Matt N

28th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 2) Day 2 today! I know I said that we were planning to have a more relaxed day today, but we had more left to do rides-wise than we’d previously anticipated, and if I’m being honest, I am quite naturally drawn to rides compared to Europa’s other stuff, so I’ll digress that that did go out of the window somewhat as the day went on. It wasn’t quite as intense as yesterday, however; there were less coasters involved, and my parents said it felt more relaxed than yesterday. We did oversleep slightly, and my parents weren’t feeling ready to enter the park early, so I did enter the park on my own at a little before 10am. As with yesterday, I was compelled to start on… Wodan Timbur Coaster Wodan was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go. The queue ended up being a bit longer than advertised, taking around 35-40 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 9, and it was just as phenomenal as yesterday, being blisteringly fast and packed with airtime: After an awesome ride on Wodan, I decided to have another try of the other coaster in Iceland… Blue Fire Blue Fire was on an advertised 30 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go. Interestingly, the ride once again had a brief breakdown while I was in the queue, but it must be said that it was resolved very quickly; only one empty train cycled and then people were back on it! Operations were also phenomenal; for some idea, 20-seat trains were launching before the train in front had even hit the final brake run, which is really quite nuts! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 8, and it was similar to yesterday; a very good, fun ride with some nice inversions and hangtime: After Blue Fire, my parents entered the park, and we headed together to ride… Arthur Arthur was on a 35 minute advertised queue time, so we decided to give it a go seeing as we hadn’t done it yesterday. The queue for this was quite long compared to other rides in the park, and it took a little longer than 35 minutes (perhaps closer to 45 minutes to an hour), but it was very well themed (although that is admittedly the case for most queue lines at EP)! So, how was the ride? Well, I must say it was a very pleasant surprise! I went in anticipating quite a tame, kiddified ride, but I’ve got to say that it was really quite a fun dark ride roller coaster; the dark ride portion was brilliant, with some great scenes, and the coaster element was more thrilling and more substantial than expected! Overall, Arthur was a really fun attraction that we all thoroughly enjoyed; certainly a pleasant surprise: After Arthur, we sauntered around the Austrian lake for a bit before riding… Josefina’s Magical Imperial Journey Josefina’s was nearby, it had a very minimal queue, and my mum had expressed desire to ride it, so we decided to give it a go. I’ll admit that this was slightly different to what I was expecting from having viewed the Austrian lake yesterday; I thought riders had water cannons to shoot passers-by with, but it turns out that that was a completely different ride! Anyway, how was Josefina’s Imperial Journey? Well, I thought it was a really nice attraction; nothing too thrilling for sure, but a very nice way to relax for a few minutes, with wonderful scenery and some really cool fountains! Overall, we really enjoyed Josefina’s, and it was certainly a nice little ride for what it was: After our ride on Josefina’s, we decided to trek over to Greece to have a go on… Pegasus Pegasus was on an advertised 25 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. This was one of the 4 credits I was missing, and the only non-water coaster remaining at that point, so I was intrigued to try it. I did notice that Pegasus appeared to be one of the lower capacity Europa coasters; with only one train of 18 riders, it wasn’t throttling people through at quite the same rate as the others, so the queue ended up perhaps being longer per the amount of people in the queue than some of the park’s other rides. That’s not to say that it was at all slow, mind you; as is usual in Europa, the staff certainly didn’t hang about when the ride was parked, and the train appeared to be sent in very little time at all; great job, guys! Anyway, how was the ride? Well, it was quite a pleasant surprise! I was expecting something akin to a Vekoma Rollerskater like Hippogriff, but the actual ride was very fun, very smooth and a fair bit more thrilling than expected; it reminded me more of Thirteen’s outdoor section, with perhaps even a tad more punch than that, and on the back row (where we were seated), it had a surprisingly fun pop of airtime on the drop, as well as in one other area that I remember! Overall, I thought Pegasus was a very fun ride, and definitely a pleasant surprise: After Pegasus, we decided to tackle the other Greek roller coaster, and our first water ride… Poseidon Poseidon was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. This was our first water ride of the trip, so I was interested to see what it was like. Before getting onto the ride itself, I must talk about a rather embarrassing moment that occurred in the queue. I was taking photographs with my phone, and I was prepping to take a photograph of a boat splashing down the first drop. However, I didn’t realise that the queue was designed in such a way that the waves could come over into it, so as such, I got caught off-guard and got surprisingly drenched! My phone was fine, but things certainly got off to a pretty wet start on Poseidon! It must be said that the queue and general area are stunningly themed; I think the whole bit around Poseidon is a truly stunning vista within Europa, and the queue is fantastic! So, how was the ride? Well I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a fan at all. I was intrigued to see how the coaster sections rode on Poseidon, as my only previous experience with a Mack Water Coaster was Journey to Atlantis at SeaWorld Orlando, whose coaster section is not especially extensive, but I’m sad to say that I didn’t especially enjoy the coaster bits of Poseidon. It was similar to Euro Mir in that it seemed to get hideously rough whenever it sped up or turned (although perhaps slightly less bad than Euro Mir), and I was bashed around like hell. And even on the straight bits, it seemed to vibrate in a rather uncomfortable way that hurt my bottom a bit (I know that sounds weird, but that’s what I genuinely felt). Wetness-wise, I got pretty soaked; my trousers were soaking wet through! However, we’re not talking anywhere near a Valhalla level soaking or anything; it was still within the comfortable realm of wetness, so I’d say it delivered as a water ride. Overall, while Poseidon looks beautiful, I wasn’t really a fan of its on-ride experience; it was too rough for me, I’m afraid: After Poseidon, we had a bit of a sit down in France with some delicious baked goods; we had pretzels from the boulangerie, and they were delicious! After that, we walked for a bit, and headed onto… Piccolo Mondo Piccolo Mondo was on a walk-on queue, so we decided to give it a go; it was a new dark ride that I thought looked intriguing. So, how was it? Well, I thought it was quite good fun; it was certainly quirky, but it had quite a fun vibe about it, and it had lots of fun animatronics and scenes! All in all, definitely a fun little ride: After Piccolo Mondo, we decided to try the other dark ride in Italy… Geisterschloss Geisterschloss also had a very small queue, so we decided to give it a whirl. I’d heard that this was very similar to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, which I really liked, so I was interested to give it a try. So, how was it? Well, I can definitely see the similarities between HM and Geisterschloss (not least the stretching room pre-show, which was almost an exact replica of its Disney inspiration), but it was surprisingly dark and gory in comparison to Haunted Mansion, with a lot of heads being cut off and dead bodies. It also appeared more reliant on jumpscares than HM, and while it was a nice dark ride, I’m not sure I liked it quite as much as its Disney sibling: After Geisterschloss, we cut through an alleyway to get nearer to the entrance of… Silver Star Silver Star was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so we decided to give it a ride. As with yesterday’s rides, the queue moved at phenomenal pace, and I’m not sure it even took 15 minutes! So, how was the ride? Well, we were seated in row 7, and it was just as phenomenal as yesterday, being packed full of awesome airtime: After Silver Star, we sauntered steadily over to Portugal to do our final new coaster, and our next water ride… Atlantica SuperSplash Atlantica was on an advertised 35 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, this was somewhat understated, and it ended up taking close to an hour all in, which was the longest queue of the trip so far. That’s not through the fault of the ride team, however; the queue still moved fast, and there are many theme parks where I’d be thrilled with an hour’s wait, so I guess Europa has just spoiled me over the last 2 days! So, how was the ride? Well, it was perfectly all right, but not something I was particularly thrilled with or something I’d rush to do again unless it had a short queue. The main drop was quite good, and the airtime hill was a fun moment too, but the ride didn’t do an awful lot, and I thought the coaster functionality didn’t really serve much purpose; it just kind of existed, and it didn’t really add a lot to the ride for me. Don’t get me wrong, Atlantica wasn’t a bad ride by any means, and I did get pretty wet on it, so it certainly served its purpose as a water ride, but it wasn’t a favourite of mine, and I think my parents agreed. It looks beautiful, however, and is very well themed: After Atlantica, we sat down for a few minutes before deciding to do another water ride while we were still wet… Fjord-Rafting Fjord-Rafting was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. We were going to do this yesterday, so I was intrigued to see what it was like now that we’d vowed to do water rides today. So, how was it? Well, I thought it was a very enjoyable rapids ride; there were loads of good waves, loads of good effects, some really nice theming, and it was overall a really good, fun rapids that was decently wet while still being within the realms of fun! I definitely liked this rapids a lot! (I apologise, as I realise I forgot to photograph Fjord-Rafting…) After a fun ride on Fjord-Rafting, I split off from my parents; they went to the paddle steamer in France for some drinks, while I had one last ride on each of the big 3. I initially started with Silver Star, where I scored a back row ride; it was absolutely sublime, with tons of phenomenal airtime! I then trekked over to Iceland, where I joined a 25 minute queue for Blue Fire. I scored a back row ride on this too, and similarly to earlier, it was good fun! I then finished the day with a ride on Wodan. I was seated in row 9, and this was possibly the most fast-paced Wodan ride yet; the ride felt absolutely unstoppable! Having done the big 3 in quick succession, and having done multiple rides on each now, I am definitely noticing a hierarchy emerging in terms of how I rank them. Silver Star is top dog (a truly spectacular ride that is packed with fun and infectiously rerideable!), Wodan is a very close second to Silver Star (absolutely relentless, and so much fun!), and Blue Fire is a more distant third (still an excellent coaster, but lacking a certain something to take it into that truly top tier alongside Silver Star and Wodan. Nevertheless, the last inversion is truly excellent, and the ride is certainly great fun!). After my rides on the big 3, I headed back to our hotel, where I met back up with my parents to close off the day with a lovely evening meal in Restaurant Castillo. So, that was day 2! We had a great day today, and I thoroughly enjoyed ticking off more attractions we hadn’t done, including some slightly different ones compared to the rather coaster-heavy first day! Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed my report from day 2! Day 3 will be coming tomorrow, and my mum has already strategised a plan of action for us tomorrow that involves ERT and getting on some of the remaining rides we haven’t done, as well as rerides on our favourites and possibly a show or two as well!

27th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 1) Today, our first day in the park finally arrived! It’s a day I had dreamed about for ages, and quite literally dreamed about within the last few months… although unlike in my dreams, no vloggers stopping me from boarding rides or university staff with cricket bats were here to ruin it for me (if you don’t know what I mean, check out the theme park dreams thread)! And it was a very exciting day for sure… let me get straight to the good stuff! We did not go into the park for ERT this morning, instead opting for a more relaxed start to the day. We headed into Europa at a little after 9:30am through the hotel guest entrance, which was very quick and easy: After getting into the park, we initially considered starting with Alpenexpress Enzian, but we could not find the entrance, so we instead decided to start with a nearby ride that we were all hotly ancitipating… Wodan Timbur Coaster Wodan was on an advertised 40 minute queue, so we decided to join it. I was very excited to ride Wodan; Wicker Man was my #3 prior to visiting Europa, so I naturally had high expectations for its bigger, badder cousin. The queue for Wodan is an attraction in itself, with very elaborate theming throughout, and we also had the bonus of it only being 20 minutes as opposed to the advertised 40, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, we rode in row 8, and I thought it was absolutely phenomenal; the pacing was truly relentless like no other ride I’ve ever ridden, and every bit of the ride felt like it was trying to fling you out of the seat in some way, including some very unexpected moments of airtime! Interestingly, I thought it encapsulated elements from all 3 of the modern wooden coasters I’ve done previously (Wicker Man, Mine Blower and Megafobia); the initial sequence of elements reminded me a lot of Megafobia with the sustained air on the way down the first drop and the big turnaround directly after, while the fun twists and turns, the relative smoothness and the comfy trains reminded me a lot of Wicker Man, and the awesome little pops of air at the end reminded me a lot of Mine Blower. And it integrated all of these elements wonderfully to make it an absolutely phenomenal wooden roller coaster; Wodan definitely became my favourite wooden roller coaster I’ve ridden (yes, I concede that I definitely liked it more than Wicker Man), and it has definitely blazed its way into my top 3 for sure! My parents loved the ride, too: After Wodan, we headed to the other major roller coaster in Iceland… Blue Fire Blue Fire was on an advertised 20 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. Seeing as Icon was my #2 prior to visiting Europa, I was very interested to ride the prototype Mack launch coaster. Many had told me that Blue Fire was superior to Icon, so I was interested to see what I thought to it given my Icon love. The wait took a tad longer than 20 minutes due to a breakdown, but that certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the ride team; trains were being hammered out, and as I later found would be the case with every ride at Europa, the queue moved very quickly, and the boarding/checking process took very little time at all; they don’t mess around! So, how was Blue Fire? Well, I thought it was a very fun ride; it was smooth, the inversions were nice (particularly the first and last ones; the last one is challenging for my favourite inversion), there were some nice transitions and it was overall a nice, fun coaster! However… I did think it was lacking a little something relative to Icon. I can’t quite put my finger on what, but I wasn’t getting quite the same wow feeling that I get from a ride on Icon. It could be that it’s not the most airtime-y ride, and I do enjoy airtime on this style of coaster, so I was missing a little air on there, but I’m not sure that was entirely it; while it was a terrific coaster, I did think it was missing that little spark to make it a true 10/10 tier ride for me. That’s not to say that Blue Fire isn’t a great ride, though; I thoroughly enjoyed myself on it, and it still makes my top 10! Neither of my parents seemed overly keen, though; my mum said it was “sick-making”, and said she isn’t riding again this trip, while my dad said that it felt slow for a ride of 62mph: After Blue Fire, we decided to wander for a bit and see where the path took us. It took us to Scandinavia, and Fjord-Rafting was initially considered as our next ride, but we then made the conservative decision to leave the water rides for a hotter day on our trip (tomorrow and Friday are due to be hotter), so we instead chose to ride… Snorri Touren I didn’t actually know how long the queue for Snorri Touren was, but I thought it looked intriguing, so we joined the queue. For such a hidden away attraction, I thought the queue was very nicely themed, with lots to look at and odd appearances from an octopus who I’m guessing is Snorri (?). So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was a fun little ride for what it was, with some nice theming, a catchy soundtrack, good projection mapping, and a rather surprising and clever section that almost resembled a simulator-style ride, which I thought was interesting! Overall, I thought it was a fun and intriguing ride, and my parents seemed to agree: After Snorri Touren, we decided to head to another dark ride that I knew a little more about… Piraten in Batavia Piraten in Batavia was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we joined it. We thought the queue looked rather big from the outside, as it was spilling out of the building into the plaza, but it turned out that the sign was right, as the queue moved at a very fast pace and took no longer than advertised, perhaps even slightly less! The queue was also incredibly well themed, with some surprisingly massive rooms and lots to look at, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, I didn’t know too much about it other than that it was similar to Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney and replaced an older attraction of the same premise, so I went in (relatively) blind aside from people telling me it was brilliant. And I must say, I thought it was a truly excellent dark ride, and perhaps controversially, I’d take it over its Disney source material any day of the week (well, the WDW version). There was lots of theming to look at throughout, the scenes were really excellent (with some being surprisingly grand in scale), and other tools such as smells and projection mapping were also used very effectively in there; I thought it was a fantastic dark ride, and it seemed to be a hit with my parents too: After Piraten in Batavia, we headed to our next roller coaster, which was very nearby… Euro Mir Euro Mir was on an advertised 15 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. The ride looks very impressive from off-ride, with the huge glass buildings and the big rocket giving it a very strong presence within the surrounding area. The ride also has an… interesting indoor queue, with some fun UV lighting and a soundtrack that is bound to be stuck in one’s head after riding (as is the case with a surprising number of Europa’s rides)! So, how was Euro Mir? Well, I was interested to see what I thought to it, as it seems quite marmite; I’ve noticed that people seem to either really like it or not think much to it at all. And sadly, me and my parents all fell quite comfortably into the latter camp. Europa had certainly been buttering us the right way up to this point, so I hate to say it, but… oh dear. This was genuinely horrible, and I don’t think any of us enjoyed it at all. I thought it was quite a strange coaster, with an interesting start with some controlled spinning and a very long lift hill given the height, which was intriguing. The aerial turns were OK, providing some nice views of the park… but that’s where the ride went hugely downhill, both literally and figuratively. Interestingly, it didn’t spin at all in the main thrilling body of the coaster, so nausea wasn’t really an issue, but whenever it sped up or turned, it got horrifically rough. Me and my mum were facing forwards, and we got bashed around a hell of a lot (particularly our shins/knees, getting bashed against the hard side of the car), but my dad, who was facing backwards, seemed to get the brunt of the bashing, with him saying that it really hurt his shins. Granted, Euro Mir is a fairly forceful coaster for a ride of its type, and it’s certainly novel, so I probably shouldn’t be so harsh, but none of us especially enjoyed it at all: After Euro Mir, we wandered into the Great Britain section of the park, where we had a spot of lunch in the sports bar before having a little stroll around the Great Britain area while working out where to go next: I’ve got to say, Europa is the perfect park for just strolling around; it’s truly beautiful throughout, and never feels too busy given that it gets over 5 million guests per year! After a brief stroll through Britain, we stumbled into Switzerland, where we boarded our next attraction: Schweizer Bobbahn Schweizer Bobbahn had a 15 minute advertised queue, so we joined it. I was interested to ride Schweizer Bobbahn; I’d remembered really liking Avalanche at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, so I was hopeful for quite a fun little coaster. So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was rather good fun myself, with some nice helixes and turns! I didn’t think it quite stacked up to Avalanche, though; it didn’t seem quite as fast, and it had a slight rattle in some of the more forceful sections that I don’t remember Avalanche having, which detracted ever so slightly. Nevertheless, I thought it was a fun little coaster for what it was, and certainly something I enjoyed: After Schweizer Bobbahn, we headed to do the other coaster in Switzerland… Matterhorn Blitz Matterhorn Blitz had an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to join it and give it a go. The queue felt like one of the longest queues of the day, however; Matterhorn Blitz is not the highest capacity ride at Europa, and the ride did appear quite popular. It was a fairly nicely themed queue, though, with a very nicely themed indoor section at the end, although I’ll digress that I found some of the animatronics a tad disconcerting! Putting aside the queue, though; how was the ride? Well, I thought the elevator lift was really interesting, and it was relatively smooth for a wild mouse, as well as well themed, but I don’t generally rate wild mouse coasters that highly, so saying it’s my favourite wild mouse coaster is damning with faint praise a tad. With that being said, though, I did like the theme, and it certainly looks pretty; this style of ride just isn’t really my thing, so I’m not sure I was ever going to rate it super highly: After Matterhorn Blitz, we took a stroll and found ourselves in Greece, where we got in line for… Abenteuer Atlantis I thought Abenteuer Atlantis looked intriguing, and it was on a 1 minute advertised queue, so we decided to join it and give ourselves a brief respite from coastering. The queue board certainly wasn’t lying; we literally waltzed straight on, and interestingly, we boarded entirely by ourselves, with seemingly no host there at all! So, how was Abenteuer Atlantis? Well, I thought it was a fun little interactive dark ride, with some excellent theming and animatronics and an overall fun vibe; I really liked it, and my mum and dad seemed to as well. Mum & dad scored well, with them getting scores in the 20,000-30,000 ballpark, but being as shocking at interactive dark rides as I am, I got a truly abysmal 701; I have very poor aim, so I never score particularly well on these. Nevertheless, we all found it a fun little ride: After Abenteuer Atlantis, we initially pondered riding Pegasus, but we were instead drawn to a somewhat more anticipated coaster located right next to it… Silver Star Silver Star was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. One thing I must say about Silver Star is that I think it is quite possibly one of the fastest moving queues I have ever stood in; we were initially doubtful about whether it would actually take 15 minutes, as the queue looked quite large, but the sign wasn’t wrong, perhaps even a little pessimistic; we reached the station in around 10 minutes. I was going into Silver Star with very mixed expectations and feelings. My pre-Europa #1 was also a B&M Hyper Coaster (Mako at SeaWorld Orlando), so I had high expectations for SS, but I also had somewhat low expectations too, as it never seems to get very positive press; it appears to have marmite status among Europa’s coasters at best, with a fair percentage of people not rating it very highly at all while another percentage likes it, but doesn’t love it. As such, I was wondering whether to expect a pretty rough coaster lacking in airtime more akin to The Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as a number of reviews had implied Silver Star to be quite rough and severely lacking in airtime. I was excited to ride Silver Star, but also quite nervous as well. Would the B&M Hyper experience live up to my glorious memories of Mako from 6 years earlier now that I’ve ridden considerably more rides? Well, I shouldn’t have worried. Unlike the similarly marmite Euro Mir, me and my parents fell firmly into the “love it” category with this ride, and I thought it was truly spectacular! I was a tad skeptical about how our first ride would be, as we were seated in row 5 (slap bang in the middle… not usually the best spot on airtime coasters) but it was absolutely breathtaking! The first drop provided stunning sustained floater, and it bought all of those glorious Mako memories flooding back. Each successive hill had glorious sustained air for seconds and seconds, and I thought the ride was pretty smooth and comfortable too (admittedly not quite the same wonderful level of glass smoothness as 2016 Mako, but that’s to be expected given that Mako was brand new when I rode it, while SS is 20 years old). The ending was excellent too; we got properly yanked off the MCBR with a phenomenal and surprisingly abrupt jolt of airtime, with each successive hill in the post-MCBR section being similar, and the s-bend rode pretty well too! Overall, I was truly blown away by Silver Star, and my parents appeared to be too; they both raved about the experience: After an epic ride on Silver Star, we headed to the other roller coaster in France… Cancan Coaster Cancan Coaster was on a 25 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. As with many rides at Europa, this had a beautiful queue, with tons to look at, and it moved quickly too; what more can you ask for? So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was really good fun, and definitely a surprising one; the ride was very smooth, and packed surprising pace throughout, with some really fun turns being packed in there too. I also thought the theming was very fun and whimsical, and I did like having the can can playing to you while you were riding! Overall, I thought Cancan was great fun; definitely one we all enjoyed: After Cancan Coaster, we decided to relax for a bit and sit down in the town square in France to watch the fountain show for 10 minutes or so: I must say, Europa’s France section is beautiful; it had a very nice atmosphere, and was lovely to spend time in! The fountain show was quite a fun watch, too! After our sit down, we decided to spice things up with another random ride we stumbled across… Madame Freudenreich’s Curiosities I thought Madame Freudenreich’s Curiosities looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a go. As with Abenteuer Atlantis earlier, the queue was walk-on, which is always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was quite a fun little ride! Certainly quirky for sure, but it was certainly a fun little detour, with some fun animatronics, a fun storyline, and surprisingly excellent theming: After Madame Freudenreich’s, we decided to take a gradual stroll down to Deutsche Allee, Europa’s very nice entrance area: We didn’t just stroll down to EP’s entrance area for the sake of it, however. While in the area, we took a ride on… Voletarium Voletarium was on a mere 5 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. The queue for Voletarium is almost an attraction in itself; it’s absolutely stunning, with some huge rooms and tons to look at! However, we didn’t get a lot of time to look at anything, as we practically waltzed straight onto the ride! So, how was Voletarium? Well, I thought it was a really nice ride, with some good cinematography, nice smells and some nice special effects on the side; definitely a good fun dark ride: After Voletarium, we took a bit of a stroll through the gardens area by Europa’s entrance, as in all honesty, we weren’t really sure where we were going at this point: We eventually found ourselves in Austria, where we briefly sat down to look at the fountains: After our brief sit down, we headed over to ride… Alpenexpress Enzian Alpenexpress had a 15 minute advertised queue, so we joined it. VR was in operation on this ride, but on our train, there were no VR riders, so we managed to score a ride towards the back of the train; always a bonus with these powered coasters! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was really good fun, with two surprisingly fast helixes; it’s probably up there with Alton Towers’ Runaway Mine Train as one of my favourite powered coasters: After Alpenexpress, we decided to gradually stroll back over to Iceland to take a second ride on Wodan. I was seated in row 7 for this ride, and it was just as phenomenal as earlier; in fact, it was possibly a tad faster, and I was genuinely somewhat worried for my unzipped jacket’s life over some of the airtime hills! After that, I split off from my parents to go for one final ride on Silver Star. You don’t think of EP as being overly big, but the walk from Iceland to France is surprisingly hefty! In terms of my second ride on Silver Star; I scored the back row, and it was even more phenomenal than earlier! Even with the trim brakes biting somewhat, every hill had a truly phenomenal yank of airtime over it, and the ride was absolutely exquisite from start to finish! You may notice that I have thus far steered clear of doing a direct comparison between Silver Star and Mako. So, has Silver Star dethroned Mako as my number 1 coaster? My answer is… not quite, but there’s phenomenally little in it; that verdict was not reached easily, and my rides on Silver Star today certainly had me second guessing Mako’s #1 placement more than any other ride has since Mako. It was a very tough decision, but I ultimately decided to keep Mako on top because while Silver Star is absolutely spectacular, I don’t think any individual element on it had quite the same wow factor as elements like Mako’s sublime first drop and first camelback hill, from memory, and while still very smooth and comfortable for the most part, Silver Star doesn’t ride quite as exquisitely as Mako did in 2016, and Mako’s completely glass smooth ride was one of the things I loved about it. I know that those sound like very pedantic reasons, but when two rides are both that good and it’s the top spot being fought for, I’m afraid that it has to be pedantry that ultimately decides which ride comes out on top. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a phenomenal coaster that truly took my breath away, and that back row ride in particular certainly had Mako quaking in its boots! After a glorious ride on Silver Star, I met back up with my parents, and we headed out of the park for the day: After that, we headed to Hotel Colosseo for a lovely meal in Pizzeria de Romantica before heading back to our room, saying goodnight to Europa Park for the day: So in conclusion, we had a wonderful first day in Europa Park! The park is absolutely stunning, with stunning rides and stunning theming; it’s certainly a phenomenally well rounded park, in my view, and I can’t wait to see the rest of what it has to offer over the next 2 days! I’m aware that our schedule was quite intense today (I was possibly further down the rabbit hole of “new park stress” than I’d have perhaps liked), so we agreed that we’re going to have a more relaxed day tomorrow, with some shows scattered in alongside rides we haven’t done yet (including water rides and the remaining 4 coaster credits), as well as rerides on our favourites. Thanks for reading (apologies for the length; if you read it all, you deserve a medal!), and I hope you enjoyed my report; I’ll be back tomorrow with day 2!

Ouch; the end of that one sounds painful! Thank you; the actual first day at Europa Park is tomorrow, so let’s hope that my dream wasn’t a premonition!

26th April 2022 (Travel) Hi guys. Today was a very exciting day; the start of my first ever trip to Europa Park! This might possibly be my most significant theme park trip in some time, and it’s quite a significant change in tune compared to the bulk of my recent trips, with a number of new experiences in store for me; my first time travelling abroad post-COVID, my first time at Europa Park, my first time in Germany full stop… I could go on, as there are so many firsts for me this trip! So join me over the next 5 days as I visit Europa Park, a major bucket list park I have legitimately wanted to visit for the past 7 or 8 years, for the very first time! This was only our travel day, so I haven’t set foot into the park itself yet, but I’ve already gotten some glimpses of what Europa Park Resort has to offer. So let me start today from the very beginning. Interestingly, today started out with the longest single leg of the trip there; a 3 hour drive from Gloucestershire to London Stansted. The drive actually felt quicker than expected given it was 3 hours, and my dad said it was very easy, so I guess that’s all you can ask for, really! After that, we went into Stansted itself, where check-in & security were surprisingly quick; we were through it all very quickly compared to what I always remembered Manchester/Gatwick being like, which is always good! It felt very weird being back in an airport… the last time I flew abroad was to Florida in April 2019, so after the few years we’ve all had, it felt almost surreal being back travelling abroad again, with surprisingly few differences compared to pre-COVID! It was exciting, though; even though an airport in itself is perhaps not the most pleasurable of experiences, being in an airport preparing for a foreign holiday does give you a certain buzz that I can’t quite put my finger on, particularly when your destination is a park you’ve spent years dreaming of visiting! After a wait of around an hour in Stansted’s departure lounge, we headed to our gate and boarded our plane to Baden-Baden: This flight was my first ever Ryanair flight, which I’m led to believe is somewhat of a rite of passage for any theme park enthusiast, and I’ve got to say, it was quite good! The seats were perfectly comfortable, the flight was short (only 1h 25m); what more can you really ask for? After getting off our flight, we headed through immigration in Baden-Baden, which was fairly quick, and that’s when it hit home that Europa Park really was well within my reach: Wow, seeing that was exciting! After that, we got our hire car and headed down to Europa Park itself from Baden-Baden airport, which my dad described as a surprisingly easy drive. It took around 45 minutes, and I must say, I was stunned by quite how convenient Europa is to reach from the motorway; when people described it as being in a town/village, I was expecting something like Alton Towers, where you wind your way through all kinds of country lanes and villages for miles on end once you leave the motorway, but it was literally a case of “exit the motorway… wow, there’s Europa!” in an almost America-style fashion! I was also surprised at how much Europa Park dominates Rust; I was anticipating it being a case of Europa Park being in the middle of a large town that engulfed it, but it’s almost more like Rust is an add-on to Europa Park, which I found very interesting! Then, we headed onto the resort itself. I have to say, first impressions are very good; the hotels are stunningly themed, and they’re all very grand in scale! My first view of a Europa Park hotel was the lobby for El Andaluz, where we checked in, and I must say, it’s stunning: We’re staying in a Standard Room Plus in Hotel Castillo Alcazar, and the room is very nicely themed, as well as surprisingly big. The park view is also fantastic, and gives Blackpool’s similar park view a run for its money for sure: After getting settled into our room, we decided to take a stroll around the Europa resort and see what some of the other hotels had to offer. We firstly stopped at Hotel Colosseo, where we loitered around the piazza for a bit: And then we went up to the top of the Colosseum replica, where I got some views of the piazza from above: As well as Rulantica: And also some of the surrounding Black Forest area; EP is surprisingly rural and in a surprisingly nice forest setting for such a huge resort: After that, we strolled past Hotel Bell Rock: And finally, we ended up walking past Colosseo again and going back to El Andaluz: After our little stroll around, we headed into the Castillo Restaurant in Hotel Castillo Alcazar for an evening meal, which it must be said was very nice; the restaurant is also very nicely themed. I didn’t take any photos of the restaurant, but my mum did catch a photo of the very nice corridor leading up to it, which is very well themed indeed, and certainly sets the tone for the restaurant: Finally, I caught a few photos of the stunning night time view from out of our window; Europa really does look stunning at night: So, that was the first day of our trip! Apologies that this was a bit of a boring report today; I hope the next few days’ worth of reports are a bit more interesting, seeing as we’re going to be in the park itself on tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. I’m incredibly excited; I can’t wait to see what Europa has to offer after years of wanting to go! What I’ve seen of the resort so far certainly bodes well for what I’ll think of the park, as it’s all very nice! Tomorrow, we’ll be stepping into the park for the first time… I can’t wait!

Maybe they could do some sort of refurbishment to convert it into a more regular dark ride? I'd imagine that DBGT probably has more track than you might expect, so that could work!

Sorry to double post, but I think it's time I did the 3rd and final part of this... today, I'll be investigating: Which coaster selections emphasise quantity over quality and which coaster selections emphasise quality over quantity? Now I'll digress that this one is possibly harder to measure statistically, but it was one I was interested to find out, so I still decided to give it a go! I used 3 different measures to try and work this out. The first measure I used was to work out the median:mean ratio, as it always appeared to me as though a higher median denoted a more consistently strong selection (thus more of a quality focus), while a higher mean denoted a less consistently strong selection (thus more of a quantity focus). To work this out, I simply did median/mean, and the results were as follows (to 2sf)... Top 5 "Quantity over Quality" (Median/Mean) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Median/Mean (2sf) 1 Movie Park Germany 8 0.73 2 Freizeit-Land Geiselwind 5 0.74 3 Walibi Rhone-Alpes 5 0.74 4 Mirabilandia 8 0.76 5 Plopsaland 7 0.76 Top 5 "Quality over Quantity" (Median/Mean) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Median/Mean (2sf) 1 Flamingo Land 5 1.4 2 Thorpe Park 7 1.2 3 Parque Warner 6 1.2 4 Liseberg 5 1.2 5 Heide Park 8 1.2 The second measure I used was to work out the mean:count ratio, because a park having a high or low mean relative to their coaster count would surely denote whether their coaster selection is quantity over quality or quality over quantity, no? One slight flaw with this method is that any theme park with more than 10 scoreable roller coasters automatically gravitates towards "quantity over quality" by default because you cannot have a mean above 10, although one could argue that having a coaster count of more than 10 makes you quantity-focused to a certain extent anyway... To work this out, I did mean/count, and the results were as follows (to 2sf)... Top 5 "Quantity over Quality" (Mean/Count) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Mean/Count (2sf) 1 Freizeit-Land Geiselwind 5 0.27 2 Wiener Prater 10 0.34 3 Movie Park Germany 8 0.48 4 Blackpool 10 0.48 5 Bobbejaanland 8 0.49 Top 5 "Quality over Quantity" (Mean/Count) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Mean/Count (2sf) 1 Liseberg 5 1.5 2 Grona Lund 6 1.2 3 Parque de Atracciones 5 1.1 4 Toverland 6 1.0 5 Walibi Holland 6 1.0 The final measure I used was to repeat the same process as above, but using the median instead of the mean. To work this out, I did median/count, and the results were as follows (to 2sf)... Top 5 "Quantity over Quality" (Median/Count) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Median/Count (2sf) 1 Freizeit-Land Geiselwind 5 0.20 2 Wiener Prater 10 0.35 3 Movie Park Germany 8 0.35 4 Mirabilandia 8 0.40 5 Gardaland 8 0.43 Top 5 "Quality over Quantity" (Median/Count) Ranking Park Number of Scoreable Coasters Median/Count (2sf) 1 Liseberg 5 1.8 2 Walibi Holland 6 1.2 3 Grona Lund 6 1.2 4 Parque Warner 6 1.1 5 Parque de Atracciones 5 1.1 So, what did we learn from today's analysis? In terms of which park emphasises quantity over quality most; I think we can conclude that Freizeit-Land Geiselwind is the European winner for this, winning 2 out of 3 measures and coming 2nd in the only one it didn't win. And it won the measures it did win by some distance! In terms of which park emphasises quality over quantity most; I think we can conclude that Liseberg is the European winner for this, winning 2 out of 3 measures and coming 4th in the only one it didn't win. And as with Geiselwind, it won the measures it did win by some distance! That brings us to the end of our analysis of European coaster selections. I hope you've enjoyed my little look at the continent's coaster selections using data analysis techniques; I know I've certainly found crunching the numbers interesting! Although if you'd like me to ask any more questions about this dataset, then feel free to give me a suggestion and I'll happily do it for you! This won't be the last time you see me do one of these, though... I'm hoping to dive into North America's major coaster selections next, so keep your eyes peeled for that at some point in the not-too-distant future!

I'd say Thorpe is definitely a one-day park myself unless you're seeking absolutely copious amounts of re-rides, and even they might be possible in one day if you visit on an off-peak weekday. Even when not quite spending a full day on park on a peak day, I can usually get all 5 of the big coasters done at least. On most days, even peak days, I can often get all 5 coasters done with a reride in on 1 or 2 of them and 1 or 2 filler rides as well. In terms of where to start; I'd recommend the Stealth/Inferno type area. I've tried Swarm, Saw/Colossus and Stealth/Inferno in the past, and Stealth/Inferno is easily the one that has worked best for me, from experience. Those 2 rides were dead, and I got 2x Stealth, 1x Inferno and 1x Detonator in within the first hour. With Saw/Colossus, on the other hand; I joined a 40 minute Saw queue at 10am when I tried it, and Colossus was no shorter. Swarm is often quite busy in the mornings, from my experience, although it also tends to have Thorpe's highest coaster throughput, which helps. I can only speak from my own experiences, however; I don't know whether this varies at all.

Hi guys. I was curious to know; have any of you ever had any theme park related dreams? I only ask because I had a very weird theme park dream last night that I couldn’t not share… Basically, it revolved around my first day at Europa Park, which is coming up in real life in 6 days’ time. And it was one of those dreams where every little thing was stopping me from getting into the park and riding any rides… but far from a regular one. Buckle up, because this dream is weird… Things got off to a good start after a wonderful sleep in Hotel Castillo Alcazar (actually, I’m not sure what hotel it even was… it certainly didn’t look like Castillo Alcazar), but then we went down into the hotel lobby… where I was greeted by my study skills tutor from university, who was armed with a cricket bat and a huge black bin bag. She then proceeded to whack me around the head repeatedly with the cricket bat and throw me into the bin bag… When I finally woke up from being knocked out by repeated cricket bat wounds, my study skills tutor had taken me out of the bin bag, and I found myself in a room that looked bizarrely like the House of Commons if it didn’t have any MPs in it. She then threw me onto one of the green seats and threw an exam paper in my face before informing me that I had to resit A Level Maths for some reason, and I wasn’t allowed into the park until I’d passed. I then started doing the exam, but for some reason that I can’t quite remember, she then came and kicked me out of the room for “acting up” before throwing me into my own private room and restarting my timer from the beginning, even though I’d completed a fair chunk of the exam. The exam was fairly plain sailing after that, but when I got out of the exam, I wasn’t allowed to leave the House of Commons-style room, as it got stranger… two team members from TowersStreet Talk then appeared out of nowhere and informed me that it was time for my “Forum Member’s Review”. They sat me down at this table where I was facing them directly, and then they began to spend a long time grilling me on my past forum posts. I don’t remember exactly what they said, other than that it started with them going “We’ve been looking through your post history… and my god, you’re a moaner!” before then shaking their heads and tutting at me in perfect unison. I don’t remember what they said after that, other than that it was definitely about my previous post history, but for some reason, my mum then appeared and reprimanded me for being rude to the two TS team members. And I again can’t remember what I did… it just came seemingly out of nowhere. After that, I finally found myself in Europa Park… except as is typical for dream theme parks, it looked nothing like I’d imagined it would. I started in this tiny indoor area with Victorian style windows and a tiny little house to navigate your way around to get into the park. It had corridors that were barely wide enough to fit me in them, and it was an absolute maze to navigate my way through. I did eventually get through it, but for some reason, my grandparents (who aren’t even coming to Germany with us in real life) then appeared out of nowhere, and we spent a few minutes exchanging pleasantries. By this point, my enthusiast anxiety was most certainly rising, and it was close to closing time. I then exited the maze with my grandparents… which led us to a massive muddy field that had Silver Star randomly plonked in the middle of it. I yelled “OH MY GOD, IT’S SILVER STAR!” and then started sprinting like I’ve never sprinted before. My grandparents initially tried sprinting with me, but then they told me to leave them behind, as they were too tired. My foot fell into a giant rabbit hole while I was sprinting, and I twisted my ankle very badly (much more badly than you’d expect for merely getting your foot stuck in a rabbit hole, for some reason), but I kept running (albeit in a rather haphazard way, and certainly not straight… I felt like I was going to keel over any second due to my ankle pain). I was very close to reaching Silver Star’s queue entrance… but then in typical theme park dream fashion, I woke up. I know it sounds weird, but that’s exactly what happened, word for word… have you ever had any theme park related dreams?

If Swarm’s old plaza audio has returned and the new station audio has stayed, then perhaps controversially, I actually think that would be my ideal Swarm music scenario, as I preferred the old plaza audio to the new one bought in last year, but I thought the new station audio was awesome!

Out of interest, is Thorpe going back to the older families market as well as teenagers & adults with their recent moves? It appears to me as though things like the playground and roaming entertainment are geared towards a younger audience than the park has targeted for the last few years, but I could be wrong there…

Thanks for the post @Inferno; I really appreciate it! I’m studying Computer Science at the University of Gloucestershire. I am starting to get a little more used to it now, although I’ll admit that rightly or wrongly, I do still tread through my course and assignments with a certain degree of trepidation. In terms of asking for help; I do often drop my lecturers an email if I need to know something for an assignment or whatever, and they always seem happy to help, but I’ll admit that I’ve never been the most forthcoming in asking for help, particularly in university what with the big onus on “independent learning”. In terms of the employment thing; I’m getting quite mixed messages about that. We were told by the employability team at the university that graduate jobs often require at least a 2/1 (albeit not always), whereas my dad, who works in a big company in a position where he deals with interviewing university graduates for jobs, said something similar to you about how the exact grade of the degree isn’t really taken into account when looking at a CV and assessing someone’s eligibility for a job.

Right; sorry to triple post, but I think it's about time I did Part 2 of this! And for Part 2, I'll be exploring... What coaster selections in Europe are the most and least consistent? Now I should clarify that this is not wishing to determine consistent strength, but merely consistency on its own, which can work both ways. So, let's dive straight in! To work this out, I used two different types of range. The first measure I used was the range between the highest and lowest ratings, which is a very simple measure where you merely subtract the lowest value from the highest value (Range = Highest Rating - Lowest Rating). The top 5 most and least consistent using that method were as follows: Top 5 Most Consistent (Using Range) Ranking Park Range Mean Rating (out of 10) (to 1dp) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Freizeit-Land Geiselwind 2.5 1.4 5 2 Efteling 3.9 6.5 8 3 Grona Lund 4 6.9 6 4 Flamingo Land 4.4 3.1 5 5 Skyline Park 4.7 4 5 Top 5 Least Consistent (Using Range) Ranking Park Range Mean Rating (out of 10) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Energylandia 10 5.7 11 2 Walibi Holland 9.8 6.2 6 3 Walibi Belgium 9.4 4.9 9 4 Mirabilandia 9 4.2 8 5 Plopsaland 8.9 5 7 The other measure I used was the interquartile range between the quartiles (IQR = Upper Quartile - Lower Quartile), which should provide a better gauge of the selection's general consistency and not be too swayed by one particularly highly or lowly rated ride. The top 5 most and least consistent using IQR were as follows: Top 5 Most Consistent (Using IQR) Ranking Park Interquartile Range Mean Rating (out of 10) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Blackpool 1 4.8 10 2 Freizeit-Land Geiselwind 1.1 1.4 5 3 Alton Towers 1.3 7.3 9 4 Liseberg 1.4 7.6 5 5 Grona Lund 1.7 6.9 6 Top 5 Least Consistent (Using IQR) Ranking Park Interquartile Range Mean Rating (out of 10) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Walibi Rhone-Alpes 6.3 4.5 5 2 Parque Warner 5.9 5.5 6 3 Plopsaland 5.8 5 7 4 Movie Park Germany 5.8 3.8 8 5 Parc Asterix 5.7 5 5 Finally, let me once again reference the boxplot from Part 1, for a visual aid to show this off: Let me once again remind you of the order the parks are in, from left to right: Alton Towers Thorpe Park Blackpool Pleasure Beach Phantasialand Liseberg Walibi Holland Energylandia Plopsaland de Panne Walibi Belgium Europa Park PortAventura Parque Warner Madrid Parque de Atracciones de Madrid Efteling Bobbejaanland Toverland Movie Park Germany Heide Park Hansa Park Flamingo Land Tripsdrill Parc Asterix Gardaland Mirabilandia Djurs Sommerland Farup Sommerland TusenFryd Linnanmaki Bellewaerde Nigloland Skyline Park PowerPark Grona Lund Wiener Prater Walibi Rhone-Alpes Freizeit-Land Geiselwind In terms of how you can visualise the ranges; you can see the range as the difference between the extreme ends of the plot, and the IQR can be visualised as the difference between the ends of the coloured rectangle in the middle. So, what have we learned from this part of the investigation? Firstly, I think I can declare Freizeit-Land Geiselwind the winner for consistency in Europe; it scored very highly on consistency using both measures! Even if the selection isn't the most highly rated, it's certainly consistent if nothing else! Secondly, I found it odd how besides Geiselwind, the results varied drastically dependant on the measure applied. Some parks did appear again besides Geiselwind (for instance, Grona Lund was quite consistently strong by both measures), but many others only appeared in the top 5 for one or the other. But overall, I think my data has concluded that Freizeit-Land Geiselwind is the winner for most consistent in Europe. And for least consistent, I think I can conclude that Plopsaland de Panne actually wins that one, as it is the only park to appear in the top 5 least consistent for both measures. I hope you enjoyed discovering which coaster selection is Europe's most consistent (according to the data) in part 2! Part 3 (which I'm thinking may be the final part) will be coming soon...

Hi guys. In a Thorpe Park trip report thread I was just reading over on CoasterForce, Serena from CoasterForce made this really interesting post: “Okay, I'll bite. Families with young children who go to Thorpe Park simply don't do their research. It's not the parks fault if they have a disappointing day. It's like going to a vegan restaurant and moaning there's no meat options. If you look at their marketing, Thorpe don't bill themselves as a family park. It's almost always groups of young adults / teens in their photos. That's their target demographic, clearly. When talking about "what is there to do for families" at Thorpe - I also think we forget that many older kids love thrills. When I worked there last year, the majority of the best feedback was from 10 - 13 yr olds loving the big coasters. Again, families who do their research and bring thrillseeking kids over 1.4m in height will likely have a fantastic time. So when we ask: what is there for families to do - the question is too broad. What type of families? Families with 4yr olds? 8yr olds? 11yr olds? The southern UK Merlin park trajectory for families is clearly intended to be Legoland then Chessington then Thorpe. Thorpe isn't a massive cater-for-all place like Alton Towers, in the same way that Chessington and Legoland aren't there to cater for thrillseekers. We don't criticise Chessington for having no thrilling rides. So why do we criticise Thorpe for having a small selection of tame rides? Parks that are only 30 miles apart are supposed to be different from each other and have contrasting ride offerings. It's a bit like critising a horror movie for being too scary. Thrills are the purpose of Thorpe, that's why they're building the UKs tallest coaster. And families with thrillseeking 1.4m kids will LOVE it. As will the majority of their teenage / young adult / groups of mates clientele too. Celebrate it for it's purpose.” Now I didn’t just cite Serena’s post for no reason. To a degree, I do agree with her, and her post did get me thinking; why is it that thrill parks often don’t seem as successful, and often receive a lot of stick compared to parks that go solely for young families, for instance? Why is it that enthusiasts constantly bemoan the fact that Thorpe lacks family rides, but never bemoan the fact that Legoland and Chessington lack thrill rides? And why is it that thrill parks often seem to struggle compared to solely family-focused parks? Why is it that thrill parks aren’t simply accepted as another genre of theme park with a different target market in the same way as children’s parks are, and are often told that they need to change and appeal to young families more? I’ll admit I’m a bit stumped, and I’d be intrigued to know your thoughts. I’ve often heard it said that families have more disposable income and money to spend on park than thrill seekers, but the more I think about it and the more I hear, the less I agree with that statement. As another poster in that same thread mentioned when I raised that point, a lot of families visiting the Southern Merlin parks are working off of a tight budget; many of them will be MAP holders who visit on a regular basis with their own packed lunches and don’t buy any merchandise or extra goodies, and even if they aren’t MAP holders, many families are on a tight budget, and whatever they buy on park will naturally cost more due to an increased group size, thus possibly deterring them from making the spend. The park gets no money at all from those MAP guests, and less money from those types of families even without MAPs. With thrill seekers, on the other hand; while there are of course plenty of thrill seekers who fit the description of “MAP holder who visits every weekend and doesn’t spend any money”, this audience might have less of a tight budget for a theme park day, and things will naturally cost less for them due to them usually paying for less people than a family group, so they might be more inclined to spend that little bit of money on in-park food, for instance. Yes, I know that a big family group would generate more money per purchase than a smaller thrill seeker group or single thrill seeker, but if the families aren’t making those purchases and the thrill seekers are, then the smaller thrill seeker purchase is financially preferable to the non-existent family purchase. As Serena also says, thrill seekers and families are not necessarily mutually exclusive groups, so that makes the struggle of the thrill park all the more interesting. What do you guys think? P.S. Here’s the thread I’m referring to, in case you’re interested: https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/thorpe-park-how-crap-is-it.45495/

Hi guys. I was reading a Merlin-bashing thread over on CoasterForce earlier, and I noticed a really interesting series of posts that a poster made in that particular thread talking about their recent trip to Alton Towers, in which they made numerous comments inferring that Alton Towers is not an especially relaxed park visit for them: The full series of posts I'm referring to begins here: https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/wtf-merlin.38748/post-1132260 Their post really inspired me, and it got me thinking about some of the more relaxed and more stressful theme parks I've ever been to. So with that in mind, my question to you today is; what are the most relaxed and most stressful theme parks you've visited? What parks feel like a nice Sunday stroll, where you're as chilled as you can be? What parks feel really stressful to be in (for any reason)? I'll get the ball rolling with my choices... For most relaxed, I'm going with Paultons Park. We visited this park during the summer holidays, yet we surprisingly got on 14 rides within a park day of a little over 6 hours. And that was with at least 2 hours of that, possibly getting on for 2.5-3 hours, spent not riding anything; I can't remember exactly, but my photo history from the day suggests that we spent a good hour just aimlessly strolling about taking in the surroundings, we spent a good hour eating a sit-down meal in the Tornado Springs restaurant, and we probably spent another solid 30 minutes in downtime when you add on the good few minutes we spent having drinks and cakes outside Cobra while we watched the ride go round, as well as the stroll we had through the gardens later in the day. We got in a pretty incredible ride count (my second highest ever!), yet it never once felt like we were rushing; the whole park just felt so relaxed and stress-free to be in the whole time we were there! For most stressful, I'm perhaps controversially going to go with Disney's Magic Kingdom. Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely park, but I wouldn't say I felt overly relaxed in there at all. I can't pinpoint one particular thing that made me feel this way, but there were a number that could have contributed. The sheer crowd levels in the park made me feel pretty anxious; it feels like you're packed in there pretty tightly, and I felt like I had to remain hyper-aware of where I was stepping for the entire time I was there. Queues were sometimes pretty long (often approaching, or even at times exceeding, 2 hours), and I felt like I was slightly rushed trying to get on everything, although FastPass+ was admittedly a big help here. And something about the whole atmosphere made me feel a bit stressed, and I can't quite place my finger on what. For some reason, I'd also say that MK felt more stressful than even the other 3 Disney parks; I'm not even sure why, it just did for some reason. But what are the most relaxed and most stressful theme parks you've visited?

Right; apologies for the double post, but I decided to have another go at Part 1. But this time, I did what some people suggested and calculated the mean and median using only the park's 3 top-rated coasters. When I did this, the results were as follows (to 1dp): Mean Park Mean Rating of Top 3 (1dp) Energylandia 9.6 Phantasialand 9.5 Liseberg 9.4 Walibi Holland 9.3 Alton Towers 8.8 Europa Park 8.8 Plopsaland 8.6 Parque Warner 8.6 Toverland 8.5 Heide Park 8.4 Median Park Median Rating of Top 3 (1dp) Energylandia 9.8 Phantasialand 9.6 Mirabilandia 9.6 Liseberg 9.4 Walibi Holland 9.3 Toverland 8.9 Hansa Park 8.7 Europa Park 8.7 Tripsdrill 8.6 Parque Warner 8.6 I hope you find that interesting! I promise that is the last time I will faff around with part 1... part 2 will be coming soon! Do you guys have any questions you'd like me to try and answer using this dataset? I've got a couple in mind of my own, but I'm happy to take suggestions!

I did wonder why Detonator felt less forceful than Venom at WMSP, in spite of it being the same ride type… didn’t stop me from riding it twice on my last visit, though, and it also doesn’t stop it being my favourite Thorpe flat and quite possibly one of my favourite overall Thorpe rides! I love a good drop tower, and I’ll admit that I have a definite soft spot for those Fabbri towers…

Nemesis’ retrack has been approved: https://riderater.co.uk/9610/nemesis-rollercoaster-track-replacement-approved/?fbclid=IwAR06_AdjQ5o75HJOLzcl08ypB1zF9al4PomaYMItoRvMKqtuPCm66eAE9gc Great news!

Land clearing has started for the B&M Surf Coaster: I can’t wait to see what this is like!

I played around with altering the Matt N formula. I tried doing three alterations. Altered Matt N Formula 1 The first altered Matt N formula I tried was as follows: Altered Matt N Formula 1: Score = (Highest rating + upper quartile)^2 + (Lowest rating + lower quartile) I squared the bracket containing highest rating + upper quartile in an attempt to give the higher ranked coasters slightly more weight. And the results were... Ranking Park Altered Matt N Formula Score Original Matt N Formula Score Rank with Original Formula Change 1 Phantasialand 3646.7 191.7 2 +1 2 Liseberg 3612.7 188.2 3 +1 3 Alton Towers 3524.5 196.9 1 -2 4 Grona Lund 3049.4 183.2 4 0 5 Efteling 2747.1 164.5 5 0 6 Europa Park 2297.3 141.4 6 0 7 Toverland 2279.2 128.8 7 0 8 Tripsdrill 2029 120.2 8 0 9 Djurs Sommerland 1933.9 112.8 9 0 10 Parque de Atracciones 1620.7 110.3 10 0 Altered Matt N Formula 2 And the second formula I tried was: Altered Matt N Formula 2: Score = (Highest rating^2 + upper quartile) + (Lowest rating + lower quartile) I squared the highest rating to try and make that have more of an impact, and the result was as follows: Ranking Park Altered Matt N Formula Score Original Matt N Formula Score Rank with Original Formula Change 1 Alton Towers 1085.2 196.9 1 0 2 Phantasialand 1060.5 191.7 2 0 3 Liseberg 1033.3 188.2 3 0 4 Grona Lund 975.2 183.2 4 0 5 Efteling 792.4 164.5 5 0 6 Europa Park 767.8 141.4 6 0 7 Toverland 677.6 128.8 7 0 8 Djurs Sommerland 620.3 112.8 9 +1 9 Tripsdrill 609.3 120.2 8 -1 10 PortAventura 577.4 94.5 11 +1 As you can see, doing those first two formulas changed... very little. I then decided to consult a final alteration... Altered Matt N Formula 3: Score = (Highest rating + Upper quartile)/2 For the final formula, I eliminated the lower ends of the coaster selection entirely, focusing only on the highest rating and the upper quartile. I calculated the mean of these two values so as to gauge an average quality of a park's "top" coasters. The results were as follows: Ranking Park Altered Matt N Formula Score Original Matt N Formula Score Rank with Original Formula Change 1 Liseberg 9.6 188.2 3 +2 2 Walibi Holland 9.5 82.3 15 +13 3 Phantasialand 9.5 191.7 2 -1 4 Energylandia 9.3 61.1 19 +15 5 Plopsaland de Panne 9 57.3 20 +15 6 Alton Towers 9 196.9 1 -5 7 Toverland 8.9 128.8 7 0 8 Hansa Park 8.9 87.6 13 +5 9 Parque Warner 8.8 49.6 26 +17 10 Djurs Sommerland 8.6 112.8 9 -1 Interesting to see how things change quite a bit when the lower coasters are removed from the equation... Phantasialand and Liseberg remain in the top 3, but for the first time, Alton Towers has been ousted from the top 3, landing at #6 when only their top coasters are concerned.

Sorry to double post, but I had a thought while in the shower this morning about these results and why they might have been so weird when I applied my own formula. As much as I tried to make high ratings and low ratings carry equal weight in terms of how a coaster selection is rated, I failed to take into account some real-life bias that exists when evaluating coaster selections by doing that. That real-life bias is that enthusiasts naturally gravitate more towards highly rated rides when evaluating a park’s coaster selection, whereas my formula assumed that highly rated and lowly rated would be equally weighted in the minds of enthusiasts, which isn’t really how it works. For instance, this formula assumes that removing Viking Roller Coaster from Energylandia and removing Zadra from Energylandia would have exactly the same level of impact on the rating of its coaster selection. However, I’d wager that most enthusiasts would see Energylandia’s coaster selection quality as being far more impacted by the removal of Zadra than by the removal of Viking Roller Coaster. As such, I’ll play around with an altered version of the Matt N Formula when I get some time later today, one that weights the score more towards the higher rated rides, and see what I come out with.

Disclaimer: This post is extremely long, and if you don't like data analysis and geeky maths talk, I'd suggest you run for the hills and don't look back, because this post has quite a bit of it! Hi guys. There are a lot of theme parks in Europe, as well as a lot of roller coasters. So naturally, people (myself included) tend to ask questions like “which park has Europe’s best roller coaster lineup?” or “which parks are quality-over-quantity and which parks are quantity-over-quality?”, amongst others. As such, while it’s not really a discussion thread as such, I thought it might be fun to try to take a quantitative look into some of these questions and try to answer them using some data science techniques. So join me as I attempt to perform a quantitative, multi-part analysis of Europe’s major coaster selections! I'll split my investigations into a couple of posts, one for each question, to make it a little more digestible. Before we start, let me set out a few prerequisites and explain some of the facts regarding the investigation… Prerequisites of the Investigation I am using the coaster ratings on Captain Coaster (https://captaincoaster.com/en/) as of March 2022 to perform this investigation. If you look at each ride’s page on CC, it has a % score out of 100; this is what I have used and converted into ratings out of 10. For the rating out of 10 of a ride, I converted the percentage into a rating by dividing by 10 (so for instance, a ride rated 87% would have an average rating of 8.7/10). Building upon the ratings stuff; all ratings are rounded to the nearest 0.1 (so to 1dp). As a rule of thumb of what’s considered major, I went with; to be considered, a park must have 5 scoreable roller coasters. If you’re wondering why I get so specific in saying “scoreable roller coasters”, it’s because Captain Coaster does not score what it considers to be “kiddie coasters”, so not every ride in a park's lineup is scored. As such, this means that parks with 5 kiddie coasters wouldn't be eligible for this investigation; my rule ensures that a park in the study has 5 family/family thrill coasters, at the very least. It also doesn't score rides where the ridership is too low, but that doesn't really affect this investigation; even the newest major coasters in Europe like Ride to Happiness and Kondaa were ridden enough to be scoreable. However, one inconsistency is that Captain Coaster has a somewhat inconsistent definition of what it considers a kiddie coaster. For instance, things like the Steeplechases at Blackpool are considered kiddie coasters, but Blue Flyer in the same park, which I personally would consider a kiddie coaster, isn't. The site also has rides listed on it that some probably wouldn't count as roller coasters, but some do, such as SuperSplash at Plopsaland and Fuga de Atlantide at Gardaland. I just decided to go with the site's scores and the rides that the site scored, as even though I could calculate the mean rating of some unscored rides, I don't think CC's scoring system only uses mean rating, as I seem to remember it being mentioned that members' rankings are also factored in, so me attempting to meddle with CC's system risks introducing bias and skewing the data the wrong way, which you definitely don't want in a data investigation. However, I did think this was something I should raise before we begin. The most important prerequisite of all is that the results of this investigation are not necessarily the final answers to the questions I raised in my introductory paragraph by any stretch. All of this still comes entirely down to personal opinion, of course. Right then; I think that's everything, so let's dive into the dataset... The Dataset When applying my criteria and thinking of parks in Europe that might qualify for this, as well as searching through RCDB just to check that I hadn't missed any obvious ones (as it turned out, I had missed a few on the first check...), I came out with approximately 36 theme parks to analyse in total, with 253 scoreable roller coasters between them. The theme parks being studied are as follows, with the number of scoreable roller coasters each park has being listed in brackets: Alton Towers, UK (9) Bellewaerde, Belgium (6) Blackpool Pleasure Beach, UK (10) Bobbejaanland, Belgium (8) Djurs Sommerland, Denmark (6) Efteling, Netherlands (8) Energylandia, Poland (11) Europa Park, Germany (12) Farup Sommerland, Denmark (6) Flamingo Land, UK (5) Freizeit-Land Geiselwind, Germany (5) Gardaland, Italy (8) Grona Lund, Sweden (6) Hansa Park, Germany (6) Heide Park, Germany (8) Linnanmaki, Finland (8) Liseberg, Sweden (5) Mirabilandia, Italy (8) Movie Park Germany, Germany (8) Nigloland, France (6) Parc Asterix, France (5) Parque de Atracciones de Madrid, Spain (5) Parque Warner Madrid, Spain (6) Phantasialand, Germany (8) Plopsaland de Panne, Belgium (7) PortAventura Park, Spain (8) PowerPark, Finland (6) Skyline Park, Germany (5) Thorpe Park, UK (7) Toverland, Netherlands (6) Tripsdrill, Germany (6) TusenFryd, Norway (5) Walibi Belgium, Belgium (9) Walibi Holland, Netherlands (6) Walibi Rhone-Alpes, France (5) Wiener Prater, Austria (10) I think that just about covers everything, but if you feel I’ve missed an obvious one, then don’t be afraid to tell me. Let's move on to some fun stuff now... I'll start analysing some different common questions and see what answers I come out with. I'll use this first post to do... Which European theme park has the strongest coaster lineup? Let's start with the big one; which European theme park has the strongest coaster lineup? There are many different ways you could measure this, but I'll start with the simplest one; the mean coaster rating of each park... Mean Coaster Ranking of each Park If I look at the Explore function of this spreadsheet, the top 10 highest mean ratings come out as follows: Ranking Park Mean Rating out of 10 (to 1dp) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Liseberg 7.6 5 2 Phantasialand 7.5 8 3 Alton Towers 7.3 9 4 Grona Lund 6.9 6 5 Efteling 6.5 8 6 Toverland 6.3 6 7 Walibi Holland 6.2 6 8 Tripsdrill 6.1 6 9 Europa Park 6.1 12 10 Djurs Sommerland 6.1 6 Those certainly aren't the answers I'd have expected, I'll admit, but that's what the data says for that particular method. However, it should be said that the mean is far more easily swayed by outliers in any particular direction than some other methods (for instance, it's very easily swayed by one coaster rating much more highly or lowly than the others on average). Let's explore a different method... Median Coaster Rating of each Park Instead of using the calculated average (mean), I'm going to be using the median, the middle-ranking value for each park, this time. Using Google Sheets to explore the median values instead of the mean, the top 10 median values are as follows: Ranking Park Median Rating out of 10 Amount of Scoreable Coasters 1 Liseberg 8.9 5 2 Alton Towers 7.7 9 3 Phantasialand 7.7 8 4 Walibi Holland 7.2 6 5 Thorpe Park 6.9 7 6 Grona Lund 6.9 6 7 Parque Warner Madrid 6.3 6 8 Heide Park 6.3 8 9 Tripsdrill 6.3 6 10 Toverland 6.2 6 Interesting to see that we have quite a few differing results when we change to the median; in spite of the top 3 staying consistent, 4-10 have actually changed a fair amount! I guess the median is possibly a better gauge of a consistently well-rated coaster selection than mean, because it isn't as easily swayed by one particularly highly rated or lowly rated attraction. But at the same time, it also doesn't really take into account those more highly rated or lowly rated coasters either; if a park's highest rated coaster is rated more highly than a median of 7/10, for instance, it makes no difference whether it's an 8/10 or 10/10. With that in mind, I have concocted my own formula (of sorts) that I think offers the best of both worlds... My formula for coaster selection quality The formula that I propose seems to me like a good way to take into account both a park's highly rated coasters and the consistent quality of their selection. It is as follows: Matt N's Formula for Coaster Selection Quality: Score = (Highest rating + upper quartile)*(Lowest rating + lower quartile) Now I don't know if I've got my assumptions 100% correct here, but my assumption was that the use of the highest rating and lowest rating would ensure that any standouts at either end are adequately accounted for, but the use of the quartiles would ensure that the consistency of a park's coaster selection is also accounted for, and that the two metrics cancel each other out and make the playing field level. The higher the score, the higher the rank. Using the Matt N Formula, the top 10 was as follows: Ranking Park Matt N Formula Score Upper quartile Lower quartile Highest rating Lowest rating Amount of Scoreable Coasters 1 Alton Towers 196.9 8.4 7.1 9.5 3.9 9 2 Phantasialand 191.7 9.2 7.1 9.8 3 8 3 Liseberg 188.2 9.4 8 9.8 1.8 5 4 Grona Lund 183.2 7.7 6 9 5 6 5 Efteling 164.5 8.2 5.3 8.5 4.6 8 6 Europa Park 141.4 7.3 4.9 9 3.8 12 7 Toverland 128.8 8.5 4.9 9.2 2.4 6 8 Tripsdrill 120.2 8.1 5.3 8.8 1.8 6 9 Djurs Sommerland 112.8 7.9 5.3 9.3 1.3 6 10 Parque de Atracciones de Madrid 110.3 7.1 4.9 7.6 2.6 5 I'll admit those aren't the results I expected, and I know they probably look a bit weird to some of you, but that is what the data came out with. So, in conclusion... Well, that produced some interesting data! I'll admit that the results weren't quite what I was expecting, but I do think they make sense when you look at the data. In terms of the answer to the initial question of "what is Europe's highest rated coaster selection?"; even though the parks in the top 10 for each method varied, the top 3 stayed consistent every time, and that top 3 was Liseberg, Phantasialand and Alton Towers. In terms of an order for those top 3; I'd probably go with something like this based on the data: Liseberg (won 2/3) Alton Towers (beat Phantasialand in 2/3, while Phantasialand only beat Towers in 1/3) Phantasialand However, I should stress that just because my data analysis put these parks on top, that is not "the correct answer" to the question by any stretch. As with most things, it all boils down to your own personal opinion and personal preference. You might think these results are hogwash, and that's fine; your personal answer to this question is entirely down to your opinion. Before we end, here's the Google Sheet with my calculations, for your viewing pleasure: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_GaPx5r61Qlv7Irka92VrjFbQy-nhiJYRjeAOkNyDE8/edit?usp=sharing And here is the dataset shown in visual form using a boxplot, coded in Python using MatPlotLib, Seaborn and Pandas (Python libraries). This shows the median, upper quartile, lower quartile, highest value, lowest value and any outliers (values more than 1.5 times the interquartile range from the upper or lower quartile) for each park: I know that the x-axis is a bit of a jumbled mess, so let me clear up the order in which the parks appear so that you can more clearly see which park's boxplot is which. The boxplots appear in the following order, from left to right: Alton Towers Thorpe Park Blackpool Pleasure Beach Phantasialand Liseberg Walibi Holland Energylandia Plopsaland de Panne Walibi Belgium Europa Park PortAventura Parque Warner Madrid Parque de Atracciones de Madrid Efteling Bobbejaanland Toverland Movie Park Germany Heide Park Hansa Park Flamingo Land Tripsdrill Parc Asterix Gardaland Mirabilandia Djurs Sommerland Farup Sommerland TusenFryd Linnanmaki Bellewaerde Nigloland Skyline Park PowerPark Grona Lund Wiener Prater Walibi Rhone-Alpes Freizeit-Land Geiselwind So, I hope you found my first dive into European coaster selection data interesting! I'll certainly be answering more questions about this dataset at some point in the near future; I've got some ideas of my own, but I'm also happy to accept suggestions from any of you of questions you'd like answering. I apologise for the ridiculously long post, I hope you find this interesting, and if you have any questions or feedback, or if anything isn't clear, then don't be afraid to ask me!

Sorry to double post, but the videos are now in properly. I apologise, as I didn’t embed them properly earlier.

Right then; sorry about the long wait, but the first area of Sinister Springs is finally ready! So without further ado, let me welcome you all to… Sinistra’s Lair: I’ll confess that I struggled a little with this area. The entrance area of a park, regardless of how you tackle it, has to be quite all-encompassing, and effectively has to summarise your entire park in one area. With a thematic archetype as broad as horror, I’ll admit that was quite tough. I opted for a crypt-style building style, with bits such as skeletons and gargoyles around the area, but there are so many other ways I could have tackled it, and I’ll admit that finding stuff to fill the space was quite hard in areas. That’s besides the point, though; I hope you like it! Now, Sinistra’s Lair has 4 attractions (well, 3 if you amalgamate the 2 that are different experiences of the same ride type together), and they are as follows: Sinistra’s Spine-Tingler, an S&S 4th dimension coaster themed as Sinistra's most terrifying torture device. The ride is 237ft tall, reaches 79mph and has 3,751ft of track. The ride’s story is as follows: “Now Sinistra has you under her spell, she’s ready to give you your first physical test. And she feels that her Spine-Tingler is the perfect way to test you. It’s a torture device that provides the ultimate endurance test, separating the strong from the weak… and alas, some are too weak for the Spine-Tingler, but that’s a sacrifice that Sinistra is willing to make. The Spine-Tingler feeds off the flesh of its victims… survive, and prove your true strength, or die trying, and become its next meal. It’s time to show Sinistra how much you can take… live or die, make your choice.”: I also filmed a POV and some cinematic shots: I apologise for the slightly janky track profiling in places... I smoothed it, but those bits wouldn't budge. Sinistra’s Hellraiser, an S&S Screamin’ Swing. The ride is themed as a torture device giving you a taste of hell, and has a timed special effects sequence, including fire, water and smoke. Hellraiser’s story is as follows: "Hell is a terrible place... you'll be headed there if you lose the game, so Sinistra feels as though she may as well give you a taste of it. Her Hellraiser is the perfect device; it offers a taste of hell you won't forget anytime soon. That should be enough to scare you into submission...": Sinistra's Horror Crypt, a duo of drop tower dark rides. The storyline for the whole ride is as follows: "Sinistra may have tested you physically, but you still need a psychological test. When you enter the Horror Crypt, Sinistra has two terrifying tales up her sleeves to put you directly into, and your job is to escape them alive. Good luck, mortals...". I know that the previous drop tower dark ride I did, Doomsday Temple, only had one tower, but I decided to go for two here, as I later discovered that the throughput of one tower was only around 500-600pph... here, I decided to go for two towers, with each offering a different experience, to increase both throughput and rerideability: I'll introduce each of the two Horror Crypt towers separately, as each has its own separate storyline and POV. The first tower is Drop Dead. The storyline of Drop Dead is: "You have been invited on a ghost hunt at the house of Dr Derek Von Doom, a scientist experimenting with the dead. Will you find more than you'd bargained for? Or worse, become his next test subjects?". Here's the POV: The second tower is Terrorestrial. The storyline of Terrorestrial is: "It's 2089, and you've been summoned to the lair of Zorgor, a hostile alien... will you survive the encounter of a lifetime?". Here's the POV: P.S. Horror Crypt POVs contain strobe lighting That's all the attractions in Sinistra's Lair. But the area also has various amenities, which I decided to give some thematically fitting names. Conventional names like "Box Office" and "Souvenirs" aren't the name of the game here; in Sinister Springs, all of the information stands will be named Clues for Survival, all of the drink stands will be named Bloodbath, and the park's main gift shop is called Sinistra's Scars. There is also a buffet restaurant named Sinistra's Banquet. Here's one of the facility buildings I did: Finally, here's some area overview shots, taken at both daytime and nighttime: As well as an area overview video: I apologise for the slightly plain area surroundings at present... I'm going to jazz up the edges of the park a bit more when I've completed the entire park, so that is still a work in progress at present. So, I hope you like Sinistra's Lair! I would appreciate any constructive feedback, and I hope to be back with more Sinister Springs content, or content from a different park, within a much quicker timeframe than my last break!

Sorry to double post, but I decided to have a bash at building the alternative layout in Planet Coaster, if anyone's interested. Here's what I came up with based on what Thorpe have provided: For some idea, this ride is 236ft/72m tall, the exact same height as Exodus. It hits 82mph/132kph, has 4,446ft/1,355m of track, and has 2 trains with 7 cars/28 riders. I managed to get 4 airtime hills in there (2 big camelbacks, 2 lower hills), alongside a hammerhead turn, a mini version of Mako's turnaround, a mini treble clef, and what I guess you could call a mini hammerhead (of sorts). I apologise for some slightly off profiling in places (I smoothed the hell out of it, but some parts wouldn't budge), but I hope that gives you all a basic idea of what it could have been like. If you're wondering why I varied the colour scheme in places, it's because the planning application mentioned the high points being painted light colours, so I did a bit of a Stealth on anything above about 80ft, as the application mentions. I hope you find this interesting!

Good to finally have this locked into a full planning application! I've got to say, I have personally warmed to this coaster a fair amount since it was first unveiled. I was initially a bit skeptical, as I'll admit that I was a big advocate for a more airtime-focused ride during the rumour stage (you'd have heard "B&M Hyper" come out of my mouth a lot...), but having let the layout sink in a bit, I actually think it's an excellent-looking layout with some really great-looking elements, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to riding! Some particular highlights of mine include the drop and the overbank into an inversion, but to be honest, most of the elements look really fun! Yes, this probably won't win any awards for the most airtime on earth or anything (while I'm sure Exodus will have some airtime, and some quite strong airtime at that, it doesn't look to have an overtly airtime-focused layout; I think the airtime will be more sprinkled in there as a side dish alongside other types of forces as opposed to being the main focus of the ride like some were perhaps hoping for), but it looks like a really fun, unique layout in my opinion, and certainly a phenomenal use of the space and Merlin's limited budget given the presumed brief (tall with lots of high elements)! In terms of the planning application; I find the alternative layout interesting, as to me, that suggests that the B&M Hyper rumour might not have been such an outlandish rumour after all... that layout looks like a B&M Hyper layout if I ever saw one. I'll admit that that alternative proposal is more what I personally had in mind for this project (I was a keen advocate for a B&M Hyper during the rumour stage), but the jury's out on whether it would have been more well received than the Exodus we got. It's hard to tell what it would have been like from an overhead view, even though you can get some ideas. Putting aside alternate realities, though; bring on 2024! I can't wait to ride Exodus!