Benin

Banned for necroposting...

Could up the photo limit on blog posts, seems that my latest one (and a few others) are missing like, a handful of photos... If we want to make blogs the place to do trip reports, it makes sense...

Day 2 – Bellewaerde Park Time for coasters! And with a brand new one it was time to head along to Belle, via several country roads and an awful diversion, we eventually arrived at the destination (N.B. There is an easier route to take to get to the park we discovered on our way back, blergh)… Formerly a safari park, this place certainly shares similarities with both Chessington and Flamingoland, but let’s not set our hopes too low, and go and ride the first coaster of the day (in order to avoid long queues later), Ladybird a Large Zierer Tivoli… Bugger. Well, these coasters are actually quite fun at times; although how it fitted into the Western theme area I have no idea. Though this thing was basically bread and butter to the usual types of this ride, so it’s unremarkable. Next up, Boomerang. It’s like the park WANTS us to hate it, but either way, this is a well themed one so at least it looked nice to ride. After Nicky’s apprehension of her first Boomerang, we were on and were surprised to find it smooth, barring the odd jerk during the backwards section of course, it wasn’t perfect. But comparatively, it was like riding a B&M. Amazing scenes! The final coaster was the brand new Huracan, an indoor Zierer coaster with random outside bit and epic dark ride section. Most reports heard before were of high praise regarding the level of theme this ride has, and this is most certainly true of the queue, station and pre-lift section. It’s pretty damn awesome, if the queue is quite bland and rather boring. Onto the ride itself and with no explanation you’re set off through various rooms with random theming in each, with music booming out of the speaker, pretty cool so far. After the wind room we’re off into the daylight (and random pointless red strobe) up the lift into the pre-darkness section. I do like the way the music fades out at this point and returns upon entry into the building, and speaking of such, the ride section is decent, but completely lacking in anything. I do like the daylight peeking it allowing you glimpses of the track, but there’s just nothing else. Even cheap cut-outs a la Revenge of the Mummy would improve things. Although with a minimum height of 1m, they put their hat on that market and went with it. The brake run laser show is quite cool, but I can only imagine what if they had decided to put in a freefall section on this to finish it instead? Then the turn back into the station to finish instead of stopping and waiting for the train in front to depart? Good family coaster mind, with some decent dark ride element to it, but it had a lot more potential that could have been realised. 7/10 Coasters done, it was time for other things, so we polished up the Aztec area with El Volador, a Topple Tower which ran a lot faster than Djurs’, and El Toro a Huss Breakdance of JOY. After which we broke for lunch. As the weather was awesome (where has Summer gone now?) we elected for the Log Flume, which had a massive ONE drop, and two lift hills… Lol wut? It was rather refreshing though to be fair, but that to me made no sense whatsoever. It was then time to meander around the zoo part, or at least part of it, as it was still reasonably spread out. But regardless we saw Giraffes, Elephants, Zebras and Lemurs for the exotic stuff, whilst goats were the more typical animal nearby. A wild Madhouse, Houdini appeared, which was promptly ruined by loud teenagers. But had an amusing clip which was as good as SMUGHEX. Further into the park we delved and found the potentially unique Bengal Express, which makes the idea of Zufari look turd, why? Because you’re in a train going right through the Lion and Tiger enclosure that’s why! Ok it’s well protected and everything, but still… Was awesome. Next up were the Bengal Rapids, my very first Wedge rapids style ride, where rather than one complete boat they’ve cut it up and had essentially 3/4 (depending on where you go) sections that can and do act separately from each other. This also means that you can be attacked from any direction which balances out the general lack of being able to have too many large drops (which was disproven by Bagatelle). Was quite good fun though really in the end. We dried off with an ice cream before doing the Squirrel Monkey island and then continuing around to the Huss Drop Tower Screaming Eagle, which was a good bit of fun as well. Next up was the Jungle Mission boat ride, after our experiences of such in Denmark, we dreaded to think what would be next, but we found an excessively random ride mixed into some animal enclosures (including Capybara, YAY), worth a go. At that point we felt like we had done as much of the park that we wanted, so we rode Boomerang and Huracan again, before heading to the shop and home. Overall I would say Bellewaerde is a good park with a lot of potential ahead. The theming it has is very well done but is rather sparse overall. They also (in my opinion) need a real stand-out ride to really reach out to a larger audience of people, with a hint of uniqueness. Probably why I think Huracan would have benefitted from the freefall drop but on the other hand it would have meant missing out on that 1m limit. I really liked the park, and whilst the zoo portion of it is tiny these days, they have some excellent viewing areas which make it rather similar to Flamingoland, only without the awfulness of being it. I hope they expand continually in the future because there is a great potential in there.

Hah, I remember how confused the people working at the outlet were when several enthusiasts were reading every detail picking out potential hints to the future... Wouldn't be surprised if the next thing was in place of the Flume though...

Isn't 199ft the height of the building rather than the actual lift shafts though?

Just noticed Falcon is gonna be 335ft tall... Oh how I love spending half the ride at terminal velocity... IF they can pull off the face first stuff, then it MIGHT make it awesome... But still, yawn at tall drop towers...

IRL LOL

Detonator is the best drop tower in the world out of the ones I've ridden... Why change perfection?

Air doesn't rip my body apart, therefore my preference is based upon whether or not the ride wants to tear me limb from limb... This experience is not affected by the restraints...

Not even B&M restraints can save Tatsu from being awful...

Some Intamin Drop Towers tilt about 10-15 degrees currently... This, being 90 degrees... Could be either awesome or brutally awful...

Day 1 – Bruges An early Friday morning greeted us as my car was packed and we set off for the Channel Tunnel, before long however we had reached Calais and the drive to Bruges through 20 million sets of road-works began. About 2 hours after our arrival in Calais, we had arrived at our hotel, on the outskirts of the ‘Old Town’ of Bruges. A quick note about the hotel, it is pretty fab… Not in the way of being amazing, it’s just extremely nice, with great people running it who are very helpful and have great knowledge of the local area. Plus the lift had no doors and sounded like Tower of Terror <3 We began our adventure in Bruges with food, Croque Monsieurs to be precise, and after that we hit up our first stop, the Chocolate Musuem. For €7 (or 6 if you have a hotel thingy we got given) you get a very small museum that teaches you the history of chocolate through the ages via the usual array of text walls and Playmobil models. It also has a live demonstration where you get to try an extremely fresh piece of gorgeous chocolate. It’s small and can probably be done in 30 minutes, but certainly worth the €6 we paid each. Classic England! Next up we headed to the main square and had our interest piqued by the Historium. This is a weird one, as it gives off a vibe of being like the Dungeons, and indeed, the whole theming is of a Dungeons standard. However it’s an audio guide following the tale of some young lad trying to help his famous painting master paint something. He falls in love; there are parakeets, yada, yada, yada. It’s a decent attraction though for the tourist crowd, and does vary the way in which you watch the videos. There’s also nudity for those interested. It pops you out on the second floor of the building, allowing for some great views of the market. After a quick drink in the bar (and it’s chandelier of beer), we walked around for a bit. Bruges is a very beautiful place to be quite honest. The building work especially, could easily spend a day walking around taking photos. Eventually we decided to go on a Canal Tour, and although we feared for our safety when a fat American boarded, it was very good. Get a 35 minute tour for the trouble of €12 odd so you definitely get your money’s worth. Go home statue, you are drunk! After a bit more faffing we decided it was time to grab a bite to eat and we enjoyed some Mussels and Salmon (Friday is fish day in Bruges) which were extremely nice. This was followed up by some Waffles, because Belgium. After that we wondered back to the hotel and chilled out. The BEERWALL! As I said, Bruges is a wonderful place, full of history and is beautiful. I would happily go back there and spend more time wondering around, but we managed to do most of the big touristy stuff in an afternoon. Heartily recommend it to everyone who’s in the area to visit for a day.

Chessington Mania?

It would also help if he actually allowed opinions that differed from his own, and didn't treat everyone who does have a different opinion with such contempt and generally acting like a complete pillock... Then bans everyone who disagrees with him... If anyone else had said it there would have been less outrage, because that other person would respect others opinions and not called everyone who disagreed with them stupid or ban them...

As Tommy alluded to, it's probably more to ensure that it doesn't happen again later on in the course, even with the second lift hill... Don't forget, it IS only two coasters bolted together [/robbalvey]

Piraten it were, rather over-rated if not actually bad...

I really adore the music, can't wait to actually hear it on park...

Denmark is tres expensive when you're there (food is the main culprit, but I think for the most part it's the weird change of having DKK, 1200DKK for 4 people in Hard Rock Cafe for 2 courses as a base line)... Cost for 4 of us about £500 each for 3 different hotels (all in the centre of their respective towns), flights, hire car and then 4 parks in advance (Farup and Bakken were on the day)... It depends what you want from a country trip really... There are plenty of cheap alternatives around the continent, but really there are few stand-out smaller countries on a whole, since they all have good and bad parks... Worth going though...

Rides can and do stall... For various reasons... If this is down to a hardware issue with the trims then fair enough... Unfortunately these days rides are too complex, same could be said of any machinery really, but sometimes the safety measures are too over-board and hence break-downs occur on a regular basis (see Thirteen's summer of woe and over-speeding)...

Add to that, Stealth and Saw... Unfortunately it seems that whenever Gerstlauer try and do something new, it just goes tits up... Although this seems to be either a trim hardware or wheel issue...

Oblivion is open this time... Probably learnt that it's no do-able to have it closed all day again... Can't say for Submission and Enterprise, but nobody cares about them...

You've still not done 400000000 Big Apples though have you? #inexperienced

Day 8 – Farup Sommerland And so the final day, we packed up and departed Aarhus northwards. We eventually arrived after more venturing through country roads and paid upon arrival in the car (which took us all by surprise, fortunately we were prepared for this) and ended up in the car park, which strangely sits in the middle of the park, allowing for some good views of the two main coasters. Our first destination was Lynet, the Gerstlauer launched, to which I was excited for because Anubis back at Plopsa is made of win. Would Lynet (their first) continue the trend? After the dark and dingy Shockwave-esque queueline we arrived in the dark and atmospheric station before taking our comfy seats and rolling out into the small drop into the launch. Rolling launches need to exist more, and the quick and tight layout really showed some good imagination on the park and Gerst’s parts, featuring airtime, 2 corkscrews and a few tight helixes. This seems to be something Gerstlauer do well in relatively intense compact layouts. There was some bumpiness to it but nothing too extreme, why every other Gerstlauer I’ve been on that’s 2009 or older tonnes better than Saw? Either way, a solid headline ride perfect for Farup. 7/10 Another go lead us searching for a change of coaster, unfortunately Flagermusen was closed due to vomit cleaning, so we headed deeper into the woodland in which the park is set and eventually found Mine Expressen, a Vekoma Junior which was rattly and rough, hence, not very good indeed. It was at this point we realised that Farup was very much an adventure park with rides added on, rather than Djurs which seemed more focused on the ride aspect, as such we hit up the next play area to entice us, as well as some more Bouncy Mats that we found. New for 2013 at Farup is Ice Age 4D, so we headed to that corner of the park to see what system they had for times. Being regular, we decided a quick cool down on the Log Flume would be in order, before drying off. The flume was surprising long, with 3 decent drops throughout, although the force at which you stop on the final one is enough to fling you practically out of the boat if you’re not careful. Back to the show, which had an enthusiastic operator who treated us to the effects prior to the show, including moving chairs and the unsurprising water sprays, the moving seats were at first a novelty before becoming tiresome halfway through. It does have a scene missing from the version at Towers (the plant scene) which I found weird, but I didn’t really care that much in the end. We walked back towards the park entrance and decided to ride Flagermusen, yay for Zamperla spinning coasters! Actually, after Tornado, this was a god-send and actually quite fun since we had a relatively balanced car for it. Quite good in the end. We broke for lunch at the entrance and sat outside, enjoying the vast sunshine Denmark had decided to give us upon our last day, before our quest to the left side of the park continued with Pindsnivet a random kiddie coaster which was a welcome change from the constant Zierers we had endured. Onwards we went to were Orkanen (new for 2013 but alas, closed, actually opens on the day I am writing this) and Falken, a S&S Wooden coaster. This was good aside from the cornering not being brilliant, with lots of bumping along the track occurring at the finale helix. Not brilliant but not great either sums it up quite nicely. We felt like we needed a sugar rush, so Mark, Holly and Nicky elected for candyfloss whilst I went for a normal ice cream which was then dunked in chocolate dust. If I wanted chocolate ice cream, I would have asked for it. No matter, we headed back across the park to the woodland side, and proceeded into THE adventure course… Treasure Hunt is something we did not see coming in its entirety. I had seen bits of it such as the water steps and the monkey bars over the water, but nothing can get you ready for the sheer length of the thing. It starts with a ‘maze’ before proceeding to make you slide, climb, step and pull your way around the woodland and over the lake. It was an amazing thing to go through and when we got through to the end we felt a high sense of full on achievement that we had done it. I’ll let the photos speak for some of it, but it cannot be missed. Next door there is a Fun House, which was exceedingly dark due to the theme of being the home of one of the woodland creatures. We then did some Mini Golf in which I managed to get 2 hole in ones throughout the course, of which some of the holes were excessively made of WHY? We found another playground and after some mincing around there we all felt like we were done for the day (Treasure Hunt really took it out of us, and we were in there for at least 45 minutes). So we headed back towards Lynet, being enticed by Chairswings along the way before laziness got the better of us and we got the train back to Falken for our very last ride of the trip. And that was that, we headed back to Aalborg to find it was in the middle of a Carnival the likes which were unprecedented, with our hotel slap bang in the middle. With some negotiating we got in and enjoyed one last burger in our oasis of calm before the flight home the next morning (N.B. Norwegian Air currently have Wi-Fi and fly from Gatwick to Aalborg). Overall, I would say Denmark is a wonderful place. We didn’t do that much in the way of culture, but in our week we could tell that the people are lovely and friendly, speak great English and have a good sense of humour. Bakken and BonBon aside their parks are lovely with a fantastic atmosphere in each one, whilst they might not be full of the biggest or best rides ever, you can tell the parks do care and there is great fun to be had at them. I would say Djurs took the top park spot, although Tivoli is just behind it, with Juvelen and Rusty Banana taking the top two spots for best rides. In the end though we discovered a wonderful country with some good (and bad) parks that I think we would happily visit again if we could in the near future. I would recommend Denmark to any theme park enthusiast who is bored of the typical European countries, and it excites me for the trip to Sweden next year. Happy Hedgehog thanks you for reading