gardens literally a road and hill away from the actual entrance building. The way the park is accessed feels slightly Towers like, with country roads, a small village and a descent into a giant valley with a forest backdrop providing an interesting opener to the day. A busy day awaited us As part of the EU “Parks should open rides after the park has actually opened” law, we had 30 minutes to spend having breakfast on park. Eventually the rides opened and we headed towards the dead end of the park (themed to Canada), where the Gold Mine Train lives. As we were to discover, Nigloland has a ridiculously healthy relationship with Mack, as half their rides are built by them. This is powered Mine Train that kind of sits between that gap of Chessie’s and Towers’, in that it goes off on a little adventure (with a decent drop into a tunnel) but isn’t too long a ride time. However since it actually goes off into the woodland and interacts with the Log Flume next door, it gets a lot of points on that front. Next door was the aforementioned Log Flume that interacts with the Mine Train. With just a singular drop it was rather short, a basic figure of 8 layout I think actually, however with an extended amount of interaction with the Mine Train it improves the meander around somewhat. Certainly a sign of a ride built from a park slowly building its reputation, and as the park’s only real water ride it’s one of the flaws the park has. Hopefully they plan to rectify this soon. Next up was our first non-Mack ride, Grizzli, a Zamperla Disko Coaster, which was as standard as the rest of them are. However it was cool to finally ride the one that appears in practically all of Zamperla’s advertising of the ride, and it was also rather well themed (apart from the clash of shed). We started to head further into the park, and chanced upon The Travels of Jacques Cartier, which was a non-spinning boat variant of Seastorm. It made up for this by having decent animatronics in the middle of the ride and being surprisingly intense. Further in and we found a ride many of us were anticipating, Air Meeting, a Gerstlauer Sky Fly. These are essentially an intense version of the old Flying Scooters, and are fantastic if you want a solid work-out, lots of confined spinning, and enjoying physics. The seats rotate based on the position of the wings and your own momentum, it’s a rather difficult method to describe and there certainly is a knack to doing it, just got to get it right, because once you lose the momentum mid-ride, you never get it back. I wouldn’t mind seeing one in the UK, but the throughput would be an immense issue. Themed staff and stadium announcers Next up was the Space Experience, located in the 50s area of the park. So naturally, it was some good old fashioned cheesy space times, essentially it was EuroSat light. It was rather good fun, especially in the back row which promoted the tight turns and decent near misses with the scenery, although the change from pounding techno music in the queue and exit to classical was a bit curious to say the least. After this there was a toilet break, which I took the time to watch the construction taking place around Alpina Blitz. Again that EU Law of “Rides cannot be completed on time, but can run later in the day”. As I was watching, a man came up to me and asked if I was John. This was a result of John getting in contact with the park prior to our arrival and asking if he could chat to anyone about Alpina Blitz and the park in general. He had received an email the night before asking if we were still visiting and Rodolphe had clearly developed a goon sense having worked at the park (and Madame Tussauds and Pleasurewood Hills), having noticed people talking not only in English but in possession of a Walibi hoodie. Needless to say John’s reaction when he vacated the toilet was quite amusing. Rodolphe explained he’d had a busy morning doing stuff for a kids TV show, so needed a drink, promptly treating us all to something as well. We had a good natter amongst ourselves over our drinks before he suggested he take us on a mini backstage tour of the park. What kind of goons would we be to turn down such a chance? So off we went. Even their engineers are goons Having seen the entirety of the backstage (including the bakery, locker room and a very teasing Alpina Blitz sign they didn’t need anymore and would obviously resulted in a fight to the death over if my Peugeot had been alive), we decided that as most of the rides were closed for lunch (a system they use for very dead days, like this day was), we would also do that. And once again we were treated to a local delicacy which can be described as pork bolognaise, which was rather good and certainly in the upper limits of theme park food. After more tales of Rodolphe’s exploits at IAAPA and EAS, we decided that it was time for Alpina Blitz. After finding out the various reasonings as to why Nigloland went with Mack over Intamin (cheaper to build (ride alone costs €4.5m), great working relationship, better trains/restraints and many more), we were all pretty excited to ride it, if only to compare it to the Intamin version. Of course, as we were Rodolphe’s guests in the park, we went via the exit and stood on the offload platform as the ride was going around. Eventually the back two rows were held off and we were on. The first drop and turn are a fantastic start to this ride, and any qualms people had of it losing speed throughout due to the high second hill can be discarded as rather unfounded. I was greying out everytime on the first turn, which arguably makes it more intense than Piraten, and the second hill when sitting in the front involves a rather special bit of ejector due to the transition. The rest of the ride is filled with airtime of both the floater and tonnes more ejector variety, and I can but hope our reactions as we returned to the station made Rodolphe very happy indeed. We were allowed to fill up some empty seats (the park really was empty), before being allowed to use the bridge of randomness to access the front row. It’s just as good if not slightly better than the back purely for the second hill turn. Later on that night we found that the Mitch Hawker polls had come out, with Kawasemi 7th and Piraten 12th. If these are relatively accurate depictions (though why the Mega-Lite clones are separate I have no idea), then Alpina Blitz is quite clearly superior then Piraten at least. The Mack trains take a rather good layout (with some changes it must be said, it’s as much of a clone as Cinecitta World’s 10 looper is a clone of Colossus) and make it something even better. This ride alone makes me believe that Helix could easily be Europe’s best coaster, and hopefully with lots of parks visiting Nigloland to ride Alpina, we’ll be seeing plenty of these in the near future. Which can only be a good thing. After that, Peter enquired if we could have a nosey at the park’s hotel, a small 32 room affair but with 4 stars. So off we went. It looks rather unassuming (or bland) from the outside, however inside is a different matter. Beautifully themed from the bar to the restaurant, and the rooms are pretty decent as well, we all liked it so much that when we inevitably return to the park we’ll be booking a stay in the hotel for certain. It kinda shows the difference that a good family run park can provide compared to a corporation run park, as the attention to detail not just in the hotel but also throughout the park (themed staff uniforms, etc) with a focus on providing a great experience with a long term plan over monetary gain in the short term. Nigloland really does tick all the boxes brilliantly. Back in the park, we decided it would be a good time to grab the rest of the coasters as they were all nearby. Starting with La Chenille, another Wacky Worm, before Schlitt Express, a Mack Wild Mouse which was a lot better than Bakken’s equivalent (probably because it wasn’t at Bakken), and finally Bobsleigh, a smaller version of Black Hole which was quite heavily themed it must be said. The two major coasters were both very enjoyable and themed to a very good standard, with the Bobsleigh standing out as looking rather brand new for something rather old, upkeep eh? After Bobsleigh, Rodolphe showed us the hydraulic room for the Chairswings. Which on the inside are nothing out of the ordinary, however the theming effort put into the outside is something I’ve only really seen at Europa Park in the pump rooms for Atlantica. The fact that the piping linking the shed and ride together is buried under themed rail and mining cars is that next level set of detailing that sets great parks apart from good parks. To quote Rodolphe “Theming, theming, theming”, and he’s damn right. After another drink we headed back onto Space Experience, where Rodolphe went off and got the lights turned on for us. It was quite cool to see the level of detail hidden amongst the theming that is dotted around the building. We then had another quick go on Air Meeting, where I did a couple of spins and thought better of it. Rodolphe then urged us to do “their Zufari”, in Africa Cruise, which is basically Jungle Cruise on a budget. However the home-made rocks looked really good, and the commentary of such issues on the ride like “we need more greenery to hide the mechanics” and “I was told we wouldn’t be able to see the concrete” showed a real honesty and enthusiasm about the park, which seemed to flow through the entire place. Very refreshing indeed. After this we ventured into the Haunted Mansion, which was practically Disney-light. You do have to love a good old-fashioned Disney knock-off, although the independent spinning car and the lighting of the load vehicle was pretty awesome it must be said. Give this ride an upgrade with brand new effects/animatronics and it’d be even better! After this we headed over to the King of Mississippi riverboat, where Rodolphe had to leave us to do some real work (rather than show some dodgy English folk the park), so we went around without him. It was quite nice really; nothing too special around it, but one of those rides filed under “for a long sit-down”. With the rides closing shortly we decided it was time to whore Alpina Blitz a bit, with various rows experienced and the last ride of the day. It truly is a fantastic ride and hopefully we’ll see a lot more of them in the future, especially for a base price of €4.5 million, it’s SUCH a bargain! We met up with Rodolphe at the hotel for a quick drink but unfortunately dinner in the hotel (which he invited us to) had to be cut off as Peter had clearly ridden Alpina Blitz too many times in the heat of the day (turns out you CAN have too much of a good thing). So we bid farewell and promised that we would return to the park in the future. And that we shall, because even without Rodolphe’s tour of the place we would have loved it anyway. The park itself is presented well, with lots of rides dotted about with some immense theming (I fell in love with the Tractor ride as an example), and just an overall look and atmosphere to the place that few parks can achieve. Alpina Blitz is a brilliant landmark coaster for them to be put on the map in the wider world of the industry, and hopefully that will kick-start them into pushing for a lot more guests not only this year but in the years to come. I send a lot of thanks to Rodolphe as well for giving us an even more fantastic day and really going above and beyond the levels of park hospitality for us, the sort of stuff that in my experience is only reserved for those huge groups who pay for it, rather than 4 random people. His tales and honest opinions on the industry, the park and his own experiences and future were both fascinating and insightful throughout the day. And his enthusiasm about the park (and his career in general) certainly rubbed off on us. [/size][/font]