BenC

Canadian Caper
 
Sometimes in life, an opportunity presents itself that you just can't pass up, despite the fact it might be a bit mad... and in my case, this year it was an email from British Airways offering me a return flight to Toronto, Friday - Wednesday in September, for just £356. I had a few days holiday left, hadn't set foot in Canada before, and knew there were some tasty coasters operating in this part of the world... so why not?
 
It didn't take too long to come up with a plan: flight out of LHR on the Friday night after work, landing into YYZ (Toronto International) on the Friday night (8 hour flight but Toronto is 5 hours behind!). Pick up hire car, drive to hotel near the airport on arrival. A whole day at Canada's Wonderland on the Saturday, with the evening back in the airport hotel. Sunday was to be the big one: a three hour drive across the border to Darien Lake (USA), taking in both Marineland (Canada) and Martin's Fantasy Island (USA) on the way. Sunday night spent in Buffalo, which would set me up nicely for a whole day on the Monday exploring Niagara Falls. Return the hire car on the Monday evening, and take the subway into downtown Toronto, leaving Tuesday and Wednesday free to explore all the city has to offer. Phew.
 
With temperatures in the high-teens and the late-summer sun set against deep blue cloudless skies, September is a fantastic time of year to visit Toronto. I found the city to be a smaller, more friendly New York, made all the better by its location on the waterfront of Lake Ontario and the omnipresence of Tim Hortons. But what of the Theme Parks?
 
Read on for my Canadian Caper!
 

 
CN Tower: EdgeWalk
 
Before we dive in, a quick nod firstly to a Toronto attraction that isn't a Theme Park, but gave me a bigger thrill than any Park in this report.
 
The CN Tower is quite the landmark for Toronto, built in 1979 as the world's tallest tower and to this day remaining the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. At 1,815ft high (553m), it's nearly twice the height of London's Shard, although the viewing platform (shown below by the red arrow) stands only at 1,168ft (356m).
 
No big deal, right?
 
...it is when you're harnessed up and walking around on a small platform on the top of it!
 
This is the EdgeWalk, opened in 2011 as the world's highest full-circle, hands-free building walk. It punishes your bank balance at $195 (c.£115), although this is somewhat justified given that it has a capacity of only 6 people every half an hour, and it's really, really cool.
 

 
Understandably security is very tight for an attraction like this - guests all have to wear a bright red "walk suit", and aren't allowed any loose objects on them, including watches, hair clips, and wedding rings. Personal cameras are a definite no-no. However, walk leaders are equipped with cameras and all guests receive a complimentary HD video and printed photo of their experience, with the (predictable) opportunity to buy even more photos at the exit.
 
I went up first thing on a beautiful cloud-free morning, and can honestly say it was the most exciting, terrifying, and liberating thing I've done all year.
 
Just check out that view!
 

 
Guests are harnessed up to the overhead rail via two ropes, and the walk leader takes the group around one complete circuit during the 30 minute session, encouraging each person to try out a few "tricks" along the way, such as balancing your feet on the edge and leaning back (above), and leaning out over the edge into the city like the famous "I'm Flying!" scene in Titanic (below).
 
Everyone attempted all the tricks (I was joined by a thirty-something IT technician from Jordan, and a fifty-something management consultant from the US), although not without a few wobbly legs and involuntary shrieks along the way.
 
If you completely trust your harness - and you have no reason not to - you're absolutely fine, but nonetheless the raw adrenaline from being that high up and that exposed is quite something, especially if conditions get a little windy. It's breathtaking and beautiful, and worth every penny.
 
EdgeWalk: bringing a whole new meaning to "don't look down"...!
 

 
Canada's Wonderland
 

 
Onto the Parks.
 
Canada's Wonderland, located 25 miles north of Downtown Toronto, is by any standards a serious player in the Theme Park industry, being ranked 3rd in the world by number of roller coasters (16), after Six Flags Magic Mountain (19) and Cedar Point (17), and being the 2nd most-visited Park in the Cedar Fair chain (soundly beating Cedar Point, and sitting just behind Knotts Berry Farm).
 
I'm a fan of Cedar Fair properties - in my experience they tend to index slightly more towards "well funded" than "managed by corporate spreadsheet" vs. either of the Six Flags or Merlin chains. That said, they are far from immune to criticism, and Wonderland's $20 parking fee payable as soon as you drive onto the property hardly gets your day off to a flying start.
 
What immediately lifts the mood however is a quite wonderful view of the Park's headline attraction, Leviathan.
 

 
More on that later.
 
For now, it was a quick photo of the uninspiring but admittedly well-maintained entrance, a mandatory scan through the metal detectors, and in through the turnstiles...
 

 
...and straight after the pretty average entrance comes an unexpected visual treat.
 
Seeing Main Street and the Cinderella Castle upon entering the Magic Kingdom creates an excitement and anticipation of the day ahead that is rarely matched, although plenty of Parks aspire to have the same effect. Wonderland's huge flower display, flanked by patriotic flags, in front of a giant water display, in front of a large artificial mountain, has quite some impact.
 
Definitely above average!
 

 
And so to the first ride of the day, which was actually housed inside the mountain: Wonder Mountain's Guardian. Debuting in 2014 (although the idea was first mooted 10 years prior), the 3D dark-ride-come-roller-coaster represents a unique collaboration between Germany's Art Engineering (no, me neither), who manufactured the track, and Canada's own TrioTech, who designed the ride's interactive 3D animations.
 
Riders sit in one of the 2 car, 8 seat trains, wearing 3D glasses and holding a mounted "blaster" gun. Alas, on my visit every train had at least 1 or 2 blasters not operational, meaning the hourly capacity wasn't hitting much more than 500... snails have travelled faster than this queueline.
 
The first half of the ride resembles a fairly tame wild-mouse style coaster, although the enjoyment of it is somewhat impaired by the 3D glasses making everything a bit of a blur . Riders then enter the mountain, as the second half of the ride sees the trains shuttle between giant video screens, in much the same style as Toy Story Mania and Maus Au Chocolat. The story goes that old King Adelsten once tried to fight a dragon inside the mountain, but during the battle, the King lost his crown. Stansein, one of the king's servants, now guides riders through the mountain to find and retrieve the crown - with riders helping fight off all the monsters along the way using the mounted blasters. You would be forgiven for wondering what on earth was going on; the 3D animations weren't great. So far, so humdrum.
 
But THEN, out of nowhere, comes the best drop track section on a roller coaster I have ever experienced. Wonder Mountain's Guardian features a surprise drop of 30ft (9m), roughly twice the height of Thirteen's and Darkmare's, and many times more powerful. It's the final scene, and the mountain dragon has emerged again, breathing fire at riders - and without any warning, the train just plummets at a rate that would rival most drop towers.
 
Indeed, it's so impressive that it turns a fairly mediocre ride into one worth joining the back of the queue again for... if it weren't for the fact that the throughput was so horrific.
 

 
Sat right behind the Mountain, and even snaking around the top of it, is Vortex, an Arrow suspended coaster. I've always liked these swinging rides (alas Vampire at Chessington was never the same after the new trains...), and this particular model looked fantastic sporting a fresh new coat of red paint.
 
The ride experience held up very well too given its age, with the cars' extreme swinging being made all the more fun by the track's proximity to the lake and a top speed of 55mph - the fastest Arrow suspended coaster ever built.
 

 
Vortex: 25 years old, and still one of the best rides in the Park. Both unique and intense; there are now only 5 rides of this type left operating in the world - ride whilst you can!
 

 
Speaking of "best rides in the Park", at this point I couldn't resist giving the headline attraction a spin, Leviathan. Leviathan is a 306ft giga coaster and one of only two B&M creations to break the 300ft mark to date; the other being the superlative Fury 325 at sister Cedar Fair Park, Carowinds.
 
Decked out in bold blue and cyan hues, the ride looks spectacular and although far from fully themed, attention has certainly been given to the ride's styling, which includes a classy three-dimensional logo sat atop a 360° waterfall at the entrance. Why can't major rides in the UK be as bright and colourful as this?
 
As for the ride itself - as you'd expect from a B&M airtime machine, it's a huge amount of fun; silky smooth tracking even at top speeds of 92mph, coupled with the comfortable, open train design, makes for a supremely enjoyable and highly re-rideable experience. What really stands out though is the first drop: diving into a tunnel, it's one of the best, bum-off-seat freefall experiences I have had in a very long time. So. Much. Fun. One of B&M's best, both in the back row (for the airtime) and the front row (for the sheer raw speed).
 

 
What lets Leviathan down a little though is actually its length, which might seem a strange thing to say for a coaster that's got the same amount of track as Blackpool's Big One. But Leviathan is over 40% taller than Big One, and goes 20mph faster, so you hit that final brake run so much quicker than you'd like. Indeed, the brake run itself is actually taller than most coasters, standing at over 100ft - one can't help but wonder whether there's a missed opportunity there with all that kinetic energy going to waste. It could simply do more.
 
Leviathan is undoubtedly a brilliant ride and I could sit on it all day, but it is bettered by Carowinds' very similar installation 3 years later, due to Fury being well over 1,000ft longer, containing all the same juicy floater airtime, and still having an absolutely killer first drop. Fury should be a top 10 coaster (top 5?) in anyone's book, whereas I suspect riders of Leviathan will be slightly less generous in their rankings.
 
You can't deny though that it looks very pretty indeed...
 

 
3 down, many more to go, but it's from here that you start to realise that although on the coaster front Wonderland has a lot of quantity, it doesn't fare so well on quality.
 
For starters, there's the ubiquitous Vekoma Boomerang, The Bat, which rode much the same as any other (although it's continually surprising how forceful these can be; I even greyed out on one in Thailand...). 
 
I was actually lucky(?) to even get a ride, given that it seemed to be giving the engineering department headaches for most of the day.
 

 
In a similar vein, the Park hosts one of the original Vekoma Suspended Family Coasters, Silver Streak. Built in 2001, the coaster still rides well, but the tracking is rougher and the seating inferior to the manufacturer's more recent SFC effort at our own Paulton's Park.
 

 
And completing the Vekoma hat trick is Flight Deck, an SLC that looked shiny and fun, but predictably rode like a complete turd. It was a standard stick-your-neck-out-to-avoid-your-ears-getting-boxed affair, with generous helpings of being kicked in the back by your seat. Tick.
 
At the macro level, it's a real shame that these rides are so commonplace around the world - there are well over 40 still operating today, and Vekoma are still making money from it; a Park in Vietnam appears to have bought a brand new one for 2017 .
 
Very few ride types in the world are nigh-on guaranteed to put the rider through such an endurance test...
 

 
...except for maybe this one, the Zamperla Volare.
 
Thankfully less commonplace than the SLC (there are only 7), the Volare is without doubt one of the most poorly designed and fabricated coaster types around. Canada's Wonderland has the dubious honour of buying one of the first ones, with Tomb Raider: The Ride debuting in 2004.
 
These days it's called Time Warp, although much of the Tomb Raider themeing still exists. Getting into the ride involves a fairly frantic process of jumping onto the moving train, climbing a small ladder, and poking your head through the front bars. Staff members at the end of the station manually lower the back bars to lock you into place, and the ride then turns the train horizontal.
 

 
The riding position isn't exactly uncomfortable, but unlike, say the B&M flyer trains, you never feel particularly cushioned; there's a lot of industrial-looking metal around you.
 
The slowly rotating lift hill (in a similar style to Eurosat at Europa) winches you to the top, and then the pain begins.
 
To say Time Warp was inelegant would be an understatement; the sharp turns and awkward inversions ensure your body is slammed with some force into all sides of the ride car. I spent the ride braced for impact.
 
There is a reason as to why "Favourite Volare" came last in the Mitch Hawker Poll, below even Goudurix. It's a rather unique experience, but not, unfortunately, an enjoyable one.
 

 
Time for a quick look at the Park's flat rides - starting with Shockwave, a Mondial Top Scan.
 
Top Scans are amongst my favourite flat ride types, but despite sporting a supremely colourful paint job, this one was about a thrilling as a limp handshake. It lifted us up, lethargically windmilled a few times, and lowered us down again.
 
If you think Thorpe's Samurai is a good example of a terribly-run Top Scan model, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's a shame, but these rides are really only at their best when on the fair circuit, where they're not being continually flogged for 8 hours+ a day.
 

 
Wonderland also features a WindSeeker, another Mondial creation and a staple of Cedar Fair parks (having bought 6 of them over a 2 year period!).
 
You may be forgiven for thinking that these ride in much the same way as a Funtime Star Flyer, but they're actually quite different experiences. Star Flyers give riders the illusion of jeopardy, helped in large part by the fact that the seats are pretty minimalist, attached via a few chains to a central rotating structure that looks like it's been made out of Meccano. Wind Seekers are altogether more substantial; the seats are heavily cladded, attached via large metal arms to the sizable central rotating structure. Wind Seekers are also larger machines, with a capacity of up to 64 per ride and in this case, a height exceeding 300ft.
 
This provides the average rider with less to be nervous about as they're dangling around at altitude, and the result is an altogether more enjoyable ride. Views from the top of Wonderland's Windseeker were spectacular; you could even see the skyscrapers of Downtown Toronto.
 

 
New for 2016 was Skyhawk, a 131ft Gerstlauer Sky Roller. As with the Mondial Top Scan, I'm a huge fan of these flat rides - the ability to give yourself a seriously intense spinning ride through simple physics is fantastic fun.
 
I'd really enjoyed Holiday Park's Gerstlauer Sky Fly earlier in the year, and having given Wonderland's Skyhawk a spin, it's very clear as to which is the superior model.
 
The Sky Roller works by rotating the ride vehicles 360 degrees around the central tower in one plane (do excuse the pun). The Sky Fly however employs a boom arm that is far more three dimensional in its swinging around of the ride vehicles - meaning that riders have far greater opportunity to complete a full spin in their vehicle.
 
I managed to get a couple of complete spins in my aeroplane on Skyhawk, but it was much trickier than on either of the Holiday Park or Nigloland Sky Fly models. Cedar Fair likely chose the Sky Roller for capacity reasons (16 per ride vs. 12 per ride), but that's about the only advantage I can see over the Fly.
 

 
And it would be remiss of me to move on without touching on Sledge Hammer, the world's first and only HUSS JUMP². Designed especially for Canada's Wonderland, this giant flat ride (as with so many prototypes) has suffered more than its fair share of technical problems and downtime since it opened in 2003; kudos should be given to the Park for persevering with it.
 
It certainly looks the part, but how does it ride? Pretty well, actually, apart from one flaw. The ride involves the eight claws rotating around the central structure, with the 8-seater cars at the end of each claw also rotating around their own axes. Every so often, the eight claws suddenly shoot up into the air (as shown below), causing a sharp "losing your stomach" feeling. More rotating happens with the claws all raised, and again without warning they suddenly all drop down to ground level again. This repeats for around 2 minutes of ride time.
 
It's certainly a unique experience, and one that I'm glad to have had, but the flaw becomes apparent during a "jump", thanks to the sudden change in direction upwards or downwards; momentum from the rotation causes both your body to slam into the side of the seat, and your face to slam into the side of the restraint. The restraints are very cushioned (more so than usual...), but you couldn't exactly call it a refined ride.  Ow.
 

 
Back to the coasters. Dragon Fire is one of the four original coasters at Canada's Wonderland, having opened in 1981 along with the Park.
 
Geek fact: since the removal of Drachen Fire from Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Dragon Fire is also the only Arrow coaster in existence to have counterclockwise-turning corkscrews.
 
I can't say I particularly noticed the difference.
 

 
Ghoster Coaster is another of the original 1981 lineup, and is tucked away in the Peanuts-themed kids' area at the back of the Park.
 
Coasters like this - solid, medium-sized, family rides - are generally undervalued by enthusiasts, but are arguably just as important as the big blockbuster attractions to the average punter; Ghoster was pulling queues nearly as long as Leviathan's.
 
Alas leg room for me was worse than even the very worst European short haul airline (I'm looking at you, Wizz Air), but the kids were having a great time.
 

 
The Park also features a "large Park" version of Mack's standard Wild Mouse: The Fly. Always good fun.
 
Geek fact #2: The Fly has an identical layout to all of the Project X / Test Track rides operating in the Legolands of the world. Thankfully The Fly's ride vehicles did not have comedy hoods installed over them, unlike poor Legoland Windsor's old Jungle Coaster...
 

 
Canada's Wonderland also plays host to one of the 3 Premier-built Backlot Stunt Coasters; these were previously known as the Italian Job Stunt Track from when the rides opened in 2005 to when the old Paramount Parks (of which Canada's Wonderland was one) were sold to Cedar Fair in 2008.
 
All of them clones, the layout sees guests launched at 40mph out of the station, before winding around a succession of tight upward helices themed as a parking lot. From here the trains dive into a series of s-bends trying to "avoid" parked police cars, before plateauing out in front of a tunnel. When the ride first opened under Paramount, here the trains were stopped for a short show to take place, involving a helicopter rising up along with simulated gunfire; this gunfire sprayed "petrol" all around riders, which resulted in a gas tank "explosion". Alas on my ride none of these special effects were in operation, and the block brakes weren't even slowing the trains, so we just cruised on past all of the themeing. A shame - not least because on the Kings Island version I rode earlier this year, they had kept a stripped down version of the show complete with pyros.
 
Trains are then launched for a second time into a tunnel, twisting and dropping before coming out of the "broken billboard", diving down in an aqueduct and turning back into the ride's station (below).
 
In all, despite having a mediocre capacity (only 12 guests per train...), these are great little rides; the tight transition from the initial launch into the "parking lot" helices is surprisingly intense, even causing me to momentarily grey out. It's just a little frustrating to see this particular one so pared back compared to its launch just over 10 years ago. No special effects, no Italian Job theme, and no MINI Cooper trains (sadly, Cedar Fair lost the licence for these too in 2010).
 

 
And finally to Behemoth, the original B&M airtime machine at Canada's Wonderland, which - incredulously - now has to put up with being Leviathan's little brother. Opening only 4 years prior to Leviathan, Behemoth is an unquestionably fun coaster, and has much in common with it's bigger, blue-r counterpart. Comfortable, smooth ride? Yep. Nonrestrictive clam shell lap bar? Indeed. Soaring airtime hills? Oh yes. Named after a huge Biblical creature in the book of Job? You got it.
 
But there are also differences; Behemoth is nearly 80ft shorter in height, its 4-across trains have staggered seating, and it's placed to great effect on a large lake, making the dives towards the ground even more exciting. Alas, its first drop doesn't have as much "wow" as Leviathan's - it's good, but not that good - but it redeems itself through its length; having just as much track as Leviathan makes for a longer ride.
 

 
Both deliver lots of floater and ejector airtime. Both are lots of fun. If I had to call it, I'd say front row / back row on Leviathan beats any row on Behemoth, but it's marginal.
 
Visitors to Canada's Wonderland should count themselves lucky they can enjoy not one, but two examples of fine Swiss engineering.
 

 
So, Canada's Wonderland: a large, well-presented park with a tonne of rides to enjoy; some impressive, some less so. My overall impressions of place were very favourable - there is no doubt that it is, as claimed, "Canada's Premier Amusement Park".
 
This is clearly borne out in the visitor numbers - I went on a Saturday in September and the queues were thronging. Great to see, but on days like these it's impossible to do the Park in a day without a Fast Pass - I duly coughed up for the Fast Lane Plus, which allowed me to get on a total of 24 rides in exchange for my additional $75 (c.£43); without it I'd have been lucky to do more than 12.
 
And a place like Wonderland is all about the rides; it's definitely a case of quantity over quality, but there are moments of brilliance to be found in Leviathan's front row, Vortex's back row, and Guardian's breathtaking drop - these alone make the trip over the pond worthwhile.
 
~
 
Thanks for reading! Comments very welcome below.
 
Next up: Day 2 of the Canadian Caper, including Marineland, Martin's Fantasy Island, and Darien Lake.

Canadian Caper
 
Sometimes in life, an opportunity presents itself that you just can't pass up, despite the fact it might be a bit mad... and in my case, this year it was an email from British Airways offering me a return flight to Toronto, Friday - Wednesday in September, for just £356. I had a few days holiday left, hadn't set foot in Canada before, and knew there were some tasty coasters operating in this part of the world... so why not?
 
It didn't take too long to come up with a plan: flight out of LHR on the Friday night after work, landing into YYZ (Toronto International) on the Friday night (8 hour flight but Toronto is 5 hours behind!). Pick up hire car, drive to hotel near the airport on arrival. A whole day at Canada's Wonderland on the Saturday, with the evening back in the airport hotel. Sunday was to be the big one: a three hour drive across the border to Darien Lake (USA), taking in both Marineland (Canada) and Martin's Fantasy Island (USA) on the way. Sunday night spent in Buffalo, which would set me up nicely for a whole day on the Monday exploring Niagara Falls. Return the hire car on the Monday evening, and take the subway into downtown Toronto, leaving Tuesday and Wednesday free to explore all the city has to offer. Phew.
 
With temperatures in the high-teens and the late-summer sun set against deep blue cloudless skies, September is a fantastic time of year to visit Toronto. I found the city to be a smaller, more friendly New York, made all the better by its location on the waterfront of Lake Ontario and the omnipresence of Tim Hortons. But what of the Theme Parks?
 
Read on for my Canadian Caper!
 

 
CN Tower: EdgeWalk
 
Before we dive in, a quick nod firstly to a Toronto attraction that isn't a Theme Park, but gave me a bigger thrill than any Park in this report.
 
The CN Tower is quite the landmark for Toronto, built in 1979 as the world's tallest tower and to this day remaining the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. At 1,815ft high (553m), it's nearly twice the height of London's Shard, although the viewing platform (shown below by the red arrow) stands only at 1,168ft (356m).
 
No big deal, right?
 
...it is when you're harnessed up and walking around on a small platform on the top of it!
 
This is the EdgeWalk, opened in 2011 as the world's highest full-circle, hands-free building walk. It punishes your bank balance at $195 (c.£115), although this is somewhat justified given that it has a capacity of only 6 people every half an hour, and it's really, really cool.
 

 
Understandably security is very tight for an attraction like this - guests all have to wear a bright red "walk suit", and aren't allowed any loose objects on them, including watches, hair clips, and wedding rings. Personal cameras are a definite no-no. However, walk leaders are equipped with cameras and all guests receive a complimentary HD video and printed photo of their experience, with the (predictable) opportunity to buy even more photos at the exit.
 
I went up first thing on a beautiful cloud-free morning, and can honestly say it was the most exciting, terrifying, and liberating thing I've done all year.
 
Just check out that view!
 

 
Guests are harnessed up to the overhead rail via two ropes, and the walk leader takes the group around one complete circuit during the 30 minute session, encouraging each person to try out a few "tricks" along the way, such as balancing your feet on the edge and leaning back (above), and leaning out over the edge into the city like the famous "I'm Flying!" scene in Titanic (below).
 
Everyone attempted all the tricks (I was joined by a thirty-something IT technician from Jordan, and a fifty-something management consultant from the US), although not without a few wobbly legs and involuntary shrieks along the way.
 
If you completely trust your harness - and you have no reason not to - you're absolutely fine, but nonetheless the raw adrenaline from being that high up and that exposed is quite something, especially if conditions get a little windy. It's breathtaking and beautiful, and worth every penny.
 
EdgeWalk: bringing a whole new meaning to "don't look down"...!
 

 
Canada's Wonderland
 

 
Onto the Parks.
 
Canada's Wonderland, located 25 miles north of Downtown Toronto, is by any standards a serious player in the Theme Park industry, being ranked 3rd in the world by number of roller coasters (16), after Six Flags Magic Mountain (19) and Cedar Point (17), and being the 2nd most-visited Park in the Cedar Fair chain (soundly beating Cedar Point, and sitting just behind Knotts Berry Farm).
 
I'm a fan of Cedar Fair properties - in my experience they tend to index slightly more towards "well funded" than "managed by corporate spreadsheet" vs. either of the Six Flags or Merlin chains. That said, they are far from immune to criticism, and Wonderland's $20 parking fee payable as soon as you drive onto the property hardly gets your day off to a flying start.
 
What immediately lifts the mood however is a quite wonderful view of the Park's headline attraction, Leviathan.
 

 
More on that later.
 
For now, it was a quick photo of the uninspiring but admittedly well-maintained entrance, a mandatory scan through the metal detectors, and in through the turnstiles...
 

 
...and straight after the pretty average entrance comes an unexpected visual treat.
 
Seeing Main Street and the Cinderella Castle upon entering the Magic Kingdom creates an excitement and anticipation of the day ahead that is rarely matched, although plenty of Parks aspire to have the same effect. Wonderland's huge flower display, flanked by patriotic flags, in front of a giant water display, in front of a large artificial mountain, has quite some impact.
 
Definitely above average!
 

 
And so to the first ride of the day, which was actually housed inside the mountain: Wonder Mountain's Guardian. Debuting in 2014 (although the idea was first mooted 10 years prior), the 3D dark-ride-come-roller-coaster represents a unique collaboration between Germany's Art Engineering (no, me neither), who manufactured the track, and Canada's own TrioTech, who designed the ride's interactive 3D animations.
 
Riders sit in one of the 2 car, 8 seat trains, wearing 3D glasses and holding a mounted "blaster" gun. Alas, on my visit every train had at least 1 or 2 blasters not operational, meaning the hourly capacity wasn't hitting much more than 500... snails have travelled faster than this queueline.
 
The first half of the ride resembles a fairly tame wild-mouse style coaster, although the enjoyment of it is somewhat impaired by the 3D glasses making everything a bit of a blur . Riders then enter the mountain, as the second half of the ride sees the trains shuttle between giant video screens, in much the same style as Toy Story Mania and Maus Au Chocolat. The story goes that old King Adelsten once tried to fight a dragon inside the mountain, but during the battle, the King lost his crown. Stansein, one of the king's servants, now guides riders through the mountain to find and retrieve the crown - with riders helping fight off all the monsters along the way using the mounted blasters. You would be forgiven for wondering what on earth was going on; the 3D animations weren't great. So far, so humdrum.
 
But THEN, out of nowhere, comes the best drop track section on a roller coaster I have ever experienced. Wonder Mountain's Guardian features a surprise drop of 30ft (9m), roughly twice the height of Thirteen's and Darkmare's, and many times more powerful. It's the final scene, and the mountain dragon has emerged again, breathing fire at riders - and without any warning, the train just plummets at a rate that would rival most drop towers.
 
Indeed, it's so impressive that it turns a fairly mediocre ride into one worth joining the back of the queue again for... if it weren't for the fact that the throughput was so horrific.
 

 
Sat right behind the Mountain, and even snaking around the top of it, is Vortex, an Arrow suspended coaster. I've always liked these swinging rides (alas Vampire at Chessington was never the same after the new trains...), and this particular model looked fantastic sporting a fresh new coat of red paint.
 
The ride experience held up very well too given its age, with the cars' extreme swinging being made all the more fun by the track's proximity to the lake and a top speed of 55mph - the fastest Arrow suspended coaster ever built.
 

 
Vortex: 25 years old, and still one of the best rides in the Park. Both unique and intense; there are now only 5 rides of this type left operating in the world - ride whilst you can!
 

 
Speaking of "best rides in the Park", at this point I couldn't resist giving the headline attraction a spin, Leviathan. Leviathan is a 306ft giga coaster and one of only two B&M creations to break the 300ft mark to date; the other being the superlative Fury 325 at sister Cedar Fair Park, Carowinds.
 
Decked out in bold blue and cyan hues, the ride looks spectacular and although far from fully themed, attention has certainly been given to the ride's styling, which includes a classy three-dimensional logo sat atop a 360° waterfall at the entrance. Why can't major rides in the UK be as bright and colourful as this?
 
As for the ride itself - as you'd expect from a B&M airtime machine, it's a huge amount of fun; silky smooth tracking even at top speeds of 92mph, coupled with the comfortable, open train design, makes for a supremely enjoyable and highly re-rideable experience. What really stands out though is the first drop: diving into a tunnel, it's one of the best, bum-off-seat freefall experiences I have had in a very long time. So. Much. Fun. One of B&M's best, both in the back row (for the airtime) and the front row (for the sheer raw speed).
 

 
What lets Leviathan down a little though is actually its length, which might seem a strange thing to say for a coaster that's got the same amount of track as Blackpool's Big One. But Leviathan is over 40% taller than Big One, and goes 20mph faster, so you hit that final brake run so much quicker than you'd like. Indeed, the brake run itself is actually taller than most coasters, standing at over 100ft - one can't help but wonder whether there's a missed opportunity there with all that kinetic energy going to waste. It could simply do more.
 
Leviathan is undoubtedly a brilliant ride and I could sit on it all day, but it is bettered by Carowinds' very similar installation 3 years later, due to Fury being well over 1,000ft longer, containing all the same juicy floater airtime, and still having an absolutely killer first drop. Fury should be a top 10 coaster (top 5?) in anyone's book, whereas I suspect riders of Leviathan will be slightly less generous in their rankings.
 
You can't deny though that it looks very pretty indeed...
 

 
3 down, many more to go, but it's from here that you start to realise that although on the coaster front Wonderland has a lot of quantity, it doesn't fare so well on quality.
 
For starters, there's the ubiquitous Vekoma Boomerang, The Bat, which rode much the same as any other (although it's continually surprising how forceful these can be; I even greyed out on one in Thailand...). 
 
I was actually lucky(?) to even get a ride, given that it seemed to be giving the engineering department headaches for most of the day.
 

 
In a similar vein, the Park hosts one of the original Vekoma Suspended Family Coasters, Silver Streak. Built in 2001, the coaster still rides well, but the tracking is rougher and the seating inferior to the manufacturer's more recent SFC effort at our own Paulton's Park.
 

 
And completing the Vekoma hat trick is Flight Deck, an SLC that looked shiny and fun, but predictably rode like a complete turd. It was a standard stick-your-neck-out-to-avoid-your-ears-getting-boxed affair, with generous helpings of being kicked in the back by your seat. Tick.
 
At the macro level, it's a real shame that these rides are so commonplace around the world - there are well over 40 still operating today, and Vekoma are still making money from it; a Park in Vietnam appears to have bought a brand new one for 2017 .
 
Very few ride types in the world are nigh-on guaranteed to put the rider through such an endurance test...
 

 
...except for maybe this one, the Zamperla Volare.
 
Thankfully less commonplace than the SLC (there are only 7), the Volare is without doubt one of the most poorly designed and fabricated coaster types around. Canada's Wonderland has the dubious honour of buying one of the first ones, with Tomb Raider: The Ride debuting in 2004.
 
These days it's called Time Warp, although much of the Tomb Raider themeing still exists. Getting into the ride involves a fairly frantic process of jumping onto the moving train, climbing a small ladder, and poking your head through the front bars. Staff members at the end of the station manually lower the back bars to lock you into place, and the ride then turns the train horizontal.
 

 
The riding position isn't exactly uncomfortable, but unlike, say the B&M flyer trains, you never feel particularly cushioned; there's a lot of industrial-looking metal around you.
 
The slowly rotating lift hill (in a similar style to Eurosat at Europa) winches you to the top, and then the pain begins.
 
To say Time Warp was inelegant would be an understatement; the sharp turns and awkward inversions ensure your body is slammed with some force into all sides of the ride car. I spent the ride braced for impact.
 
There is a reason as to why "Favourite Volare" came last in the Mitch Hawker Poll, below even Goudurix. It's a rather unique experience, but not, unfortunately, an enjoyable one.
 

 
Time for a quick look at the Park's flat rides - starting with Shockwave, a Mondial Top Scan.
 
Top Scans are amongst my favourite flat ride types, but despite sporting a supremely colourful paint job, this one was about a thrilling as a limp handshake. It lifted us up, lethargically windmilled a few times, and lowered us down again.
 
If you think Thorpe's Samurai is a good example of a terribly-run Top Scan model, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's a shame, but these rides are really only at their best when on the fair circuit, where they're not being continually flogged for 8 hours+ a day.
 

 
Wonderland also features a WindSeeker, another Mondial creation and a staple of Cedar Fair parks (having bought 6 of them over a 2 year period!).
 
You may be forgiven for thinking that these ride in much the same way as a Funtime Star Flyer, but they're actually quite different experiences. Star Flyers give riders the illusion of jeopardy, helped in large part by the fact that the seats are pretty minimalist, attached via a few chains to a central rotating structure that looks like it's been made out of Meccano. Wind Seekers are altogether more substantial; the seats are heavily cladded, attached via large metal arms to the sizable central rotating structure. Wind Seekers are also larger machines, with a capacity of up to 64 per ride and in this case, a height exceeding 300ft.
 
This provides the average rider with less to be nervous about as they're dangling around at altitude, and the result is an altogether more enjoyable ride. Views from the top of Wonderland's Windseeker were spectacular; you could even see the skyscrapers of Downtown Toronto.
 

 
New for 2016 was Skyhawk, a 131ft Gerstlauer Sky Roller. As with the Mondial Top Scan, I'm a huge fan of these flat rides - the ability to give yourself a seriously intense spinning ride through simple physics is fantastic fun.
 
I'd really enjoyed Holiday Park's Gerstlauer Sky Fly earlier in the year, and having given Wonderland's Skyhawk a spin, it's very clear as to which is the superior model.
 
The Sky Roller works by rotating the ride vehicles 360 degrees around the central tower in one plane (do excuse the pun). The Sky Fly however employs a boom arm that is far more three dimensional in its swinging around of the ride vehicles - meaning that riders have far greater opportunity to complete a full spin in their vehicle.
 
I managed to get a couple of complete spins in my aeroplane on Skyhawk, but it was much trickier than on either of the Holiday Park or Nigloland Sky Fly models. Cedar Fair likely chose the Sky Roller for capacity reasons (16 per ride vs. 12 per ride), but that's about the only advantage I can see over the Fly.
 

 
And it would be remiss of me to move on without touching on Sledge Hammer, the world's first and only HUSS JUMP². Designed especially for Canada's Wonderland, this giant flat ride (as with so many prototypes) has suffered more than its fair share of technical problems and downtime since it opened in 2003; kudos should be given to the Park for persevering with it.
 
It certainly looks the part, but how does it ride? Pretty well, actually, apart from one flaw. The ride involves the eight claws rotating around the central structure, with the 8-seater cars at the end of each claw also rotating around their own axes. Every so often, the eight claws suddenly shoot up into the air (as shown below), causing a sharp "losing your stomach" feeling. More rotating happens with the claws all raised, and again without warning they suddenly all drop down to ground level again. This repeats for around 2 minutes of ride time.
 
It's certainly a unique experience, and one that I'm glad to have had, but the flaw becomes apparent during a "jump", thanks to the sudden change in direction upwards or downwards; momentum from the rotation causes both your body to slam into the side of the seat, and your face to slam into the side of the restraint. The restraints are very cushioned (more so than usual...), but you couldn't exactly call it a refined ride.  Ow.
 

 
Back to the coasters. Dragon Fire is one of the four original coasters at Canada's Wonderland, having opened in 1981 along with the Park.
 
Geek fact: since the removal of Drachen Fire from Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Dragon Fire is also the only Arrow coaster in existence to have counterclockwise-turning corkscrews.
 
I can't say I particularly noticed the difference.
 

 
Ghoster Coaster is another of the original 1981 lineup, and is tucked away in the Peanuts-themed kids' area at the back of the Park.
 
Coasters like this - solid, medium-sized, family rides - are generally undervalued by enthusiasts, but are arguably just as important as the big blockbuster attractions to the average punter; Ghoster was pulling queues nearly as long as Leviathan's.
 
Alas leg room for me was worse than even the very worst European short haul airline (I'm looking at you, Wizz Air), but the kids were having a great time.
 

 
The Park also features a "large Park" version of Mack's standard Wild Mouse: The Fly. Always good fun.
 
Geek fact #2: The Fly has an identical layout to all of the Project X / Test Track rides operating in the Legolands of the world. Thankfully The Fly's ride vehicles did not have comedy hoods installed over them, unlike poor Legoland Windsor's old Jungle Coaster...
 

 
Canada's Wonderland also plays host to one of the 3 Premier-built Backlot Stunt Coasters; these were previously known as the Italian Job Stunt Track from when the rides opened in 2005 to when the old Paramount Parks (of which Canada's Wonderland was one) were sold to Cedar Fair in 2008.
 
All of them clones, the layout sees guests launched at 40mph out of the station, before winding around a succession of tight upward helices themed as a parking lot. From here the trains dive into a series of s-bends trying to "avoid" parked police cars, before plateauing out in front of a tunnel. When the ride first opened under Paramount, here the trains were stopped for a short show to take place, involving a helicopter rising up along with simulated gunfire; this gunfire sprayed "petrol" all around riders, which resulted in a gas tank "explosion". Alas on my ride none of these special effects were in operation, and the block brakes weren't even slowing the trains, so we just cruised on past all of the themeing. A shame - not least because on the Kings Island version I rode earlier this year, they had kept a stripped down version of the show complete with pyros.
 
Trains are then launched for a second time into a tunnel, twisting and dropping before coming out of the "broken billboard", diving down in an aqueduct and turning back into the ride's station (below).
 
In all, despite having a mediocre capacity (only 12 guests per train...), these are great little rides; the tight transition from the initial launch into the "parking lot" helices is surprisingly intense, even causing me to momentarily grey out. It's just a little frustrating to see this particular one so pared back compared to its launch just over 10 years ago. No special effects, no Italian Job theme, and no MINI Cooper trains (sadly, Cedar Fair lost the licence for these too in 2010).
 

 
And finally to Behemoth, the original B&M airtime machine at Canada's Wonderland, which - incredulously - now has to put up with being Leviathan's little brother. Opening only 4 years prior to Leviathan, Behemoth is an unquestionably fun coaster, and has much in common with it's bigger, blue-r counterpart. Comfortable, smooth ride? Yep. Nonrestrictive clam shell lap bar? Indeed. Soaring airtime hills? Oh yes. Named after a huge Biblical creature in the book of Job? You got it.
 
But there are also differences; Behemoth is nearly 80ft shorter in height, its 4-across trains have staggered seating, and it's placed to great effect on a large lake, making the dives towards the ground even more exciting. Alas, its first drop doesn't have as much "wow" as Leviathan's - it's good, but not that good - but it redeems itself through its length; having just as much track as Leviathan makes for a longer ride.
 

 
Both deliver lots of floater and ejector airtime. Both are lots of fun. If I had to call it, I'd say front row / back row on Leviathan beats any row on Behemoth, but it's marginal.
 
Visitors to Canada's Wonderland should count themselves lucky they can enjoy not one, but two examples of fine Swiss engineering.
 

 
So, Canada's Wonderland: a large, well-presented park with a tonne of rides to enjoy; some impressive, some less so. My overall impressions of place were very favourable - there is no doubt that it is, as claimed, "Canada's Premier Amusement Park".
 
This is clearly borne out in the visitor numbers - I went on a Saturday in September and the queues were thronging. Great to see, but on days like these it's impossible to do the Park in a day without a Fast Pass - I duly coughed up for the Fast Lane Plus, which allowed me to get on a total of 24 rides in exchange for my additional $75 (c.£43); without it I'd have been lucky to do more than 12.
 
And a place like Wonderland is all about the rides; it's definitely a case of quantity over quality, but there are moments of brilliance to be found in Leviathan's front row, Vortex's back row, and Guardian's breathtaking drop - these alone make the trip over the pond worthwhile.
 
~
 
Thanks for reading! Comments very welcome below.
 
Next up: Day 2 of the Canadian Caper, including Marineland, Martin's Fantasy Island, and Darien Lake.

Been a long time! But a busy few months lie ahead for me and theme parks so time to revive this blog! 
Europa Park is one me and Jack had talked about for a few years, the place of dreams almost. Finally, it happened! This is one of those trips worthy of a realistic report, not some sarcastic attack at the park like I usually do.

We arrived in Basel to get a 100+mph train into Freiburg, followed by a double decker train to Ringsheim and a short "bus" (was a coach) ride to the park.

What a lovely sight to walk in on!

Just looming in the distance

Ed and Jack were ready!

Water fountains were ready!

Let's go!

First up Silver Star. I like the Mercedes F1 tie in, it's intimidating, trims aren't as bad as I was expecting but the airtime just got repetitive, twists were great though!

This twist though 



Meanwhile over at Epcot, I mean the silver ball at EuropaPark... Eurosat sits around. This thing is bonkers, so glad it's hidden inside. Caught me by surprise each time we rode! Totally get why people wish X was like it.

It's also huge!

Cheeky bit of lunch in Greece. Food on park is great, so much choice and it's not hugely expensive for a theme park!

I don't know why, but this is now such a guilty pleasure ride of mine

Looks great!


Theming!!!!

Really nice station too!

Meanwhile, in Portugal there is this. A ride that is newer than Poseidon, yet does less and does nothing for me. 

It photos well

But that's about it
Annoyingly I didn't take any photos of Spain, other than the jousting show with added drama

Bad guy drama


It's okay, it had a happy ending!
Whilst we're talking about shows. They have so many! Lots of 30-40 minute shows, this in itself takes over a day to complete. Plus, on the larger shows they have mimes entertaining the audience as you enter! 

You had Bombay Nights in Holland with the Pirate's of Batavia ride going around the stage!

A live action Italian film set stunt magic show thing

An electronic bird show

In the same room as a bubble magician guy who smokes as part of the show.

A musical show in the Globe Theatre, because Shakespeare was known for his musicals.

A dome screen show where you lie in sleeping bags! Plus, an ice show, flamenco, open and closing show, 2 4D films, a little French dance/magic show and a parade



Ed being boss.

Just this. Quality.

What's this?

A mine train that even with VR has a higher throughput than any Mack mine train over here!

Bears for bare banter.

Okay, I'll move on from that one.

Anyone still needing a lift to any meets this year, there are two options. This. 

Or Jack in his purple sportscar! Can seat another 2 people, it's speedy and laps Silverstone regularly so must be good! Feel free to get in touch with Jack for more details

Then there was this thing. Odd is one word I suppose. 

Next please.

Yup, this guy looks like a trusty op. We'll do this then.

I want them everywhere. This is ideal for family parks!

Great coaster section! Fab dark ride.

And great visual in the plaza of the kingdom. Lots of these please thanks.

So many photos it's hard to fit them all in. So let's look at the hotels.

Bell Rock is gorgeous.

Colosseo really cool!

The other 3 really cool!

And not bad views from the bars

Back on park this guy thought he'd set fire to his house. As you do, red fire and that.
So that's it! Europa Park! Stunning park with great rides, operations, atmosphere, just everything! I have loads of photos so if you do want anymore just request in the comments and I'll post more  
 
Oh, guess you want to see something else first though.

Me and Jack with ED  that's why you're all here.

Or maybe for what this is...


Lots of artsy fartsy photos thanks to a back path that I think used to be an extension but is now open to public for photos, round the back of Wodan village.





This inline is crazy. The little pops of airtime, fast changes of direction, it's all just great. LOTS more of these in the world please, I bow to our new Mack overlords.

Wodan for me though was the best ride on the trip. The indoor queue has some great effects, and is just a really nice place to queue.

It just looks intimidating.

Has a spectacular entrance


Just loved it!
Bye bye Europa, it was fab. Should be back for Horror Nights!

 
 

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the Stuttgart Sojourn; an April weekend exploring the regional Parks of south Germany (if you haven't read it, Part 1 is here). Following an overcast, but very enjoyable, day at Tripsdrill, a good night's sleep in one of their cosy Schäferwagen, and a hearty continental breakfast in a log cabin in the middle of the WildParadies (a second gate Wildlife Park next to the Theme Park), it was time to make the hour-long drive north to Haßloch's Holiday Park!
 
And what a difference a day made to the weather; out was the blanket grey cloud, and in were bright blue skies with warm sunshine. Theme Parks generally look great in any weather, but they look especially great when the sun has his hat on .
 

 
Holiday Park
 

 
Holiday Park is based 12 miles out of Neustadt in Haßloch, and much like Tripsdrill before it, is set in the middle of vast areas of German countryside. Rather more "corporate" and polished than Tripsdrill, the Park was owned and run by the Schneider family from its opening in 1971, and was sold on to Studio 100 (who own the Plopsa brand) in November 2010.
 
Since then, Studio 100 have made significant efforts to "Plopsa-ify" the Park, importing into Germany the characters so prominent in their other Parks (and if you haven't heard of Plop the Gnome, Wickie the Viking, and Maya the Bee... well, you're not missing much). And there are now lofty ambitions for Holiday Park, which had suffered in the years prior to the Studio 100 takeover, with the stated aim to drive gate figures up to 1.2m through a phased €25m investment (to match visitor numbers at the flagship Park, Plopsaland De Panne).
 
It's easy to spot the new owner's influence from the moment you enter the car park - Holiday Park now sports a jazzy new themed archway at the entrance, much like the one at its sister Park.
 

 
The eagle eyed amongst you will have already spotted the Park's signature attraction in the above photo, and it was indeed the first ride we made a Maya-the-Beeline for as we entered the Park.
 
Expedition Ge Force's reputation precedes it; winner of the (revered?) Mitch Hawker Best Steel Coaster Poll 5 times in the last 10 surveys, and never dropping below third place over that time. With three of my personal favourite coasters coming in at 8th (Shambhala), 9th (Nemesis), and 11th (Katun) respectively, it would be fair to say that I was hyped to get to ride the so-called "King" of the leaderboard.
 
The ride is loosely themed around an expedition, with jeeps / backpacking gear / kettle drums scattered around the queueline, but the station is essentially an unglamorous tin shack, and the unthemed trains are of the standard Intamin lap-bar variety, commonly seen on their megalite rides (although these had tedious seat belts around the waist as well as the lap bar).
 

 
So far, so average. Also average were the operations - one train op, with the 2 ride attendants checking and re-checking both bar and seat belt twice each before the train was dispatched. We were lucky that despite the glorious weather, the Park wasn't overly busy - but had these ops been on a busier day, the resulting queues would have been pretty intolerable.
 
What isn't in any way average though, is this ride's scale. In a small-ish Park, it looks absolutely huge (at 171ft tall), with a monstrous sweeping layout that takes up a pretty large amount of Holiday Park's available space.
 
The cable lift hill is speedy, and affords some magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, along with the large twisty mess of track that riders are about to navigate. And as with Shambhala, the anticipation (and feeling of vulnerability) on the ascent is tangible.
 

 
There are many standout moments on this ride.
 
The 75mph first drop is an absolute winner; steep and sharply twisted down to the ground - in the back row particularly it's a killer. The numerous airtime hills, like the one below, deliver a sustained shot of ejector airtime. And the head choppers towards the end of the ride, where the track doubles back on itself underneath the supports of the first airtime hill, are some of the best I've experienced for maintaining the illusion of collision.
 
CoasterForce have a video of the ride that's well worth a look. GeForce is really, really good fun.
 

 
And yet, despite all this, it is hard to recommend it as the best coaster in the world.
 
The ride was built in 2001, around the same sort of time as Thorpe's Colossus. Aside from the lack of OTSRs, the train and track construction is pretty similar. The trains sound the same as Colossus as they roar around the track. And the comparisons with Colossus unfortunately extend to comfort: Expedition GeForce has exactly the same level of constant vibration / roughness that Colossus has.
 
For some people, this may add to the ride - no-one can claim that GeForce isn't exhilarating, or that it doesn't "give you a good ride". It's quite the thrill. But it does, especially in the back rows, mean that rides can come off GeForce feeling a bit beaten up.
 
And alas our old friends - the Intamin lap bars of doom - also don't help this feeling. Granted, they're far preferable to Colossus' restrictive OTSRs, but they do crush your thighs, especially over those ejector airtime hills, making re-riding more of a difficult choice than it should be. How Richard Rodriguez spent 104 days on the thing I've no idea.
 
So, Expedition GeForce: brilliant in many ways, but not, in my opinion, the best coaster in the world.
 

 
The Park's other big attraction is 2014's Sky Scream, a Premier LSM launched coaster with a small footprint; identical to Superman Ultimate Flight (the 2012 original) at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Part of Studio 100's €25m investment plan, the ride replaced the ageing Vekoma Corkscrew Super Wirbel, and a la Towers' entrance, corkscrew track from retired ride has been installed over the pathway towards Sky Scream as a nostalgic decoration.
 
And as you can see, the old overgrown Wirbel area has been completely transformed by the new ride. Anyone for a quick trip in the Sky Scream Limo of Horror?
 

 
I was not expecting to come away with a hugely positive review of the ride, thinking that the experience would be similar to Parque de Atracciones' Abismo, Linnanmäki's Ukko and the like (in short: fun Maurer rides, but too short, and with stomach-hugging, oppressive restraints).
 
I was surprised.
 
Sky Scream is smooth, intense, and well engineered. The train shuttles out of the blocks into a half-powered set of LSMs, pushing it halfway up the incline. Then it shuttles (backwards) into the station, where the LSMs (now with reversed magnetism) push it nearly all the way up the incline on the opposite side. Gravity does its bit to take the train back down (forwards) into the station, where the LSMs (at 100%) boost the train right up the incline and over the top of the 150ft structure.
 
A slow inline twist follows at the top (as with the Maurer SkyLoops), and then a short holding brake (seen below) creates suspense, before the train bombs down again at a very steep angle into the non-inverting loop, and then down again back into the station. The train overshoots the station once, before being comfortably braked coming backwards in to stop.
 
Sky Scream is a lot of fun, with decent Gs felt across all of the elements, and the (comfortable) lap bar restraints meaning the rider can properly enjoy being thrown around the circuit. It's worth saying that the trains come complete with a leg bar as well as a lap bar - which could be an irritation for taller people - but (at 6'1'') this didn't materially affect my enjoyment of the ride.
 

 
Holiday Park chose to open the ride without any of the associated themeing in place (see an early photo here), but a mention must be given to the final product, which is now of a very high quality. The queueline acts as a walk-through Haunted House, with jumpy TV-screen effects, detailed set scenes, and loud noises (chains, dogs barking) startling prospective riders throughout. The Park actually has banners outside the entrance advising under 14s to stay away! I particularly enjoyed the lenticular portraits that changed from "normal" to "spooky" as you walked on past; done before, but nonetheless effective.
 
Overall, Sky Scream gets a thumbs up. Yes, it's short, but for the size of its footprint I think Premier are on to a winner, besting Maurer's ride by having intense launches, and being less clunky and more comfortable. And with two of these rides having opened last year, and two more opening this year, I'm clearly not the only person to think so.
 
Given its limitations, Sky Scream clearly can't compete with the very best coasters out there, but I'd ride again without hesitation. Couple that with an impressive themeing package, and Studio 100 have done a great job here - no bad thing if this is indicative of future quality from Holiday Park.
 

 
The Park's final coaster comes in the form of Holly's Wilde Autofahrt ("Holly's Crazy Car Journey"), a brightly-themed 2010 Maurer Wild Mouse from the now defunct Loudoun Castle, not dissimilar to Rattlesnake at Chessington. There's not a lot to be said about these rides, other than this one was running well, with barely a brake in sight... other than at the very end! The cars screech around the corners with gusto, throwing all riders uncontrollably into the side of the vehicles.
 
Brutal, but fun!
 

 
It's easy as a coaster geek to undervalue common ride types, such as the wild mouse, the boomerang, even the wacky worm... but for 99% of a Park's guests, particularly the younger ones, these rides are as fresh and exciting as anything else out there.
 
I was reminded of this when watching riders on Holly's Wild Fart (yes, a fart gag) - almost every car was filled with guests screaming their heads off and having a thoroughly good time. These ride types are successful for a reason, and although we goons might have ridden many identikit versions of a type ourselves, this doesn't make their existence any less worthwhile.
 

 
Onto the Park's supporting attractions, and first up was Sky Fly, a new-for-2015 Gerstlauer, um, Sky Fly. Whilst not winning any awards for naming innovation, the Park have presented the ride well in a colourful new area surrounded by stalls, cafes and a toilet block. I am a huge fan of this ride type, which involves riders tilting the wings on their individual aircraft left and right in order to induce rotation, all whilst being whirled around a central support via a giant arm (much like a Mondial Top Scan).
 
Holding the left wing down / right wing up will rock you in one direction, holding left wing up / right wing down will rock you in the other. Get enough momentum up and you can make it over the top and complete a 360. Keep your wings "fixed" in the wing position (up / down) that pushes you over the top, and you'll continue to rotate in that direction like a madman. Of the 12 guests per ride, usually 2-3 will grasp the concept and make it over the top.
 
What is brilliant is that the rider can set the intensity of their ride by how much they want to rotate their aircraft. What is also brilliant is that if you get the rotation momentum right, the resulting spinning is downright insane - and easily one of the most intense flat ride experiences out there. If you have read my mini Trip Report from Nigloland in 2014, you'll know that their Air Meeting gave me a subconjunctival haemorrhage, as well as an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Whilst the eye problems were thankfully not repeated in Holiday Park, the giggles certainly were, and I came away with a big grin on my face, along with lots of strange looks from the waiting crowd.
 

 
The Park also has a Star Flyer, the 260ft Lighthouse Tower, from Funtime. I like these rides mainly for the fab views (yes, more German countryside), but with only a few chains holding your chair onto the central spinning structure, I can see why some otherwise-confident guests chicken out of riding...!
 

 
Burg Falkenstein ("Falkenstein Castle") is a German hill castle in the Harz mountain range, located between Aschersleben and Harzgerode, dating back to the High Middle Ages. It's also the name of Holiday Park's only dark ride!
 
Built in 1987, the ride certainly looks the part from the outside, complete with wooden stocks and well-established plants growing up around the aging brickwork...
 

 
...and long-time visitors to Thorpe will recognise the inside - it's Phantom Fantasia!
 
Sort of. Mack provided Holiday Park with this version of the omnimover-style ride 4 years after they furnished Thorpe with theirs, and 5 years after they gave Europa Geisterschloss.
 
Alas time has not been kind to the Burg on the inside. Burg Falkenstein has to be one of the most badly-aged dark rides in Europe, with only a tedious journey around supposed "animatronics" that are either falling apart, squeaky, or stationery, to offer. The attraction is very dark, and there is the impression that scenes have been removed over the years; there are some entirely blank spots during the ride. Altogether very dull.
 
It's a well above average dark ride building, and a well below average dark ride. A shame.
 

 
Much more impressive is Donnerfluss ("Thunder River"), an Intamin rapids ride that also happens to be Holiday Park's oldest ride; built in 1983, Donnerfluss was also Germany's first ever rapids.
 
Sporting the same boats as Thorpe's Thunder River (also an Intamin creation), this rapids has all the components of a great water ride: good rockwork, thunderous waterfalls, surprise geyser bombs, and most importantly, some pretty hairy rapids sections! 3 out of 4 of our boat got very wet; only one of us came off unscathed, and thankfully that was me .
 

 
And on the subject of good water rides, Wickie Splash is another solid addition to the Park's lineup. The Mack flume was opened as Teufelsfässer in 1992 ("Barrels of Hell"; darkly-themed with the devil, skeletons, and fire effects), but received a family-friendly Plopsa re-brand in 2014.
 
The re-theme is fantastic, brightening up the whole area with shiny, colourful buildings and characters from the Wickie the Viking series (if you still aren't familiar, you can enjoy / waste 3 minutes introducing yourself here). And the log flume itself is excellent; 3 fun drops including one backwards, with the inside turntable sections allowing for some storytelling with Wickie and friends. The final drop is an airtime-filled double-down, much like Logger's Leap's (now sadly missed), but a smidgen higher at 65ft.
 
Good length, multiple drops, a backwards section, well themed, wet but not too wet. You can't ask for much more from a Park flume!
 

 
The final ride of note in the Park is Anubis Free Fall Tower; the first free fall drop in Europe, standing tall at 230ft. I love Intamin drops, common though they are, and this delivered as consistently as any other. That said, having opened in 1997, its age does show - the fall itself was pretty unrefined and clunky, and there was definitely a greater than average amount of shaking on the way down!
 
It's also worth saying that the link to Anubis, Studio 100's successful kids drama, was tenuous at best - there were a few posters of the show displayed in the queueing area... and that was it.
 
Previously the ride was simply called Free Fall Tower. Nothing like shoehorning in an IP when it's not required...!
 

 
And last, but by no means least, we come to the Park's all-season Wasserski Stunt Show, staged at least once a day in the Park's 1,300 capacity Aquastadion.
 
Replacing the incumbent show of the last 2 years, "Hollywood's Talking Dead" (um, OK ), for their 45th birthday Holiday Park debuted a brand new spectacle: "Die Jubilaumsshow Holiday Park - 45 Jahre" ("The Anniversary Show of Holiday Park - 45 Years"). There was even a giant celebratory cake floating in the middle of show lake.
 

 
The Holiday Park waterski show remains Europe's first and only waterski stunt show in Europe, and against any metric, it's an absolute winner. A team of c.10 stunt performers showed off some serious skills on the water, involving waterskis, waterboards, high speed boats, jetskis, and jetpacks. There was also some abseiling and high-wire work across the audience.
 
And the whole show was set to a pumping up-tempo soundtrack, with gunfire, cannon-fire, pyrotechnics and party streamers thrown into the mix!
 

 
Perhaps the best thing about the show though was its bonkers storyline. My German's not exactly great, but from what I could gather...
 
Holly (the Park's original mascot; not a Plopsa character) wants to throw a party to celebrate Holiday Park's 45th birthday Holly has made a giant birthday cake, and needs help lighting the candles Comedy French bad guy (in a comedy cape, sporting comedy mustache) turns up with his comedy French henchman, having arrived all the way from Disneyland Paris (in a Mickey-Mouse themed old banger) Disneyland Paris bad guy claims that Disneyland is the best Park in Europe, and therefore must ruin Holiday Park's 45th birthday celebrations Holly attempts to eliminate the Disneyland bad guy, via many high-speed chases and stunts on the water Having had no success, Holly rings up good friend Roland Mack (!), who provides Holly with a Europa Park stunt boat (!!) Holly saves the day by arriving in the nick of time on the Europa Park stunt boat Both comedy French bad guy and henchman are blown up in a big fireball via a cannon The cannon is then filled with fireworks and directed towards the cake The cake explodes with colourful fireworks, streamers erupt into the audience, Holly does a dance, much jubilation, etc...  
Utterly hilarious, and great to see such tongue-in-cheek rivalry between Parks on the continent...!
 
Holiday Park flatters itself by making the comparison to Disneyland and Europa, but still... top stuff .
 

 
So if it wasn't clear already, I had a great day at Holiday Park, with GeForce, Sky Scream, and the Wasserski Stunt Show being reason alone to make the journey over to Haßloch. It's in a period of transition, with the new owners investing in both new areas (Sky Scream) and redevelopment of old areas (Entrance Plaza, Wickie Splash) - and long may this investment continue.
 
There is certainly more to do; the Park's layout is strange, and the quality is inconsistent; generally, things that have been Plopsa-ified are of a far higher standard than the legacy areas from the old ownership (I'm looking at you, Burg Falkenstein...). So there's a way to go before the whole thing feels coherent. But I am confident - seeing the improvements to date, and having the backing of the chain behind it - that this upward trajectory will continue.
 
And any Park that invests heavily in entertainment gets my vote. In addition to the Wasserski Stunt Show, Holiday Park puts on an energetic daily parade involving all the Plopsa characters, as well as regular shows for little ones in the main plaza area.
 
Thanks for all the smiles, Maya the Bee!
 

 
And thanks to you for reading; comments welcome as always.

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Stuttgart Sojourn
 
The 2016 Theme Park season is upon us, and what better way to kick off than a weekend hop over to visit our deutsche Freunde in Baden Württemberg. The reason for the trip was to explore two of the more regional, and less-well-travelled parks, in Germany: Tripsdrill and Holiday Park.
 
Planning was a cinch, involving a Eurowings flight out to Stuttgart (£50) and overnight stay at the Wyndham hotel on airport (£30) on the Friday evening, 2-day car hire from Avis (£30) picked up on the Saturday morning, entry to Tripsdrill on the Saturday (£17), overnight stay in the Tripsdrill Schäferwagen on the Saturday evening (£40), entry to Holiday Park on the Sunday (£24), petrol for the weekend (£8.50), and BA flights home on Avios (£17.50); all prices per person, based on 2 travelling. At £217 each, it's great value - and I'd encourage anyone thinking about planning a similar European trip to jump straight in - there's a huge variety of Theme Parks on the continent, not all that far from us, at relatively accessible prices.
 

 
As you can see, both Tripsdrill and Holiday Park are easily driven to from Stuttgart airport, although flying into Frankfurt could also work. And for a three day trip, Europa Park is also just under 100 miles away...
 
First up, on the Saturday, was Tripsdrill; a Park marketed as "featuring over 100 original attractions depicting Swabian life in the late 1800s... remarkable attention to detail, dedication to authenticity and respect for nature truly set Tripsdrill apart". And I'm happy to report that there's no marketing hooey here: the above sums up Tripsdrill really rather well.
 
Tripsdrill
 

 
This here is a Swabian man - let's call him Günther - from the late 1800s. Goodness knows what he is doing, or what he has on his back, but Tripsdrill is stuffed full of animatronics such as Günther - the Park really is a mecca for rural German history, if that's the sort of thing you're into. There are whole areas of the Park filled with both static tableaux and moving scenes, and you can easily spend an hour wandering around the place exploring all the exhibits.
 
This, along with its gorgeous rural location (in a valley, surrounded by vast rolling fields), gives Tripsdrill a very "homely" feel: it would come as no surprise to anybody that it remains family owned (the Fischers have run Tripsdrill since 1929; it's easily Germany's oldest Theme Park). It's clearly important to the owners that the Park integrates as much with nature as possible; wood is used for most buildings, and there are trees and flowers everywhere. And being family owned, there is a more "relaxed" approach to H&S (although I never once felt unsafe), operations were excellent, and there wasn't a queue-jumping scheme to be seen.
 

 
First up for us was the 2013 Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, Karacho (no literal translation, other than "a lot of power"). The Park's newest and most intense ride, Karacho still manages to nestle in very comfortably with its countryside surroundings. The ride features Infinity trains with similar assemblies to Alton's The Smiler, but with only 2 rows rather than 4, and lap bars instead of OTSRs.
 
Themeing on the ride, as with all of Tripsdrill, is excellent, with scenes around the queueline telling a story about a madcap inventor designing his perfect roller coaster, surrounded by plans, prototypes and the like. Karacho is the result of his work, but as riders disembark, they are treated to one final animatronic of the inventor throwing up (water) into an oil drum. Not so perfect for him, then.
 
The ride itself involves a 180 degree turn out of the station into darkness, a "surprise" indoors heartline roll in the same vein as The Smiler, a peppy 55mph LSM launch out into the light, and an outside layout that involves a 98ft top hat, 2 dive loops and a corkscrew.
Operations were excellent, with fast, regular dispatching of trains - the operator would give each lap bar one push down and one pull up, and that was it; away we went. Top marks.
 

 
I was expecting Karacho to be a solid Gerstlauer installation, in the same vein as Lynet at Fårup, or Anubis at Plopsa. Solid launch, decent layout, OK trains. So I was really surprised to find that Karacho was actually bloody fantastic.
 
The trains are a large reason as to why - the Gerstlauer clamshell lap bar is a triumph; allowing maximum freedom whilst not exerting too much pressure on any one part of your thighs (I'm looking at you, solid Intamin bar of doom; see my Italy TR for more musings on this). For me, Karacho's are the closest coaster seats in terms of comfort to those found on Mack's megacoaster product - high praise indeed.
 
This elevates an enjoyable experience to a brilliant one, as the rider has complete freedom to be thrown about the remarkably well-tracked layout - which, in contrast to certain other rides, features absolutely no jolting or shuddering whatsoever. It's super smooth, and super fun.
 

 
By far the highlight of the ride is the 2nd dive loop, shown below. Not only does the ride tunnel underground, but the transition from the banked curve (seen at the back) and the dive loop (at the front) is very tight, meaning that riders get sharply "pulled around" into the dive (in a similar way to blue fire's final inline twist). It's an example of where OTSRs would have caused all sorts of painful head bashing, but with clamshell restraints, the ride remains intense but comfortable.
 

 
A final nod to the ride's lighting package. The well-themed trains look even better when they connect to the power supply in the station, as the two rear "engines" start to glow a vibrant red. It's a simple LED effect but really showcases Tripsdrill's attention to detail, fostering a nice anticipatory atmosphere in the dimly-lit station.
 
Overall, Karacho came very close for me to being the perfect mid-sized coaster. Although it probably wouldn't trouble my top 10, it would get fairly close - and it's by far the best Gerstlauer I've ever ridden. It actually prompted me to consider a trip to Finland to ride its brightly-coloured brother at PowerLand, and seems to me to be the perfect investment for parks with mid-sized budgets; I can imagine Blackpool and Drayton would be good candidates in the UK for this sort of ride.
 
And finally - why, oh why, could Merlin not have opted for lap bars on Smiler's Infinity trains...?!
 

 
Next up was 2008's Mammut ("Mammoth"), a pre-fab wooden coaster from Holzbau Cordes (similar to Intamin's pre-fab efforts with Balder and Colossos), themed around German saw mills. Cue more tableaux in the queue line of workers, saws, wood, etc... you get the idea. Strangely, no mammoths to be seen. And again, Gerstlauer were involved - this time producing the trains.
 
It's an imposing ride for a smaller park like Tripsdrill (98-foot tall, 2,822ft long), and I had to set my camera to "panorama mode" to fit it all in...
 

 
We were lucky enough to get 4 back-to-back rides in the morning (it turns out the Park doesn't get so busy during dreary Saturdays in April...!), and I'm happy to report Mammut is a good 'un.
 
An entertaining pre-show before the lift hill (with a "saw mill goes wrong" theme), a killer first drop (especially in the back row), and a varied layout including a tunnel, all add up to a solid ride. Operations were good, albeit one train only.
 
It isn't hugely intense - although I suspect that's not the market Tripsdrill's after - and there is a little bit of roughness during some parts of the ride - although there's a good argument that this is part and parcel of a wooden coaster - but these are minor quibbles of an otherwise decent coaster.
 

 
You also get the advantage of some superb views of the rolling green countryside as you ascend the lift hill.
 
It's no Wodan or Troy, but just look at the curve on that drop. Phwoar.
 

 
Moving on, and this is G'sengte Sau - the Park's first "big" coaster, from - you guessed it - Gerstlauer. Indeed, Tripsdrill's involvement with Gerstlauer goes back a long way, as G'sengte Sau was Gerst's first ever coaster, back in 1998. And what is remarkable is how smooth and accomplished the ride is, given that it was Gerstlauer's very first effort.
 
The ride is built around a schwäbisch castle, featuring the wild-mouse bends and tight helices typical of these bobsled coasters, with some good near misses around the building structure. More than most rides at Tripsdrill, this one felt truly integrated with its environment; the bunny hops towards the end of the layout felt more like they were following the terrain than having been artificially created.
 

 
It most reminded me of Thor's Hammer at Djurs, which was no bad thing - and no surprise either given that Thor was Gerst's 2nd ever bobsled ride in 2002. A little rough in places, but capable of pulling some great forces around its tight layout.
 
Note how close the ride track is to the public pathway; no netting obscuring the view, no fencing or bars erected in the name of H&S. It makes a big difference to the organic feel to the ride, and was great to see - the Germans are clearly more trusted than we are to not do anything stupid...
 

 
The other side to the castle hosts the wonderful Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (translation: "Bathtub Journey to the Fountain of Youth"). This is an above-average Mack flume ride, where riders sit in comedy bathtubs meandering around various animatronic bath time scenes - some featuring a fair bit more nudity than you'd see in other countries! I have photos, but we must remember that TPM is a family website...
 
There were three drops, including a backwards one, and some nice interaction with the aforementioned G'sengte Sau. The drop was visually impressive, but didn't get you all that wet - which is the perfect combination for a cloudy April afternoon in my eyes.
 

 
By far the best bit of Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen however is the figure - let's call her Maike - that greets you when you disembark your bathtub.
 
She surely has to be one of the most gross characters to be found at a Theme Park, ever.
 
Some things cannot be unseen...
 

 
Onto some of the Park's supporting attractions, and we come first to Doppelter Donnerbalken (literally, "Double Thunder Beam"). This is a quirky set of two 50ft drop towers from Premier, facing each other, both themed to large trees. "Forest Brother" Huzelin lives in these trees, apparently, and the only way to visit him is to ride the tower. You know it makes sense.
 
What was quirky about the ride, apart from the fab Tripsdrill themeing, was what happened for the finale. For most of the ride the towers acted like oversized frog-hoppers, bouncing around whilst catching the expressions of those on the tower opposite (made all the more thrilling by only having a small lap bar to hold you in). The finale though involved both towers being raised to the highest point, and then a pretty fast, aggressive lurch forwards towards the riders on the opposite side.
 
This maneuver was genuinely surprising, and only a touch away from being "too rough" - with only a thin lap bar to hold you in, the experience could be compared to having a minor car crash.
 
A nice idea, but I have no doubt that the same effect could be achieved in a more refined way. It's telling that I didn't rush around to ride it again, and I'm a big fan of drop towers (for the record, Thorpe's Detonator still stands as #1 drop tower for me, even up against other towers three times its height...).
 

 
The Park also has a decent kiddie coaster in Rasender Tausendfüßler (translation: "Raging Centipede" ), a Zierer Tivoli with a high-capacity train that snakes around a lake with a fountain.
 
Some decent landscaping - and two laps around the track rather than one - elevate this coaster above the majority of similar kiddie rides.
 

 
Tripsdrill also has an excellent rapids ride in Waschzuber-Rafting ("Washtub Rafting"), a Hafema installation themed around an old washhouse from 1808. The queueline was, as ever, excellently themed, although old mangles and first-gen Miele washing machines aren't the most exciting of things to view whilst queueing...
 
I've always been a fan of Hafema rapids (their best creation surely being Phantasialand's River Quest) due to their innovative 3-piece boats that allow water to slosh around everywhere. This rapids was great fun as expected, with some seriously choppy bits, a thundering waterfall section, and a mock whirlpool, seemingly a Hafema hallmark.
 
Note again how close the Park's public areas are to the trough of the rapids. There's only a small wire fence between the pathway and the ride, meaning that an idiotic guest could easily jump right on in...
 

 
...and the same applies for Mühlbach-Fahrt ("Mill Stream Ride"), the Park's kiddie flume with a teensy 11ft drop - the cobbled area shown on the bottom right of this photo is a public area, but with absolutely nothing to stop a guest falling / jumping in to the water. I wonder how many kids in the summer have attempted to jump in!
 
In today's age of hyper-sensitivity to H&S and litigation, Tripsdrill's approach is unusual, but refreshing - let's just hope their more trusting attitude doesn't spell trouble for the Park down the line.
 

 
And finally a quick look at some oddities that make Tripsdrill, well, Tripsdrill. This ride, Weinkübelfahrt ("Wine Barrel Ride"), looks like your typical cars-on-a-track affair (R.I.P. Miss Hippo), but when various sensors are tripped around the course, the barrels spin like a lively teacup. Fun!
 

 
Fittingly, just behind the Weinkübelfahrt is the Vinarium, a free museum dedicated to German viticulture that offers all those who enter a free Tripsdrill glass ( ) and a walk around (yet more) exhibits of Swabian culture.
 
More of note was the cellar of this Vinarium, which turned out to be a fully operational bar. Manned by a local guy with absolutely no understanding of English whatsoever (A Level German suddenly became very useful to me), locally-produced wines from the region were the order of the day. I went for a glass of red (€1.50), which proved very palatable.
 
Tripsdrill are onto a winner here: if only more Theme Parks would give out free merch and sell cheap local wine in pleasant surroundings....
 

 
Laughs were had on the Park's Wackelräder ("Shaky Wheels") bikes, which had asymmetrical spokes on the front wheels, making them pretty hard to cycle around. I crashed into a wall once, and very nearly crashed into another guest barely a minute later. Good fun, with up-charging conspicuous by its absence.
 

 
In all, Tripsdrill is a really lovely place, filled with good quality, well themed mid-sized attractions.
 
Karacho is a stand-out ride. The fact the Park is family owned and run is evident throughout, and although it was pretty when I went, it must look really gorgeous in the summer. The flowerbed : guest ratio, even in peak season, must be approaching something like 3 : 1 .
 
It's also a place filled with German heritage oddness, which can range from educational and interesting to just plain strange.
 
To finish, I'll leave you with the latter; yet another Tripsdrill character - let's call this one Stefanie - who was found towards the end of the Tripsdriller Eheinstitut (translation: "Tripsdrill Institution of Marriage"; itself an odd attraction).
 
You saucepot, Stefanie.
 

 
N.B. We stayed overnight in one of Tripsdrill's Schäferwagen ("Shepherd's Carts"); essentially a classier, all wooden Thorpe Shark Hotel, set in gorgeous woodland surroundings. Theoretically you can fit 5 in these 13 sq.m.carts, although it would be a squeeze even with 4: two bunk beds hang over a central double bed, with a couch doubling up as a potential fifth bed. Toilets and showers are situated in a (well maintained) central block, but for those with a bit more cash to spare, full blown 6-person 35 sq.m. treehouses (with integrated bathrooms) are also up for grabs.
 
It was more than comfortable, and didn't just provide €7 pizzas delivered to our door and a great night's sleep, but a hearty free breakfast the next morning. At €100 (£80) a night all-in, including free entry to the Tripsdrill Wildparadies Nature Park next door and discounted Tripsdrill Theme Park entry, it comes recommended to those looking for an overnight option.
 

 
Thanks for reading; comments welcome as always.
 
Next up: Holiday Park!

Arabian Adventure
 
It's winter: the nights are drawing in, the days are getting shorter, and it's altogether a bit chilly. So what better excuse than to have a quick break away to the UAE; land of sand, sun, Sheiks... and coasters! Thanks to a bargain return BA flight booked relatively last minute, I enjoyed 4 pleasantly warm (28°C) days at the end of November in the Emirates, seeing the sights, enjoying the food, and riding the rides. Read on for the highlights, and lowlights, of my Arabian Adventure.
 
This trip report covers all of the Parks I visited:
 
Sparky's FEC, Dubai Wonderland, Dubai Sega Republic, Dubai Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi  
I was based in Dubai for my visit, and all of the Dubai Parks were within easy reach of the Metro. Like most of the buildings & infrastructure in Dubai, the Metro is very new, with the first line having been opened only in 2009, and a second one following in 2011. The city's tram is so new, it was only 2 weeks old when I visited! Dubai is also very easy to get around via the relatively cheap taxis, which are ubiquitous.
 
Yas Island, which houses both Yas Waterworld and Ferrari World, is located in Abu Dhabi, and the only means of getting there is via car. Given that the UAE has a less than impressive road safety record (supposedly you are 7x more likely to have a road accident vs. in the UK), for these Parks I opted to avoid driving myself and got a taxi, which took just under an hour each way.
 

 
So, on with the report. Hold on tight - it's a long one. And the first (mini) Park I visited was Sparky's:
 
Sparky's Family Entertainment Centre, Dubai

Sparky's FEC is a very new addition to the Dubai amusement scene, having only officially opened in March 2014. Owned by Saudi Arabia's Al Hokair Group (who run 55 indoor recreation centres in Saudi and the UAE), the complex is based on the top floor of the Al Ghurair Centre - one of the more modest Malls in Dubai, but still comparatively large compared to anything in the UK. The site houses an ice rink, 5D cinema, dark ride, go karts, soft play area, many arcade games... and a coaster!
 
Entrance is free, and rides and arcade games are on a pay-as-you-go basis. The minimum top-up on the Sparky's card was 50 AED (£8.77), which got me 2 rides on the coaster and 1 go on the 5D cinema (which incidentally was very well done, if quite jumpy... damn zombies).
 

 
The coaster was simply called Roller Coaster, and stood seemingly deserted when I walked up to the entrance gates: I had to ask an attendee tending to another ride to come over and open it up for me! Truth be told, the FEC wasn't busy, so I suspect it makes sound business sense to employ fewer "roaming" ride operators than have more of them all fixed on certain rides for the day.
 

 
Roller Coaster is an I.E. Park Spinning Coaster - indeed, is one of I.E. Park's very first Spinning Coasters. Riders sit back to back on Maurer-style spinning cars, with a simple lap bar to hold them in. Squarely aimed at the family market, the ride features 2 lift hills and weaves its way around the top of the FEC.
 

 
And perhaps surprisingly, the ride was good fun from start to finish. I wasn't expecting much to start with, but Roller Coaster had a good amount of spinning, a few airtime-inducing drops (when sat at the back) and was altogether a very comfortable ride. Not half bad for a new model, so I.E. Park should be commended. It looks pretty good too (pictured here above the ice rink)!
 

 
Sparky's won't take up any more than an hour or so of your time due to the small choice of attractions and even smaller crowds, but I'd nonetheless recommend paying it a visit if you're in the area. Roller Coaster is a decent attraction, and the supporting rides make for a more entertaining visit to a shopping mall than normal!
 

 
Wonderland, Dubai

Wonderland is situated to the north of Dubai city, only 10 mins drive from the airport. Before venturing off to find it, I questioned whether it would even be worth a visit: it was a little out of the way, looked as if it had only one operational coaster (a Vekoma Roller Skater), and the reviews on Trip Advisor were not even slightly encouraging (11% approval at time of writing). But not wanting to judge the place before I'd seen it myself, I took the Metro to the nearest stop, Dubai Healthcare City, and walked up to the Park entrance.
And this is what I found:
 

 
And this is what the car park looked like:
 

 
And there was no activity going on at this Beijing Jiuhua Amusement Rides Spinning Coaster:
 

 
And this contraption looked like it would kill anyone who tried to ride it:
 

 
Undeterred, I walked up to the very-far right booth at the entrance to speak to the attendant, and asked if I could buy a ticket. He was a local Emirati guy in traditional dress, but was a man of few words.
 
"Park is closed today", he said - even though their website stated it was open from 10am to 12am. When I asked why, he said that there was a "big new attraction coming", and they had to close the whole Park to construct it. "What sort of ride?", I asked, somewhat surprised. "A big one which spirals around a lot", he said, gesturing with his hands. I couldn't see any construction going on.
 
"When are you opening again?", I asked. He shrugged.
 
I then asked if I could have a look around the deserted Park to take some photos, but unsurprisingly he declined. The only snap I got was of the view into the Park from the entrance gates (below).
 
"Water park is open today", he said, pointing over to the left. And then he sat back down again.
 

 
But I had a good look at the water park, and it didn't look very open to me. Cutting my losses, I left Wonderland feeling more than a little frustrated.
 

 
Sega Republic, Dubai

Sega Republic is a relatively new FEC located on the top floor of the Dubai Mall. The Dubai Mall is the "world's largest shopping mall", with over 1,200 (count them) stores, including all the luxury brands you could want, along with a Debenhams, M&S, and Hamleys. Annually it hosts more visitors than New York City . So there's more than enough demand for an indoor Theme Park and Sega Republic stepped up to the mark, opening in 2009.
 
Much like Sparky's, Sega Republic operate on both a pay-as-you-go basis, where rides range in price from 15 AED to 30 AED (£2.63 - £5.25), and a pay-once basis, where a "Power Pass" for all rides is available at 175 AED (£30.65). Payment is handled via a Sega-bespoke smart card system, where ride entrances have only Sega-card readers and don't accept cash: Sega-cards must be topped up at designated payment booths prior to riding.
 

 
It's a pretty big FEC at 76,000 sq ft, and sprawls across 2 floors. As standard, the Park opens from 10am to 1am (11pm at off-peak times), so there's lots of opportunity to visit. And the Park's headline attraction is the rather good Gerstlauer custom spinner, Spin Gear.
 

 
As with the rest of the Park, Spin Gear is themed around Sonic and friends, and features an enclosed dark section in the second half of the ride that is not visible from the outside. It's a good length, smooth family spinner - the local riders opposite us in our car certainly seemed to enjoy themselves.
 

 
The standard of presentation is really rather good, with Doctor Eggman goading Sonic / presenting safety information in the queueline videos.
 

 
And the cars are very comfortable too, with a snug lap bar restraint to hold you in. So in all, Spin Gear can be recommended: it's a solid attraction that's much larger than first appears, and produces some good lateral forces. Well worth giving a go.
 

 
A side note on Sega Republic: prior to boarding any ride, riders are forced to stand and read a laminated sheet of paper with detailed instructions / safety information / rider restrictions printed on it. Ride attendants present this laminate to every rider about to board, which was fine given the relatively low crowds, but would be a throughput nightmare if there was any sort of queue.
 
I've never seen a Park do this before - highly conservative, and probably highly unnecessary.
 

 
Sega Republic had a good selection of flats to support the main 'coaster, include Xyclone, a gyro-swing-esq ride, which goes a full 360° and inverts riders over the top. Good fun, although a little painful being slammed back onto your restraint every time the carriage comes down having gone over the top.
 

 
My favourite flat was the innovative Halfpipe Canyon, which rode a little like a standing-up-pirate-ship. Huge amounts of fun, the ride puts 4 riders in 2 teams of 2, who compete against each other on their respective green or orange skateboard. Once the ride begins, the skateboards start to swing much like a pirate ship. Once the boards have reached their highest swings, they also rotate 360° for added disorientation. Teams gain points for stamping left-right-left-right on the plates underneath them at the points where the skateboards reach the top of the halfpipes - the most points wins.
 
Halfpipe Canyon: huge re-rideability - some people were running around for second / third / tenth goes - and very entertaining. If you ever see one of these, hand over your money!
 

 
Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi
 
And now onto the Parks in Abu Dhabi, both based on Yas Island. Yas Island is - much like the Palm in Dubai - an artificial block of land, located just off the coast of Abu Dhabi. It's still half completed, but the stats are staggering: the idea for the island was conceived only in 2006, but was built and opened for business just a few years later. The F1 circuit is the main draw, but the island has just opened a large Mall, and is home to both Yas Waterworld, and more famously Ferarri World. Total investment in the project is estimated at US$40 billion - that's 9 zeros - $40,000,000,000 . We opted for Yas Waterworld first.

Yas Waterworld opened only last year in January 2013, and has already been named the second best waterpark in the world, behind Disney's Typhoon Lagoon. Pretty impressive, and it's easy to see why - for me the Park is right up there with any of its American counterparts in terms of number, quality and variety of flumes & rides, and the standard of presentation across the whole Park is top notch.
 

 
For example, I don't think I've ever seen such a glorious mess of flumes as this (below) in any water park I've been to! These snake flumes were all provided by WhiteWater - the company behind our own revered Storm Surge. I think they've innovated a little since the advent of their Spinning Rapids Ride: these 6 slides include both cool new Rattler sections and a SuperBowl.
 
WhiteWater actually provided 12 out of the 14 attractions for Yas, and the Park is great advert for their products. One of the star attractions is the Liwa Loop AquaLoop, which I'm happy to confirm is one of the most heart-in-mouth water slides I've ever ridden. That moment when you're standing atop a trap door, knowing there's a freefall drop of several tens of feet below you and then a loop, hearing a calm female voice counting down "3...2...1..."? Scary bananas. WhiteWater also supplied a Freefall Speed Slide and a 6-lane Whizzard racer, which were both a whole lot of fun.
 

 
Judging by queue length alone though, it was ProSlide who won the popularity contest at Yas with their ginormous HydroMagnetic Mammoth Water Coaster installations that went by the names of Dawwama and Falcon's Falaj. Both slides use LIMs to propel the 6-person rafts up, as well as using gravity to push them down again into features such as this massive 20m funnel.
 
And you can't even blame low capacity for that queue - ProSlide claims a throughput of up to 1,080 per hour on their 6-person Water Coasters!
 

 
Hugely wet, hugely fast, hugely fun. And the uphill LIMs are a big improvement on e.g. Alton's Master Blaster water-propelled method.
 

 
But the real reason for visiting Yas Waterworld was to have a go on their Vekoma Splash Party coaster, Bandit Bomber.
 

 
It's a pretty bold decision by the Park to install a water-based steel coaster in a wet environment, especially given that previous attempts by other manufacturers (notably Setpoint) can hardly be deemed a success - Carowinds and Hersheypark can tell you more. The track layout sprawls across the Park affording riders a good view of the slides below, and the real fun comes when the 4-person trains roll through the "splash zone". In this area, riders on Bandit Bomber can choose to press a "trigger" button attached to the seats to dump a load of water on the queueing guests below. Guests below can retaliate thanks to ground-based water guns pointing up at the track.
 

 
It's a great idea, although unfortunately marred by the fact that on some of the trains, the hardware wasn't working (meaning no water was dumped, even if the triggers were pressed at the right time by riders), and that many of the riders seemingly had no idea that they had a trigger at their disposal, choosing instead to completely ignore the splash zone interactivity.
 
Whilst this was a shame, for those riders who did know what they were doing, and had been lucky enough to get a working train, Bandit Bomber was a lot of fun - anyone who's used the pay-per-use water guns located to the sides of Storm Surge or Tidal Wave will know how gratifying spraying a complete stranger with water can be.
 

 
And for everyone else, Bandit Bomber was still a solid family ride, with a decent twisty layout that afforded some good negative-G-inducing drops and swoops. Extra points to Vekoma for producing a really smooth ride, too - their latest steelies are so much improved vs. their back catalogue (their 2013 suspended family coaster Orkanen is one of the best family rides out there). Guests were running around back to the ride entrance to try it again; a thumbs up from me.
 

 
Yas Waterworld, then, is an excellent Park with only a few flaws (location is a bit in the middle of nowhere, and it's not cheap at 240 AED - £42), so I'd encourage anyone in Abu Dhabi, or even in Dubai, to make the trip over to Yas Island to spend a day there. The themeing and attention to detail is superb, and for my money the range of attractions and quality of the environment makes this a notch above more established local rivals such as Wild Wadi or Aquaventure.
 

 
Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi

Last but not least - Ferrari World. This had been by far my most anticipated Park due to its scale ("world's largest indoor Theme Park") and its speed machine ("world's fastest roller coaster"). As we had only a day on Yas Island, we didn't get over to Ferrari World until 4pm, having spent the morning and a fair amount of the afternoon in Yas Waterworld! Doing both Parks in one day does however have the advantage of being able to use the Yas Park Pass - a snip(?) at 365 AED (£63.87) - which bought us entry into both attractions.
 

 
The first thing to say is that the huge red structure which houses this Park is really, well, huge. It is so huge, in fact, that it's almost too big for the number of attractions that Ferrari World offers - around 15 if everything is operational. Walking from one side of the place to the other takes a considerable amount of time, but it wouldn't be difficult to polish the Park off in just half a day - as we did!
 
It's clear however that the Park are aware of this and are still investing. The 200ft drop tower that sits in the middle of the structure is currently under scaffolding (although it was unclear whether this was for renovation or to dismantle it), and the flume ride was boarded up with large "Coming Soon" signs plastered all over it. Local news suggests that the Park plans to install 7 new rides over the next 3 years, with the general manager claiming that some of these will be "iconic". Gringotts coaster, anyone?
 

 
But let's get straight to business - and the reason most of you probably came to read this trip report in the first place.
 
Formula Rossa is a breathtaking, pant-wetting rocket of a ride, and gave me the biggest adrenaline rush I've had from a 'coaster in a good long time; maybe even ever.
 

 
Made by Intamin, the coaster somewhat trumps sister hydraulic launch rides Stealth and Rita by boasting a launch of 0 to 149mph in ~4 seconds. That's basically Stealth's launch, and then Stealth's launch again. What follows is a 171ft hill, and then one of the longest layouts in the world (6th longest at the time of writing - Lightwater's Ultimate comes in at 2nd), mostly consisting of high hills and wide turns.
 
Although Ferrari World is an indoor Park, their star attraction of course launches off into the desert outside. And the Park provides a great viewing platform for potential riders to assess what they're letting themselves in for...
 

 
Two things happen in the station to keep the ride safe and operational. One: the train wheels and chassis are sprayed with water via automatic misters to cool it down in between launches. With temperatures in the summer averaging over 38°C, Intamin have had to adapt to the local climate. And two: riders are presented with red glasses, to keep any windy desert sand away from delicate eyes when moving at 149mph. All riders are required to wear these.
 

 
This ride is - unsurprisingly - all about the speed. The layout is fun, but with the transitions so wide and the hills relatively tall, not especially forceful. It's just fast. Bloody fast.
 
I rode Formula Rossa twice; once in the 3rd car (of 4), and once in the front row. In the 3rd car, the speed was palpable, with facial features distinctly wobbling and riders' screams literally taken from mouths.
 
On the front row, the ride morphs into an even more intense beast. Words cannot describe the sheer thrill of the launch: it really pushes the limits of human endurance on a Theme Park ride. My face turned into a rubbery mess, my arms - which were over-confidently in the air until about halfway down the launch track - were pinned back down into my lap bar, and my eyes streamed from the speed (even though I had the glasses on). In many ways, I am thankful for the trims on the hill after the launch - if the train continued to career around the track at the launch speed, it would have been a very uncomfortable experience indeed.
 
For me, the rush was comparable only to the huge adrenaline shot I experienced when skydiving over Salisbury Plain a few years ago - with a vertical terminal velocity of about 120mph. I have never experienced a Theme Park ride like it.
 

 
The riders' expressions say it all.
 

 
The Park's supporting attractions are the Fiorano GT Challenge racing coasters, from Maurer Söhne. Located on the other side of the Park, these dualing car-themed coasters use LSM technology to launch riders at a more family-friendly 59mph.
 

 
The trains are themed to Ferrari F430 Spiders, and feature comfy lapbars common to their spinner rides (a la Sonic Spinball). With a launch straight after the station, 3 further launches around the 1km track, and a handful of stop-start magnetic brake sections, the ride was both thrilling and a lot of fun. The ride layouts weaved in and out of each other, with red, yellow and green lights situated to the side of the tracks to inducate the (green) launches, (yellow) hairpin turns and (red) braking sections.
 
The ride ops didn't mind re-riding here, so we had a good 10 goes on Fiorano GT Challenge, on both the left (black) and right (red) sides - the left proved the favourite.
 

 
Other attractions at Ferrari World included the Scuderia Challenge simulators, Speed of Magic 4D dark ride, Viaggio in Italia Soarin-style attraction, newly-installed Tyre Twist teacups ride, and Karting Academy go-karts, which operated on a time-slot basis (we asked for a slot at 4:30pm, but were told the next available slot was at 7:30pm, so gave it a miss).
 
One of the largest-footprint rides inside the giant Ferrari building is Bell'Italia, a tour around a mini-Italy in a tracked Ferrari 250 California car. This ride proved to be a little embarassing, as the majority of "mini-Italy" had either been removed, or was in a state of disrepair. We were just driving around a load of empty green banking; Verona was little more than a sign saying "under renovation". Really quite poor.
 
Unfortunately, the Bell'Italia experience was somewhat reflective of Ferrari World as a whole; the two major 'coasters notwithstanding, the Park is a little in a state of disrepair at the moment. It is badly missing supporting attractions, with the closure of the drop tower and water ride not helping matters. The main Ferarri building is vast and needs more inside it to justify a gate price of 250 AED (£43.75). Although Formula Rossa and the Go Karts had queues, crowds were low (much lower than Yas Waterworld), which did little to lift the atmosphere - it was all a bit empty and flat.
 
I have hope for Ferrari World, though. Its coasters are both of real quality, and they have the infrastructure to build upon and grow. Yas Island is not even finished yet and Abu Dhabi has great potential to capitalise on tourism in the same way that Dubai has done. Fingers crossed the owners can keep the venture afloat and the Park doesn't go the same way as other expensive IP-led ventures such as ill-fated Hard Rock Park.
 

 
Burj Khalifa, Dubai
 

 
OK, so this is clearly not a Theme Park... but you, esteemed reader, may still be interested. This is the Burj Khalifa, and I was lucky to get in a visit to "At The Top" during my trip. Much in the spirit of all things UEA, you may not be surprised to hear that this is the "tallest building in the world". Tom Cruise famously sat on top of it. To put some numbers around it, the Burj Khalifa is 828m tall. That's insanely tall. If Nemesis Inferno's track was stretched out vertically from start to end, it still wouldn't be as tall as the Burj. London's The Shard could be stretched 2.5 times its height, and it wouldn't be as tall as the Burj.
 
In person, it's really quite impressive. It towers above Dubai's already screamingly tall skyline. The building houses 30,000 people, in both office and residental space. And for 165 AED (£28.87), tourists can take the (ear-poppingly fast) elevator up to floor 124 for a simply stunning view of the Emirate.
 
I picked my time slot to visit a couple of weeks before I arrived in Dubai ("At The Top" sells out weeks in advance), so I was primed for a good sunset at around 5pm. It didn't disappoint.
 

 
Watching the sun set over the city, desert and sea, from nearly a kilometer up in the sky, was a very cool moment. And as you might expect Dubai just lights up at night, yielding awesome views such as the below. Magnificent.
 

 
~
 
So, there is a wealth of Theme Park fun to be had out in the UAE, with clear highlights of my trip being Formula Rossa, Sega Republic and Yas Waterworld. The region is growing so rapidly that in many areas you can almost smell the investment being pumped into the place. That's not to say it's been an easy ride, however - the recession in 2008/2009 hit the sector hard, with projects like Universal Studios Dubailand barely making it off the drawing board. Indeed, when I was travelling down to Abu Dhabi from Dubai, I could see from my taxi the entrance arch to the proposed Universal Studios standing alone in the vast desert around it - very bizarre.
 
One large reason to be excited for UAE's Theme Park future is the development of Dubai Parks and Resort, a massive £1.7bn entertainment complex located towards the south of Dubai city centre, slated to open in 2016. Parques Reunidos - operators of Parque Warner Madrid and Mirabilandia - have been appointed to run two of the three Theme Parks due to open at the resort: Motiongate Dubai (a 4 million sq. foot Hollywood-inspired Park, with studios such as Dreamworks already on board) and Bollywood Parks Dubai (a 3-million sq. foot Bollywood-inspired Park, with major Mumbai studios on board).
 
The third Park in the complex is from a more familiar operator: Merlin Entertainments. Legoland Dubai, a proposed 7th Legoland Park, promises more than 40 attractions upon opening over an area of 3 million sq. foot. Construction boards have already gone up and are again visible from the E11 road to Abu Dhabi, so if all goes to plan, I can see many reasons for a return trip in a few years' time. And I haven't even mentioned the near-future opening of IMG Worlds of Adventure, featuring a Mack launched coaster...
 
Thanks for reading!

Back again with more definitive decisions on whatever I've visited over this year. And it's been a VERY busy year, with trips far and wide (as far as the Netherlands at least), as once again Europe called to me on a much more regular basis than anywhere in the UK. Indeed, I only visited Towers once, and only because I would've been upset with that red dot on my Coaster-Count profile. Perhaps next year I'll look to complete the leftovers of the UK.
How does one define 60 odd park visits into one list of things? With a bit of difficulty, but here we go:
Best Park – Efteling
Yep, not really a difficult one, the quality shines through Efteling completely. Effects fixed over the course of a few days trip, things added for no real reason, and just generally a nice place to be. No matter the season, since there's seemingly ALWAYS something going on.
Best New for 2015 Ride – Baron 1898 - Efteling
I was going to give this to Cu Chulainn, honest. But, yeah. Baron does everything I want from a ride. Theatrical, theming, classy music, fun ride, projection mapping. Ticking all the boxes for a good ride, but what makes it great is the details involved, there are plenty that are easily missed. They've also changed the outdoor batch and made it slightly better, still a weird system though, but it seems to work a lot better now. Baron sums up Efteling very well in everything with it, and I wish there were more like it.
Best “New for Benin” Ride – Troy (TROY!) - Toverland
In hindsight I'm not sure how many stand out rides there were for me this year. Too much mediocrity clearly. However Troy (and Toverland in general) was a rather bright spot this year. Troy is excellent quality and showed why GCI coasters are in general, great additions to a developing park.
Best Water Ride – (H)el Rio - Bobbejaanland
A surprisingly fab Rapids ride, the Halloween décor they had added to it improved it a fair amount, even if the ridiculous Ferris Wheel lift seems to be lifeless these days (would’ve been interesting to experience that), it made up with it with the whirlpool of death as also featured at Bagatelle’s rapids. But the Halloween music, theming and smoke made it so much better than I’m sure it would normally have been.
Best Flat Ride – De Waarbeek’s classic selection
Cheating I know for this one, but quite frankly the couple of classic flat rides available at De Waarbeek were great fun. From the self-propelled Whip to the unrestrained Caterpillar with added cover, a really nice surprise to discover.
Best Dark Ride – U-571
This is how you do a simulator attraction, a real standout from Movieland and sums up the place nicely. Effort and insanity go hand in hand from the naval base theming, the great staff members, to the fact that you have to run down metal steps as water bombs go off. The simulator feels real too, and the lack of restraints adds to the fear. I was fortunate/unfortunate to not experience the WET version too, which apparently ups the ante further. Which sounds insane.
Best Show - Romanes vs Gaules, The Match
New for this year, and Asterix really pulled this out of the bag. This is an amazing show, with a great setup, spoof adverts on the screens, great references to pop culture. Just the effort put into it makes it one of the best shows in a theme park today. Also gains points for having a real dog involved.
Worst Park – Duinrell
A bad atmosphere and even worse rides, there was just something about this park that didn’t end up sitting right with my positive side. Pretty much started downhill with the stupidly long queue to enter the place, followed by a massive walk around a caravan site. At least most of the other parks I visited this year had some positive elements.
Worst Seaside Park – Hemsby Fun Park
Decided it would be unfair to put Seaside parks in with normal ones this year, Hemsby was a clear winner for this though. The place is an absolute dump.
Worst Coaster – Sequoia Adventure
I had the misfortune of riding this again this year. It cemented its place as the worst coaster I’ve ever been on. No wonder they can’t sell it.
Worst Water Ride – DiVertical
It was closed and spiteful. Tbh, there were no real water rides I went on worthy of this award, so the chance to jump on some Intamin rubbish cant be knocked.
Biggest Surprise – U-571, Movieland Studios
Best dark ride, and biggest surprise in general. The unexpectedness of the attraction is what makes it so unique.
Biggest Disappointment – The Forbidden Caves
I loved Lost Temple in Germany. I really did. So I thought Bobbiejobbie's effort would be as good, but it was lacking a fair bit if I'm honest. The pre shows just felt faffy, as did the long walk to the ride. The story also didn't really work to the ride type. Shame.
The “I forgot actually how good this ride was” Award – Oz’Iris – Parc Asterix
A new award, purely for Oz'Iris if I'm honest. Its so good! Better than Katun in my book now, and shows that just because B&M don't go ridiculously intense anymore doesn't stop them creating real gems.
The “WTF was that?” Award – Revolution, Bobbejaanland
Just... I don't even know tbh... From the 30 car train in the curved station, the weird seating arrangement, the underground train sounds, the massive round lift hill room with the screen to the tiny descending drops in the outside. Revolution was certainly an enigma.
Why is this under-rated? Ride - Goliath - Walibi World
This is better than Expedition GeForce. There I said it. Where GeForce I found lacklustre last year, Goliath this year was seemingly a breath of fresh air for me. Perhaps the layout, perhaps the lax ride ops meaning no stapling, but it's just something about Goliath that made it a better overall ride than it's highly rated German counterpart.
Strangest Park – Movieland Studios
I've already mentioned U-571, but the rest of the park deserves credit too. Magma 2.0 is a fantastic experience, whereas things like Terminator (interactive shooting gallery) and Kitt Superjet (waterjet attraction) seemingly add to the insanity. The Rambo stunt show was also fab, and involved ACTUAL volunteers. It really is just a random and entertaining place.
Best Park related Experience – The Plopsaland Backstage Tour
A whole morning finding out about Plopsa and a full on tour of the backstage. It was informative though really, and worth it was the cred anxiety that took place. I wish Plopsa would open something in the UK.
Worst Park related Experience – Gardaland’s Express Pass Problem
Oh Merlin, even when barely going in the UK you still curse me. Providing AP holders with unlimited Fastrack for €80 for the year was never going to end well, and it pretty much ruined the day at Garda as a result. If they ever bring it over to the UK, their fan won't be able to move.
Best Ride Experience – Sky Drop Tower – Tivoli Friheden
Kinda pushing the definition of ride, but I'm glad I did this. Summed up you go up a tower, winched up and then free fall into a net. The tower is tall. The experience of literally free falling attached to nothing is something no other ride can fulfill. Well worth the money (£5).
Milestones – 450th (Hembsy Caterpillar), 500th (Formule X)

Roman Roaming: Highlights from Italy, Part 2
 
Ciao! You've found Part 2 of my Roman Roaming Trip Report - if you've not yet seen Part 1, it's worth checking that out first. Part 2 continues with the tour around the land of pizza, pasta and Mario Balotelli, and includes the following Parks:
 
Part 2
Mirabilandia, Ravenna Ai Pioppi, Treviso Etnaland, Sicily  

 
Bellissimo. Let's dive straight in!
 
Mirabilandia
 

 
Mirabilandia is Italy's #2 Theme Park, yet can hardly be called "conveniently located"; its closest major city is Ravenna (nope, me neither), and the closest airports are Bologna (90 mins drive), Florence (150 mins drive), and Venice (150 mins drive). You can see the Park skyline for miles in advance of actually getting there, due to the vast area of flat fields and low vegetation that surround it. And yet that doesn't prevent Mirabilandia from being rammed most days of the weekend / holidays, largely by Italians.
 
For this reason, Mirabilandia was the only Park in which I chose to invest in a Flass Pass, which afforded unlimited riding on all rides all day. It operated via a wristband system, and dedicated ride entrances - flash the wristband, and you're let straight on. Very similar to Thorpe's Ultimate Fastrack (£80), but with less need to re-mortgage your house, at just €39 (approx. £28).
 
Few of the locals had opted for the Flash Pass, so it turned out to be a highly worthwhile purchase - namely for the numerous laps I managed on Katun, unarguably one of the best B&M inverts in the world.
 

 
No doubt many of you on here will have ridden Katun, but for those that haven't, there is a very good reason that it has placed in and around the top 10 in Mitch Hawker's annual Best Steel Coaster Poll for the last 10 years. Only Alton's own Nemesis can boast a similar record as an Invert.
 
And why? Katun's sense of speed is hard to beat. The steep first drop is a genuinely thrilling, high-octane rush of a start (which consistently gave me an shot of adrenaline that few rides do), and from there the ride never lets up, with a layout including a very floaty zero-G, and a very speedily-taken cobra roll. The final helix, again taken at some speed, with riders' feet nearly brushing the dense vegetation that has grown up around it, is another highlight, and an excellent end to the ride.
 

 
It's very hard to make the call as to which is the better inverted coaster vs. Nemesis, but Katun wins points for a simply stunning first drop, and for the sheer relentless-ness of the ride. Nemesis benefits from its greater number of near-misses, given its location in the pit, arguably a better theme, and an excellent final corkscrew inversion that - as an ending - just edges out Katun's. It's interesting to note that both Nemesis and Katun are "old school" B&Ms, having been built in 1994 and 2000 respectively, and there's a pretty solid argument that the Swiss manufacturer have edged away from these more intense inverted layouts in recent years (although Asterix's excellent OzIris can perhaps make a counter argument here).
 
At the end of the day, one ride Katun alone is worth the flight out to Mirabilandia. Book it now.
 

 
Mirabilandia also offers an attractive set of supporting rides, including the visually impressive Intamin Water Coaster, DiVertical. Opened in 2012 (and initially mired with technical problems), DiVertical remains the tallest Water Coaster in the world, with its 197ft elevator lift structure towering over the skyline.
 
Boats meander along a concrete trough towards the bottom of the lift, where they are loaded individually onto a platform - connected to one side of the dual-pronged structure - that raises the boat up to the top. The bulbous middle of the elevator lift is to allow for another platform with an empty boat - connected to the other side - to descend alongside the ascending platform containing riders. It's a very speedy process, and hats must be tipped to Intamin for making it so efficient.
 
The drop itself is a fun one - not overly steep, but longer to compensate, and the minimal lap-bar restraints ensure riders feel vulnerable during the descent.
 

 
The initial splashdown is mild, with the track barely skimming the water - the proper dose of H2O is to come. The boat careers over a well-profiled airtime hill, a couple of turns, and downward helix, before making a proper splash back down into the trough. As you can see, riders should not expect to come away dry from the experience - but in the scorching Italian summer, I didn't see one person who cared.
 
I was expecting to enjoy DiVertical, but I really enjoyed DiVertical - Intamin may well have a ride that betters Mack's well-received Water Coaster. Intamin's track is smoother (), and there is real tension built by the lift structure. Colour me surprised, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of these pop up in the warmer Parks of the world.
 

 
Continuing the Intamin theme, Mirabilandia also hosts one of the better layouts of the Intamin Accelerator in iSpeed. Opened in 2009, iSpeed accelerates from 0 - 60mph in 2.2 seconds (not dissimilar to Rita), up a 180ft top hat (not dissimilar to Stealth). What follows thereafter though is dissimilar to both UK Accelerators - a further 2,500ft of twisty, airtime-filled track, including a corkscrew and inline twist.
 
The layout is great fun, fairly intense, and taken at some speed - indeed, the ride actually hits its top speed (74mph) well after the LSM launch. What prevented it becoming a brilliant ride for me was alas the restraints - the same as those featured on Stealth and Rita.
 
As you will know, these restraints have a thin over the shoulder design, with weighty bars that sit over riders' thighs. And actually this design is pretty bearable (but wouldn't go as far to say comfy) on the UK Accelerators. But on iSpeed, where there are numerous quick direction changes, and multiple pops of ejector airtime, the restraints just became painful, making re-riding a not-too-attractive prospect.
 
I managed 5 goes (with the Flash Pass), and found towards the end that the best way to ride was to use my hands to push up against the shoulder bracing on the OSTRs, to stabilise me and alleviate the pressure from the lap bar on my thighs. In this position, the air time didn't crush my legs against the solid, straight bar as much, and the direction changes didn't slice my neck with the shoulder bracing as much. But I shouldn't have to do this to enjoy the ride - rides should be comfortable and afford the rider as much freedom as possible.
 
In sum: great layout, hampered by poor trains, 7/10. If Mack could build iSpeed but with their Mega Coaster trains, that would be amazing, thankyouverymuch.
 

 
Mirabilandia is also host to Niagara, a very wet 100ft Shoot the Chutes flume, Reset, an excellent post-apocalyptic New York-themed laser shooter Dark Ride, and Eurowheel, Europe's largest ferris wheel, which stands tallest in the Park's skyline at 300ft.
 
It's also well known for its expensive-looking stunt show, which gets refreshed yearly. After many seasons running with a "Police Academy" theme, this year Mirabilandia debuted a new Grosso Guaio a Stunt City Show ("Big Trouble in Stunt City"), in collaboration with Hot Wheels - which meant the Park could generate extra cash through placing Hot Wheels kits for sale in every retail outlet on Park.
 
The arena set looked great, and after a pretty slow start (15 mins of talking, "comedy", more talking, and some audience participation), the eventual stunts were pretty impressive. It was the usual fare: car chases, motorbike jumps, dumper trucks doing wheelies; but the stand out moment came in the finale, where "Europe's first" real-life loop-the-loop stunt was unveiled. The green Hot Wheels-branded car attacks it with some speed and the chassis actually connects with a trough in the loop to keep it on course through the manoeuvre, but it's nonetheless an impressive visual spectacle, especially in combination with the trigger-happy pyrotechnics used throughout the show!
 
Great fun, and a nice way to end the day at one of the more impressive Italian Parks.
 

 
Ai Pioppi
 
From the sublime to the ridiculous... this next Park couldn't be more different to Miribilandia if it tried.
 
Presenting Ai Pioppi. Ai Pioppi ("the poplars") is an "osteria" - literally translated as a "bar" or "tavern". It's actually more of a restaurant, and is nestled in the woodland 30 minutes drive north of Treviso (an hour north of Venice).
 
All very good, but why did a family-run restaurant feature in my roam around Italy?
 
Because, of course, this particular restaurant has roller coasters...
 

 
The restaurant itself is pretty rustic - the menu most comprising steak, fish, and polenta slices all being cooked on large hot plates together. Chips were also available. The outdoor seating area has been built to cater for crowds, with large numbers of benches and tables scattered around the expansive undercover area next to the kitchen.
 
Pricing was highly reasonable, and the food was tasty enough. There was even a nicer indoor section for the more formal meal out.
 
But you didn't come here for a food review...
 

 
Ai Pioppi is a restaurant with a difference, as the back of it features an entirely hand-built playground filled with rides ranging from swings, slides, seesaws, gyroscopes, flat rides and even roller coasters!
 
Some history: on June 15th 1969, a man named Bruno bought himself a few jugs of wine, some sausages and a few other items, and set up a tiny food stand underneath a tree in northern Italy to see if anyone would show up. By the end of the day - to his surprise - he had sold almost everything and the family restaurant, Ai Pioppi, was born.
 
The next month he had an encounter with a blacksmith who didn’t have time to make a few hooks for some chains. Bruno decided instead he would learn to weld to make the hooks, and enjoyed it so much he began to dream up small rides he could build to entice new customers to Ai Pioppi.
 
40 years later, and Bruno is still building rides by hand. And admission for these rides remains free for all patrons of his restaurant.
 

 
This is the workshop from which Bruno dreams up, and subsequently builds, new rides.
 

 
And this is the man himself - in his element as architect and manufacturer of his restaurant's attractions... and seemingly laughing in the face of retirement!
 

 
So what's on offer? There's too much to show, so here I'll offer some highlights, starting with this "ferris wheel with a difference".
 
Like many of the rides at Ai Pioppi, this attraction uses people-power to operate. Riders (max of 2) climb up the ladder to get to the central platform, where there are walkways to each opposite end. The way to make the wheel turn is for the riders to distribute their weight by walking (either forwards or backwards - different direction by each) in the smaller wheels situated at each end. With each rider moving around their respective mini-wheels, the central wheel turns, and it's entirely possible to complete a full 360 turn (and for riders to remain fairly upright) if both participants get the hang of it.
 
Fascinating to watch, and fairly daunting to ride - there are no restraints to speak of, only a handlebar to hold, so it's quite easy to see this going wrong with a mis-step or two...
 

 
Onto another hand-built kinetic wonder. In this ride, guests sit in cages and pedal what most closely resembles a bicycle, in order to drive their carriage around the large loop. There are heavy counterweights at the other ends of the pendulums, which enables a decent momentum to be built up - hard work to start with, but it's not too difficult to get into a rhythm and build up enough power to get close to inverting.
 
The best I managed was to get my cage to the 1-o-clock position on the "clock"; not quite enough to get to "12-o-clock" and beyond to make the full inversion. There were three reasons for this:
 
1) Momentum runs out very quickly when your cage (the heavier part) reaches any height, meaning a huge effort is required on the pedals to continue to push it over the top;
2) The "restraints" consisted of two curved shoulder bars, not unlike the ones featured on Thorpe's Slammer, but with zero padding, so they hurt really quite a lot when your entire body weight starts to rest on them, and;
3) By the time I'd pedalled all the way to "1-o-clock", I was fairly terrified of the entire contraption.
 

 
Moving on, to the 4 roller coasters that exist at Ai Pioppi.
 
Two were unfortunately not operating during my visit; the oldest, Bob, had a large twig over the tracks and the gate to access it was padlocked. Unfortunately, my Italian wasn't good enough to ask Bruno what was wrong. The second, Catapulta, has been "Under Construction" for 5+ years now, although given that it looked like it was attempting a petrifying Stealth-like launch using a counterweight system, this wasn't a huge issue for me...
 
The Carrello della Gobba ("Cart with a Hump") was open, and is a fairly sizable butterfly / shuttle ride with a c.30 degree incline, a bunny hop after the initial drop, and a steep (nearly vertical) ramp at the other end. Being similarly "people-powered", riders have to push the single-person cart to the top of the incline (on the left) until it locks into place at the top, get into the thing, lower and lock the "restraint", and release the brake on the floor of the cart to start the descent...
 

 
Given my previous experience with the flat rides, and the appearance of the cart (below), I was needless to say rather apprehensive about releasing the brake (had Bruno ever heard of ADIPS?!). However, my fears were (mostly) unfounded, as Carrello della Gobba gave a pleasantly smooth ride, marred only by the extreme ejector airtime over the bunny hop, which would have certainly thrown me (to some considerable height) out of the cart, had the painful metal thigh-restraint not prevented me from doing so. Ow.
 
The ride also takes a fair time to finish, because there is nothing to stop the cart once its been released at the top; it just continues to shuttle forwards, and backwards, and forwards, until friction alone brings it to a slow enough speed to get out of it unharmed.
Most riders came off with grins on their faces, and bruises on their thighs!
 

 
But the emotions stirred by Carrello della Gobba were nothing in comparison to Ai Pioppi's headline attraction, the Pendolo ("Pendulum").
 
Pendolo, like Carrello, is a butterfly / shuttle ride, but on a much grander scale, and without the bunny hop. Built 15 years after the original Bob coaster, Pendolo towers well above every other construction in the woodland, including the trees.
 
When we approached the ride, it was considered a write-off; the cart was covered up, and the railings sported signs saying "Closed" and "Under Maintenance". Given the sheer size of the thing, and the disconcerting yellow sign that advertised "maximum speeds of 100 km/hour", I would be lying if I said that a tiny part of me wasn't a tiny part relieved that I wouldn't be riding today...
 

 
But as we were eating our steak and polenta for lunch, Bruno had other ideas... and set to work fixing up the Pendolo to get it into operation!
 
When the first test car ascended the incline - shunning people-power this time, being driven by a pulley system with motor - we all held our breath as to whether the car would complete the run successfully, given the rampant foliage growing up through the track...
 

 
...but complete successfully it did, making a huge clattering racket as it thundered through the bottom of the half-pipe and up the towering steep ramp the other side. Much like Carrello, there was no braking mechanism, so the ride took around 3 minutes of coasting up and down each side of the track to slow down enough to (manually) pull the car to a halt for the oncoming riders.
 
And then it was my turn. Getting into the 3-across car, featuring seats still covered in leaves and head rests that had clearly been "borrowed" from a Fiat 500, I had rarely been more nervous for a ride. Not even the Vietnamese coaster with the non-locking OTSRs last year had me as worried as this one did, and I'm unashamed to say that at the point the car was released at the top of the slow incline, I shrieked like a little girl.
 
Whether we hit 100 km/hour or not, I will never know, but it could well have been; thankfully the near-vertical ramp that greeted us at the other side was quick to take the speed out of the car, and back down we went. The adrenaline rush was massive; 80% due to pure fear, 20% due to the thrill of the (impressively smooth) ride.
 
I have no doubt that the first time I rode Colossus, way back when, I experienced a similar level of nerves and excitement (10 loops! OMG!). But having grown older and more travelled, it's become harder and harder to re-create that pure adrenaline rush. Ferarri World's Formula Rossa did it for me last year, but then it had to launch me to 149mph across the Arabian desert to do so.
 
All the more kudos then, to Bruno, for giving me such intense "fear and thrills" feelings all over again on his Pendolo . Bravo!
 

 
In sum, Ai Pioppi is an absolutely bonkers place; as likely to make you soil your underwear in fear as it is to make you drop your jaw in wonder. It's probably a place that I'll never frequent again. But boy, am I glad to have been. Bruno - thank you for the memories, and don't ever stop inventing.
 
For more, there's a mini-documentary about Ai Pioppi available on Vimeo that's well worth 11 minutes of your time, here.
 

 
Etnaland
 

 
And finally, a little note on Etnaland. Etnaland is not an easy place to get to; situated on the isle of Sicily, around 30 minutes drive from the town of Catania on the east coast. Even a weekend trip over is not the easiest; only Ryanair fly direct from the UK (Stansted), only once a day during peak season, and even then it's a 3 hour+ drive to the Park from Sicily's Palermo airport...
 
This is a shame, because Etnaland is a gem of a Park. It features both a Water Park and a Theme Park, and in the summer season opens the former 9am - 6pm, and the latter 7:30pm - 1am. The only overlapping attractions to the Parks are the Jungle Splash (Shoot the Chutes with a vertical lift, below), and the Crocodile Rapids (Hafema Rapids) rides - and in the daytime, both rides add huge volumes of water to the experience (e.g. Crocodile Rapids has a massive waterfall directly over the rapids trough; in the evening, this is switched off... in the daytime, it is not...).
 
Ride either of these "Theme Park" rides in the daytime without wearing "Water Park" attire (e.g. swimming costume) at your peril...!
 

 
As for the Theme Park, it boasts a (surprisingly) excellent S&S Mine Train, Eldorado, which offers a wonderfully drawn-out first drop, detailed mountain rock work, and impressive forces on the downward helices. More mine trains from S&S, please! Other supporting rides include the novel The School dark ride, featuring desks and multi-choice questions rather than the usual laser guns, Quasar, a Zamperla Disk'O coaster, and the imaginatively-titled Etnaland Tower, a standard 200ft S&S Double Shot (elevated above others by offering excellent views of a certain Mount Etna...).
 
The real reason to make the effort to get to Etnaland, however, is The Storm, one of the first Mack MegaCoasters built after the debut of Blue Fire in Europa Park in 2009. I love the comfort of the Mack MegaCoaster trains, and was intrigued as to how this one would ride, especially compared to my experiences on Helix (review), and Alpina Blitz (review).
 
Happily, I can report that The Storm is an excellent ride; smooth, with a few pop of airtime, and an absolute killer Mack-trademark inline twist at the end of the course (akin to Blue Fire), but with the added bonus of a loud thunder crack being played by a nearby speaker when the train travels through it. It's infinitely re-ridable and has a great "rock and roll" theme, with heavy metal being blasted out through the queue line every time a train ascends the lift hill! Catch a POV of it here.
 
So how does it compare? It's certainly a brilliant ride... but lacks the insane airtime of Alpina Blitz, the length and terrain of Helix, and the theming and near misses of Blue Fire... so unfortunately doesn't compare quite as well to these similar Mack rides. It also could have done with being a little more forceful. But given the overall quality of the Mack product, there is absolutely nothing for Etnaland to be ashamed of - The Storm easily outstrips a large majority of the other coasters I've ridden. Top notch work from Mack, again.
 
And at 1am, with its LED lighting package shining bold in the moonlight, it looks bloody good too.
 

 
~
 
In short, I'd thoroughly recommend checking Italy out - both as a "normal" tourist and a "coaster" tourist; the country is packed with variety, and this trip report has barely scratched the surface of what's on offer.
 
And worth re-iterating again: whilst many of the Parks showcased here are relatively easy to get to for your average coaster enthusiast, touring the whole country and hitting everything is rather more tricky - which is why unlike my previous Trip Reports, for Italy I was with a large group from the European Coaster Club. If you've not heard of the ECC, membership is £25.50 a year, and that buys you 6 issues of the excellent First Drop magazine, a bunch of discounts for Parks across Europe, and of course access to trips such as the one I've described here
 
Thanks for reading!

Roman Roaming: Highlights from Italy, Part 2
 
Ciao! You've found Part 2 of my Roman Roaming Trip Report - if you've not yet seen Part 1, it's worth checking that out first. Part 2 continues with the tour around the land of pizza, pasta and Mario Balotelli, and includes the following Parks:
 
Part 2
Mirabilandia, Ravenna Ai Pioppi, Treviso Etnaland, Sicily  

 
Bellissimo. Let's dive straight in!
 
Mirabilandia
 

 
Mirabilandia is Italy's #2 Theme Park, yet can hardly be called "conveniently located"; its closest major city is Ravenna (nope, me neither), and the closest airports are Bologna (90 mins drive), Florence (150 mins drive), and Venice (150 mins drive). You can see the Park skyline for miles in advance of actually getting there, due to the vast area of flat fields and low vegetation that surround it. And yet that doesn't prevent Mirabilandia from being rammed most days of the weekend / holidays, largely by Italians.
 
For this reason, Mirabilandia was the only Park in which I chose to invest in a Flass Pass, which afforded unlimited riding on all rides all day. It operated via a wristband system, and dedicated ride entrances - flash the wristband, and you're let straight on. Very similar to Thorpe's Ultimate Fastrack (£80), but with less need to re-mortgage your house, at just €39 (approx. £28).
 
Few of the locals had opted for the Flash Pass, so it turned out to be a highly worthwhile purchase - namely for the numerous laps I managed on Katun, unarguably one of the best B&M inverts in the world.
 

 
No doubt many of you on here will have ridden Katun, but for those that haven't, there is a very good reason that it has placed in and around the top 10 in Mitch Hawker's annual Best Steel Coaster Poll for the last 10 years. Only Alton's own Nemesis can boast a similar record as an Invert.
 
And why? Katun's sense of speed is hard to beat. The steep first drop is a genuinely thrilling, high-octane rush of a start (which consistently gave me an shot of adrenaline that few rides do), and from there the ride never lets up, with a layout including a very floaty zero-G, and a very speedily-taken cobra roll. The final helix, again taken at some speed, with riders' feet nearly brushing the dense vegetation that has grown up around it, is another highlight, and an excellent end to the ride.
 

 
It's very hard to make the call as to which is the better inverted coaster vs. Nemesis, but Katun wins points for a simply stunning first drop, and for the sheer relentless-ness of the ride. Nemesis benefits from its greater number of near-misses, given its location in the pit, arguably a better theme, and an excellent final corkscrew inversion that - as an ending - just edges out Katun's. It's interesting to note that both Nemesis and Katun are "old school" B&Ms, having been built in 1994 and 2000 respectively, and there's a pretty solid argument that the Swiss manufacturer have edged away from these more intense inverted layouts in recent years (although Asterix's excellent OzIris can perhaps make a counter argument here).
 
At the end of the day, one ride Katun alone is worth the flight out to Mirabilandia. Book it now.
 

 
Mirabilandia also offers an attractive set of supporting rides, including the visually impressive Intamin Water Coaster, DiVertical. Opened in 2012 (and initially mired with technical problems), DiVertical remains the tallest Water Coaster in the world, with its 197ft elevator lift structure towering over the skyline.
 
Boats meander along a concrete trough towards the bottom of the lift, where they are loaded individually onto a platform - connected to one side of the dual-pronged structure - that raises the boat up to the top. The bulbous middle of the elevator lift is to allow for another platform with an empty boat - connected to the other side - to descend alongside the ascending platform containing riders. It's a very speedy process, and hats must be tipped to Intamin for making it so efficient.
 
The drop itself is a fun one - not overly steep, but longer to compensate, and the minimal lap-bar restraints ensure riders feel vulnerable during the descent.
 

 
The initial splashdown is mild, with the track barely skimming the water - the proper dose of H2O is to come. The boat careers over a well-profiled airtime hill, a couple of turns, and downward helix, before making a proper splash back down into the trough. As you can see, riders should not expect to come away dry from the experience - but in the scorching Italian summer, I didn't see one person who cared.
 
I was expecting to enjoy DiVertical, but I really enjoyed DiVertical - Intamin may well have a ride that betters Mack's well-received Water Coaster. Intamin's track is smoother (), and there is real tension built by the lift structure. Colour me surprised, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of these pop up in the warmer Parks of the world.
 

 
Continuing the Intamin theme, Mirabilandia also hosts one of the better layouts of the Intamin Accelerator in iSpeed. Opened in 2009, iSpeed accelerates from 0 - 60mph in 2.2 seconds (not dissimilar to Rita), up a 180ft top hat (not dissimilar to Stealth). What follows thereafter though is dissimilar to both UK Accelerators - a further 2,500ft of twisty, airtime-filled track, including a corkscrew and inline twist.
 
The layout is great fun, fairly intense, and taken at some speed - indeed, the ride actually hits its top speed (74mph) well after the LSM launch. What prevented it becoming a brilliant ride for me was alas the restraints - the same as those featured on Stealth and Rita.
 
As you will know, these restraints have a thin over the shoulder design, with weighty bars that sit over riders' thighs. And actually this design is pretty bearable (but wouldn't go as far to say comfy) on the UK Accelerators. But on iSpeed, where there are numerous quick direction changes, and multiple pops of ejector airtime, the restraints just became painful, making re-riding a not-too-attractive prospect.
 
I managed 5 goes (with the Flash Pass), and found towards the end that the best way to ride was to use my hands to push up against the shoulder bracing on the OSTRs, to stabilise me and alleviate the pressure from the lap bar on my thighs. In this position, the air time didn't crush my legs against the solid, straight bar as much, and the direction changes didn't slice my neck with the shoulder bracing as much. But I shouldn't have to do this to enjoy the ride - rides should be comfortable and afford the rider as much freedom as possible.
 
In sum: great layout, hampered by poor trains, 7/10. If Mack could build iSpeed but with their Mega Coaster trains, that would be amazing, thankyouverymuch.
 

 
Mirabilandia is also host to Niagara, a very wet 100ft Shoot the Chutes flume, Reset, an excellent post-apocalyptic New York-themed laser shooter Dark Ride, and Eurowheel, Europe's largest ferris wheel, which stands tallest in the Park's skyline at 300ft.
 
It's also well known for its expensive-looking stunt show, which gets refreshed yearly. After many seasons running with a "Police Academy" theme, this year Mirabilandia debuted a new Grosso Guaio a Stunt City Show ("Big Trouble in Stunt City"), in collaboration with Hot Wheels - which meant the Park could generate extra cash through placing Hot Wheels kits for sale in every retail outlet on Park.
 
The arena set looked great, and after a pretty slow start (15 mins of talking, "comedy", more talking, and some audience participation), the eventual stunts were pretty impressive. It was the usual fare: car chases, motorbike jumps, dumper trucks doing wheelies; but the stand out moment came in the finale, where "Europe's first" real-life loop-the-loop stunt was unveiled. The green Hot Wheels-branded car attacks it with some speed and the chassis actually connects with a trough in the loop to keep it on course through the manoeuvre, but it's nonetheless an impressive visual spectacle, especially in combination with the trigger-happy pyrotechnics used throughout the show!
 
Great fun, and a nice way to end the day at one of the more impressive Italian Parks.
 

 
Ai Pioppi
 
From the sublime to the ridiculous... this next Park couldn't be more different to Miribilandia if it tried.
 
Presenting Ai Pioppi. Ai Pioppi ("the poplars") is an "osteria" - literally translated as a "bar" or "tavern". It's actually more of a restaurant, and is nestled in the woodland 30 minutes drive north of Treviso (an hour north of Venice).
 
All very good, but why did a family-run restaurant feature in my roam around Italy?
 
Because, of course, this particular restaurant has roller coasters...
 

 
The restaurant itself is pretty rustic - the menu most comprising steak, fish, and polenta slices all being cooked on large hot plates together. Chips were also available. The outdoor seating area has been built to cater for crowds, with large numbers of benches and tables scattered around the expansive undercover area next to the kitchen.
 
Pricing was highly reasonable, and the food was tasty enough. There was even a nicer indoor section for the more formal meal out.
 
But you didn't come here for a food review...
 

 
Ai Pioppi is a restaurant with a difference, as the back of it features an entirely hand-built playground filled with rides ranging from swings, slides, seesaws, gyroscopes, flat rides and even roller coasters!
 
Some history: on June 15th 1969, a man named Bruno bought himself a few jugs of wine, some sausages and a few other items, and set up a tiny food stand underneath a tree in northern Italy to see if anyone would show up. By the end of the day - to his surprise - he had sold almost everything and the family restaurant, Ai Pioppi, was born.
 
The next month he had an encounter with a blacksmith who didn’t have time to make a few hooks for some chains. Bruno decided instead he would learn to weld to make the hooks, and enjoyed it so much he began to dream up small rides he could build to entice new customers to Ai Pioppi.
 
40 years later, and Bruno is still building rides by hand. And admission for these rides remains free for all patrons of his restaurant.
 

 
This is the workshop from which Bruno dreams up, and subsequently builds, new rides.
 

 
And this is the man himself - in his element as architect and manufacturer of his restaurant's attractions... and seemingly laughing in the face of retirement!
 

 
So what's on offer? There's too much to show, so here I'll offer some highlights, starting with this "ferris wheel with a difference".
 
Like many of the rides at Ai Pioppi, this attraction uses people-power to operate. Riders (max of 2) climb up the ladder to get to the central platform, where there are walkways to each opposite end. The way to make the wheel turn is for the riders to distribute their weight by walking (either forwards or backwards - different direction by each) in the smaller wheels situated at each end. With each rider moving around their respective mini-wheels, the central wheel turns, and it's entirely possible to complete a full 360 turn (and for riders to remain fairly upright) if both participants get the hang of it.
 
Fascinating to watch, and fairly daunting to ride - there are no restraints to speak of, only a handlebar to hold, so it's quite easy to see this going wrong with a mis-step or two...
 

 
Onto another hand-built kinetic wonder. In this ride, guests sit in cages and pedal what most closely resembles a bicycle, in order to drive their carriage around the large loop. There are heavy counterweights at the other ends of the pendulums, which enables a decent momentum to be built up - hard work to start with, but it's not too difficult to get into a rhythm and build up enough power to get close to inverting.
 
The best I managed was to get my cage to the 1-o-clock position on the "clock"; not quite enough to get to "12-o-clock" and beyond to make the full inversion. There were three reasons for this:
 
1) Momentum runs out very quickly when your cage (the heavier part) reaches any height, meaning a huge effort is required on the pedals to continue to push it over the top;
2) The "restraints" consisted of two curved shoulder bars, not unlike the ones featured on Thorpe's Slammer, but with zero padding, so they hurt really quite a lot when your entire body weight starts to rest on them, and;
3) By the time I'd pedalled all the way to "1-o-clock", I was fairly terrified of the entire contraption.
 

 
Moving on, to the 4 roller coasters that exist at Ai Pioppi.
 
Two were unfortunately not operating during my visit; the oldest, Bob, had a large twig over the tracks and the gate to access it was padlocked. Unfortunately, my Italian wasn't good enough to ask Bruno what was wrong. The second, Catapulta, has been "Under Construction" for 5+ years now, although given that it looked like it was attempting a petrifying Stealth-like launch using a counterweight system, this wasn't a huge issue for me...
 
The Carrello della Gobba ("Cart with a Hump") was open, and is a fairly sizable butterfly / shuttle ride with a c.30 degree incline, a bunny hop after the initial drop, and a steep (nearly vertical) ramp at the other end. Being similarly "people-powered", riders have to push the single-person cart to the top of the incline (on the left) until it locks into place at the top, get into the thing, lower and lock the "restraint", and release the brake on the floor of the cart to start the descent...
 

 
Given my previous experience with the flat rides, and the appearance of the cart (below), I was needless to say rather apprehensive about releasing the brake (had Bruno ever heard of ADIPS?!). However, my fears were (mostly) unfounded, as Carrello della Gobba gave a pleasantly smooth ride, marred only by the extreme ejector airtime over the bunny hop, which would have certainly thrown me (to some considerable height) out of the cart, had the painful metal thigh-restraint not prevented me from doing so. Ow.
 
The ride also takes a fair time to finish, because there is nothing to stop the cart once its been released at the top; it just continues to shuttle forwards, and backwards, and forwards, until friction alone brings it to a slow enough speed to get out of it unharmed.
Most riders came off with grins on their faces, and bruises on their thighs!
 

 
But the emotions stirred by Carrello della Gobba were nothing in comparison to Ai Pioppi's headline attraction, the Pendolo ("Pendulum").
 
Pendolo, like Carrello, is a butterfly / shuttle ride, but on a much grander scale, and without the bunny hop. Built 15 years after the original Bob coaster, Pendolo towers well above every other construction in the woodland, including the trees.
 
When we approached the ride, it was considered a write-off; the cart was covered up, and the railings sported signs saying "Closed" and "Under Maintenance". Given the sheer size of the thing, and the disconcerting yellow sign that advertised "maximum speeds of 100 km/hour", I would be lying if I said that a tiny part of me wasn't a tiny part relieved that I wouldn't be riding today...
 

 
But as we were eating our steak and polenta for lunch, Bruno had other ideas... and set to work fixing up the Pendolo to get it into operation!
 
When the first test car ascended the incline - shunning people-power this time, being driven by a pulley system with motor - we all held our breath as to whether the car would complete the run successfully, given the rampant foliage growing up through the track...
 

 
...but complete successfully it did, making a huge clattering racket as it thundered through the bottom of the half-pipe and up the towering steep ramp the other side. Much like Carrello, there was no braking mechanism, so the ride took around 3 minutes of coasting up and down each side of the track to slow down enough to (manually) pull the car to a halt for the oncoming riders.
 
And then it was my turn. Getting into the 3-across car, featuring seats still covered in leaves and head rests that had clearly been "borrowed" from a Fiat 500, I had rarely been more nervous for a ride. Not even the Vietnamese coaster with the non-locking OTSRs last year had me as worried as this one did, and I'm unashamed to say that at the point the car was released at the top of the slow incline, I shrieked like a little girl.
 
Whether we hit 100 km/hour or not, I will never know, but it could well have been; thankfully the near-vertical ramp that greeted us at the other side was quick to take the speed out of the car, and back down we went. The adrenaline rush was massive; 80% due to pure fear, 20% due to the thrill of the (impressively smooth) ride.
 
I have no doubt that the first time I rode Colossus, way back when, I experienced a similar level of nerves and excitement (10 loops! OMG!). But having grown older and more travelled, it's become harder and harder to re-create that pure adrenaline rush. Ferarri World's Formula Rossa did it for me last year, but then it had to launch me to 149mph across the Arabian desert to do so.
 
All the more kudos then, to Bruno, for giving me such intense "fear and thrills" feelings all over again on his Pendolo . Bravo!
 

 
In sum, Ai Pioppi is an absolutely bonkers place; as likely to make you soil your underwear in fear as it is to make you drop your jaw in wonder. It's probably a place that I'll never frequent again. But boy, am I glad to have been. Bruno - thank you for the memories, and don't ever stop inventing.
 
For more, there's a mini-documentary about Ai Pioppi available on Vimeo that's well worth 11 minutes of your time, here.
 

 
Etnaland
 

 
And finally, a little note on Etnaland. Etnaland is not an easy place to get to; situated on the isle of Sicily, around 30 minutes drive from the town of Catania on the east coast. Even a weekend trip over is not the easiest; only Ryanair fly direct from the UK (Stansted), only once a day during peak season, and even then it's a 3 hour+ drive to the Park from Sicily's Palermo airport...
 
This is a shame, because Etnaland is a gem of a Park. It features both a Water Park and a Theme Park, and in the summer season opens the former 9am - 6pm, and the latter 7:30pm - 1am. The only overlapping attractions to the Parks are the Jungle Splash (Shoot the Chutes with a vertical lift, below), and the Crocodile Rapids (Hafema Rapids) rides - and in the daytime, both rides add huge volumes of water to the experience (e.g. Crocodile Rapids has a massive waterfall directly over the rapids trough; in the evening, this is switched off... in the daytime, it is not...).
 
Ride either of these "Theme Park" rides in the daytime without wearing "Water Park" attire (e.g. swimming costume) at your peril...!
 

 
As for the Theme Park, it boasts a (surprisingly) excellent S&S Mine Train, Eldorado, which offers a wonderfully drawn-out first drop, detailed mountain rock work, and impressive forces on the downward helices. More mine trains from S&S, please! Other supporting rides include the novel The School dark ride, featuring desks and multi-choice questions rather than the usual laser guns, Quasar, a Zamperla Disk'O coaster, and the imaginatively-titled Etnaland Tower, a standard 200ft S&S Double Shot (elevated above others by offering excellent views of a certain Mount Etna...).
 
The real reason to make the effort to get to Etnaland, however, is The Storm, one of the first Mack MegaCoasters built after the debut of Blue Fire in Europa Park in 2009. I love the comfort of the Mack MegaCoaster trains, and was intrigued as to how this one would ride, especially compared to my experiences on Helix (review), and Alpina Blitz (review).
 
Happily, I can report that The Storm is an excellent ride; smooth, with a few pop of airtime, and an absolute killer Mack-trademark inline twist at the end of the course (akin to Blue Fire), but with the added bonus of a loud thunder crack being played by a nearby speaker when the train travels through it. It's infinitely re-ridable and has a great "rock and roll" theme, with heavy metal being blasted out through the queue line every time a train ascends the lift hill! Catch a POV of it here.
 
So how does it compare? It's certainly a brilliant ride... but lacks the insane airtime of Alpina Blitz, the length and terrain of Helix, and the theming and near misses of Blue Fire... so unfortunately doesn't compare quite as well to these similar Mack rides. It also could have done with being a little more forceful. But given the overall quality of the Mack product, there is absolutely nothing for Etnaland to be ashamed of - The Storm easily outstrips a large majority of the other coasters I've ridden. Top notch work from Mack, again.
 
And at 1am, with its LED lighting package shining bold in the moonlight, it looks bloody good too.
 

 
~
 
In short, I'd thoroughly recommend checking Italy out - both as a "normal" tourist and a "coaster" tourist; the country is packed with variety, and this trip report has barely scratched the surface of what's on offer.
 
And worth re-iterating again: whilst many of the Parks showcased here are relatively easy to get to for your average coaster enthusiast, touring the whole country and hitting everything is rather more tricky - which is why unlike my previous Trip Reports, for Italy I was with a large group from the European Coaster Club. If you've not heard of the ECC, membership is £25.50 a year, and that buys you 6 issues of the excellent First Drop magazine, a bunch of discounts for Parks across Europe, and of course access to trips such as the one I've described here
 
Thanks for reading!

Roman Roaming: Highlights from Italy, Part 2
 
Ciao! You've found Part 2 of my Roman Roaming Trip Report - if you've not yet seen Part 1, it's worth checking that out first. Part 2 continues with the tour around the land of pizza, pasta and Mario Balotelli, and includes the following Parks:
 
Part 2
Mirabilandia, Ravenna Ai Pioppi, Treviso Etnaland, Sicily  

 
Bellissimo. Let's dive straight in!
 
Mirabilandia
 

 
Mirabilandia is Italy's #2 Theme Park, yet can hardly be called "conveniently located"; its closest major city is Ravenna (nope, me neither), and the closest airports are Bologna (90 mins drive), Florence (150 mins drive), and Venice (150 mins drive). You can see the Park skyline for miles in advance of actually getting there, due to the vast area of flat fields and low vegetation that surround it. And yet that doesn't prevent Mirabilandia from being rammed most days of the weekend / holidays, largely by Italians.
 
For this reason, Mirabilandia was the only Park in which I chose to invest in a Flass Pass, which afforded unlimited riding on all rides all day. It operated via a wristband system, and dedicated ride entrances - flash the wristband, and you're let straight on. Very similar to Thorpe's Ultimate Fastrack (£80), but with less need to re-mortgage your house, at just €39 (approx. £28).
 
Few of the locals had opted for the Flash Pass, so it turned out to be a highly worthwhile purchase - namely for the numerous laps I managed on Katun, unarguably one of the best B&M inverts in the world.
 

 
No doubt many of you on here will have ridden Katun, but for those that haven't, there is a very good reason that it has placed in and around the top 10 in Mitch Hawker's annual Best Steel Coaster Poll for the last 10 years. Only Alton's own Nemesis can boast a similar record as an Invert.
 
And why? Katun's sense of speed is hard to beat. The steep first drop is a genuinely thrilling, high-octane rush of a start (which consistently gave me an shot of adrenaline that few rides do), and from there the ride never lets up, with a layout including a very floaty zero-G, and a very speedily-taken cobra roll. The final helix, again taken at some speed, with riders' feet nearly brushing the dense vegetation that has grown up around it, is another highlight, and an excellent end to the ride.
 

 
It's very hard to make the call as to which is the better inverted coaster vs. Nemesis, but Katun wins points for a simply stunning first drop, and for the sheer relentless-ness of the ride. Nemesis benefits from its greater number of near-misses, given its location in the pit, arguably a better theme, and an excellent final corkscrew inversion that - as an ending - just edges out Katun's. It's interesting to note that both Nemesis and Katun are "old school" B&Ms, having been built in 1994 and 2000 respectively, and there's a pretty solid argument that the Swiss manufacturer have edged away from these more intense inverted layouts in recent years (although Asterix's excellent OzIris can perhaps make a counter argument here).
 
At the end of the day, one ride Katun alone is worth the flight out to Mirabilandia. Book it now.
 

 
Mirabilandia also offers an attractive set of supporting rides, including the visually impressive Intamin Water Coaster, DiVertical. Opened in 2012 (and initially mired with technical problems), DiVertical remains the tallest Water Coaster in the world, with its 197ft elevator lift structure towering over the skyline.
 
Boats meander along a concrete trough towards the bottom of the lift, where they are loaded individually onto a platform - connected to one side of the dual-pronged structure - that raises the boat up to the top. The bulbous middle of the elevator lift is to allow for another platform with an empty boat - connected to the other side - to descend alongside the ascending platform containing riders. It's a very speedy process, and hats must be tipped to Intamin for making it so efficient.
 
The drop itself is a fun one - not overly steep, but longer to compensate, and the minimal lap-bar restraints ensure riders feel vulnerable during the descent.
 

 
The initial splashdown is mild, with the track barely skimming the water - the proper dose of H2O is to come. The boat careers over a well-profiled airtime hill, a couple of turns, and downward helix, before making a proper splash back down into the trough. As you can see, riders should not expect to come away dry from the experience - but in the scorching Italian summer, I didn't see one person who cared.
 
I was expecting to enjoy DiVertical, but I really enjoyed DiVertical - Intamin may well have a ride that betters Mack's well-received Water Coaster. Intamin's track is smoother (), and there is real tension built by the lift structure. Colour me surprised, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of these pop up in the warmer Parks of the world.
 

 
Continuing the Intamin theme, Mirabilandia also hosts one of the better layouts of the Intamin Accelerator in iSpeed. Opened in 2009, iSpeed accelerates from 0 - 60mph in 2.2 seconds (not dissimilar to Rita), up a 180ft top hat (not dissimilar to Stealth). What follows thereafter though is dissimilar to both UK Accelerators - a further 2,500ft of twisty, airtime-filled track, including a corkscrew and inline twist.
 
The layout is great fun, fairly intense, and taken at some speed - indeed, the ride actually hits its top speed (74mph) well after the LSM launch. What prevented it becoming a brilliant ride for me was alas the restraints - the same as those featured on Stealth and Rita.
 
As you will know, these restraints have a thin over the shoulder design, with weighty bars that sit over riders' thighs. And actually this design is pretty bearable (but wouldn't go as far to say comfy) on the UK Accelerators. But on iSpeed, where there are numerous quick direction changes, and multiple pops of ejector airtime, the restraints just became painful, making re-riding a not-too-attractive prospect.
 
I managed 5 goes (with the Flash Pass), and found towards the end that the best way to ride was to use my hands to push up against the shoulder bracing on the OSTRs, to stabilise me and alleviate the pressure from the lap bar on my thighs. In this position, the air time didn't crush my legs against the solid, straight bar as much, and the direction changes didn't slice my neck with the shoulder bracing as much. But I shouldn't have to do this to enjoy the ride - rides should be comfortable and afford the rider as much freedom as possible.
 
In sum: great layout, hampered by poor trains, 7/10. If Mack could build iSpeed but with their Mega Coaster trains, that would be amazing, thankyouverymuch.
 

 
Mirabilandia is also host to Niagara, a very wet 100ft Shoot the Chutes flume, Reset, an excellent post-apocalyptic New York-themed laser shooter Dark Ride, and Eurowheel, Europe's largest ferris wheel, which stands tallest in the Park's skyline at 300ft.
 
It's also well known for its expensive-looking stunt show, which gets refreshed yearly. After many seasons running with a "Police Academy" theme, this year Mirabilandia debuted a new Grosso Guaio a Stunt City Show ("Big Trouble in Stunt City"), in collaboration with Hot Wheels - which meant the Park could generate extra cash through placing Hot Wheels kits for sale in every retail outlet on Park.
 
The arena set looked great, and after a pretty slow start (15 mins of talking, "comedy", more talking, and some audience participation), the eventual stunts were pretty impressive. It was the usual fare: car chases, motorbike jumps, dumper trucks doing wheelies; but the stand out moment came in the finale, where "Europe's first" real-life loop-the-loop stunt was unveiled. The green Hot Wheels-branded car attacks it with some speed and the chassis actually connects with a trough in the loop to keep it on course through the manoeuvre, but it's nonetheless an impressive visual spectacle, especially in combination with the trigger-happy pyrotechnics used throughout the show!
 
Great fun, and a nice way to end the day at one of the more impressive Italian Parks.
 

 
Ai Pioppi
 
From the sublime to the ridiculous... this next Park couldn't be more different to Miribilandia if it tried.
 
Presenting Ai Pioppi. Ai Pioppi ("the poplars") is an "osteria" - literally translated as a "bar" or "tavern". It's actually more of a restaurant, and is nestled in the woodland 30 minutes drive north of Treviso (an hour north of Venice).
 
All very good, but why did a family-run restaurant feature in my roam around Italy?
 
Because, of course, this particular restaurant has roller coasters...
 

 
The restaurant itself is pretty rustic - the menu most comprising steak, fish, and polenta slices all being cooked on large hot plates together. Chips were also available. The outdoor seating area has been built to cater for crowds, with large numbers of benches and tables scattered around the expansive undercover area next to the kitchen.
 
Pricing was highly reasonable, and the food was tasty enough. There was even a nicer indoor section for the more formal meal out.
 
But you didn't come here for a food review...
 

 
Ai Pioppi is a restaurant with a difference, as the back of it features an entirely hand-built playground filled with rides ranging from swings, slides, seesaws, gyroscopes, flat rides and even roller coasters!
 
Some history: on June 15th 1969, a man named Bruno bought himself a few jugs of wine, some sausages and a few other items, and set up a tiny food stand underneath a tree in northern Italy to see if anyone would show up. By the end of the day - to his surprise - he had sold almost everything and the family restaurant, Ai Pioppi, was born.
 
The next month he had an encounter with a blacksmith who didn’t have time to make a few hooks for some chains. Bruno decided instead he would learn to weld to make the hooks, and enjoyed it so much he began to dream up small rides he could build to entice new customers to Ai Pioppi.
 
40 years later, and Bruno is still building rides by hand. And admission for these rides remains free for all patrons of his restaurant.
 

 
This is the workshop from which Bruno dreams up, and subsequently builds, new rides.
 

 
And this is the man himself - in his element as architect and manufacturer of his restaurant's attractions... and seemingly laughing in the face of retirement!
 

 
So what's on offer? There's too much to show, so here I'll offer some highlights, starting with this "ferris wheel with a difference".
 
Like many of the rides at Ai Pioppi, this attraction uses people-power to operate. Riders (max of 2) climb up the ladder to get to the central platform, where there are walkways to each opposite end. The way to make the wheel turn is for the riders to distribute their weight by walking (either forwards or backwards - different direction by each) in the smaller wheels situated at each end. With each rider moving around their respective mini-wheels, the central wheel turns, and it's entirely possible to complete a full 360 turn (and for riders to remain fairly upright) if both participants get the hang of it.
 
Fascinating to watch, and fairly daunting to ride - there are no restraints to speak of, only a handlebar to hold, so it's quite easy to see this going wrong with a mis-step or two...
 

 
Onto another hand-built kinetic wonder. In this ride, guests sit in cages and pedal what most closely resembles a bicycle, in order to drive their carriage around the large loop. There are heavy counterweights at the other ends of the pendulums, which enables a decent momentum to be built up - hard work to start with, but it's not too difficult to get into a rhythm and build up enough power to get close to inverting.
 
The best I managed was to get my cage to the 1-o-clock position on the "clock"; not quite enough to get to "12-o-clock" and beyond to make the full inversion. There were three reasons for this:
 
1) Momentum runs out very quickly when your cage (the heavier part) reaches any height, meaning a huge effort is required on the pedals to continue to push it over the top;
2) The "restraints" consisted of two curved shoulder bars, not unlike the ones featured on Thorpe's Slammer, but with zero padding, so they hurt really quite a lot when your entire body weight starts to rest on them, and;
3) By the time I'd pedalled all the way to "1-o-clock", I was fairly terrified of the entire contraption.
 

 
Moving on, to the 4 roller coasters that exist at Ai Pioppi.
 
Two were unfortunately not operating during my visit; the oldest, Bob, had a large twig over the tracks and the gate to access it was padlocked. Unfortunately, my Italian wasn't good enough to ask Bruno what was wrong. The second, Catapulta, has been "Under Construction" for 5+ years now, although given that it looked like it was attempting a petrifying Stealth-like launch using a counterweight system, this wasn't a huge issue for me...
 
The Carrello della Gobba ("Cart with a Hump") was open, and is a fairly sizable butterfly / shuttle ride with a c.30 degree incline, a bunny hop after the initial drop, and a steep (nearly vertical) ramp at the other end. Being similarly "people-powered", riders have to push the single-person cart to the top of the incline (on the left) until it locks into place at the top, get into the thing, lower and lock the "restraint", and release the brake on the floor of the cart to start the descent...
 

 
Given my previous experience with the flat rides, and the appearance of the cart (below), I was needless to say rather apprehensive about releasing the brake (had Bruno ever heard of ADIPS?!). However, my fears were (mostly) unfounded, as Carrello della Gobba gave a pleasantly smooth ride, marred only by the extreme ejector airtime over the bunny hop, which would have certainly thrown me (to some considerable height) out of the cart, had the painful metal thigh-restraint not prevented me from doing so. Ow.
 
The ride also takes a fair time to finish, because there is nothing to stop the cart once its been released at the top; it just continues to shuttle forwards, and backwards, and forwards, until friction alone brings it to a slow enough speed to get out of it unharmed.
Most riders came off with grins on their faces, and bruises on their thighs!
 

 
But the emotions stirred by Carrello della Gobba were nothing in comparison to Ai Pioppi's headline attraction, the Pendolo ("Pendulum").
 
Pendolo, like Carrello, is a butterfly / shuttle ride, but on a much grander scale, and without the bunny hop. Built 15 years after the original Bob coaster, Pendolo towers well above every other construction in the woodland, including the trees.
 
When we approached the ride, it was considered a write-off; the cart was covered up, and the railings sported signs saying "Closed" and "Under Maintenance". Given the sheer size of the thing, and the disconcerting yellow sign that advertised "maximum speeds of 100 km/hour", I would be lying if I said that a tiny part of me wasn't a tiny part relieved that I wouldn't be riding today...
 

 
But as we were eating our steak and polenta for lunch, Bruno had other ideas... and set to work fixing up the Pendolo to get it into operation!
 
When the first test car ascended the incline - shunning people-power this time, being driven by a pulley system with motor - we all held our breath as to whether the car would complete the run successfully, given the rampant foliage growing up through the track...
 

 
...but complete successfully it did, making a huge clattering racket as it thundered through the bottom of the half-pipe and up the towering steep ramp the other side. Much like Carrello, there was no braking mechanism, so the ride took around 3 minutes of coasting up and down each side of the track to slow down enough to (manually) pull the car to a halt for the oncoming riders.
 
And then it was my turn. Getting into the 3-across car, featuring seats still covered in leaves and head rests that had clearly been "borrowed" from a Fiat 500, I had rarely been more nervous for a ride. Not even the Vietnamese coaster with the non-locking OTSRs last year had me as worried as this one did, and I'm unashamed to say that at the point the car was released at the top of the slow incline, I shrieked like a little girl.
 
Whether we hit 100 km/hour or not, I will never know, but it could well have been; thankfully the near-vertical ramp that greeted us at the other side was quick to take the speed out of the car, and back down we went. The adrenaline rush was massive; 80% due to pure fear, 20% due to the thrill of the (impressively smooth) ride.
 
I have no doubt that the first time I rode Colossus, way back when, I experienced a similar level of nerves and excitement (10 loops! OMG!). But having grown older and more travelled, it's become harder and harder to re-create that pure adrenaline rush. Ferarri World's Formula Rossa did it for me last year, but then it had to launch me to 149mph across the Arabian desert to do so.
 
All the more kudos then, to Bruno, for giving me such intense "fear and thrills" feelings all over again on his Pendolo . Bravo!
 

 
In sum, Ai Pioppi is an absolutely bonkers place; as likely to make you soil your underwear in fear as it is to make you drop your jaw in wonder. It's probably a place that I'll never frequent again. But boy, am I glad to have been. Bruno - thank you for the memories, and don't ever stop inventing.
 
For more, there's a mini-documentary about Ai Pioppi available on Vimeo that's well worth 11 minutes of your time, here.
 

 
Etnaland
 

 
And finally, a little note on Etnaland. Etnaland is not an easy place to get to; situated on the isle of Sicily, around 30 minutes drive from the town of Catania on the east coast. Even a weekend trip over is not the easiest; only Ryanair fly direct from the UK (Stansted), only once a day during peak season, and even then it's a 3 hour+ drive to the Park from Sicily's Palermo airport...
 
This is a shame, because Etnaland is a gem of a Park. It features both a Water Park and a Theme Park, and in the summer season opens the former 9am - 6pm, and the latter 7:30pm - 1am. The only overlapping attractions to the Parks are the Jungle Splash (Shoot the Chutes with a vertical lift, below), and the Crocodile Rapids (Hafema Rapids) rides - and in the daytime, both rides add huge volumes of water to the experience (e.g. Crocodile Rapids has a massive waterfall directly over the rapids trough; in the evening, this is switched off... in the daytime, it is not...).
 
Ride either of these "Theme Park" rides in the daytime without wearing "Water Park" attire (e.g. swimming costume) at your peril...!
 

 
As for the Theme Park, it boasts a (surprisingly) excellent S&S Mine Train, Eldorado, which offers a wonderfully drawn-out first drop, detailed mountain rock work, and impressive forces on the downward helices. More mine trains from S&S, please! Other supporting rides include the novel The School dark ride, featuring desks and multi-choice questions rather than the usual laser guns, Quasar, a Zamperla Disk'O coaster, and the imaginatively-titled Etnaland Tower, a standard 200ft S&S Double Shot (elevated above others by offering excellent views of a certain Mount Etna...).
 
The real reason to make the effort to get to Etnaland, however, is The Storm, one of the first Mack MegaCoasters built after the debut of Blue Fire in Europa Park in 2009. I love the comfort of the Mack MegaCoaster trains, and was intrigued as to how this one would ride, especially compared to my experiences on Helix (review), and Alpina Blitz (review).
 
Happily, I can report that The Storm is an excellent ride; smooth, with a few pop of airtime, and an absolute killer Mack-trademark inline twist at the end of the course (akin to Blue Fire), but with the added bonus of a loud thunder crack being played by a nearby speaker when the train travels through it. It's infinitely re-ridable and has a great "rock and roll" theme, with heavy metal being blasted out through the queue line every time a train ascends the lift hill! Catch a POV of it here.
 
So how does it compare? It's certainly a brilliant ride... but lacks the insane airtime of Alpina Blitz, the length and terrain of Helix, and the theming and near misses of Blue Fire... so unfortunately doesn't compare quite as well to these similar Mack rides. It also could have done with being a little more forceful. But given the overall quality of the Mack product, there is absolutely nothing for Etnaland to be ashamed of - The Storm easily outstrips a large majority of the other coasters I've ridden. Top notch work from Mack, again.
 
And at 1am, with its LED lighting package shining bold in the moonlight, it looks bloody good too.
 

 
~
 
In short, I'd thoroughly recommend checking Italy out - both as a "normal" tourist and a "coaster" tourist; the country is packed with variety, and this trip report has barely scratched the surface of what's on offer.
 
And worth re-iterating again: whilst many of the Parks showcased here are relatively easy to get to for your average coaster enthusiast, touring the whole country and hitting everything is rather more tricky - which is why unlike my previous Trip Reports, for Italy I was with a large group from the European Coaster Club. If you've not heard of the ECC, membership is £25.50 a year, and that buys you 6 issues of the excellent First Drop magazine, a bunch of discounts for Parks across Europe, and of course access to trips such as the one I've described here
 
Thanks for reading!

Roman Roaming: Highlights from Italy, Part 2
 
Ciao! You've found Part 2 of my Roman Roaming Trip Report - if you've not yet seen Part 1, it's worth checking that out first. Part 2 continues with the tour around the land of pizza, pasta and Mario Balotelli, and includes the following Parks:
 
Part 2
Mirabilandia, Ravenna Ai Pioppi, Treviso Etnaland, Sicily  

 
Bellissimo. Let's dive straight in!
 
Mirabilandia
 

 
Mirabilandia is Italy's #2 Theme Park, yet can hardly be called "conveniently located"; its closest major city is Ravenna (nope, me neither), and the closest airports are Bologna (90 mins drive), Florence (150 mins drive), and Venice (150 mins drive). You can see the Park skyline for miles in advance of actually getting there, due to the vast area of flat fields and low vegetation that surround it. And yet that doesn't prevent Mirabilandia from being rammed most days of the weekend / holidays, largely by Italians.
 
For this reason, Mirabilandia was the only Park in which I chose to invest in a Flass Pass, which afforded unlimited riding on all rides all day. It operated via a wristband system, and dedicated ride entrances - flash the wristband, and you're let straight on. Very similar to Thorpe's Ultimate Fastrack (£80), but with less need to re-mortgage your house, at just €39 (approx. £28).
 
Few of the locals had opted for the Flash Pass, so it turned out to be a highly worthwhile purchase - namely for the numerous laps I managed on Katun, unarguably one of the best B&M inverts in the world.
 

 
No doubt many of you on here will have ridden Katun, but for those that haven't, there is a very good reason that it has placed in and around the top 10 in Mitch Hawker's annual Best Steel Coaster Poll for the last 10 years. Only Alton's own Nemesis can boast a similar record as an Invert.
 
And why? Katun's sense of speed is hard to beat. The steep first drop is a genuinely thrilling, high-octane rush of a start (which consistently gave me an shot of adrenaline that few rides do), and from there the ride never lets up, with a layout including a very floaty zero-G, and a very speedily-taken cobra roll. The final helix, again taken at some speed, with riders' feet nearly brushing the dense vegetation that has grown up around it, is another highlight, and an excellent end to the ride.
 

 
It's very hard to make the call as to which is the better inverted coaster vs. Nemesis, but Katun wins points for a simply stunning first drop, and for the sheer relentless-ness of the ride. Nemesis benefits from its greater number of near-misses, given its location in the pit, arguably a better theme, and an excellent final corkscrew inversion that - as an ending - just edges out Katun's. It's interesting to note that both Nemesis and Katun are "old school" B&Ms, having been built in 1994 and 2000 respectively, and there's a pretty solid argument that the Swiss manufacturer have edged away from these more intense inverted layouts in recent years (although Asterix's excellent OzIris can perhaps make a counter argument here).
 
At the end of the day, one ride Katun alone is worth the flight out to Mirabilandia. Book it now.
 

 
Mirabilandia also offers an attractive set of supporting rides, including the visually impressive Intamin Water Coaster, DiVertical. Opened in 2012 (and initially mired with technical problems), DiVertical remains the tallest Water Coaster in the world, with its 197ft elevator lift structure towering over the skyline.
 
Boats meander along a concrete trough towards the bottom of the lift, where they are loaded individually onto a platform - connected to one side of the dual-pronged structure - that raises the boat up to the top. The bulbous middle of the elevator lift is to allow for another platform with an empty boat - connected to the other side - to descend alongside the ascending platform containing riders. It's a very speedy process, and hats must be tipped to Intamin for making it so efficient.
 
The drop itself is a fun one - not overly steep, but longer to compensate, and the minimal lap-bar restraints ensure riders feel vulnerable during the descent.
 

 
The initial splashdown is mild, with the track barely skimming the water - the proper dose of H2O is to come. The boat careers over a well-profiled airtime hill, a couple of turns, and downward helix, before making a proper splash back down into the trough. As you can see, riders should not expect to come away dry from the experience - but in the scorching Italian summer, I didn't see one person who cared.
 
I was expecting to enjoy DiVertical, but I really enjoyed DiVertical - Intamin may well have a ride that betters Mack's well-received Water Coaster. Intamin's track is smoother (), and there is real tension built by the lift structure. Colour me surprised, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of these pop up in the warmer Parks of the world.
 

 
Continuing the Intamin theme, Mirabilandia also hosts one of the better layouts of the Intamin Accelerator in iSpeed. Opened in 2009, iSpeed accelerates from 0 - 60mph in 2.2 seconds (not dissimilar to Rita), up a 180ft top hat (not dissimilar to Stealth). What follows thereafter though is dissimilar to both UK Accelerators - a further 2,500ft of twisty, airtime-filled track, including a corkscrew and inline twist.
 
The layout is great fun, fairly intense, and taken at some speed - indeed, the ride actually hits its top speed (74mph) well after the LSM launch. What prevented it becoming a brilliant ride for me was alas the restraints - the same as those featured on Stealth and Rita.
 
As you will know, these restraints have a thin over the shoulder design, with weighty bars that sit over riders' thighs. And actually this design is pretty bearable (but wouldn't go as far to say comfy) on the UK Accelerators. But on iSpeed, where there are numerous quick direction changes, and multiple pops of ejector airtime, the restraints just became painful, making re-riding a not-too-attractive prospect.
 
I managed 5 goes (with the Flash Pass), and found towards the end that the best way to ride was to use my hands to push up against the shoulder bracing on the OSTRs, to stabilise me and alleviate the pressure from the lap bar on my thighs. In this position, the air time didn't crush my legs against the solid, straight bar as much, and the direction changes didn't slice my neck with the shoulder bracing as much. But I shouldn't have to do this to enjoy the ride - rides should be comfortable and afford the rider as much freedom as possible.
 
In sum: great layout, hampered by poor trains, 7/10. If Mack could build iSpeed but with their Mega Coaster trains, that would be amazing, thankyouverymuch.
 

 
Mirabilandia is also host to Niagara, a very wet 100ft Shoot the Chutes flume, Reset, an excellent post-apocalyptic New York-themed laser shooter Dark Ride, and Eurowheel, Europe's largest ferris wheel, which stands tallest in the Park's skyline at 300ft.
 
It's also well known for its expensive-looking stunt show, which gets refreshed yearly. After many seasons running with a "Police Academy" theme, this year Mirabilandia debuted a new Grosso Guaio a Stunt City Show ("Big Trouble in Stunt City"), in collaboration with Hot Wheels - which meant the Park could generate extra cash through placing Hot Wheels kits for sale in every retail outlet on Park.
 
The arena set looked great, and after a pretty slow start (15 mins of talking, "comedy", more talking, and some audience participation), the eventual stunts were pretty impressive. It was the usual fare: car chases, motorbike jumps, dumper trucks doing wheelies; but the stand out moment came in the finale, where "Europe's first" real-life loop-the-loop stunt was unveiled. The green Hot Wheels-branded car attacks it with some speed and the chassis actually connects with a trough in the loop to keep it on course through the manoeuvre, but it's nonetheless an impressive visual spectacle, especially in combination with the trigger-happy pyrotechnics used throughout the show!
 
Great fun, and a nice way to end the day at one of the more impressive Italian Parks.
 

 
Ai Pioppi
 
From the sublime to the ridiculous... this next Park couldn't be more different to Miribilandia if it tried.
 
Presenting Ai Pioppi. Ai Pioppi ("the poplars") is an "osteria" - literally translated as a "bar" or "tavern". It's actually more of a restaurant, and is nestled in the woodland 30 minutes drive north of Treviso (an hour north of Venice).
 
All very good, but why did a family-run restaurant feature in my roam around Italy?
 
Because, of course, this particular restaurant has roller coasters...
 

 
The restaurant itself is pretty rustic - the menu most comprising steak, fish, and polenta slices all being cooked on large hot plates together. Chips were also available. The outdoor seating area has been built to cater for crowds, with large numbers of benches and tables scattered around the expansive undercover area next to the kitchen.
 
Pricing was highly reasonable, and the food was tasty enough. There was even a nicer indoor section for the more formal meal out.
 
But you didn't come here for a food review...
 

 
Ai Pioppi is a restaurant with a difference, as the back of it features an entirely hand-built playground filled with rides ranging from swings, slides, seesaws, gyroscopes, flat rides and even roller coasters!
 
Some history: on June 15th 1969, a man named Bruno bought himself a few jugs of wine, some sausages and a few other items, and set up a tiny food stand underneath a tree in northern Italy to see if anyone would show up. By the end of the day - to his surprise - he had sold almost everything and the family restaurant, Ai Pioppi, was born.
 
The next month he had an encounter with a blacksmith who didn’t have time to make a few hooks for some chains. Bruno decided instead he would learn to weld to make the hooks, and enjoyed it so much he began to dream up small rides he could build to entice new customers to Ai Pioppi.
 
40 years later, and Bruno is still building rides by hand. And admission for these rides remains free for all patrons of his restaurant.
 

 
This is the workshop from which Bruno dreams up, and subsequently builds, new rides.
 

 
And this is the man himself - in his element as architect and manufacturer of his restaurant's attractions... and seemingly laughing in the face of retirement!
 

 
So what's on offer? There's too much to show, so here I'll offer some highlights, starting with this "ferris wheel with a difference".
 
Like many of the rides at Ai Pioppi, this attraction uses people-power to operate. Riders (max of 2) climb up the ladder to get to the central platform, where there are walkways to each opposite end. The way to make the wheel turn is for the riders to distribute their weight by walking (either forwards or backwards - different direction by each) in the smaller wheels situated at each end. With each rider moving around their respective mini-wheels, the central wheel turns, and it's entirely possible to complete a full 360 turn (and for riders to remain fairly upright) if both participants get the hang of it.
 
Fascinating to watch, and fairly daunting to ride - there are no restraints to speak of, only a handlebar to hold, so it's quite easy to see this going wrong with a mis-step or two...
 

 
Onto another hand-built kinetic wonder. In this ride, guests sit in cages and pedal what most closely resembles a bicycle, in order to drive their carriage around the large loop. There are heavy counterweights at the other ends of the pendulums, which enables a decent momentum to be built up - hard work to start with, but it's not too difficult to get into a rhythm and build up enough power to get close to inverting.
 
The best I managed was to get my cage to the 1-o-clock position on the "clock"; not quite enough to get to "12-o-clock" and beyond to make the full inversion. There were three reasons for this:
 
1) Momentum runs out very quickly when your cage (the heavier part) reaches any height, meaning a huge effort is required on the pedals to continue to push it over the top;
2) The "restraints" consisted of two curved shoulder bars, not unlike the ones featured on Thorpe's Slammer, but with zero padding, so they hurt really quite a lot when your entire body weight starts to rest on them, and;
3) By the time I'd pedalled all the way to "1-o-clock", I was fairly terrified of the entire contraption.
 

 
Moving on, to the 4 roller coasters that exist at Ai Pioppi.
 
Two were unfortunately not operating during my visit; the oldest, Bob, had a large twig over the tracks and the gate to access it was padlocked. Unfortunately, my Italian wasn't good enough to ask Bruno what was wrong. The second, Catapulta, has been "Under Construction" for 5+ years now, although given that it looked like it was attempting a petrifying Stealth-like launch using a counterweight system, this wasn't a huge issue for me...
 
The Carrello della Gobba ("Cart with a Hump") was open, and is a fairly sizable butterfly / shuttle ride with a c.30 degree incline, a bunny hop after the initial drop, and a steep (nearly vertical) ramp at the other end. Being similarly "people-powered", riders have to push the single-person cart to the top of the incline (on the left) until it locks into place at the top, get into the thing, lower and lock the "restraint", and release the brake on the floor of the cart to start the descent...
 

 
Given my previous experience with the flat rides, and the appearance of the cart (below), I was needless to say rather apprehensive about releasing the brake (had Bruno ever heard of ADIPS?!). However, my fears were (mostly) unfounded, as Carrello della Gobba gave a pleasantly smooth ride, marred only by the extreme ejector airtime over the bunny hop, which would have certainly thrown me (to some considerable height) out of the cart, had the painful metal thigh-restraint not prevented me from doing so. Ow.
 
The ride also takes a fair time to finish, because there is nothing to stop the cart once its been released at the top; it just continues to shuttle forwards, and backwards, and forwards, until friction alone brings it to a slow enough speed to get out of it unharmed.
Most riders came off with grins on their faces, and bruises on their thighs!
 

 
But the emotions stirred by Carrello della Gobba were nothing in comparison to Ai Pioppi's headline attraction, the Pendolo ("Pendulum").
 
Pendolo, like Carrello, is a butterfly / shuttle ride, but on a much grander scale, and without the bunny hop. Built 15 years after the original Bob coaster, Pendolo towers well above every other construction in the woodland, including the trees.
 
When we approached the ride, it was considered a write-off; the cart was covered up, and the railings sported signs saying "Closed" and "Under Maintenance". Given the sheer size of the thing, and the disconcerting yellow sign that advertised "maximum speeds of 100 km/hour", I would be lying if I said that a tiny part of me wasn't a tiny part relieved that I wouldn't be riding today...
 

 
But as we were eating our steak and polenta for lunch, Bruno had other ideas... and set to work fixing up the Pendolo to get it into operation!
 
When the first test car ascended the incline - shunning people-power this time, being driven by a pulley system with motor - we all held our breath as to whether the car would complete the run successfully, given the rampant foliage growing up through the track...
 

 
...but complete successfully it did, making a huge clattering racket as it thundered through the bottom of the half-pipe and up the towering steep ramp the other side. Much like Carrello, there was no braking mechanism, so the ride took around 3 minutes of coasting up and down each side of the track to slow down enough to (manually) pull the car to a halt for the oncoming riders.
 
And then it was my turn. Getting into the 3-across car, featuring seats still covered in leaves and head rests that had clearly been "borrowed" from a Fiat 500, I had rarely been more nervous for a ride. Not even the Vietnamese coaster with the non-locking OTSRs last year had me as worried as this one did, and I'm unashamed to say that at the point the car was released at the top of the slow incline, I shrieked like a little girl.
 
Whether we hit 100 km/hour or not, I will never know, but it could well have been; thankfully the near-vertical ramp that greeted us at the other side was quick to take the speed out of the car, and back down we went. The adrenaline rush was massive; 80% due to pure fear, 20% due to the thrill of the (impressively smooth) ride.
 
I have no doubt that the first time I rode Colossus, way back when, I experienced a similar level of nerves and excitement (10 loops! OMG!). But having grown older and more travelled, it's become harder and harder to re-create that pure adrenaline rush. Ferarri World's Formula Rossa did it for me last year, but then it had to launch me to 149mph across the Arabian desert to do so.
 
All the more kudos then, to Bruno, for giving me such intense "fear and thrills" feelings all over again on his Pendolo . Bravo!
 

 
In sum, Ai Pioppi is an absolutely bonkers place; as likely to make you soil your underwear in fear as it is to make you drop your jaw in wonder. It's probably a place that I'll never frequent again. But boy, am I glad to have been. Bruno - thank you for the memories, and don't ever stop inventing.
 
For more, there's a mini-documentary about Ai Pioppi available on Vimeo that's well worth 11 minutes of your time, here.
 

 
Etnaland
 

 
And finally, a little note on Etnaland. Etnaland is not an easy place to get to; situated on the isle of Sicily, around 30 minutes drive from the town of Catania on the east coast. Even a weekend trip over is not the easiest; only Ryanair fly direct from the UK (Stansted), only once a day during peak season, and even then it's a 3 hour+ drive to the Park from Sicily's Palermo airport...
 
This is a shame, because Etnaland is a gem of a Park. It features both a Water Park and a Theme Park, and in the summer season opens the former 9am - 6pm, and the latter 7:30pm - 1am. The only overlapping attractions to the Parks are the Jungle Splash (Shoot the Chutes with a vertical lift, below), and the Crocodile Rapids (Hafema Rapids) rides - and in the daytime, both rides add huge volumes of water to the experience (e.g. Crocodile Rapids has a massive waterfall directly over the rapids trough; in the evening, this is switched off... in the daytime, it is not...).
 
Ride either of these "Theme Park" rides in the daytime without wearing "Water Park" attire (e.g. swimming costume) at your peril...!
 

 
As for the Theme Park, it boasts a (surprisingly) excellent S&S Mine Train, Eldorado, which offers a wonderfully drawn-out first drop, detailed mountain rock work, and impressive forces on the downward helices. More mine trains from S&S, please! Other supporting rides include the novel The School dark ride, featuring desks and multi-choice questions rather than the usual laser guns, Quasar, a Zamperla Disk'O coaster, and the imaginatively-titled Etnaland Tower, a standard 200ft S&S Double Shot (elevated above others by offering excellent views of a certain Mount Etna...).
 
The real reason to make the effort to get to Etnaland, however, is The Storm, one of the first Mack MegaCoasters built after the debut of Blue Fire in Europa Park in 2009. I love the comfort of the Mack MegaCoaster trains, and was intrigued as to how this one would ride, especially compared to my experiences on Helix (review), and Alpina Blitz (review).
 
Happily, I can report that The Storm is an excellent ride; smooth, with a few pop of airtime, and an absolute killer Mack-trademark inline twist at the end of the course (akin to Blue Fire), but with the added bonus of a loud thunder crack being played by a nearby speaker when the train travels through it. It's infinitely re-ridable and has a great "rock and roll" theme, with heavy metal being blasted out through the queue line every time a train ascends the lift hill! Catch a POV of it here.
 
So how does it compare? It's certainly a brilliant ride... but lacks the insane airtime of Alpina Blitz, the length and terrain of Helix, and the theming and near misses of Blue Fire... so unfortunately doesn't compare quite as well to these similar Mack rides. It also could have done with being a little more forceful. But given the overall quality of the Mack product, there is absolutely nothing for Etnaland to be ashamed of - The Storm easily outstrips a large majority of the other coasters I've ridden. Top notch work from Mack, again.
 
And at 1am, with its LED lighting package shining bold in the moonlight, it looks bloody good too.
 

 
~
 
In short, I'd thoroughly recommend checking Italy out - both as a "normal" tourist and a "coaster" tourist; the country is packed with variety, and this trip report has barely scratched the surface of what's on offer.
 
And worth re-iterating again: whilst many of the Parks showcased here are relatively easy to get to for your average coaster enthusiast, touring the whole country and hitting everything is rather more tricky - which is why unlike my previous Trip Reports, for Italy I was with a large group from the European Coaster Club. If you've not heard of the ECC, membership is £25.50 a year, and that buys you 6 issues of the excellent First Drop magazine, a bunch of discounts for Parks across Europe, and of course access to trips such as the one I've described here
 
Thanks for reading!

Arabian Adventure
 
It's winter: the nights are drawing in, the days are getting shorter, and it's altogether a bit chilly. So what better excuse than to have a quick break away to the UAE; land of sand, sun, Sheiks... and coasters! Thanks to a bargain return BA flight booked relatively last minute, I enjoyed 4 pleasantly warm (28°C) days at the end of November in the Emirates, seeing the sights, enjoying the food, and riding the rides. Read on for the highlights, and lowlights, of my Arabian Adventure.
 
This trip report covers all of the Parks I visited:
 
Sparky's FEC, Dubai Wonderland, Dubai Sega Republic, Dubai Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi  
I was based in Dubai for my visit, and all of the Dubai Parks were within easy reach of the Metro. Like most of the buildings & infrastructure in Dubai, the Metro is very new, with the first line having been opened only in 2009, and a second one following in 2011. The city's tram is so new, it was only 2 weeks old when I visited! Dubai is also very easy to get around via the relatively cheap taxis, which are ubiquitous.
 
Yas Island, which houses both Yas Waterworld and Ferrari World, is located in Abu Dhabi, and the only means of getting there is via car. Given that the UAE has a less than impressive road safety record (supposedly you are 7x more likely to have a road accident vs. in the UK), for these Parks I opted to avoid driving myself and got a taxi, which took just under an hour each way.
 

 
So, on with the report. Hold on tight - it's a long one. And the first (mini) Park I visited was Sparky's:
 
Sparky's Family Entertainment Centre, Dubai

Sparky's FEC is a very new addition to the Dubai amusement scene, having only officially opened in March 2014. Owned by Saudi Arabia's Al Hokair Group (who run 55 indoor recreation centres in Saudi and the UAE), the complex is based on the top floor of the Al Ghurair Centre - one of the more modest Malls in Dubai, but still comparatively large compared to anything in the UK. The site houses an ice rink, 5D cinema, dark ride, go karts, soft play area, many arcade games... and a coaster!
 
Entrance is free, and rides and arcade games are on a pay-as-you-go basis. The minimum top-up on the Sparky's card was 50 AED (£8.77), which got me 2 rides on the coaster and 1 go on the 5D cinema (which incidentally was very well done, if quite jumpy... damn zombies).
 

 
The coaster was simply called Roller Coaster, and stood seemingly deserted when I walked up to the entrance gates: I had to ask an attendee tending to another ride to come over and open it up for me! Truth be told, the FEC wasn't busy, so I suspect it makes sound business sense to employ fewer "roaming" ride operators than have more of them all fixed on certain rides for the day.
 

 
Roller Coaster is an I.E. Park Spinning Coaster - indeed, is one of I.E. Park's very first Spinning Coasters. Riders sit back to back on Maurer-style spinning cars, with a simple lap bar to hold them in. Squarely aimed at the family market, the ride features 2 lift hills and weaves its way around the top of the FEC.
 

 
And perhaps surprisingly, the ride was good fun from start to finish. I wasn't expecting much to start with, but Roller Coaster had a good amount of spinning, a few airtime-inducing drops (when sat at the back) and was altogether a very comfortable ride. Not half bad for a new model, so I.E. Park should be commended. It looks pretty good too (pictured here above the ice rink)!
 

 
Sparky's won't take up any more than an hour or so of your time due to the small choice of attractions and even smaller crowds, but I'd nonetheless recommend paying it a visit if you're in the area. Roller Coaster is a decent attraction, and the supporting rides make for a more entertaining visit to a shopping mall than normal!
 

 
Wonderland, Dubai

Wonderland is situated to the north of Dubai city, only 10 mins drive from the airport. Before venturing off to find it, I questioned whether it would even be worth a visit: it was a little out of the way, looked as if it had only one operational coaster (a Vekoma Roller Skater), and the reviews on Trip Advisor were not even slightly encouraging (11% approval at time of writing). But not wanting to judge the place before I'd seen it myself, I took the Metro to the nearest stop, Dubai Healthcare City, and walked up to the Park entrance.
And this is what I found:
 

 
And this is what the car park looked like:
 

 
And there was no activity going on at this Beijing Jiuhua Amusement Rides Spinning Coaster:
 

 
And this contraption looked like it would kill anyone who tried to ride it:
 

 
Undeterred, I walked up to the very-far right booth at the entrance to speak to the attendant, and asked if I could buy a ticket. He was a local Emirati guy in traditional dress, but was a man of few words.
 
"Park is closed today", he said - even though their website stated it was open from 10am to 12am. When I asked why, he said that there was a "big new attraction coming", and they had to close the whole Park to construct it. "What sort of ride?", I asked, somewhat surprised. "A big one which spirals around a lot", he said, gesturing with his hands. I couldn't see any construction going on.
 
"When are you opening again?", I asked. He shrugged.
 
I then asked if I could have a look around the deserted Park to take some photos, but unsurprisingly he declined. The only snap I got was of the view into the Park from the entrance gates (below).
 
"Water park is open today", he said, pointing over to the left. And then he sat back down again.
 

 
But I had a good look at the water park, and it didn't look very open to me. Cutting my losses, I left Wonderland feeling more than a little frustrated.
 

 
Sega Republic, Dubai

Sega Republic is a relatively new FEC located on the top floor of the Dubai Mall. The Dubai Mall is the "world's largest shopping mall", with over 1,200 (count them) stores, including all the luxury brands you could want, along with a Debenhams, M&S, and Hamleys. Annually it hosts more visitors than New York City . So there's more than enough demand for an indoor Theme Park and Sega Republic stepped up to the mark, opening in 2009.
 
Much like Sparky's, Sega Republic operate on both a pay-as-you-go basis, where rides range in price from 15 AED to 30 AED (£2.63 - £5.25), and a pay-once basis, where a "Power Pass" for all rides is available at 175 AED (£30.65). Payment is handled via a Sega-bespoke smart card system, where ride entrances have only Sega-card readers and don't accept cash: Sega-cards must be topped up at designated payment booths prior to riding.
 

 
It's a pretty big FEC at 76,000 sq ft, and sprawls across 2 floors. As standard, the Park opens from 10am to 1am (11pm at off-peak times), so there's lots of opportunity to visit. And the Park's headline attraction is the rather good Gerstlauer custom spinner, Spin Gear.
 

 
As with the rest of the Park, Spin Gear is themed around Sonic and friends, and features an enclosed dark section in the second half of the ride that is not visible from the outside. It's a good length, smooth family spinner - the local riders opposite us in our car certainly seemed to enjoy themselves.
 

 
The standard of presentation is really rather good, with Doctor Eggman goading Sonic / presenting safety information in the queueline videos.
 

 
And the cars are very comfortable too, with a snug lap bar restraint to hold you in. So in all, Spin Gear can be recommended: it's a solid attraction that's much larger than first appears, and produces some good lateral forces. Well worth giving a go.
 

 
A side note on Sega Republic: prior to boarding any ride, riders are forced to stand and read a laminated sheet of paper with detailed instructions / safety information / rider restrictions printed on it. Ride attendants present this laminate to every rider about to board, which was fine given the relatively low crowds, but would be a throughput nightmare if there was any sort of queue.
 
I've never seen a Park do this before - highly conservative, and probably highly unnecessary.
 

 
Sega Republic had a good selection of flats to support the main 'coaster, include Xyclone, a gyro-swing-esq ride, which goes a full 360° and inverts riders over the top. Good fun, although a little painful being slammed back onto your restraint every time the carriage comes down having gone over the top.
 

 
My favourite flat was the innovative Halfpipe Canyon, which rode a little like a standing-up-pirate-ship. Huge amounts of fun, the ride puts 4 riders in 2 teams of 2, who compete against each other on their respective green or orange skateboard. Once the ride begins, the skateboards start to swing much like a pirate ship. Once the boards have reached their highest swings, they also rotate 360° for added disorientation. Teams gain points for stamping left-right-left-right on the plates underneath them at the points where the skateboards reach the top of the halfpipes - the most points wins.
 
Halfpipe Canyon: huge re-rideability - some people were running around for second / third / tenth goes - and very entertaining. If you ever see one of these, hand over your money!
 

 
Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi
 
And now onto the Parks in Abu Dhabi, both based on Yas Island. Yas Island is - much like the Palm in Dubai - an artificial block of land, located just off the coast of Abu Dhabi. It's still half completed, but the stats are staggering: the idea for the island was conceived only in 2006, but was built and opened for business just a few years later. The F1 circuit is the main draw, but the island has just opened a large Mall, and is home to both Yas Waterworld, and more famously Ferarri World. Total investment in the project is estimated at US$40 billion - that's 9 zeros - $40,000,000,000 . We opted for Yas Waterworld first.

Yas Waterworld opened only last year in January 2013, and has already been named the second best waterpark in the world, behind Disney's Typhoon Lagoon. Pretty impressive, and it's easy to see why - for me the Park is right up there with any of its American counterparts in terms of number, quality and variety of flumes & rides, and the standard of presentation across the whole Park is top notch.
 

 
For example, I don't think I've ever seen such a glorious mess of flumes as this (below) in any water park I've been to! These snake flumes were all provided by WhiteWater - the company behind our own revered Storm Surge. I think they've innovated a little since the advent of their Spinning Rapids Ride: these 6 slides include both cool new Rattler sections and a SuperBowl.
 
WhiteWater actually provided 12 out of the 14 attractions for Yas, and the Park is great advert for their products. One of the star attractions is the Liwa Loop AquaLoop, which I'm happy to confirm is one of the most heart-in-mouth water slides I've ever ridden. That moment when you're standing atop a trap door, knowing there's a freefall drop of several tens of feet below you and then a loop, hearing a calm female voice counting down "3...2...1..."? Scary bananas. WhiteWater also supplied a Freefall Speed Slide and a 6-lane Whizzard racer, which were both a whole lot of fun.
 

 
Judging by queue length alone though, it was ProSlide who won the popularity contest at Yas with their ginormous HydroMagnetic Mammoth Water Coaster installations that went by the names of Dawwama and Falcon's Falaj. Both slides use LIMs to propel the 6-person rafts up, as well as using gravity to push them down again into features such as this massive 20m funnel.
 
And you can't even blame low capacity for that queue - ProSlide claims a throughput of up to 1,080 per hour on their 6-person Water Coasters!
 

 
Hugely wet, hugely fast, hugely fun. And the uphill LIMs are a big improvement on e.g. Alton's Master Blaster water-propelled method.
 

 
But the real reason for visiting Yas Waterworld was to have a go on their Vekoma Splash Party coaster, Bandit Bomber.
 

 
It's a pretty bold decision by the Park to install a water-based steel coaster in a wet environment, especially given that previous attempts by other manufacturers (notably Setpoint) can hardly be deemed a success - Carowinds and Hersheypark can tell you more. The track layout sprawls across the Park affording riders a good view of the slides below, and the real fun comes when the 4-person trains roll through the "splash zone". In this area, riders on Bandit Bomber can choose to press a "trigger" button attached to the seats to dump a load of water on the queueing guests below. Guests below can retaliate thanks to ground-based water guns pointing up at the track.
 

 
It's a great idea, although unfortunately marred by the fact that on some of the trains, the hardware wasn't working (meaning no water was dumped, even if the triggers were pressed at the right time by riders), and that many of the riders seemingly had no idea that they had a trigger at their disposal, choosing instead to completely ignore the splash zone interactivity.
 
Whilst this was a shame, for those riders who did know what they were doing, and had been lucky enough to get a working train, Bandit Bomber was a lot of fun - anyone who's used the pay-per-use water guns located to the sides of Storm Surge or Tidal Wave will know how gratifying spraying a complete stranger with water can be.
 

 
And for everyone else, Bandit Bomber was still a solid family ride, with a decent twisty layout that afforded some good negative-G-inducing drops and swoops. Extra points to Vekoma for producing a really smooth ride, too - their latest steelies are so much improved vs. their back catalogue (their 2013 suspended family coaster Orkanen is one of the best family rides out there). Guests were running around back to the ride entrance to try it again; a thumbs up from me.
 

 
Yas Waterworld, then, is an excellent Park with only a few flaws (location is a bit in the middle of nowhere, and it's not cheap at 240 AED - £42), so I'd encourage anyone in Abu Dhabi, or even in Dubai, to make the trip over to Yas Island to spend a day there. The themeing and attention to detail is superb, and for my money the range of attractions and quality of the environment makes this a notch above more established local rivals such as Wild Wadi or Aquaventure.
 

 
Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi

Last but not least - Ferrari World. This had been by far my most anticipated Park due to its scale ("world's largest indoor Theme Park") and its speed machine ("world's fastest roller coaster"). As we had only a day on Yas Island, we didn't get over to Ferrari World until 4pm, having spent the morning and a fair amount of the afternoon in Yas Waterworld! Doing both Parks in one day does however have the advantage of being able to use the Yas Park Pass - a snip(?) at 365 AED (£63.87) - which bought us entry into both attractions.
 

 
The first thing to say is that the huge red structure which houses this Park is really, well, huge. It is so huge, in fact, that it's almost too big for the number of attractions that Ferrari World offers - around 15 if everything is operational. Walking from one side of the place to the other takes a considerable amount of time, but it wouldn't be difficult to polish the Park off in just half a day - as we did!
 
It's clear however that the Park are aware of this and are still investing. The 200ft drop tower that sits in the middle of the structure is currently under scaffolding (although it was unclear whether this was for renovation or to dismantle it), and the flume ride was boarded up with large "Coming Soon" signs plastered all over it. Local news suggests that the Park plans to install 7 new rides over the next 3 years, with the general manager claiming that some of these will be "iconic". Gringotts coaster, anyone?
 

 
But let's get straight to business - and the reason most of you probably came to read this trip report in the first place.
 
Formula Rossa is a breathtaking, pant-wetting rocket of a ride, and gave me the biggest adrenaline rush I've had from a 'coaster in a good long time; maybe even ever.
 

 
Made by Intamin, the coaster somewhat trumps sister hydraulic launch rides Stealth and Rita by boasting a launch of 0 to 149mph in ~4 seconds. That's basically Stealth's launch, and then Stealth's launch again. What follows is a 171ft hill, and then one of the longest layouts in the world (6th longest at the time of writing - Lightwater's Ultimate comes in at 2nd), mostly consisting of high hills and wide turns.
 
Although Ferrari World is an indoor Park, their star attraction of course launches off into the desert outside. And the Park provides a great viewing platform for potential riders to assess what they're letting themselves in for...
 

 
Two things happen in the station to keep the ride safe and operational. One: the train wheels and chassis are sprayed with water via automatic misters to cool it down in between launches. With temperatures in the summer averaging over 38°C, Intamin have had to adapt to the local climate. And two: riders are presented with red glasses, to keep any windy desert sand away from delicate eyes when moving at 149mph. All riders are required to wear these.
 

 
This ride is - unsurprisingly - all about the speed. The layout is fun, but with the transitions so wide and the hills relatively tall, not especially forceful. It's just fast. Bloody fast.
 
I rode Formula Rossa twice; once in the 3rd car (of 4), and once in the front row. In the 3rd car, the speed was palpable, with facial features distinctly wobbling and riders' screams literally taken from mouths.
 
On the front row, the ride morphs into an even more intense beast. Words cannot describe the sheer thrill of the launch: it really pushes the limits of human endurance on a Theme Park ride. My face turned into a rubbery mess, my arms - which were over-confidently in the air until about halfway down the launch track - were pinned back down into my lap bar, and my eyes streamed from the speed (even though I had the glasses on). In many ways, I am thankful for the trims on the hill after the launch - if the train continued to career around the track at the launch speed, it would have been a very uncomfortable experience indeed.
 
For me, the rush was comparable only to the huge adrenaline shot I experienced when skydiving over Salisbury Plain a few years ago - with a vertical terminal velocity of about 120mph. I have never experienced a Theme Park ride like it.
 

 
The riders' expressions say it all.
 

 
The Park's supporting attractions are the Fiorano GT Challenge racing coasters, from Maurer Söhne. Located on the other side of the Park, these dualing car-themed coasters use LSM technology to launch riders at a more family-friendly 59mph.
 

 
The trains are themed to Ferrari F430 Spiders, and feature comfy lapbars common to their spinner rides (a la Sonic Spinball). With a launch straight after the station, 3 further launches around the 1km track, and a handful of stop-start magnetic brake sections, the ride was both thrilling and a lot of fun. The ride layouts weaved in and out of each other, with red, yellow and green lights situated to the side of the tracks to inducate the (green) launches, (yellow) hairpin turns and (red) braking sections.
 
The ride ops didn't mind re-riding here, so we had a good 10 goes on Fiorano GT Challenge, on both the left (black) and right (red) sides - the left proved the favourite.
 

 
Other attractions at Ferrari World included the Scuderia Challenge simulators, Speed of Magic 4D dark ride, Viaggio in Italia Soarin-style attraction, newly-installed Tyre Twist teacups ride, and Karting Academy go-karts, which operated on a time-slot basis (we asked for a slot at 4:30pm, but were told the next available slot was at 7:30pm, so gave it a miss).
 
One of the largest-footprint rides inside the giant Ferrari building is Bell'Italia, a tour around a mini-Italy in a tracked Ferrari 250 California car. This ride proved to be a little embarassing, as the majority of "mini-Italy" had either been removed, or was in a state of disrepair. We were just driving around a load of empty green banking; Verona was little more than a sign saying "under renovation". Really quite poor.
 
Unfortunately, the Bell'Italia experience was somewhat reflective of Ferrari World as a whole; the two major 'coasters notwithstanding, the Park is a little in a state of disrepair at the moment. It is badly missing supporting attractions, with the closure of the drop tower and water ride not helping matters. The main Ferarri building is vast and needs more inside it to justify a gate price of 250 AED (£43.75). Although Formula Rossa and the Go Karts had queues, crowds were low (much lower than Yas Waterworld), which did little to lift the atmosphere - it was all a bit empty and flat.
 
I have hope for Ferrari World, though. Its coasters are both of real quality, and they have the infrastructure to build upon and grow. Yas Island is not even finished yet and Abu Dhabi has great potential to capitalise on tourism in the same way that Dubai has done. Fingers crossed the owners can keep the venture afloat and the Park doesn't go the same way as other expensive IP-led ventures such as ill-fated Hard Rock Park.
 

 
Burj Khalifa, Dubai
 

 
OK, so this is clearly not a Theme Park... but you, esteemed reader, may still be interested. This is the Burj Khalifa, and I was lucky to get in a visit to "At The Top" during my trip. Much in the spirit of all things UEA, you may not be surprised to hear that this is the "tallest building in the world". Tom Cruise famously sat on top of it. To put some numbers around it, the Burj Khalifa is 828m tall. That's insanely tall. If Nemesis Inferno's track was stretched out vertically from start to end, it still wouldn't be as tall as the Burj. London's The Shard could be stretched 2.5 times its height, and it wouldn't be as tall as the Burj.
 
In person, it's really quite impressive. It towers above Dubai's already screamingly tall skyline. The building houses 30,000 people, in both office and residental space. And for 165 AED (£28.87), tourists can take the (ear-poppingly fast) elevator up to floor 124 for a simply stunning view of the Emirate.
 
I picked my time slot to visit a couple of weeks before I arrived in Dubai ("At The Top" sells out weeks in advance), so I was primed for a good sunset at around 5pm. It didn't disappoint.
 

 
Watching the sun set over the city, desert and sea, from nearly a kilometer up in the sky, was a very cool moment. And as you might expect Dubai just lights up at night, yielding awesome views such as the below. Magnificent.
 

 
~
 
So, there is a wealth of Theme Park fun to be had out in the UAE, with clear highlights of my trip being Formula Rossa, Sega Republic and Yas Waterworld. The region is growing so rapidly that in many areas you can almost smell the investment being pumped into the place. That's not to say it's been an easy ride, however - the recession in 2008/2009 hit the sector hard, with projects like Universal Studios Dubailand barely making it off the drawing board. Indeed, when I was travelling down to Abu Dhabi from Dubai, I could see from my taxi the entrance arch to the proposed Universal Studios standing alone in the vast desert around it - very bizarre.
 
One large reason to be excited for UAE's Theme Park future is the development of Dubai Parks and Resort, a massive £1.7bn entertainment complex located towards the south of Dubai city centre, slated to open in 2016. Parques Reunidos - operators of Parque Warner Madrid and Mirabilandia - have been appointed to run two of the three Theme Parks due to open at the resort: Motiongate Dubai (a 4 million sq. foot Hollywood-inspired Park, with studios such as Dreamworks already on board) and Bollywood Parks Dubai (a 3-million sq. foot Bollywood-inspired Park, with major Mumbai studios on board).
 
The third Park in the complex is from a more familiar operator: Merlin Entertainments. Legoland Dubai, a proposed 7th Legoland Park, promises more than 40 attractions upon opening over an area of 3 million sq. foot. Construction boards have already gone up and are again visible from the E11 road to Abu Dhabi, so if all goes to plan, I can see many reasons for a return trip in a few years' time. And I haven't even mentioned the near-future opening of IMG Worlds of Adventure, featuring a Mack launched coaster...
 
Thanks for reading!