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Matt N

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  1. Matt N

    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023 (16th June 2023: SeaWorld Orlando)

    By Matt N,


    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023
    16th June 2023 (SeaWorld Orlando)
    We went for our first day at a non-Universal park; we went to SeaWorld Orlando! I was excited to go back to this park to ride Mako, my current number 1 coaster, as well as take a ride on new rides like Ice Breaker, Pipeline and Infinity Falls!
     
    As per usual with our park days, we left our house at just gone 8am, and with a stop for petrol (or should I say gas seeing as we’re in America?) on the way there, we arrived at around 9:15am. When we arrived, I have to say that I was very impressed by SeaWorld’s coaster skyline; it’s really getting quite imposing now, and my dad even said “Wow, it looks like Blackpool with all the track everywhere!”:



    After getting out of our car, we headed through the gates pretty promptly and were in the park by about 9:25am. After getting into the park, I decided to head to a certain brand new ride…
    Pipeline: The Surf Coaster
    Pipeline was showing as 45 minutes on the app, so as it’s a brand new ride that opened less than a month ago, my mum suggested that we take the win and get in the queue. By the time we got over to the plaza, this had fallen to 30 minutes, so me, my mum and my sister decided to get in line. The throughput of the ride was quite slow, it must be said (I logged dispatch times of 3-4 minutes), but we were on within 20-25 minutes, so I can’t really complain! But how was the ride? Have B&M finally solved the afflictions of the much-maligned standup coaster? If I’m being completely honest, I’m not convinced. I was very excited after hearing many rosy initial reviews, and I was 100% ready to love Pipeline based on how much everyone has been raving about it, but I’m sorry to say that I was sorely underwhelmed. I rode in row 12, the very back row, and my thoughts are as follows. On paper, the ride has everything going for it; the “jumping” seats are an intriguing idea, the launch is fun, it’s smooth and the layout is pretty decent, with a few surprisingly strong airtime moments. However, the whole thing is ruined by the fact that the restraints and whole standing position are inherently uncomfortable. Personally, I found it tough to enjoy the sensations of the layout because when the seat “jumped”, I felt pain in multiple different places; the vest restraints really pinched my collar bones when you rose up into the airtime, landing back on the floor after the airtime really hurt my feet and knees from the positive g impact, and the seat being forced up was also somewhat painful on the… private area for me (although I accept that that is probably a bigger issue for males). It’s all well and good having a good layout with fun airtime moments, but where the airtime on most coasters is great fun and I look forward to it, I just found the airtime on Pipeline a bit uncomfortable due to the general riding position causing me discomfort, and that discomfort was a bit of a deal breaker for me; it knocks the ride down a fair peg in my rankings. I’m sorry if this is controversial, and I’m sorry to be negative, but I feel a duty to be honest in these reviews, and that is how I honestly felt. I was ready to really like Pipeline, but it was a disappointment for me, I’m afraid:



    After Pipeline, I pondered heading over to Ice Breaker to give it a go, but the ride appeared to be closed, as it was sending empty trains around the track. As such, I instead decided to head just around the corner to a hotly anticipated previous favourite…
    Mako
    Mako was only on an advertised 5 minute wait and just around the corner from where we were standing, so my dad, my sister and I thought we’d have a go on it. As it turned out, 5 minutes was, if anything, overstated, as the ride was walk on and we instantly waltzed into the back row air gates. But how was the ride? After 7 years of hailing it as my all-time number 1, and riding all of the other coasters I’ve ridden since, did Mako still stand up? Was it still my number 1? Well, I’m happy to say; yes, it absolutely is. I was right all along. 7 years have passed since I last rode Mako, and I’ve been on a lot more coasters since I last rode Mako, including another B&M Hyper in Silver Star. However, I still have to say that no other coaster has thrilled me, offered me the fun factor and made me truly happy quite like this wonderful coaster does. For starters, I have still never felt such biblical sustained airtime as the hills on this provide; that first drop whips you out of the seat for what feels like forever, and that first airtime hill has such strong sustained air and just goes on and on and on! You do feel the trim, but it doesn’t take away from the airtime, with a wonderful jolt of airtime still delivered on that hill, and the hill that curves to the side was better than I’d remembered, with an interesting sensation of getting airtime and being twisted to the side being provided. The speed hill is absolutely sublime, with another phenomenal moment of sustained airtime being provided there, and the ending is also better than I’d remembered, with the last airtime hill still giving some solid air and the banked turns being really good fun. The ride is also still phenomenally smooth and rerideable, packs a truly exceptional sense of speed, and overall, Mako is still easily my favourite coaster I’ve ever ridden:




    After our first ride on Mako, the ride was still very quiet, so my sister and I ran straight back round for another go! We were in the back row again, and it was still absolutely sublime!
     
    After our 2 rides on Mako, we decided to go elsewhere, so I split off and decided to ride…
    Ice Breaker
    Ice Breaker was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go. This queue time actually turned out to be overstated, as I only waited through a couple of trains’ worth of queue and was on within about 5-10 minutes. But how was the ride? Well, I was interested to ride it. It had gotten generally middling to negative reviews previously, but the ride has recently had the dreaded comfort collars removed, which were many people’s main issue with the ride, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I went in with quite low expectations, but I rode in row 8, and I have to say that I absolutely loved Ice Breaker; it firmly exceeded expectations, and I thought it was an absolutely fantastic coaster! The swing launch was great fun; the launches were punchy, the backwards spike provided some very nice floater air, and the ejector airtime got surprisingly strong towards the end! The top hat itself was awesome, with a great moment of ejector air coming out of it, and the rest of the ride was excellent, with great pacing, a couple more surprising jolts of ejector air, and some really fun turns; what’s not to like? One thing I did notice is that the train was a tad tight to get into and out of, but the restraints weren’t problematic once I was sat down and on the ride, so that didn’t really take away from it for me. Overall, I adored Ice Breaker; I thought it was a phenomenal little ride, and while it’s not quite Mako, it’s a very, very firm second favourite in the park for me, with it comfortably exceeding my expectations:


    After Ice Breaker, I met back up with my family, and as we wandered into Sesame Street, my nan accompanied me in doing a little box-ticking…
    Super Grover’s Box Car Derby
    Super Grover’s Box Car Derby was walk-on, so we decided to give it a go. For clarity, I don’t normally do children’s roller coasters due to the embarrassment it gives me, but I’d been convinced that this one didn’t look too shameful (in all honesty, it is a relatively big kiddie cred), and I mainly did it for… tactical coaster counting reasons that will hopefully become apparent later in the trip. Thankfully, there was no embarrassment involved at all here; the host batched me and my nan without batting an eyelid, and we weren’t even the only lone adult group on the train! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the back row, and it was a perfectly fine kiddie coaster. It had some moments of mild speed, albeit was surprisingly a little jolty in areas, but you just have to take these coasters for what they are, really, and overall, Super Grover’s Box Car Derby was fine for a kiddie coaster. My nan actually really enjoyed it, saying it was “quite quick”:

    After Super Grover’s Box Car Derby, we met back up with the rest of our group, and we all went to watch…
    Orca Encounter
    My family wanted to see Orca Encounter, so we decided to give it a watch. We arrived at the arena around 45 minutes before the show started, so we were in the arena for just over an hour overall, and I have to say that in spite of reading about how much the orca shows at SeaWorld have changed since I last went, the show overall felt surprisingly similar to how it was 7 years ago; it still consists of orcas jumping in the air and flicking the first few rows in the audience with water using their tail to motivational song (which may even have been the same song as 7 years ago, come to think of it). With that being said, the show did have an increased onus on natural behaviours, and the trainers talked about their training methods and how the orcas at SeaWorld are cared for. They were also keen to stress that the orcas were never forced to perform, and whatever you think about the principle of keeping orcas in captivity, they did paint a picture that inferred that they were making the best of a tricky situation with the orcas. I won’t go into it any more, as I’m aware that it’s a very emotive and controversial topic, but that was just my perception:

    After Orca Encounter, my mum, my sister and I took a reride on Mako in the front row. I’d never done Mako in the front row before, but unlike Silver Star, where I was almost 100% convinced that I preferred the back, I actually think that I preferred Mako in the front, with the sense of speed seeming even better and the airtime seeming even stronger. The trim hill in particular provided an interesting pop of what almost felt like sudden ejector in the front; it really surprised me! It’s absolutely sublime in every row, and the difference is ultimately very small, but if I had to pick, I’d probably narrowly pick the front over the back:

    After Mako, I split off from the rest of my family to do a few additional rides while they looked around some of the animal exhibits. I started with a ride on a short queue that I hadn’t yet done…
    Kraken
    Kraken was on only a 5 minute advertised queue time, so I decided to give it a try. As with many queues at SeaWorld, this was if anything overstated, as I waltzed straight into the airgates. So, how was the ride? Well, I’d remembered Kraken being a pretty decent ride 7 years ago, and I have to say that today’s ride lived up to that memory; I was sat in the back row, and I overall enjoyed it! I was seated in the back row, and there was good speed and thrill through the inversions, and while there was a mild rattle, there was no notable headbanging either; what’s not to like? Overall, then, Kraken, while not my favourite in the park, was a decent B&M that I enjoyed my lap on:


    After Kraken, I decided to head over to the final B&M I hadn’t yet done…
    Manta
    Manta was on a 25 minute advertised queue time, so as it was the only big coaster I hadn’t yet done, I decided to give it a try. I was interested to go back on it, as while I didn’t remember overly enjoying it in 2016, I was interested to see if my tastes had developed. The queue was pretty accurate, taking around 20-25 minutes with 2 trains/1 station in operation. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 4, and I’m sorry to say that I still didn’t particularly enjoy it. The flying coaster as a general ride style is becoming less my kind of thing, as I find the prone position and the restraints that accompany it rather uncomfortable, and for a reason I can’t pinpoint, Manta somehow felt even less comfortable than Galactica. I also don’t enjoy the pretzel loop element on there; while Galactica’s fly to lie element is a bit uncomfortable but bearable, I find Manta’s pretzel loop really gets to me by the end of it with the sheer degree of forces rushing to your head, albeit it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d remembered back in 2016 (although I was sat in the very back in 2016, whereas I was sat further forward in 2023). Overall, while it looks pretty and I can understand why people like it, I’m not massively fond of Manta, unfortunately. In fact, I dare say I’d go out on a limb and call it my least favourite B&M coaster:


    I then headed back to Mako, which had developed more of a queue by this point. I had two further back-to-back rides; one in the back row and one in row 2. Both of these were still absolutely breathtaking; Mako is truly immense, and still easily my favourite coaster even all these years on:


    After Mako, I pondered another ride on Ice Breaker, as I’d absolutely loved it earlier in the day. Sadly, however, it wasn’t to be, as lightning in the immediate area saw all outdoor attractions cease operation not long after I joined the queue:

    Due to this, I headed to meet back up with my family, and we exited the park, as it was around 3pm and the clouds were only getting blacker on the horizon:

    So, that rounds off our day at SeaWorld Orlando! I had an absolutely brilliant day; if you lost count, I managed 10 rides in total, including 5 rides on my all-time number 1 Mako, and I managed to get on both of the new coasters I was hoping to ride! While I was unable to take my desired 2nd ride on Ice Breaker, and my family and I couldn’t ride Infinity Falls together like we were hoping to, I was pretty pleased with my ride count, with all things considered!
     
    I must also say that while I still rate it a little lower than Universal, the park has gone up in my estimations since my last visit! The coaster lineup is getting to be truly excellent, the queues are generally short, and the place has a generally nice, relaxed atmosphere; when you can ride great coasters with short queues in a park with a nice atmosphere, what’s not to like? Mako is a stunning headliner, Ice Breaker is an absolutely fantastic second place coaster, Kraken is a good, solid ride to bring up the rear of the park’s top 3, and while Pipeline and Manta aren’t my favourites, two more coasters in the lineup is never a bad thing and these two undeniably offer variety. SeaWorld may be a marine life park, but for me, the coaster lineup is easily on par with, if not superior to, that of many sole theme parks; it’s getting to be truly excellent, in my view, and the park overall is brilliant!
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed today’s report! Tomorrow, we’re headed back to Universal Orlando for an afternoon/evening at one of the theme parks; I’m thinking it’ll probably be Islands of Adventure, but the jury’s still out on which park we’re going to!
  2. Matt N

    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023 (13th June 2023: Universal Studios Florida)

    By Matt N,


    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023
    13th June 2023 (Universal Studios Florida)
    Today, we did the other park at Universal Orlando that we didn’t do yesterday; Universal Studios Florida! My grandparents didn’t join us today, but those of us who did go were excited to get back into the park and ride a combination of previous classics like Revenge of the Mummy and new attractions like Fast & Furious: Supercharged!
     
    As with yesterday, we left our villa at just gone 8am and arrived at Universal Orlando at around 9:15am:


    After walking through CityWalk and entering Universal Studios Florida, we got into the park itself at around 9:30am:


    After entering the park, we noticed that a certain major coaster was on only a 10 minute queue, so my sister and I headed over to ride…
    Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit
    Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit was on only a 10 minute advertised queue time, which seemed almost unheard of based on our previous experiences at Universal, so my sister and I decided to give it a go. As promised, the queue was very short indeed, and we were on the ride within 10-15 minutes or so. I was interested to get back on Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, as I’d always remembered enjoying it to varying degrees on previous visits. It provided the first time I ever remember experiencing airtime on a coaster when I first rode it back in 2014, so the novelty of the airtime, height and lap bars made me think it was the best thing since sliced bread. I liked it a bit less in 2016, but it was still a ride I thoroughly enjoyed and was pretty fond of compared to most. But how have 7 years of additional coaster experiences treated it? Well, I’m afraid to say that riding more coasters has massively lowered it in my estimations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got a relatively decent layout, with 1 or 2 nice bits of airtime, but there was less airtime than I’d remembered, and it was a lot rougher and more uncomfortable than I’d remembered. The ride jolted and bashed us about considerably throughout, and I almost felt like I was getting punched in the stomach entering and exiting the various brake runs. Overall, I’m sorry to say that Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit was a bit of a disappointment for me; it’s got a fair layout, but it was a bit too rough and uncomfortable for me (and my sister seemed to agree), and even as someone who’s done under 100 coasters, it just feels somewhat outclassed in the height/airtime/lap bars genre by numerous other rides I’ve done including Mako, Silver Star, and VelociCoaster. I know that sounds a bit petty and negative, so I apologise for that, but that’s how I felt:


    After Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, we met back up with my parents and noticed that a new ride we hadn’t done was on a short queue, so we headed towards…
    Race through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon
    Race through New York had only a 5 minute advertised queue, so we decided to have a go on it. The queue ultimately ended up taking a lot longer than advertised, with us instead waiting around 30 minutes. Most of that was in the living room-type bit after the actual queue, though, so I guess it might not technically count as part of the wait. We were intrigued to ride Race through New York, as it was a new ride that we’d never done before. But how was it? Well, I’d heard starkly negative reviews for this attraction before coming, and I must say that I don’t think it quite deserves the level of vitriol often directed towards it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the greatest ride ever built, and it’s pretty far down the list of draws within Universal Orlando for me, but I thought it was a perfectly fine simulator in isolation. Admittedly, there could have been a bit more going on in terms of smellpods, effects and such, but for what it was, I thought it was all right. It was nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it was perfectly fine for what it was, in my view:

    After Race through New York, we headed just down the street to what is a slightly more noteworthy draw of the park (in my view)…
    Revenge of the Mummy
    Revenge of the Mummy was on a 25 minute advertised queue, so we decided to take a ride. We were initially concerned about the queue taking far longer than 25 minutes, as it nearly filled the queue line and looked far longer than we’d ever queued for Revenge of the Mummy before, but it in fact took only 15 minutes; as with many rides at Universal, the queue was constantly moving at a rate of knots, and the operations were absolutely top-notch! Based on yesterday and today, I honestly reckon Universal Orlando is right up there with Europa Park for operational efficiency and queue moving speed, of the parks I’ve done! But how was Revenge of the Mummy? Well, I’d remembered it being a decent ride 7 years ago, but if anything, it was even better than I’d remembered; this thing is absolutely awesome! There are 2 really decent pops of airtime, the ride carries great speed throughout, it has some really fun twists and turns, and overall, the coaster itself was great fun! Not to mention that the dark ride experience with the theming and special effects was absolutely top-notch; it’s a wonderful overall experience, and the fire in particular is absolutely immense, with Revenge of the Mummy’s use of fire easily being my favourite of any attraction I’ve ever seen use fire! Overall, I thought Revenge of the Mummy was a fantastic ride; it’s not quite as good as the new IOA duo from the previous day, but it’s definitely solidly entered the 9/10 tier for me:

    After Revenge of the Mummy, we initially headed towards Diagon Alley to ride Gringotts. However, the ride was showing as “Delayed”, as was Fast & Furious: Supercharged, so we instead headed to ride…
    Transformers: The Ride
    Transformers was showing as having a 25 minute queue, so we decided to have a go on it. The queue ended up taking closer to 45-50 minutes, so it was somewhat understated. But how was the ride? Well, I have to say that I thought it was absolutely awesome! The ride was fast-paced, dynamic and full of action, with excellent 3D and loads of brilliant effects, and there was some nice physical scenery too! These Oceaneering 4D dark rides are almost invariably top-notch, from my experience, and I’m looking forward to getting back on Spider-Man later in our trip to compare it to Transformers. Overall, I thought Transformers was an absolutely fantastic dark ride, personally:


    After Transformers, we sat down briefly for a snack and some respite from the sun. I initially considered riding The Simpsons Ride alone, but I discovered that there was no Single Rider Queue and the standby line was 60 minutes, so I decided against it for the time being. However, we noticed that a ride we’d been pursuing earlier was back open on a relatively short queue time…
    Fast & Furious: Supercharged
    Fast & Furious was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so me and my dad made a beeline over there. By the time we got there, it was already up to 50 minutes, but as we’d gone all the way over there, we decided to go for it anyway. We ultimately ended up waiting about 45 minutes, so the posted wait time was pretty accurate. But how was the ride? Well, I was interested to see how it compared to Kong, a similar ride system which had massively exceeded expectations and been a firm favourite for all of us yesterday, and I have to say that it was notably inferior to Kong, in my view. I thought that the ride being in 2D took something away from it compared to Kong, and it just didn’t feel quite as substantial and impressive for me. I did feel that while the movement alongside the big screen itself was clever and surprisingly convincing, and the physical theming was decent in the places where it was present, the fact that the ride only really had the one big screen meant that it wasn’t quite as impressive for me, and I must admit that I felt a bit overwhelmed by the barrage of noisy air cannons at times. With that being said, I had similar thoughts on F&F to my thoughts on Fallon in that while it’s far from the greatest ride ever built, I thought Fast & Furious was all right in isolation, and not quite deserving of the sheer degree of vitriol it often receives. Overall, then, Fast & Furious was OK, albeit not anything spectacular; on a side note, I should also add that I honestly got wetter on F&F than I have on some water rides, with a surprising amount of unexpected water sprays being present:



    After Fast & Furious, we met back up with my mum and sister and decided to go for a walk around Diagon Alley. Gringotts was still closed, but we just decided to walk around the area and take in the sights for a bit.
     
    After that, we decided to go for something a little less simulator-based…
    Men in Black: Alien Attack
    Men in Black was on only a 20 minute advertised queue time, so we decided to give it a try. As promised, the queue was not overly long, and we quite quickly reached the pre-show. One interesting thing to note is that unlike other dark rides at Universal, loose articles were not allowed on this one, which I was a bit confused by before getting on. But how was the ride? Well, I was interested to ride it, as I didn’t really remember an awful lot about it from previous trips, and I have to say that I thought it was brilliant! There was great physical scenery, with loads of awesome little details present, the interactivity worked really well, and the spinning added a fun (albeit slightly nauseating) touch! Overall, Men in Black was a great ride; I’d say that it’s easily my favourite interactive dark ride I’ve done:

    After Men in Black, I headed alone to ride a previous guilty pleasure of mine…
    The Simpsons Ride
    The Simpsons Ride was on an advertised 25 minute queue time, so I decided to take a ride. I went alone onto this one, as none of the rest of my family liked the ride previously, and the queue was slightly overstated, taking 15-20 minutes in reality. But how was the ride? Well, I am a Simpsons fan, and the gags and script delivered as they always did, but I must admit that the ride system itself was less fun than I’d remembered, with some very disorientating motions and some pretty jerky moments; it was probably the most intense simulator of the day in terms of the nausea of the ride motions, and I did come off it feeling a tad worse for wear. Overall, then, while the ride film and gags in the queue were as fun as ever, the inherent intensity of the ride system did make The Simpsons Ride somewhat less enjoyable than it used to be for me:

    After The Simpsons Ride, it was 3:15pm and my family were feeling pretty tired, so we decided to head home for the day:


    So, that wraps up our day at Universal Studios Florida! It was a great day; I really enjoyed getting back on some old favourites as well as some new attractions, and it was overall really nice to get back to a really great park! I’ve heard quite a bit of negativity surrounding Universal Studios Florida as of late, but I have to say that I absolutely loved the park and still thought that it was brilliant! I have to say that the theming of the park was far better than I’d remembered, with loads of little details and things to look at, and it’s a very nice park to just exist in, in my view, with a nice, relaxed atmosphere. My family agreed, and had possibly more favourable views on it than I did; they seemed to prefer it to Islands of Adventure as an overall park. 
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed today’s report! Tomorrow, we’re headed for our first ever visit to Universal’s Volcano Bay!
  3. Matt N

    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023 (14th June 2023: Universal’s Volcano Bay)

    By Matt N,


    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023
    14th June 2023 (Universal’s Volcano Bay)
    We went for something slightly different today… unlike the last two days, we went to a waterpark! And it wasn’t just any waterpark, it was one that none of us had ever visited before… Universal’s Volcano Bay! The last time we drove down the Universal end of the I-4 in 2016, this park was under construction, so we were interested to see what the park was like now it was open.
     
    Before I get started, I should apologise in advance for the fact that there are no photographs in today’s report. As Volcano Bay is a waterpark, the experience is not terribly conducive to whipping out a smartphone and taking pictures, so I’m afraid you’ll have to rely on only my writing today.
     
    We set off for the park at around 8am and got to Universal’s parking structures at around 9:15am, as per usual. Unlike with the other two parks, though, we did not set off over the travelators and into CityWalk. Due to Volcano Bay being separate from the other two parks, we had to take a shuttle bus over to the entrance. There was no wait for this at all, and it only took a few minutes, so it was very convenient and got us to the park in good time.
     
    We then arrived at the park and got given our TapuTapu wearables, which we would get very well acquainted with over the course of the day. After getting changed and renting a locker, we headed to the main wave pool to reserve a set of chairs to store our things on before my dad and I headed over to Krakatau Aqua Coaster to reserve slots, as we’d heard that the ride was prone to getting very long virtual queues. When we arrived, the virtual queue was already on 125 minutes, but we decided to reserve it anyway in case it got any longer. This later proved to be a very wise decision, as the virtual queue did nothing but get longer during the time we were in the park, eventually peaking at almost 5 hours. This reservation did mean that we were unable to reserve any additional queue spaces for another 2 hours, but thankfully, there were a fair few slides showing as “Ride Now”, so we headed to…
    Taniwha Tubes
    Both sides of Taniwha Tubes were showing as “Ride Now”, so me and my dad decided to try the blue slides. The virtual queue worked well here, as it meant that we only had a couple of boats’ wait at the top of the slide tower. But how was the slide? Well, I thought it was great fun! The tube gained surprising speed in places, and although there were no additional bells and whistles like some of these tube and raft slides often have, there were some really fun twists and turns and it was overall a very fun slide!
     
    After Taniwha Tubes, my dad and I wandered back over to the main wave pool so that my sister could join us on some slides. My mum and grandparents were not keen on doing slides, but my sister was keen to join us on some, so when she was with us, we headed over to another “Ride Now” attraction…
    Maku
    Maku was showing as “Ride Now”, so we decided to give it a try. As with Taniwha Tubes, the virtual queue worked well here, meaning that the slide had a reasonably short standby line when we arrived. So, how was the slide? Well, I thought that this was a fun slide; even though I think it was probably less intense than the green slide on the same tower whose name currently escapes me, it was good fun, and I liked the open helixes that went around water jets!
     
    After Maku, we headed onto another “Ride Now” slide…
    Punga Racers
    Punga Racers was showing as “Ride Now”, so we gave it a go. One interesting thing to note here is that any kind of cotton clothing or non-swimwear was not allowed, so I had to remove my goggles and my sister had to remove the cotton t-shirt she was wearing over her swimwear. I was unsure why this was the case when it wasn’t the case on any of the other slides, but I guess it could be down to these generating friction with the channel, what with it being a body slide.
     
    After Punga Racers, we headed back onto the blue side of Taniwha Tubes, which were still on “Ride Now”, so that my sister could have a go on the ride. Once again, it was great fun.
     
    After our Taniwha Tubes reride, we went back to the main wave pool to meet back up with my mum before the four of us headed into…
    TeAwa: The Fearless River
    We were interested to try TeAwa: The Fearless River, as it was billed as great fun in other reviews and we were intrigued to try out a slightly more thrilling lazy river. We ended up taking 2 circuits in total, and I have to say that I thought this was great fun! The current was nice and fast, and I really enjoyed the additional touch of waves coming along to spice things up every now and then. It wasn’t overly intense given you needed a life jacket, although having spent many hours on Center Parcs Longleat Forest’s often “rough and ready” Wild Water Rapids as a child, anything else probably seems pretty tame by comparison!
     
    After our circuits on TeAwa: The Fearless River, we met back up with my grandparents and headed for a quick dunk in the main wave pool. While the waves did not quite match “The Wave” in Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon for pure spectacle, they were still really good fun, and were much easier to have a leisurely relax in.
     
    After the wave pool, we sat down and relaxed in our sun loungers for a few minutes before me and my dad headed over to our slot for…
    Krakatau Aqua Coaster
    After a 125 minute virtual wait, me and my dad’s slots on Krakatau Aqua Coaster were finally beckoning, so we headed over and gave it a go. As per usual, there was a short physical wait, and we were on the ride quickly. So, how was it? Well, I thought that the ride was excellent, with some good pops of airtime and much punchier launches than I’d experienced on Typhoon Lagoon’s Crush’n’Gusher, an earlier iteration of the same ride style. The ride was also very long, with many fun twists and turns!
     
    After Krakatau Aqua Coaster, we headed back to the main wave pool to collect my sister so that we could re-ride Taniwha Tubes. We did the green side this time, and I have to say that it felt faster than the blue slide had earlier, with the outdoor sections also providing an interesting touch!
     
    We then went to reserve slots on Honu. The ride had a 10 minute virtual queue, so we reserved a slot and went to ride another attraction that was showing as “Ride Now” while we waited…
    Ika Moana
    Ika Moana was showing as “Ride Now”, so seeing as it was on the same tower as Honu, we decided to take a ride on it. The standby queue for this ride took a little longer, as our slot for Honu vibrated while we were waiting. So, how was the slide? Well, it was good fun, with some fun twists and turns and nice outdoor sections!
     
    After our ride on Ika Moana, Honu was showing as “Ride Anytime”, as our slot had opened up quite a few minutes ago by the time we came off. As such, we went to ride…
    Honu
    Honu was ready for us to ride, so we entered the queue and started to ascend the tower. As with Ika Moana, there was a lengthier standby queue for this ride, with us waiting a good few minutes to get on. But how was the slide? Well, I thought it was excellent, with the two walls providing great exhilaration and the initial drop providing some interesting airtime!
     
    After our ride on Honu, we headed back to the main wave pool to meet up with my mum and grandparents. By this point, it was well past 2pm, the floors and the sand were getting uncomfortably hot to walk on in bare feet (our final walk from Honu on the concrete paths in Florida heat felt as though it was physically burning our feet, and the sand was little better), and the wave pool had just been evacuated due to a “waterfall incident” (?), so we decided to head home.
     
    So, that just about wraps up our day at Universal’s Volcano Bay! I had a great day; I had 8 rides on the slides and a go on TeAwa: The Fearless River, and it was just nice to visit a brand new waterpark! Personally, I’d say that Volcano Bay was every bit as enjoyable as any of the other Florida waterparks I’ve visited (for reference, I’ve been to both Walt Disney World water parks and Aquatica Orlando); the rides were really good, there’s a wide range of different things to do (there were a number of things that we didn’t cover today), and the theming was also lovely, with the central volcano itself being particularly impressive!
     
    The park was also an interesting one for me because it was my first ever experience of wholesale virtual queueing in a theme/water park setting, and I have to say that it worked a lot better than expected! It wasn’t perfect (I don’t think the queue times for Krakatau Aqua Coaster would have been nearly as high had it been a physical queue, for instance, and one or two slides did still have a not insignificant standby wait when our time slot arrived), but overall, I did enjoy not having to physically queue as much, and I thought that my overall experience of virtual queueing with TapuTapu was pretty positive! With that being said, I still don’t think that wholesale virtual queueing is something that you could just take, slap into any old theme park and expect to work well. I think the reason for it working reasonably well in Volcano Bay was because the park had quite a number of non-ride activities to keep you occupied while waiting, as well as a number of slides with no wait, and I think the waterpark in general lends itself to the sort of copious non-ride entertainment that virtual queues require better than the theme park does.
     
    Overall, though, I had a brilliant day at Volcano Bay, and my family really enjoyed it as well! There is a chance that we may be returning to the park next week, so there may well be a second report from Volcano Bay!
     
    Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed today’s report, although I apologise for it probably being less interesting (after all, you’re on here to read about theme parks, not water parks, and I was unable to take any pictures). We’re not doing anything tomorrow other than going for a meal in Disney Springs for my nan’s birthday, so I won’t write a report tomorrow, but the next report on Friday will be from SeaWorld Orlando, where I hope to take my first ever rides on new rides like Ice Breaker and Pipeline and see if Mako, my current number 1 coaster (yes, it’s still on top, even post VelociCoaster and Hagrid’s!), still stacks up!
  4. Matt N

    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023 (12th June 2023: Islands of Adventure)

    By Matt N,


    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023
    12th June 2023 (Islands of Adventure)
    Today was a very exciting day; our first theme park day of the trip! As we had booked 14-day Universal Orlando tickets, we decided to start with one of those parks, and our choice was Islands of Adventure! We were really excited to get on both VelociCoaster and Hagrid’s, so we thought we may as well start in IOA!
     
    We left our villa in Haines City at about 8am, and the drive took about 1h 15m, so we arrived at about 9:15am. I must say that it was nice to be entering back into Universal Orlando after 7 years:


    After entering Universal, we had to collect our tickets and get our fingerprints scanned at Islands of Adventure to get the tickets activated for the 2 weeks, so we didn’t end up entering the park until about 10am:


    After entering the park, we looked at the queue times and noticed that a certain much anticipated ride was only on a 45 minute queue…
    VelociCoaster
    VelociCoaster was on only an advertised 45 minute wait, so we decided to take a ride. It was only me, my parents and my sister who did this; my grandparents decided to sit this one out, as they’re not so big on intense rides. The ride did go down briefly while we were in the queue, so it took a little longer than 45 minutes (probably 55 minutes to an hour). But seeing as VelociCoaster was one of my most anticipated rides of the trip, how was it? Well, I was seated in row 9, and it was an absolutely phenomenal ride! The second launch, top hat and mosasaurus roll were all sublimely brilliant, there were a couple of other very nice pops of airtime, it carried an excellent sense of speed throughout, and it was comfortable and extremely fun! The theming was also excellent, particularly in the queue; I was a big fan of the raptor animatronics in particular! If I’m being completely honest, however, it perhaps wasn’t quite as phenomenal as I’d hoped, and it didn’t quite live up to some of the obscene hyperbole it receives for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was an excellent, excellent coaster with some absolutely phenomenal elements, and easily 10/10 tier for me (one of my top coasters). I also feel it would be somewhat harsh to say that I was underwhelmed, because as I say, it was a truly brilliant ride. However, I was led to believe that it would be some absolutely life-changing ride that would comfortably obliterate everything else I’d ever ridden and be my instant, undeniable number 1, and it wasn’t quite that for me. Overall, VelociCoaster was an absolutely phenomenal ride with some brilliant elements, and my initial feeling towards it could well be down to my overly high expectations rather than the ride itself, but it did fall ever so slightly short of the sky-high hype for me. I apologise if that’s triggering or controversial, and I know I’m probably being unfair on it, but I would never be dishonest in a review, and those were my true, honest thoughts:





    After VelociCoaster, we met back up with my grandparents and headed for the other ride in Jurassic Park, which we could all ride together…
    Jurassic Park River Adventure
    Jurassic Park River Adventure was on only a 20 minute queue, so as it was a quiet(ish) ride that everyone could go on, we decided to give it a try. The queue ended up being slightly underestimated, only taking around 15 minutes; always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was brilliant, and my family seemed to agree! The ride had some great animatronics and theming, the drop was exhilarating, the wetness level was perfect (refreshing on a hot day, but not unbearably wet), and overall, it was just a really fun, feel-good ride; it’s easily one of my top water rides:

    After Jurassic Park River Adventure, we decided to head to another ride that was new for all of us…
    Skull Island: Reign of Kong
    Skull Island: Reign of Kong was on an advertised 35 minute queue, so we decided to have a go on it. We were interested to ride Kong, as it was the big new thing at Islands of Adventure on our last visit in 2016, yet we were never able to ride it. It was only me, my parents and my nan who rode this one; my grandad had “hit his zenith” on Jurassic Park River Adventure, and my sister was unsure on the ride. The queue took 20-25 minutes rather than the advertised 35, which is always a bonus, and it was also one of the fastest moving queues I have ever stood in; it was basically a path of people gradually walking forwards, as it hardly ever stopped moving! The queue was also stunningly themed, with one particularly phenomenal animatronic of a tribal lady! But how was the ride? Well, I was going in with quite low expectations after reading many ambivalent to negative reviews, but I have to say that it massively exceeded expectations for me; I thought that it was absolutely brilliant! The 3D was excellent, with it being very good quality, and there were some really good action scenes with paired effects on the screens and in the motion base. There were also 1 or 2 very convincing freefall effects during the ride film, and some surprisingly nice physical set pieces around the screens! Furthermore, the Kong animatronic in the final scene was incredible; it was absolutely huge! Overall, I thought Kong was a brilliant ride, and a really pleasant surprise, and it was a big hit with my family too; my nan in particular really enjoyed it:



    After Kong, we walked into Toon Lagoon, and me and my dad pondered a ride on Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. However, the ride broke down just as we were walking into the area, so that idea was quickly stymied. We instead decided to sit down for 15-30 minutes or so to reapply sun cream, go to the toilet and have a bite to eat. After this, we headed into Marvel Super Hero Island and pondered a ride on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, which was on an advertised 40 minute queue. However, the queue turned out to be extending outside of the building, so it was deemed that the queue was too long. As such, me and my sister headed to a different Marvel ride that had a much shorter queue…
    Doctor Doom’s FearFall
    Doctor Doom’s FearFall was on an advertised 5 minute queue, so me and my sister decided to quickly hop into the queue; no one else joined us here, as no one else overly likes intense drop towers. As promised, the queue was very short, with us taking only 5-10 minutes to get on and off the ride. So, how was the ride? Well, it was good fun; the launch was reasonably punchy, there was a nice pop of airtime at the top, and I have to say that the ride was a little more fun than I’d remembered! From memory, it was certainly punchier than Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s Ice Blast, but I do still prefer a good drop tower to a shot tower, personally. Overall, Doctor Doom’s FearFall was good fun, providing a nice shot tower experience to vary things up:

    After Doctor Doom’s FearFall, we had a look at another ride in Marvel Super Hero Island, which had a shorter queue than earlier in the day…
    Incredible Hulk Coaster
    The Incredible Hulk Coaster was on an advertised 45 minute queue, so my dad, my sister and I decided to take a ride on it, with my mum and my grandparents sitting out of this one. As it turned out, 45 minutes was a vast overestimate, with the queue taking just 15 minutes in reality; you can’t complain about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 4, and it was a good ride; the launch and initial zero-g roll never fail to deliver, and the ride packs good speed throughout! However, I’m not sure that it’s one of my absolute favourites; the ride, while not unbearably rough by any means, was a little bit of a headbasher in places, and I do wonder if it’s a touch too intense in terms of sustained positive g’s in places for my liking; there was one particularly uncomfortable segment from the cobra roll to the end of the loop where I greyed out for an extended period, which I didn’t find the most pleasant, personally. Nonetheless, these are niggles rather than dealbreakers, and the ride was pretty good overall:


    After Hulk, we spent 15 minutes or so trying to find my mum and grandparents, who had gone elsewhere while we were riding. After we all met back up, we headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to ride on another much-anticipated new coaster…
    Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure
    Hagrid’s was on a 70 minute advertised queue time, which seemed short relative to some of the queue times we had seen for it, so we decided to take this opportunity to ride it. Only my parents, my sister and I rode this, as my grandparents felt that 70 minutes was too long of a queue for them. Similarly to Kong, however, the queue hardly stopped moving, and it initially took only 40-45 minutes to get on. However, just as I was sat in the row 4 bike seat ready to go, the ride broke down, so we were evacuated and sent to wait in the exit corridor, where we waited for 10 minutes or so before being let back on. Even with the breakdown, however, we only waited for around 55 minutes, which was 15 minutes less than advertised. So, how was the ride? Well, I scored the back row bike seat, and I thought it was stunning; I was really quite floored by it! I had heard very good things about Hagrid’s, so I had high expectations, but in many ways, I was still pretty blown away and surprised by it; I thought that it was absolutely phenomenal! I had heard plaudits levelled towards the theme and experience aspects, and I do have to firmly reiterate those, but I must say that I was extremely surprised by just how fun and thrilling the coaster itself was! For a “family” coaster that only goes 50mph, the launches are really quite snappy, and it feels incredibly fast in areas! Overall, though, my main takeaway from the ride is that is simply phenomenally, enormously fun, and it just makes you laugh and puts a huge smile on your face throughout the experience in a way that very few rides can match! I’m also going to make a potentially controversial statement; I think I preferred it to VelociCoaster. While VelociCoaster does have some real standout moments of thrill in a way that Hagrid’s perhaps doesn’t, Hagrid’s is just so incredibly fun throughout that it made me laugh hysterically and smile hitting the brake run in a way that VelociCoaster couldn’t quite match. Overall, then, I thought Hagrid’s was absolutely phenomenal, and my family firmly agreed (including with the verdict that it usurped VelociCoaster; even though my dad and sister in particular were quick to declare VelociCoaster their favourite coaster unlike me, we were all in unanimous agreement that Hagrid’s was top dog out of the duo):



    After coming off Hagrid’s, we pondered a ride on Forbidden Journey, but the queue was 25 minutes, which my family thought was too long at that point in the day. It was around 3:30pm by this point, and my grandparents in particular were reaching their limit, so we decided to leave the park and go home:

    So, that concluded our day at Islands of Adventure! I had a brilliant day; both VelociCoaster and Hagrid’s were absolutely phenomenal rides that easily became two of my top coasters (my review of VelociCoaster makes it sound like I liked the ride far less than I actually did; I still absolutely loved it and thought it was a phenomenal ride, it just didn’t quite live up to the sky-high hype for me), Kong was surprisingly great, and I enjoyed getting back on some previous classics like Hulk and Jurassic Park! Islands of Adventure is still easily one of my top parks ever, if not my top park ever; I loved it back in 2016, and the additions of VelociCoaster and Hagrid’s have only strengthened it further, in my view! The ride selection is just amazing, and so well-rounded (by my reckoning, they have at least one top-class ride in most categories), and the theming and atmosphere are spectacular too!
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this report! Tomorrow, I think we’re probably going to head to Universal Studios Florida, so stay tuned for a report from there!
  5. Matt N

    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023 (10th June 2023: Travel)

    By Matt N,


    Matt N’s Frolic in Florida 10th-24th June 2023
    10th June 2023 (Travel)
    Hi guys. Today was a very exciting day; the start of my 2023 Florida trip! This trip is my first time heading to Florida in 4 years, and my first time heading to the parks we’re visiting this time (Universal Orlando, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens) in 7 years, as well as the first time my grandparents have joined my family and I in Florida since 2014. There are so many new rides I’m excited to get on; VelociCoaster, Iron Gwazi, Hagrid’s, Pipeline… the list goes on! We’re here until 24th June, so today’s report represents the first in a series of trip reports posted over 14 days. I apologise in advance, as today’s report will likely be a bit dull; today’s report only covers the travel aspect of our trip. Nonetheless, I’ll start the day off from the very beginning!
     
    The start of the trip was actually a lot more relaxed than usual. Normally, our Florida trips begin with either an early morning dash to the airport at 4am or a stay at an airport hotel, but due to the combination of our flight being later than usual (3:40pm) and us going from London Heathrow (a little under 2 hours’ drive from us) rather than the usual choices of London Gatwick or Manchester (easily 3 hours’ drive from us on a bad run), we were able to leave Gloucestershire at a more reasonable time of around 9:45am. The drive was fine; there was no traffic, so even with a brief stop at Reading services, we managed to get to London Heathrow’s long stay parking by about 12pm, getting to Terminal 3 itself (the terminal from which our flight departed) by around 12:30pm after the bus ride from the car park:


    I’d never been to Heathrow before, and I have to say that it’s one of the most fascinating airports I’ve ever been to! I’ve never been to an airport where you can park so close to the runway before, and seeing all of the planes queueing up in the sky to land is quite a sight! I also have to say that check in and security were an awful lot quieter than I’d ever remembered in the past; security in particular was very efficient and took no time at all to go through!
     
    After that, we sat in the departure lounge and ate some lunch before heading to our gate and boarding the plane. Our flight was with Virgin Atlantic, and I have to say that it was really good; we’ve always liked Virgin, and today was no exception! While we flew, I did quite a few different things; I watched a few episodes of Ghosts and Young Sheldon, I did a theme park dot-to-dot drawing out of a book that I got given for Christmas (the drawing was of Parc Asterix!), and I spent some time trying to progress on Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which I recently re-downloaded on my iPad after having not played since I was about 14. Sadly, being a learner driver of 1 year has made me no better at it! Another cool thing I should mention about our flight is that we travelled on an Airbus A350-1000, which my dad helped to design!
     
    Initially, it looked like our flight was going pretty well in terms of scheduling. The captain’s announced flight time was around 8.5 hours, which was a fair amount shorter than expected, and we were supposed to land at 7:15pm local time. However… things went awry towards the end of the flight. As we got nearer to Orlando, we were informed that there was an unpredicted thunderstorm in the area, meaning that we were unable to land safely. As such, the plane circled above a patch of ocean just off the east coast of Florida for over an hour while we waited for the storm to clear. The repeated circling formed this interesting paperclip-shaped path on the flight map:

    The prospect of us being diverted to Tampa was heavily discussed, which would have really put a spanner in the works… thankfully, the storm eventually subsided and we landed, albeit with a fair amount of turbulence, in Orlando about an hour later than expected. The storm also meant that we were held on the runway for the best part of an hour after landing, so we spent about 10.5 hours on the plane in total and didn’t get off until gone 9pm local time.
     
    We then went through immigration and baggage reclaim, which were quicker than usual in fairness, and then we finally exited Orlando International Airport to get our rental car. I must say, seeing the grand foyer of Orlando International Airport was nice after the longer-than-expected flight:


    After collecting our rental car, we drove for around 50 minutes to our villa in Haines City, arriving there at around 11:30pm local time.
     
    After that, we unpacked and settled down for the night.
     
    So, that was the first day of our June 2023 Florida trip! I’m sorry that this report was so boring; the next one I write will be far more interesting, because it will be from an actual theme park! Given that they are the parks we have 14-day tickets for, I’d expect it to be one of the two Universal Orlando theme parks. Due to us all feeling pretty tired after our late arrival into Orlando, as well as us still needing to handle things like grocery shopping, I’m not necessarily expecting us to do a theme park tomorrow; if we do go to a park tomorrow, I’ll write about it, but I think our first park visit is more likely to be on Monday.
     
    Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this report; the next one will come either tomorrow or on Monday and will probably be from one of the two Universal Orlando theme parks!
  6. Matt N
    26th March 2023: Alton Towers Day 2
    We had our second day in the park today! And it was an interesting one, with some new stuff experienced today that we hadn’t done yesterday!
     
    We started out somewhat earlier than we did yesterday, arriving at Alton Towers at around 9:30am for entry into the park at around 9:45am:


    For our first ride, we headed off down Haunted Hollow to a certain new ride that none of us had ever done before…
    The Curse at Alton Manor
    The Curse at Alton Manor was closed for most of the day yesterday, so I was hoping to get it in today. Thankfully, the ride was open, and it was also pretty much walk on! As such, I didn’t really see much of the queue, although I did get a brief look at the new indoor queue, which I thought was quite neat! So, how was the ride? Well, I’ll keep it spoiler-free for now… in part because I don’t think my review containing spoilers would go into an awful lot more detail at this stage! I thought it seemed like nicely done ride, but I did perhaps find it a little overwhelming on my first ride; it is a lot to take in, and being a bit of a weakling with horror stuff, I spent most of the ride either on edge or jumping out of my skin! It was all a bit of a blur for me! My mum went round the ride terrified, as evidenced by our on-ride photo (she was always frightened of The Haunted House and Duel, so this wasn’t too surprising), but my dad said he was “underwhelmed”, saying that “it’s nice, and better than Duel, but the marketing over-egged it”. I’ll watch a POV later and see if I can do a more in-depth review with some spoilers, but that’s about as much as I’ll say for the time being:



    After The Curse at Alton Manor, we headed onto our first coaster of the day…
    Galactica
    Galactica was on an advertised 0 minute wait, and it was a ride that my grandad hadn’t ridden yet, so we decided to take a ride. The queue time board was pretty true to its word, with us waiting very little before entering the station! But how was the ride? Well, we were seated in row 3, and I must admit that I found it a bit uncomfortable. Galactica isn’t a favourite of mine, and today’s ride did seem like one of the more uncomfortable I’ve had on it; I’m a bit sceptical about whether flying coasters are really my sort of thing. As for my grandad, he said that the experience was “different” and that he found the ride “less intense than some of the others”:




    After Galactica, we were initially going to go on the Runaway Mine Train, but the queue was spilling well out of the entrance, we decided to steer clear and go on a different ride…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on an advertised 50 minute queue, so we decided to have a go on it. The queue time was ultimately somewhat overstated; we waited around 35 minutes to the pre-show, and we were even on the ride within 40-45 minutes, which is always a bonus! So, how was it? Well, I was seated in row 6, and it was phenomenal; the airtime was stunning, the speed was incredible, and it was overall an incredibly fun ride! My grandad seemed to really enjoy it too, as he had yesterday; he even bought himself a Wicker Man hoodie from the shop straight after our ride, which must surely be a good sign:



    After Wicker Man, we noticed that a certain non-coaster staple had opened for the first time this trip…
    Congo River Rapids
    Congo River Rapids had just opened while we had been on Wicker Man, so we decided to have a ride on it. The queue was fairly short; we were on within just a few minutes, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, it was decent; I got a somewhat wet back, there were a few fair waves, and my grandad seemed to enjoy himself! The ride was also spiced up somewhat this time by a jazzy new soundtrack, complete with an Australian announcer making various enthusiastic remarks during the ride; this was a fun touch, but I must digress that the irony was palpable when the announcer encouraged us to “face these waterfalls head on!” just before the waterfall section, even though there were no waterfalls running:


    After Congo River Rapids, we decided to try the other ride in the area…
    Runaway Mine Train
    Runaway Mine Train’s queue looked visibly shorter than it had done earlier, so we decided to give it a go. The queue ultimately took around 25-30 minutes, which I wouldn’t say was too bad at all, personally! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 10, and I thought it was great fun; it is a guilty pleasure of mine! My grandad thoroughly enjoyed it too; his first words to me upon getting off were “That tunnel bend was absolutely mental!”:

    After our ride on the Runaway Mine Train, we sat in the Mutiny Bay Courtyard and ate our packed lunch for a bit before asking my grandad what ride he fancied doing next. To our surprise, he said “I’ve done all the others, so I want to try The Smiler!”. As such, we headed over to…
    The Smiler
    As my grandad wanted to give Smiler a go before we left, we obliged his wishes and joined the queue. Unusually for The Smiler, the queue was only advertised at 30 minutes, and while it wasn’t quite this short in reality, it only took around 40-45 minutes, which is honestly quite a short queue for The Smiler! So, how was the ride? Well, we were seated in the back row, and I personally found it a fair bit less pleasurable than yesterday’s ride; it was rougher and also seemed notably more nauseating for me. My grandad initially seemed a bit overwhelmed by the experience when we hit the brake run, but later remarked that he did thoroughly enjoy the ride, saying that he found it “absolutely mental”! He also remarked that going upside down was nowhere near as bad as he’d feared it might be, saying that he dealt with inverting far better than he’s dealt with spinning things in the past. However, he did say that he was glad that Smiler had been his final ride, declaring that “doing that first might have terrorised [him]!”:


    After The Smiler, we headed to one final coaster that was on a very short queue…
    Oblivion
    Oblivion was on a mere 10 minute advertised queue time, so I, for one, couldn’t resist one final ride! My dad and my grandad joined me, and the advertised queue time seemed pretty accurate; we were on in no time! But how was the ride? Well, we were seated in the back row, and it was absolutely sublime; I had a loose restraint, so I got some impeccable airtime, and the sense of speed in the hole seemed particularly amazing today! My dad and grandad also seemed to enjoy it, and overall, it was a brilliant way to close our Alton Towers trip, in my view:

    By this point, it was heading towards 3pm, so we decided to head home. As it was quiet, we took my grandad on the Monorail to head back to the car park, which was certainly a welcome sit down after all the walking and standing during the day!
     
    After we rode the Monorail, we got in the car to head back home and our trip to Alton Towers ended.
     
    On the whole, this was a brilliant trip, in my view! Yes, it started off slightly rocky yesterday with the rain and the long Thirteen queue, but today was brilliant, yesterday afternoon was an improvement on the morning, and I overall thoroughly enjoyed seeing my grandad’s first reactions to Alton Towers and theme parks in general! He said that his weekend had been “fabulous”, and while he admitted that Alton Towers probably wouldn’t be somewhere he’d want to revisit too frequently and that he hadn’t become a “convert” like me, he didn’t rule out potentially visiting a theme park again in the future and said that he'd thoroughly enjoyed his weekend. His favourite ride of the trip was Wicker Man, but he also leant an honourable mention to The Smiler, which he deemed "absolutely mental"!
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you've enjoyed this trip report! I'm not sure when I'll next be writing one or where it will be from, but I hope to be writing another one soon!
  7. Matt N
    25th March 2023: Alton Towers Day 1
    Hi guys. Today was an exciting day; it was my first visit to Alton Towers of the season! But this visit was particularly exciting for a different reason… my parents and I brought my grandad along with us for what was not just his first ever visit to Alton Towers, but his first ever visit to a theme park full stop! Yes, he’d never set foot into a theme park or ridden a roller coaster prior to this morning, but after seeing Oblivion on the TV, he expressed great keenness to visit, so my parents and I took him as a 70th birthday present!
     
    We set off from Gloucestershire at about 7:15am this morning, and we arrived in Alton Towers at about 10am, making good time for entry into the park at about 10:20am:

    When we entered the park, we decided to make a beeline for Oblivion, as that was my grandad’s key bucket list ride. “I need to do Oblivion first in case it’s the only one I do!” he said! However, when we got over there, it was closed, so we had to change tack:


    Instead, we took a look at the queue times, and went to a different ride that was displaying a short queue time…
    Rita
    Rita was only displaying a 10 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. My dad felt that as Rita “is short and doesn’t really do much aside from being fast”, it was a good one to start my grandad off on. When we joined the queue, the advertised time quickly went up to 45 minutes, but we decided to persist regardless, and it ultimately took about 55 minutes. Interestingly, my grandad was absolutely perplexed about why people were screaming on the ride; he asked “what on earth are they all screaming for?”. So, how was the ride? Well, I was sat in row 4, and I thought it was awesome; the ride was relatively smooth, and it had awesome airtime and speed! As for my grandad, he seemed to enjoy the ride, and said that it felt a lot faster and more exhilarating than it looked from off-ride; he did, however, quickly retract his previous criticism of the screamers:


    After Rita, we decided to have a go on the other roller coaster in the area…
    Thirteen
    Thirteen had just opened and was on an advertised 45 minute queue, so we decided to take a ride on it. This initially seemed like a sound move; with rumblings circulating that the ride was still unable to operate in the rain, we wanted to do Thirteen quickly so that we could get it in while it was dry. This decision later proved to be a grave error… as in spite of the queue not looking exceptionally long compared to previous visits (albeit far from short), we waited for 105 minutes in total, and the heavens well and truly opened while we were waiting. On the plus side, the rumours that the ride was still unable to operate in the rain were untrue, as I saw it running in a rather heavy downpour with my own two eyes! So, how was the ride? Well, I got the front row, and it was great fun; there were some fun twists and turns, the odd pop of airtime, and an indoor section that never fails to deliver! As for my grandad, he simply turned to me at the end and said “Well, I wasn’t expecting that… I almost wet myself!”. On a positive note, he also got off and said to me “These roller coasters are rather addictive things, aren’t they? When you get off one, you just want to go straight on another one!”; he was really starting to enjoy the rides by this point:

    After we got off Thirteen, the rain became truly biblical, so we camped under a tree to try and escape the rain. After a few minutes had passed, we decided to take shelter indoors for a longer period of time, so we had a go on…
    Hex
    Hex was located nearby, so we decided to take cover on there for a few minutes. It appeared as though everyone else in that area had the same idea, as the queue quickly spilled out of the building and we later ascertained that it was advertised at 30 minutes. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever queued through the entire building and seen the queue line videos on Hex! Nonetheless, it ultimately only took about 15 minutes, and we were in the first pre-show quite quickly. So, how was the ride? Well, I have to say that it was excellent; it was my first ride on there since 2020, and it felt like everything was working and in absolutely top notch condition, and I noticed things I’ve never noticed in that ride before! Overall, it was brilliant, and I think my grandad found it interesting too:


    After that, we decided to head for another roller coaster…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on a 50 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. This was another one that my grandad was particularly keen to ride; he said he wanted to ride the ride after having completed the Wicker Man jigsaw puzzle that we gave him a couple of years ago (which I ascertain was quite difficult; he complained about every piece being the same shade of black/brown!)! The queue time was somewhat understated, ultimately taking 70-75 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I was sat in row 3, and I thought it was as brilliant as always, with an awesome sense of speed and loads of brilliant airtime! My grandad was particularly impressed with Wicker Man as well, stating that it was “the best ride yet” and “definitely better than Rita”:




    After Wicker Man, we noticed that a certain bucket list ride for my grandad was finally open, so we made a beeline for it…
    Oblivion
    When we had just stepped off of Wicker Man, my dad noticed that Oblivion was open and on an advertised 15 minute queue, so seeing as it was the main ride my grandad wanted to ride, we headed over there. We were greeted with a surprise when we got there, as the queue had risen substantially to 50 minutes rather than 15, but we joined it nonetheless seeing as it was my grandad’s most anticipated ride and me and my dad both really enjoy it too. The queue ultimately didn’t take 50 minutes, instead taking 35-40 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I do absolutely love Oblivion, and for me, it was as excellent as it always is, with a phenomenal sense of speed in the tunnel and some sublime airtime while plummeting down the drop! My grandad was blown away by the experience; he called it “barmy” and “utterly insane”, and looked in disbelief at how exhilarating Oblivion was; it was certainly the ride photo he looked the least unfazed in, anyhow!:



    After Oblivion, it was getting close to the 5pm ride close, but I managed to sneak in one final ride…
    The Smiler
    The Smiler was on an advertised 40 minute queue, but as my grandad didn’t quite seem up for The Smiler, my parents stayed off it with him and I went on it via the Single Rider Queue. This queue often produces very good results as far as waiting time reduction goes; today wasn’t quite as good as some occasions, as I waited 20 minutes, but that was still a significant reduction on the advertised queue time of 40 minutes! So, how was the ride? Well, I’m not normally the biggest fan of The Smiler, but I have to say that that was the most enjoyable ride I’ve had on The Smiler in quite some time! I was seated in the front row, and it was actually really quite good; the inversions were fun and floaty, the ride wasn’t quite as intense and nauseating as it sometimes is, it was reasonably smooth for the most part (even the ending wasn’t that bad today)… I can’t really complain too much! It’s still not my favourite coaster by any means, but overall, The Smiler was a pleasant surprise today, and a very good way to end the day! On a side note, the operations were outstanding; the average dispatch interval was barely over a minute, and the staff were really hammering the trains out:

    After The Smiler, we headed out of the park and back to our hotel in the local area.
     
    So, that sums up the first day of our Alton Towers weekend! While I’d be lying if I said that it was my greatest ever day at the park in terms of ride count, and the weather at points of the day did detract somewhat, I still had a great day, and I loved introducing my grandad to the park (and theme parks full stop) for the first time! I asked him what his thoughts to his first day were as we left, and he said that it was “awesome” and “even better than [he’d] ever hoped that it could be”; I was very gratified by that response! His favourite ride overall was “easily” Wicker Man (he called it “superb”), but he seemed to enjoy everything we did to some extent, which I was glad about!
     
    Thanks for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this report, and I’ll be back at you tomorrow with the report from our second day on park, which will cover some of the things we didn’t do today (hopefully including a ride on The Curse at Alton Manor, which none of us have done before…)!
  8. Matt N
    7th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 1
    Hi guys. Today was the first day of my latest 2 day Alton Towers trip, which is always an exciting day, particularly when your break entails a stay in the Alton Towers Hotel! I know it’s only been two months since my last trip to Alton Towers, but I got offered a theme park trip of my choice for my birthday this year by my parents, and as I had a nice time at Alton in June, I thought “why not go back there?”!
     
    We left home at about 7:15am this morning and got to the park in good time, arriving through the hotel entrance shortly after the 10am opening time. I’ve got to say, that hotel entrance has become a real secret weapon on my last two Alton Towers trips; it saves a huge amount of time getting into the park, which is always a bonus:


    After entering the park, we headed to our first ride…
    Galactica
    Galactica was on an advertised 0 minute queue, so we decided to take a ride on it. As promised, the queue was very short indeed, which is always a bonus. The operations were also very good, with a throughput of comfortably over 1,000pph being attained on 3 trains and 2 stations; terrific work! So, how was the ride? Well, Galactica isn’t a favourite of mine, as I find the flying position a bit uncomfortable, but I’ve got to say that today’s ride was one of the more fun I’ve had on it in recent times; I was seated in row 4, and it was really smooth, with some fun sensations! All in all, that ride on Galactica was about as good as I could have asked for given that the ride isn’t really one of my favourites:


    After Galactica, we tried the other Forbidden Valley B&M…
    Nemesis
    Nemesis was on an advertised 25 minute queue, and as such, we decided to give it a ride. Ultimately, the queue ended up being more like 45-50 minutes once we joined; it was only stretching up to below the first corkscrew, but dispatches were infrequent, and me and my dad later ascertained that this was because the ride was on 1 train and attaining around 500-600pph. The park decided to add the 2nd train whilst we were in the queue, which added another 10 minutes or so onto our queue time but ultimately sped up the pace of the queue after that. Interestingly, we encountered a rather angry staff member at the Fastrack merge point, who later got moved elsewhere due to them getting overly animated at guests’ behaviour. I’ve never seen that at Towers before… anyway, how was the actual ride? Well, it was good! I was seated in row 5, and it was fairly smooth, well paced and forceful; what’s not to like? As much as I may not hold Nemesis on the same god-like pedestal that most enthusiasts do, today’s ride was very good indeed; it certainly packed a very good punch:


    After Nemesis, we decided to head for a slightly longer stroll to ride…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on an advertised 50 minute queue, so we decided to have a ride on it. This queue time was very accurate, which is always a plus, and it appeared that the bulb in the pre-show had been fixed since my last visit, meaning that its tricks were obscured from guest view once again; good work, Alton! But how was the ride? Well, it was phenomenal; I was seated in row 8, and it was relentlessly fast, packed with airtime, smooth and overall very fun! That definitely cemented its place as my personal favourite ride on park, my UK #2 and my overall #5; I always feel like I shouldn’t enjoy Wicker Man nearly as much as I do, but it never fails to have me laughing and feeling blown away when I hit the brake run! As blasphemous as this probably sounds, I genuinely get almost as much enjoyment from riding it as I did from riding Wodan at Europa Park back in April! Even though it’s not nearly as impressively specced as Wodan on paper, it’s just so much fun and so rerideable, and even though Wodan does come out on top for me, the gap between the two remains far smaller than I ever expect; there’s really not a whole lot in it for me! Perhaps I just really like GCIs in general?:




    After Wicker Man, it was getting on for 1pm, so we decided to sit down in the courtyard for a spot of packed lunch before heading to our next ride…
    Thirteen
    Thirteen was on an advertised 50 minute queue, so we decided to get in the queue and have a ride. This queue didn’t end up being anywhere near 50 minutes, and operations were good; always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 2, and it was good fun, with some fun twists and turns in the outdoor section and a cracking indoor section that’s always a laugh; it was lovely and smooth, as well! However, having ridden it both towards the back and towards the front in recent months, I must say that I definitely prefer Thirteen towards the back. That cracking pop of ejector airtime over the first drop is missing in the front, and the outdoor section generally feels a bit more fun in the back. Nevertheless, Thirteen is always a really good, fun ride that puts a smile on my face, and it’s definitely one that’s grown on me over time:

    After Thirteen, we initially considered Rita, but it had a 75 minute queue, so we went elsewhere…
    The Smiler
    In spite of a 60 minute advertised queue, I decided to give Smiler a go. Now you may be wondering “why on earth did you do Smiler when you’re not a huge fan of it and it had the longest queue on park?”. Well, dear reader, that is where a secret weapon of mine came into play; the single rider queue! I made use of this for the first time on my last visit to Alton Towers, and it is truly a game changer; it reduces my wait time substantially every time I use it, and today was no different! In spite of a 60 minute advertised queue time, I got on the ride within 5-10 minutes, which I thought was brilliant! So, how was the ride? Well, Smiler isn’t really a favourite of mine, as I find it a bit too rough and intense for my personal liking, and today’s ride was pretty par for the course in this regard. However, it admittedly didn’t seem quite as rough as it did on my last ride; always a bonus, particularly given that I was seated on the back row! I do always feel bad for Smiler, though; it’s a coaster I really want to like, as I think there’s some good bits in there (the layout is admittedly creative, and those two airtime hills are absolutely amazing!), but it never really does it for me due to a combination of it not being the most comfortable ride and the back-to-back inversions almost creating a repetitive motion-type sickness feeling for me akin to that caused by a particularly intense spinning flat ride (I’m not a huge flat ride lover myself). I apologise for this, as I know that most enthusiasts love Smiler, but I cannot lie about my own opinions and experiences:


    After The Smiler, I met back up with my parents, and we moved on to the other coaster in X-Sector…
    Oblivion
    Oblivion was on a mere 15 minute advertised queue time, so we certainly couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a ride! This short advertised queue time certainly held true; it didn’t take us long to get on at all, which was aided by some very good operations. A throughput of over 1,000pph was being attained when I was in the queue, which is phenomenal, in my opinion; well done, team Oblivion! But how was the ride? Well, I’ve got to say that as ever, the other X-Sector coaster is far more up my street; it was particularly excellent today, with an absolutely sublime pop of sustained airtime over the drop and a phenomenal sense of speed in the tunnel. Even though it isn’t the fastest coaster I’ve ridden (that accolade goes to Stealth at 80mph), Oblivion always feels like it could conceivably be the fastest coaster I’ve ridden; that tunnel feels unbelievably fast! Overall, Oblivion was absolutely excellent, and definitely warranted its top 10 placement for me today; it may only have one key element, but it does it so well that it always leaves me grinning:


    After our ride on Oblivion, we fancied something slightly less thrilling…
    Congo River Rapids
    Congo River Rapids was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go as a slightly more relaxing ride to break up the coaster rides. The queue initially looked long when we joined, but it moved quickly, so the advertised queue time was actually pretty accurate. The good thing about rapids rides is that they are almost invariably queue munchers; CRR was dispatching a boat roughly every 15 seconds or so, making for a throughput of about 1,800pph if you assume full boats of 8. They also seemed pretty good at filling boats today, so this throughput figure likely wasn’t too far off despite rapids rides’ tendency to often dispatch with boats that are far from full. So, how was the ride? Well, it was all right for a nice sit down; as a way to relax, I can’t really complain about it! However, I do feel that the ride is considerably less exciting than it once was due to the removal of the waterfalls and many of the wave machines; I don’t really have an issue with it not being a huge soaker given our climate, but the opportunities to get even a slight spray on the ride are slim to none these days, and my parents and I both felt somewhat short changed upon getting off. I appreciate that this is out of the park’s hands, so I’m probably being overly harsh, but the ride is definitely less of a priority on our agenda than it once was due to these changes. Still, it was perfectly all right for a relaxing ride in between coasters, and it was nice to get back on it after quite a bit of time without a ride:


    After our ride on Congo River Rapids, we had a reride on Wicker Man, with a tempting 40 minute queue. I was seated in row 8, and it was just as sublime as our earlier ride, if not more so; it had warmed up superbly from earlier in the day:



    After this, my parents left the park and left me to my own devices. I went on to ride…
    Spinball Whizzer
    Spinball Whizzer was on an advertised 25 minute queue, so I decided to take a ride on it. The queue did end up longer than 25 minutes, taking more like 45-50 minutes, but this can’t really be helped; what can you do? So, how was the ride? Well, Spinball isn’t a ride I overly rate, and today wasn’t really an exception to that rule, I’m afraid; spinning rides aren’t my favourite anyway, as I have quite a low tolerance for spin, and Spinball is quite a jerky ride, so definitely isn’t the most comfortable of experiences. Still, that’s more down to my personal preference than anything overly wrong with Spinball; it solidly fills a family thrill coaster hole in Alton’s lineup, and even if it isn’t my personal favourite, I’m glad I got to ride it:



    After getting off Spinball Whizzer, I had a reride on Oblivion. The airtime wasn’t quite as strong this time due to me getting a pretty thorough stapling into the restraint, but the ride was still excellent nonetheless:

    After my reride on Oblivion, I closed out the day with another ride on Wicker Man. I was seated in row 3 this time, and despite being very near the front, the ride was still relentless and brilliantly thrilling and fun like it had been earlier; Wicker Man is a ride that always clicks for me regardless of where I’m sat:

    After that, I left the park and headed back to the Alton Towers Hotel:


    So, that was the first day of our trip to Alton Towers! The park was undeniably busy today, but I still got on 11 rides, which I was really chuffed with! I was also chuffed as always with how some of my favourites were riding; Wicker Man was as phenomenal as ever, and still easily my favourite on park, Oblivion seemed particularly awesome today, Thirteen was great fun, Nemesis was good… it was an excellent day all round!
     
    Thanks for reading! I’ll post the 2nd part tomorrow once I’ve had my 2nd day in the park!
  9. Matt N
    20th June 2022 (Alton Towers Day 2)
    We had Day 2 in the park today! We got up fairly early and as we were staying in the Alton Towers Hotel, we had somewhat of a head-start (or I did, anyway; my mum and Nan joined me later); even though Early Ride Time is no longer offered, the park opens its gates early to allow you to get to your first ride and queue for it before opening time, and staying in the hotel will naturally allow you to get here ahead of the regular day guests, which is always a bonus:


    As such, I decided to take advantage of this and head into the park at about 9:25am and head to an area that often gets long queues later on; Dark Forest. I started on…
    Rita
    Rita often gets a long queue later on, so I decided to give it a go early on. I watched the ride test for a bit, and I was one of very few people waiting in the area. As such, when the ride opened at around 10:05am, I discovered that I would be on the very first ride of the day, which is an achievement I’ve never had before! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 5, and the ride was more pleasurable than yesterday’s, with less rattle and some phenomenal airtime, as well as a launch that’s punchy as ever and absolutely supercharged pacing! Perhaps controversially, I do like Rita, and it was a great way to start the day:


    After Rita, I decided to tackle the other coaster in the area…
    Thirteen
    Like Rita, Thirteen was on a walk-on queue, so I decided I may as well give it a go while I was in the area. I wasn’t 100% sure of this, so wouldn’t like to claim that I was, but it looked as though I may have made the first ride of the day on Thirteen as well; the train in front of me was empty, and the station looked deserted when I arrived! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated directly on the back, and it was excellent; I once again experienced multiple moments of cracking airtime during the outdoor section, the twisty sections were great fun, the ride was blissfully smooth, and the indoor section was a good laugh as always! I‘ve got to say, I think Thirteen is definitely a back row coaster, based on my memories of the front:

    After Thirteen, my mum and Nan entered the park, and we attempted to ride Thirteen together. We got as far as the station, and I was even batched into the front row… but the ride broke down. We stood in the station for about 15 minutes or so, hoping that the issue would be resolved quickly, but they eventually closed the queue line.
     
    With that in mind, we left the queue. I initially went off to ride Oblivion, on an advertised 0 minute queue. However, the queue looked much longer than 0 minutes by the time I arrived in X-Sector, so I instead decided to rejoin my mum and Nan so we could all ride…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on an advertised 55 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. Interestingly, the queue only took 35 minutes as opposed to the advertised 55, which is always a bonus! Although this could have been in part due to a rather interesting quirk with the pre-show, where both the doors remained open. As such, no one watched it; we were just filtered straight through the room, and the show just started running to no audience while everyone was piling into the station! My mum and Nan were very happy that we didn’t have to watch it, and I have to admit that as much as I do like Wicker Man's pre-show, not watching it did shave off some time getting on the ride and make the experience less uncomfortable. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 8, and it was phenomenal; relentlessly fast and full of airtime just as it had been yesterday! We all thoroughly enjoyed it:


    After Wicker Man, I headed over to X-Sector to ride…
    The Smiler
    I hadn’t done The Smiler yet today, so I decided to give it a go. The advertised queue was 70 minutes, and it was spilling well into the pit, but I once again used my secret weapon... the single rider queue! But the question is; how much shorter would my queue be today? Well, today was where single rider really came into its own... that queue was walk on, and I waltzed straight into row 2! I actually felt a bit naughty using the single rider queue today, as it basically felt like I was using Fastrack without paying for it... even though single riding via the SRQ is technically allowed, it felt a bit wrong to walk onto the ride when the main queue was 70 minutes. But how was the ride? Well, I'm afraid it was similarly rough to yesterday's; definitely not the most enjoyable:



    After Smiler, I couldn't leave X-Sector without having a go on...
    Oblivion
    Oblivion was on a 25 minute advertised queue, so I decided to give it a go. I did wonder upon joining whether the queue might be longer than 25 minutes, as it was stretching all the way to the tunnel underneath the station where the Lord of Darkness talks about the psychological effects of Oblivion (the longest queue I've seen for it in a while). However... it only ended up taking 10-15 minutes, and this was due to some of the best operations I have ever seen on the ride; they were throwing shuttles out at a rate of knots, my measured throughput average for Oblivion exceeded 1,000 riders per hour for the first ever time, and on 5 shuttles, we were only stacking at the end for a few seconds at most (for some idea, seasoned visitors to Alton Towers will know that you typically stack for a long time on Oblivion). Phenomenal work! So, how was the ride? Well, I was on the front row, and I actually enjoyed it slightly more than yesterday's ride! The sustained airtime was once again phenomenal, but the sense of speed, while phenomenal everywhere, seemed slightly enhanced on the front, for some reason:

    After my ride on Oblivion, I met back up with my mum and nan, and me and mum rerode Wicker Man on an advertised 35 minute queue. Interestingly, we watched the pre-show this time; clearly the pre-show skipping on our first ride was just a one-time issue! The queue still only took 25-30 minutes, though, so that wasn't an issue by any stretch. As for the ride, I was seated in row 8 once again, and the ride was phenomenal once again:


    We then had some lunch before I wandered over to Forbidden Valley to ride...
    Nemesis
    Nemesis was on an advertised 25 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. This queue ended up being pretty accurate, possibly slightly understated, taking 20-25 minutes; always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 6 on an inner seat, and it was good, although slightly jolty in places. This wasn't a dealbreaker by any means, and I've ridden far rougher coasters, but it did detract ever so slightly from the ride for me:


    After Nemesis, I took a ride on the other Forbidden Valley B&M...
    Galactica
    Galactica was on an advertised 25 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. The queue was overstated, only taking 15 minutes in the end; always a bonus! The operations on Galactica were top notch this afternoon; the ride was running 3 trains and both stations, yet we didn't stack on the brake run at all. My throughput average for Galactica was 1,221pph, which was the highest I measured all trip; terrific work! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the back row, and as I said yesterday, it's not my favourite coaster; it's OK, but I do find the flying position inherently uncomfortable, and I'm also not a fan of the fly to lie, where it dumps you on your back for a sustained period. With that being said, however, the ride did feel a bit faster on the back, and bits of the layout itself are really quite good fun; it's just that I don't particularly enjoy that flying position at all:


    After Galactica, it was getting on for 2:30pm, and my mum and nan were wanting to head home. As such, we headed out the hotel entrance and closed out our day there.
     
    So in conclusion, we had a brilliant Alton Towers trip! It was great to get back to the park for my first 2022 visit, and I had many great rides! In particular, Wicker Man delivered as well as it ever did, with some of my best ever rides on it being had this trip, Oblivion was awesome, and Thirteen has gone up a fair amount in my estimations; it was unexpectedly brilliant this trip!
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you've enjoyed my reports!
     
  10. Matt N
    Matt N's Ode To Europa Park: A Review from my First Ever Visit
    For those of you that don't know, I recently returned from my first ever visit to Europa Park in Germany. I wrote a trip report series which can be viewed in earlier entries in this blog.
     
    Now I know that I did a brief summary of my thoughts on Europa Park at the end of my recent trip report series. However... now I've been back for a couple of days, I'm finding myself wanting to say a lot more than I said in that summary. It feels like I hardly scratched the surface of what I wanted to say about Europa in the closing summary of this trip report series. I apologise if this comes across a tad random or soppy, but I wanted to talk about Europa in more depth and talk about what I thought of it and why I fell in love with it, as both a way to inform the Europa regulars on here that having now been, I get it, as well as to reassure anyone who hasn't visited and is possibly a little sceptical as to whether Europa will be for them.
     
    So; Europa Park. Where do I begin?
     
    To say that I've wanted to visit Europa for a while would be an understatement; ever since I livestreamed the GTAs back in 2014, when I was only 11 years old, and saw Europa Park get awarded the award for "World's Best Theme Park", I thought to myself "I need to go there". And then I read TowersStreet/EuropaStreet, where all the members absolutely waxed lyrical about Europa even back in 2015 or whenever I started lurking around there, my excitement intensified, and Europa Park became the first big bucket list place I felt like I needed to visit. I'll be honest, I did not know a huge amount about the park at this point, but I knew that everyone loved it, which was all the incentive I needed.
     
    I would always say to my parents about Europa Park, and their response was always "we'll take you when you're 18". Seeing as I was probably no older than 12/13 at the time, this seemed a very long way off. And when I finally turned 18 in July 2021, COVID had happened, meaning that the much mooted 18th birthday trip to Europa Park was unable to happen. I did get a nice trip to Legoland Windsor and Paultons Park, though, so every cloud has a silver lining, I guess!
     
    So it's safe to say that my first trip was a very long time coming. However, my parents did stick to their word, and finally ended up booking our trip for April 2022. The excitement began.
     
    However, I'll digress that after the trip was booked, my skepticism and trepidation began to grow. I'd often heard Europa compared to Disney (I like the Disney parks, don't get me wrong, but I never really fell in love with them), and I'd heard a number of reviewers say that EP was "mediocre" and "massively overhyped", particularly through the lens of thrills (I am personally quite thrill-centred when reviewing theme parks, although they're admittedly not the be all and end all for me). So I had very high expectations, but also a degree of trepidation. I was thinking "Will it really be as good as they all say? Will I even like it that much?".
     
    So, did EP live up to its insane hype, and were my years of wanting to visit worth it? Most definitely. I had phenomenally high expectations and hopes, and somehow, there was not one single thing about Europa Park that disappointed me. It truly is absolutely exceptional, in my opinion, and there are numerous reasons why.
    Ride Selection
    Let's start with one of the principle elements of any theme park; the rides! Europa Park's ride selection delivered and then some, in my view. Of all the theme parks I've been to, I honestly think Europa Park has the most well-rounded ride selection. By my reckoning, it has at least one really excellent ride in each category of coasters, dark rides and water rides, with a plethora of others accompanying it, and that's without even getting onto the array of other wonderfully random attractions; Europa has you covered whatever your taste in rides is and however high your appetite for thrills is!
     
    Yes, the park isn't the most thrilling theme park on earth, with drop towers, huge RMCs and nuts launch coasters rammed around every corner, but I think the thrill coasters that EP has are plenty satisfying enough to quench any coaster lover's thirst for thrills; I'm reasonably thrill-centred, and they were certainly more than enough to leave me feeling fulfilled! I know that none of Europa's thrill coasters are especially intense per se, but what they are is extremely fun and rerideable. And as someone who values fun and rerideability in a coaster more than out-and-out intensity, that suited me down to the ground! Silver Star, my favourite coaster at EP, is truly euphoric and absolutely breathtaking, in my view; an epically fun and intensely rerideable coaster with phenomenal airtime, and it shot straight into my #2 spot! Wodan, a close second for me, is also truly exceptional; it's absolutely demented, packed with airtime, and is so much fun, in my opinion! And Blue Fire is also a really excellent ride; with how I've been referring to it as "a distant third among Europa's big 3", you'd be forgiven for thinking that I didn't think much to it, but that couldn't be further from the truth. BF is great fun, in my opinion, with some lovely hangtime, a punchy launch, and a smooth ride experience, and that last inversion is absolutely amazing! When a ride like Blue Fire is being relegated to "distant third" status, I know that a park's thrill credentials are delivering for me, and I was slightly stunned at how one park can have two coasters as phenomenal as Silver Star and Wodan (both in my top 3!)!
     
    Even pushing aside Europa's big 3 thrill coasters; many of Europa's plethora of sideline coasters are really great fun, and will put a smile on your face whether you're a young child, a teenager or a grandparent! And the park also has some really big hits, with truly universal appeal, in terms of dark rides and water rides as well; Piraten in Batavia is a truly spectacular dark ride (my favourite outside of Florida, and I like it a fair bit more than the original POTC at Magic Kingdom), and Voletarium is also a really solid, well-done dark ride as well. And I thought Fjord-Rafting was a really strong water ride too (I'd probably say it's my favourite water ride outside of Florida). Not to mention that for every big-ticket ride, there are about 5 smaller ones; in my opinion, one of the wonders of Europa Park is how many smaller sideline attractions there are. And in many cases, I don't think relegating them to "sideline attraction" status does them justice at all, because EP still weave a lot of magic and care into them; many of the smaller dark rides, for instance, are really quite fun in their own right, and even though some admittedly aren't as strong as others, in my view, something about stumbling across that type of attraction is really quite wonderful, and their presence makes EP's lineup so expansive, and you're never, ever short of things to do! I spent 3 full days at Europa, and there are still plenty of attractions I didn't experience and plenty of nooks and crannies I didn't even set foot in; it's truly massive!
    Theming
    Let's now talk about Europa's theming. I was unsure how well themed Europa would be, as they don't have the same types of budgets as the big duo of Disney & Universal, so I have to admit that I was stunned at how beautiful Europa is. Some of the vistas are absolutely stunning, and the general standard of theming and presentation at Europa is absolutely impeccable, in my opinion! Every crevice of Europa Park is packed with charm and detail; even many of the sideline attractions have stunningly detailed queue lines and great theming! For my money, Europa's general standard of theming is easily on par with the big 2; while they never hit quite the same highs as Disney & Universal in terms of raw scale and detail of themed vistas, I'd argue that the park is very consistent, and is easily on par with, if not more strongly themed than, a surprising proportion of Disney & Universal stuff. I also found that the themes really resonated with me; perhaps controversially, I've always liked the world style of theming, and I really enjoyed World Showcase at Epcot. When I left Epcot in April 2019, my thought was "World Showcase was great! If you removed Future World from the equation, gave each country a bit more depth and added considerably more rides, I think you'd have a truly epic park!". And as I was walking around Europa Park, I realised; 3 years ago, I was essentially describing Europa when describing the Epcot of my dreams. Theming-wise, I think the park is easily on par with World Showcase, and when you have countries with far greater depth and the amazing ride selection that Europa has, then I think 2019 Matt N was right; it did make a truly epic park!
    Atmosphere/Warmth
    Another thing that makes Europa great in my opinion is the atmosphere. I'm not someone who likes busy places, so with Europa being a 6 million a year theme park, I was unsure if I'd find it too crowded for me, but I found Europa to have a consistently relaxing and wonderfully pleasant atmosphere throughout, which made the park absolutely wonderful to be in, in my opinion; I never once felt uncomfortable within Europa Park! Adding onto this point, I found the whole place to have a wonderfully warm feeling about it throughout that I can't quite place my finger on; it almost reminded me in many ways of somewhere like Paultons Park, and I found it very heartwarming! I don't know quite what causes it, but the place feels very warm, special and magical throughout; "magic" is a cliched term within theme parkery by now, but I genuinely felt a very true sense of magic within Europa, and even setting foot in the place put a huge smile on my face; it's just so nice to be in!
    Efficiency/Operations
    I somehow haven't even mentioned the efficiency yet. My word; they don't mess around, do they? On the whole, Europa is a phenomenally well oiled machine, and that's perhaps most evident when you set foot into their coaster stations. It feels like you hardly have time to blink between sitting down and the train being dispatched; the hosts are literally running up and down the platforms, in some cases, and queues move phenomenally fast as a result. I attempted dispatch timing, and my results ended up being very unreliable, as you're never stood still long enough to get a good reading! With very limited levels of Fastrack compared to the average theme park also being added into the equation, queues that look massive do not take long at all; me and my mum rode Silver Star one day when the queue was bursting out of the Mercedes-Benz Hall and through the outdoor switchbacks, and we guesstimated that this queue would ordinarily be in the ballpark of an hour. It only took 15 minutes. Talk about efficient!
     
    Before I ramble too much (as I'm conscious that I've already rambled quite a bit), I'll just conclude by saying that the key thing I love about Europa is that it is a true chameleon of a theme park. More so than anywhere else I've ever visited, it is well and truly shape-shifting; it can be whatever you want it to be at a given point in time. You want to endlessly reride coasters? You can do that! You want to discover dark rides and go on a world-class journey of immersion? You can do that! You want to just relax and take in pleasant, well-themed surroundings? You can do that! You want to eat & drink from various different outlets? You can do that! Europa Park just says "yes" to absolutely everything and delivers upon whatever your demand is extraordinarily well; you can spend a day focusing on just about anything at Europa Park, and every day will be equally fulfilling! Most theme parks I've been to seem to hone in on either thrills or immersion, but Europa Park is a wonderful cocktail of both, and I truly love that. I find it absolutely amazing how I can go from repeat riding 2 coasters in my top 3 to experiencing wonderfully themed dark rides to just strolling along taking in pleasant, well-themed surroundings all in the same park; that is no mean feat, but Europa somehow pulls it off!
     
    So the big question is; after all the hype and obscenely high ratings, is Europa my favourite theme park I've ever visited? I can answer that rather decisively; yes. Of what I've visited, Europa Park is my favourite theme park in the world. Don't get me wrong, Islands of Adventure in Orlando, my previous favourite, is an absolutely phenomenal theme park, with an amazing ride lineup and exceptional theming making for a truly impeccable theme park experience that never stops giving and always feels well and truly magical, but Europa just nails every single aspect of theme parking, and is just so expansive and wonderful and consistently high quality in thrills, theming and everything else in between that it's absolutely unrivalled within the sphere of theme parks I've been to, in my opinion. I may have only visited once, but I got it and I felt the magic right from the off; it is a truly stunning theme park, and one I've truly fallen in love with. I can't wait for my next visit!
  11. Matt N
    29th April 2022: Europa Park Day 3
    Today was the final day of Europa Park awesomeness! We started a bit earlier today, opting to head in for ERT, and my mum had actually looked at the map and jotted down a plan of action for today, so we certainly had no shortage of things to do!
     
    My mum and I headed on into Europa at slightly after 8:30am this morning, with my dad joining us a touch later. As with both of the previous days, we used the hotel entrance, accessed via El Andaluz:

    The first ride in our plan of action was…
    Alpenexpress
    Alpenexpress was first on our action plan, and it had a walk-on queue, so we decided to give it a go. So, how was it? Well, we were seated in row 7, and it was a really good, fun powered coaster, just like it was on Wednesday. One thing I forgot to mention about this that I found really interesting is that they do not do physical restraint checks; they must clearly have a lot of trust in their ride system. That’s not an issue by any means, but I certainly found it interesting:


    After that, my dad wasn’t quite ready yet, so we had another ride on Alpenexpress while waiting for him to arrive. We were seated in row 10, and it was again great fun!
     
    After that, my dad arrived, and we headed over to Holland to ride…
    Piraten in Batavia
    Piraten in Batavia was on a walk-on queue, so we decided to give it a go. After enjoying it yesterday, we were keen to do it again during ERT this morning. So, how was it? Well, it was still an excellent dark ride; I was noticing all kinds of details I didn’t notice the first time, and as an overall package, I’ll concede that it’s absolutely spectacular, with so many different types of effects and theming blended together seamlessly. I don’t think it’s quite my favourite dark ride I’ve ever done (many of the Universal Orlando ones are still something else entirely), but it’s certainly in the upper echelons of the dark rides I’ve ridden. If I ranked dark rides, it would certainly be top 10 material, and I have no qualms about saying that of what I’ve done (Europa, the UK and Florida), it is easily my favourite dark ride outside the state of Florida. A really rather magical ride that I’ve been thoroughly impressed with both times I’ve ridden:

    We actually broke down on Piraten in Batavia, however. As such, we were stuck in the ending scene for around 15-20 minutes. I’ll admit that it was very interesting being stuck on the boat within the restaurant scene; the restaurant was totally empty, which made it rather eerie!
     
    After getting off Piraten in Batavia, our plan next saw us heading to…
    Blue Fire
    Blue Fire was on a mere 5 minute queue, so me and my dad decided to give it a go (mum declined, as she didn’t like it on Tuesday). As it turned out, 5 minutes was a slight overstatement, as me and my dad literally had a one train wait; always a bonus! So, how was Blue Fire? Well, we were seated in row 6, and it was really good fun, with some nice hangtime, a smooth ride, and that last inversion still being rather brilliant! However, I did notice that while the ride overall is very smooth, there are 1 or 2 slightly weird transitions on Blue Fire that did hurt my head a touch; hardly a deal breaker, but definitely something I noticed and something that detracted ever so slightly for me. Nonetheless, Blue Fire was a fun ride that I really enjoyed:

    After Blue Fire, we tackled the other roller coaster in Iceland…
    Wodan Timbur Coaster
    Wodan was on an advertised 30 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. It ultimately ended up feeling like it may have been a little longer than 30 minutes, but I wasn’t 100% sure. So, how was the ride? Well, we scored our first back row Wodan ride of the trip (the only one of the big 3 I hadn’t scored back row on), and it was phenomenal! However, I don’t think sitting directly on the back made an awful lot of difference on Wodan compared to something like Wicker Man, where it elevates the ride by a surprising amount; the back felt very similar to the other rides I had. Still, it was exceptional, and we all loved it:

    After Wodan, we ambled steadily over to a new ride we hadn’t done yet…
    Fluch der Kassandra
    Fluch der Kassandra was on our hit list for today, and it was on a mere 5 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. One thing I immediately noticed as soon as we entered the ride is that unlike the other 2 Madhouses I’ve done (Hex and Haunted House Monster Party), the ride had no pre-show whatsoever; you were batched straight onto the ride. I think I was able to grasp the basic gist of the story, however. So, how was the ride? Well, it was perfectly OK, but I’d definitely say it was the weakest of the 3 Madhouses I’ve done, personally. Rightly or wrongly, I did feel that the lack of any pre-show took a little something away for me, and the ride itself didn’t seem quite as fun as the other 2 Madhouses I’ve done. It also seemed a bit more sickly than the other 2, which I found interesting. However, it was still a fun ride, and I did like certain little touches in there; for instance, the little “surprises” in the seating later on in the ride definitely caught me off guard and were a very nice touch:

    After Fluch der Kassandra, we headed a short distance to another re-ride from the previous 2 days…
    Silver Star
    Silver Star was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so we decided to give it a go. From the outside, the queue looked quite long, so we were thought it would take longer than 20 minutes. However, with Silver Star being the throughput machine that it is, the ride well and truly proved us wrong, with the queue ending up at 20 minutes or possibly even slightly less! The throughput on Silver Star  really is something to behold; most of Europa’s throughputs are pretty high, but Silver Star’s seems to be on a whole different level! Me and my mum were discussing it in the queue, and I think that that 15-20 minute queue had enough people in it that it would probably be close to an hour on a ride at any of the major UK parks; truly a testament to both B&M’s efficient design and Europa’s efficient operations! So, how was the ride? Well, we were seated in row 4, and it was excellent as always, however I was pretty stapled in, so I didn’t get quite as much airtime as on previous rides. Still, it was a phenomenal ride that I absolutely loved!
    (I apologise, as I realise I took no picture of Silver Star on this ride…)
     
    After our ride on Silver Star, we fancied a change in tempo to something a touch more relaxing…
    Euro Tower
    Euro Tower was on a mere 5 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. I was keen to get on this, as I was hoping to get some good aerial photographs of the park, particularly of some of the bits that are somewhat harder to photograph from ground level (for instance, Silver Star… I wanted to have some better photos of the ride than repeated photos of the entrance). So, how was it? Well, I thought it was a really nice, relaxing ride, and it offered some excellent viewpoints; here are some of the photos I took:




    After a relaxing ride on Euro Tower, we headed to Great Britain for something completely different…
    Abraka-Shakespeare: Reloaded
    We fancied trying a show, as we had not watched any yet. As such, we went to the 11:45am showing of this magic show in the Globe Theatre. I must say, the Globe Theatre is a surprisingly phenomenal replica of the true thing, and it did feel very British! Anyway, how was the show? Well, I won’t deny that from an objective standpoint, it was a very impressive show; some of the illusions were very impressive, and the overall production value was excellent! However, it did reinforce my previous belief that shows aren’t really my thing, so as such, I decided after this to opt out of watching the Spanish horse show with my parents later on. That’s nothing against the show we watched, as I thought it was rather impressive, but they’re not really my kind of thing on the whole:

    After the show, we sat down in France to eat some lunch. We once again ate from the boulangerie, but we tried some baguettes this time, and they were once again delicious!
     
    After eating lunch, I noticed that Silver Star was on a mere 10 minute queue. I couldn’t miss an open goal like that (My favourite ride in the park is a stone’s throw away and on a 10 minute queue? Get me in line!), so I dashed off alone and had a quick ride. I was seated in row 8, and it was phenomenal, with considerably more airtime than the earlier ride:

    After my awesome ride on Silver Star, I met back up with my parents, and we headed to ride…
    Cancan Coaster
    Cancan was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. The queue was distinctly shorter than it had been on Wednesday, which was a definite bonus; we were on quickly! So, how was the ride? Well, I really enjoyed it! I noticed many new details within the queue and ride that I hadn’t noticed on the previous ride, and the coaster itself was great fun and surprisingly thrilling as it had been the first time! Yes, this ride might not be big 3 level, but I think it’s a terrifically fun coaster, and the themed experience aspect of it is beautifully crafted from start to finish; everything has been thought about, and it’s absolutely seamless, and so well done as a themed attraction! Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Cancan Coaster, and my parents seemed to as well:

    After Cancan Coaster, we had a brief sit down to watch the fountains in France before heading to a different area to ride…
    Volo da Vinci
    Volo da Vinci was on a 10 minute advertised queue time, so we decided to give it a go. The queue took slightly longer than 10 minutes (more like 15-20), but I have to say that I was very impressed with the queue from a design standpoint. It’s very well themed, and this leads me on to a wider overall point I’ve been noticing over the last 3 days; Europa’s smaller attractions have almost as much effort put into them as their larger attractions, which I’ll admit really surprised me. When you see something like Volo da Vinci, or a smaller dark ride like Snorri Touren or Madame Freudenreich’s, having such a well designed and in-depth queue, I’ll admit it is a very pleasant surprise, and does make even the most mundane of attractions feel that little bit more special! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was a nice little ride for what it was! You got really good views, and the pedalling aspect was quite novel:


    After Volo da Vinci, we strolled through Germany for a bit, and decided to try something else slightly different…
    Marionetten Bootsfahrt
    We noticed that this ride (I apologise, as I’ve probably butchered the spelling…) had no queue whatsoever, and we thought it looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a go. I never even knew this ride existed prior to stumbling across it on our stroll, so it was a surprising one to discover! So, how was it? Well, I’ll admit it was rather weird, and slightly unnerving, but something about it was weirdly charming, and I thought it was a nice little ride to relax on:

    After the puppet boat ride, we decided to try another more relaxing ride…
    Panorama-Bahn
    Panorama-Bahn had no queue, and we noticed it was convenient for getting towards another ride we wanted to do, so we decided to give it a go. Anyway, how was it? Well, I thought it was a nice little train ride, with some very nice views of Europa’s various different areas:

    (I apologise, as I notice I didn’t take any photos on the ride…)
     
    We got off Panorama-Bahn in Great Britain, and from there, we decided to take a stroll through Austria and the wonderfully charming fairytale section in order to get over to…
    Arthur
    Arthur was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. We really enjoyed this yesterday, so were keen to give it another ride today. The queue was distinctly shorter than it had been the previous day, which was a definite bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, it was just as brilliant as it had been yesterday; the theming is incredibly well done throughout, and the coaster sections have surprising vigour! Yes, it might not be big 3 level, but it’s a really fun attraction that never fails to put a smile on your face:

    After Arthur, it was not far off being time for the Spanish horse show, so my parents headed over to Spain to watch that while I split off to do a few more rides.
     
    I examined the queue times, and my first port of call was Silver Star. I did this not once, but twice in a row, and on my first ride, I decided to queue up for the front row. I was unsure how it would ride up front, as some elements did seem like they’d benefit from being ridden at the back, but I’ve got to say that it was still absolutely phenomenal, and possibly my strongest ride on Silver Star yet at that point! You really got pushed over the big camelback hills in the first half in such wonderful fashion, with some truly sublime sustained floater, and even some of the elements I thought would be more suited to the back, such as the second half and the first drop, were still truly excellent! And surprisingly, it was similar to a launch coaster in that the sense of speed felt heightened up front; even though Silver Star doesn’t look overly fast from off-ride, it feels phenomenally fast when you’re on the front!
     
    I initially thought that the front was my favourite row on Silver Star, but my second ride was on row 8 and it was equally sublime, so then I started second guessing myself! You know a ride is good when you can’t decide your favourite row!
     
    After that, I went for a second ride on Cancan, on an advertised 15 minute queue. It was just as fun as earlier on, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
     
    After that, I then went back to Silver Star, and I enjoyed a further 2 rides. My one ride was in row 4, and my other ride was in row 6, and both were absolutely exceptional! I also got a certain sense of personal satisfaction because that took my ride tally on Silver Star for today to 6 rides, which took the record for the most rides I’ve had on one roller coaster in a single park day; the previous record holder was Swarm, where I had 5 rides on it in September 2021.
     
    Those were my last rides on Silver Star of the trip; they certainly ended my rides on that coaster on a high! However, I need to talk a little more about it before I move on. I have to say that the ride has grown on me over the course of my 3 days in Europa; it is truly sublime, the airtime is something else, it’s smooth and comfortable, it keeps its pace throughout, and I love it to bits! I also had plenty of rides on it over the last 3 days (10 in total), and that 10th ride had exactly the same impact as the first; every ride I had on Silver Star had me in complete shock and fits of laughter, and every ride gave me a true euphoric feeling of wanting to run straight back round. My rides on it today in particular made me grow very attached to it in a way I can’t quite explain, and as I was floating down the first drop and camelback hills, and being ejected off the MCBR, I was having truly scary thoughts. I was thinking to myself “is Mako really better than this?”. Yes, Mako is ever so slightly smoother than Silver Star, and the shock I had upon first experiencing that immense first drop and those phenomenal airtime hills will live with me forever and always make it a special ride, as well as one that ranks highly, but it’s been absolutely years now since I rode Mako (and I only rode 3 times, at that), and I have to say, Silver Star’s raw greatness was truly having an impact on me. I love how it keeps its pace and phenomenal airtime right to the end, and I love how every airtime moment is phenomenally impactful in its own special way, and I love how smooth and rerideable it is, and getting in the queue to ride it was truly making me feel a palpable buzz. I found it hard to tear myself away after my 6th ride; I could have kept going until ride close!
     
    With that in mind; I have had a change of heart. Mako’s had a good 6 years at number 1, and it’s still an epic ride, but until I ride it again, I think it’s been narrowly surpassed. Silver Star is my new number 1 roller coaster.
     
    Sorry about that… that bombshell sounded far better in my head than it looks on the screen…
     
    Anyway, back to my Europa day.
     
    After leaving Silver Star, I headed over to Iceland. However, I decided to have a slight change of tempo on the way and try something new…
    Schlittenfahrt Schneefloecken
    Schlittenfahrt Schneefloecken was walk on, and I hadn’t done it yet, so I decided to give it a whirl. I believe this is the ride that enthusiasts refer to as “Bench” (correct me if I’m wrong), so I was interested to give it a go. So, how was it? Well, it was slightly unnerving riding it on my own, but it was a perfectly charming little ride, if not anything earth-shattering:

    After Schlittenfahrt Schneefloecken, I ended my day with a ride on Wodan. I was seated in row 6, and it was phenomenal; it’s perhaps the most unhinged roller coaster I’ve ever been on, but it maintains immense rerideability!
     
    After that, I left the park for the last time this trip:

    I then met up with my parents again, and we headed to Hotel Colosseo for a delicious evening meal in Antica Roma, the Italian buffet restaurant:

    After that, the day came to a close.
     
    So all in all, I had a phenomenal final day at Europa! It was quite a different day to the first 2 in many ways, but still equally fulfilling, and I was very satisfied! As well as my “ride count on one roller coaster in a day” record being broken on Silver Star, I also broke my overall ride count record; I make my total count for the day to be 21 (previous record was 16), and if you need a reminder, I did the following rides:
    Silver Star x6 Wodan x2 Cancan x2 Alpenexpress x2 Blue Fire x1 Piraten in Batavia x1 Fluch der Kassandra x1 Euro Tower x1 Volo da Vinci x1 Marionetten Bootfahrt x1 Panorama-Bahn x1 Arthur x1 Schlittenfahrt Schneefloecken x1 I was very satisfied with that, personally!
     
    Thanks for reading! Tomorrow, we’re going to be spending a few hours exploring the Europa Park hotel resort, so my summary will probably be somewhat briefer tomorrow, but keep your eyes peeled for a report all the same!
  12. 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!
  13. Matt N
    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!
  14. Matt N
    11th September 2024: PortAventura Park Day 2 and Ferrari Land
    We had our second day today! Today, we headed back into PortAventura Park for another day of fun, and also headed into Ferrari Land to get on Red Force for the first time!
     
    Similarly to yesterday, we entered via the Gold River hotel entrance at a bit before 10am. It looked a little busier here today, and I did have some trepidation about whether it could be busy due to it apparently being a public holiday in Catalonia today, but we decided to initially try the park without Express once again and see how it went:


    We decided to tackle the park in a slightly different manner today, starting in China to knock off Shambhala and Dragon Khan early. As much as doing Uncharted first yesterday got us on the ride with a short wait compared to anything we saw at other points in the trip, we did note that as per the app, we ended up missing half an hour of Shambhala and Dragon Khan being incredibly quiet, so we thought that we should take advantage of that today…
    Shambhala
    Shambhala only had a very short pre-queue, so we decided to ride that first. This proved a good decision, as we only waited around 5 minutes for it; you can never complain about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the front part of the very back car, and it was sublime once again; you really feel the pull over the first drop and the hills in the back, the airtime is sublime, the speed is sublime, and everything about it is just wonderful! You’ve undoubtably heard me rhapsodise about Shambhala enough by now, so I’ll end my take there:



    After our ride on Shambhala, me and my mum headed to the other Chinese coaster…
    Dragon Khan
    Dragon Khan was on an advertised 10 minute queue time, so we decided to give it a go. This queue was if anything overstated, as we only waited 5 minutes for it; I would never complain about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in an outer seat on row 2, and similarly to yesterday, it was not a bad ride at all! It was maybe fractionally rougher than it was yesterday, but still nothing too bad overall, and the layout is excellent on there, with some brilliant inversions and great forces! My mum was not a massive fan, although that perhaps isn’t overly surprising given that she also doesn’t like things like Nemesis and Kraken:

    After Dragon Khan, I went in the single rider queue for another reride on Shambhala. I waited 40 minutes (exactly the same as the advertised queue time) and got dead centre in the train that time, but it was still sublime, and I noticed that you got stronger force going up into the hills sitting a bit further towards the front!
     
    I then met back up with my mum and dad, and we headed into SesamoAventura, an area we only briefly walked through yesterday, and did something a little more unique to our trip…
    Sesame Street: Street Mission
    Street Mission was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so we decided to take a ride on there. The queue time board was true to its word, as we waited exactly 20 minutes; it’s always quite satisfying when these things are bang on the nose! So, how was the ride? Well, I went in with somewhat low expectations and was unsure of what to expect other than that it was an interactive dark ride themed to Sesame Street… but this possibly ended up being the biggest positive surprise of the trip so far! Street Mission was an absolutely fantastic dark ride! The 3D technology worked very well and the screens were excellent, but there was also an abundance of physical theming that was blended in seamlessly with the screens, the simulator section at the end was excellent, and overall, it was just such a fun and well executed dark ride! Overall, we all thoroughly enjoyed Street Mission, and I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s my favourite interactive dark ride I’ve done (yes, I would even say that it beats out Men in Black at Universal); it was fantastic, and such a positive surprise! We’ve even talked about possibly doing it again tomorrow:



    After Street Mission, we further explored SesamoAventura, and as it was on a short queue, me and my mum did another ride to get the clean sweep of PortAventura Park’s coasters…
    Tami Tami
    Now as I don’t generally ride kiddie coasters, I was not originally expecting to do Tami Tami, but it was on an advertised 10 minute queue time, and it honestly didn’t look too embarrassing in person (it looked big enough to possibly qualify as a “family coaster” rather than a kiddie coaster), so me and my mum went to give it a go. The 10 minute advertised queue time was if anything overstated, with the queue taking more like 5 minutes, and we were on the ride within only a train or two’s wait. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the back row, and for a smaller coaster, it actually wasn’t half bad, with some good bits of speed! These coasters are what they are, but some of the turns were surprisingly good fun for a smaller coaster! Overall, then, Tami Tami wasn’t a bad kiddie/family coaster at all, and better than we were expecting; it did feel good to get the clean sweep of PortAventura Park’s coasters:


    After Tami Tami, we headed over to Mexico to do an attraction me and my dad had already done yesterday…
    El Diablo
    El Diablo was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so as my mum hadn’t done it and me and my dad thought that she might like it, we decided to take a ride on there. The queue moved quite quickly, with the ride attaining a decent throughput of around 1,000pph or slightly under, and we were on within 15 minutes. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in the front row, and similarly to yesterday, it was quite a fun mine train coaster with some fun bits of speed, albeit it was perhaps a tad jerkier than it seemed yesterday:

    After El Diablo, we went for some lunch before my mum and dad left me to my own devices in the park for a bit before we entered Ferrari Land in the evening. As we’d eaten lunch in Meditarranea and it was on a relatively short queue, I decided to take a ride on…
    Furius Baco
    Furius Baco was on an advertised main queue time of 30 minutes, but as the single rider queue looked better than it had yesterday, I decided to chance that today. It ultimately took around 25 minutes, which I don’t think is too bad given some of the queue times I had seen for the ride at points. So, how was the ride? Well, I was once again seated in an inner seat in row 4, albeit on the right side rather than the left this time, and my thoughts were very similar to yesterday. The launch is excellent, but I’m not a massive fan of it as it’s pretty rough; however, it was not quite as bad as some of my worst fears and it wasn’t quite rough enough to be in contention for my “worst coaster ever” like I know it is for some. I have only ridden it in the inner seats, however:


    After my ride on Furius Baco, I decided to hot foot it back towards the back of the park, taking a ride on another coaster with a short queue on my way there…
    Stampida
    Stampida was on an advertised 10 minute queue, so I decided to have a go on there. I picked the Red side, and the queue time board was true to its word, with me queueing exactly 10 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 6, and similarly to yesterday, I’m afraid I wasn’t the biggest lover of Stampida; the ride was pretty rough, and it also had very uncomfortable lap bar restraints that really dug in and constrained any kind of airtime potential:



    After my ride on Stampida Red, I made a beeline for Mexico, as Hurakan Condor, which had spent pretty much all of my time at PortAventura on a ridiculous queue, was advertising only a 10 minute wait. When I joined, however, it became abundantly clear that this queue was longer than 10 minutes, and while I initially stuck it out thinking that the queue didn’t look too long, I decided to bail after 15 minutes of practically no movement:


    After bailing on Hurakan Condor, I decided to head to Shambhala for another single rider queue reride. I waited marginally longer than the advertised queue time this time, waiting 35 minutes compared to an advertised 30 for the main queue, but when I got on, I scored the front car this time. Shambhala on the front was phenomenal, and possibly one of the best rides yet; the unencumbered sense of speed felt slightly stronger up front, and the sensation of getting pushed up into the hills was sublime:


    After my reride on Shambhala, the single rider queue was unfortunately too long for me to have another reride and get back to meet my parents in time. As such, I instead decided to check out Hurakan Condor again, but the advertised queue time was back up to 1h 20m, so I gave it a miss for today and instead rerode El Diablo on a 10 minute advertised queue time as I was walking by. I was seated in row 3 this time, and it was similar to earlier:

    After getting off El Diablo, I pondered doing a reride on Dragon Khan on my way back to Meditarranea to meet up with my parents, but it was already approaching 4:30pm, so I thought that the queue looked a tad too long for me to be able to ride it and walk back to meet my parents by our agreed meet up time of 4:45pm. As such, I decided to just steadily walk back to Meditarranea and close off my day at PortAventura Park there:

    That was not quite the end of the day, however… when I met back up with my parents, we went to head into Ferrari Land for our one visit of this trip. We were at the entrance a little before the opening time of 5pm, so we had to wait for a bit before they opened the gates:


    When we headed into Ferrari Land, we decided to join the masses and head into the pre-opening queue for…
    Red Force
    Red Force had a modest, albeit not small, pre-opening queue by the time we reached it, so as it was the primary draw of the park for us, we decided to join it and wait for the ride to open. We initially felt quite good about our prospects, as we were ahead of much of the pre-queue… but the ride unfortunately failed to open at the park opening time of 5pm. It was inactive for a while due to a technical fault, and 1h 10m of additional waiting passed before they started sending test trains around and a full 1.5 hours of additional waiting passed before the ride actually started operating with people on board at 6:30pm.  On a side note, I got to see them manually push the train slowly up the launch track and manually pull it slowly back along it, which I’ve never seen before; that was interesting, if nothing else:

    Once the ride opened, we ultimately waited around 35 minutes for it, which we didn’t think was too bad given that the back of the queue when the ride opened was pegged at 1h 30m. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 2, and it was an absolutely fantastic coaster; it was incredibly fast with a phenomenal sense of speed, and it had some great airtime at the top of the top hat! I also felt that the overhead lap bars were much more comfortable than the old Intamin OTSRs! However, if I’m being totally honest… I perhaps controversially prefer Stealth, and given that Red Force is the tallest and fastest coaster I’ve ridden by quite some margin, I was maybe expecting a tad more. The launch was a bit rattly towards the end, notably more so than on Stealth, but the main critique I had is that I think this ride style does miss a little something without the hydraulic launch. Red Force is undeniably a very fast coaster and provides an awesome sense of speed, but without the rapid acceleration of the hydraulic launch, I almost felt that the ride didn’t feel quite as fast as it actually was. Nonetheless, Red Force was still an absolutely fantastic coaster that I loved, and I’m very glad I got to ride it (I was honestly slightly doubtful that I would even get to ride in the initial moments of our Ferrari Land visit):



    After getting off Red Force, the ride had a 1.5 hour advertised queue and my parents had booked an evening dinner reservation in the hotel for later, so any notion of reriding it went out of the window. As such, I instead decided to try…
    Thrill Towers
    Thrill Towers was on an advertised 40 minute queue time, so being a fan of a good drop tower, I decided to have a ride on there. The queue ultimately only took 20 minutes, as a second tower that was initially closed reopened while I was in the queue; you can never moan about that! But how was the ride? Well, I was allocated the shot tower side, and it was good fun, with a fun launch and some fun floaty airtime, but I think I’ve ridden better examples of the genre elsewhere:

    After I got off Thrill Towers, I met back up with my parents. I pondered doing something else, but our evening dinner reservation was looming, and Flying Dreams had a queue too long for us to ride it and get back to the hotel in time for dinner, Racing Legends was broken, and Red Force also had a queue too long for us to feasibly reride it, so we decided to call it a day there and head back to our hotel. Interestingly, we walked past the main entrance to PortAventura, which we hadn’t properly encountered previously:


    So, that just about wraps up our second day at PortAventura Park and our visit to Ferrari Land! I had a great day; PortAventura Park once again delivered, with Shambhala rerides being sublime, surprises like Street Mission being awesome, and the park generally being wonderful, and it was great to get into Ferrari Land and ride Red Force! Crowd levels also weren’t nearly as high as I’d feared despite it being a public holiday in Catalonia; I didn’t feel that the crowd levels and queues were an awful lot different to yesterday, and I was still perfectly fine without any form of Express Pass.
     
    In terms of Ferrari Land; I admit that my experience there was probably discoloured by waiting an extra 1.5 hours for Red Force to open and not spending an awful lot of time in there, but my opinions on it are very, very mixed. What’s there is excellent; Red Force is an absolutely superb headline coaster, and there’s also some lovely theming throughout the park. However… there frankly isn’t nearly enough of it. Ferrari Land is a very small park, and with only one real headline attraction, I think it is much too small for a stand-alone theme park; Red Force is basically the sole noteworthy attraction. It would have worked far better as an additional themed area of the main park, in my view. I also take issue with the way in which it is operated in some regards. I think the model of opening it in the evening from 5pm-10pm, while a nice idea on paper, causes issues because it causes practically everyone in the resort to converge on Red Force at once when the main park closes, which makes the queues for it very long and means that it struggles to handle the demand.  I also take issue with you only being allowed one visit to Ferrari Land in the package holiday deals; I feel that it would work better if they operated an unlimited 2-park park hopper ticket, similar to what Universal does, as then you could mix and match PortAventura Park and Ferrari Land more freely. Nonetheless, Red Force is excellent, and the park has some nice thematic foundations, so if PortAventura can expand and develop it in the years to come, many of these points will become moot.
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this report! Tomorrow, we’ll be heading into PortAventura Park for our final day there before heading home, so keep your eyes peeled for that report!
  15. Matt N
    8th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 2
    We had our second day at the park today! Staying in the hotel naturally gave us an advantage, and I had a particular advantage this morning as I headed in alone at about 9:15, therefore I had plenty of time to get to my first ride of the day. That hotel entrance remained a phenomenal secret weapon as it had been the previous day:

    If you’ve read many of my Alton Towers trip reports before, you’ll know that a common strategy of mine when greeted with a pre-opening Alton Towers is to start in Dark Forest and ride Rita first thing. It’s at the back of the park, but also has low capacity and often holds a substantial queue later on, so getting it done early eliminates a substantial amount of waiting. I attempted to implement this strategy once again, but sadly, Rita was experiencing difficulties, and I was informed by the ride host that it would be opening late:


    With this in mind, I instead decided to get in a pre-opening queue nearby:

    This queue was for…
    Thirteen
    Thirteen’s pre-opening queue appeared quite long, but I thought I might as well join it seeing as I was in Dark Forest and it was the only other ride I could start on in that area. Thankfully, this queue was not nearly as long as it initially appeared, only taking around 15 minutes. So, how was Thirteen? Well, I was seated in row 4, and it was really good fun just as it had been yesterday; in fact, it seemed a bit more fun today, with a little bit more airtime in the outdoor section:

    After Thirteen, I retried the other coaster in the area…
    Rita
    Rita was on an advertised 10 minute queue, so I decided to give it a ride while in the area. Rita was the only one of the big 7 I hadn’t ridden yesterday, so I was looking forward to giving it a go. So, how was the ride? Well, it was pretty good fun; perhaps controversially, I do really enjoy Rita! I was seated in the back row today, and while it had a little bit of a rattle, this was certainly not a deal breaker, and the ride sensations themselves seemed awesome today; the airtime over the first twisted hill was unbelievable, and the pacing was absolutely turbocharged throughout! Overall, Rita was good fun today, and I’m definitely glad I gave it a ride:

    After Rita, we headed over to another coaster elsewhere that had a short queue…
    Oblivion
    Oblivion had an advertised queue time of 0 minutes, and we thought that this was an opportunity far too good to pass up! As promised, the queue was very short indeed, and strong operations on 2 stations meant that we were on the ride in very little time at all! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was absolutely cracking; the speed was exceptional, the ride was smooth, and a loose OTSR made for some excellent airtime! I do love Oblivion, and today’s ride was very fun indeed:


    After Oblivion, I split off from my parents and tried the other coaster in the area…
    The Smiler
    Even though The Smiler was on an advertised 100 minute queue and I’m not its biggest fan, I decided to give it a go for one reason; that single rider queue! I know I’ve talked about it a lot lately, but the SRQ really is a game changer on this ride, and I’m far more tempted to give Smiler a go if I can get on it in very little time. I must say that “how much queueing time can I shave off by using Smiler’s SRQ?” is becoming an increasingly fun game, and it was one that very much worked in my favour today, as I only waited around 15 minutes in spite of the 100 minute advertised queue time! So, how was the ride? Well, I’ll afraid to say it wasn’t that pleasant for me at all; I was seated in row 3, and I’m afraid it seemed to give me an incredibly thorough bashing today compared to yesterday’s ride. I came off with an incredibly sore neck and a definite headache:


    After Smiler, we headed towards the lakeside. Me and my mum had drinks and ice cream while my dad attempted to get a hole in one on the £1000 golf challenge… he sadly couldn’t win £1000 on this occasion. After that, we initially headed to Wicker Man, but the queue time had risen to 80 minutes by the time we got there, so this plan was quickly foiled.
     
    We instead decided to head over and ride…
    Galactica
    Galactica was on only a 20 minute advertised queue, so we thought we’d have a ride. I’m not sure the queue even took that long, to be honest; it was very quick, which is a definite bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 5, and it was actually quite similar to yesterday’s; not my favourite ride on park, but smooth and actually not too bad at all, all things considered:


    After Galactica, we decided to try the other coaster in the area…
    Nemesis
    Nemesis was on an advertised 30 minute queue time, so we decided to give it a ride. The queue was stretching a fair amount into the extensions, so I did wonder if this was a bit understated, and it did ultimately take about 45 minutes. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 5, and it was pretty good, although it seemed a little bit rougher than it did yesterday:



    After Nemesis, we headed back to a ride we’d tried to do earlier…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on an advertised 45 minute queue time, so we decided to take advantage of the substantial drop compared to earlier. I initially thought that this was somewhat overstated, as it only took us 30 minutes to reach the baggage hold and the waiting area for the pre-show, but the advertised time turned out to be fairly accurate, as it somehow took us 15 minutes to get through the pre-show area and queue through the station. Anyway, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 6, and it was phenomenal; fast, airtime-filled, and overall very fun and rerideable! As I said yesterday, Wicker Man always delivers for me, and is definitely a coaster that I like an awful lot more than I think I probably should:

    After Wicker Man, we had time for one final ride…
    Runaway Mine Train
    Runaway Mine Train was on an advertised 30 minute queue, and we hadn’t ridden it yet this trip, so we decided to have a go on it. The queue initially didn’t look too long, but looks were a bit deceiving here, as I later ascertained that the entire queue was open, and it ended up taking 45 minutes. Anyway; how was the ride? Well, we were seated in row 16, and it was good fun; even though it’s on the less intense end of the spectrum, RMT is a good bit of light hearted fun that never fails to put a smile on my face! It’s a definite guilty pleasure of mine; the intensity of that helix into the tunnel never fails to surprise me:

    After our ride on Runaway Mine Train, it was past 3pm, so we thought it was a good time to head back home.
     
    So, that concludes our 2 day trip to Alton Towers! I had a great time; even though my last visit was a mere 2 months ago, I do always enjoy a trip there, and it was great to get back on some of my favourites! It was also nice to stay in the Alton Towers Hotel again; I do always enjoy it there!
     
    Thanks for reading! I’m not sure where I’ll be reporting from next, but I know that a new trip report from me shouldn’t be too far away!
  16. Matt N

    Thorpe Park 10th September 2022

    By Matt N,


    Thorpe Park
    Hi guys. Today was, interestingly, my first visit to Thorpe Park of the season; by my usual standards, September is quite late in the season for me to be visiting Thorpe for the first time! Today was also the return of my solo theme park tripping; as with last September, my parents’ love of professional golf was greatly useful, as they were going to watch the championship at Wentworth and offered to drop me at Thorpe for the day.
     
    We left early and made very good time; entry was very prompt, and I was in well before opening:




    Once the park opened, I headed to my first ride…
    Nemesis Inferno
    Nemesis Inferno was on a walk-on queue, so I decided to start my day there. As promised by the queue times board, it was deserted and I waltzed straight onto the second train of the day; always a bonus! So how was the ride? Well, I was seated on the outer seat of the back row, and I’ve got to say that it was absolutely brilliant! It was glass smooth, had just the right amount of force, had great pacing, and was an overall awesome coaster; having ridden the original Nemesis at Alton Towers a month ago, I perhaps controversially prefer its Thorpe Park sibling, and by a fair bit. I should also add that the operations were awesome on this run, with no stacking whatsoever! All in all, Inferno was fantastic, and a brilliant way to start the day:



    After Nemesis Inferno, I decided to try another ride nearby…
    Detonator
    Detonator was on an advertised walk-on queue, so I decided to take a ride. The ride was very quiet as promised; I only waited one cycle! But how was the ride? Well, it was absolutely fantastic! Even though I’m not generally a huge lover of flat rides, a glaring exception to that is drop towers; I can’t get enough of a good drop tower, and Detonator stacks up very well against others in the genre for me! In spite of it not being the tallest drop tower in the world, that drop is phenomenally punchy! One interesting thing that was also happening today was that the ride host appeared to be overriding the regular ride soundtrack and doing their own spiel, holding us up there for quite some time; it almost reminded me of HangOver at HPWW! Overall, though, Detonator was very good; I thoroughly enjoyed it:


    After Detonator, I went to do another coaster…
    Stealth
    Stealth was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so I decided to take a ride. It took slightly longer than this in reality, taking more like 30 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well I’ve got to say that it was absolutely fantastic! I was seated in row 5, and the launch hit just as well as it ever does, the airtime was brilliant, and the ride also seemed a fair amount smoother than it was last year; it seemed really quite jolty at times last year, but it wasn’t overly rough at all today, which made it a fair amount more enjoyable for me! Overall, Stealth was awesome today, and has definitely shot up a fair bit for me:



    After Stealth, I headed down towards Old Town to go on another coaster…
    Saw The Ride
    Saw was on an advertised 30 minute queue, so I decided to head over there and have a go on it. The advertised queue time absolutely skyrocketed before too long; it had hit 60 minutes by the time I reached the ride, and it quickly hit 120 minutes shortly after I joined the queue. However, I had a secret weapon up my sleeves… the newly added single rider queue! As anyone who’s read my recent Alton Towers trip reports will know, the single rider queue on The Smiler has been a very useful asset to me in terms of reducing queue time, so I was intrigued to see what it would do on Saw, particularly with a 120 minute queue time. It wasn’t quite as much of a remarkable silver bullet as Smiler’s, as I waited 40 minutes, but in fairness, I did only queue for 1/3 of the advertised main queue time, which I can’t really complain about! But how was the ride? Well, Saw isn’t really a favourite of mine, and today wasn’t too much of an exception, but in all fairness, my front outer seat ride was not exactly the worst ride I’ve ever had on Saw by any stretch. The first drop jolt got me pretty badly, and the ending was pretty rough, but the ride wasn’t too terrible other than those two sections. One thing I must commend about Saw that I’ve never really noticed before is that the ride actually has quite a bit of airtime; I can think of at least 3 pretty strong pops on there, and that drop off the MCBR gives off considerable shades of Silver Star! In reality, it is probably one of the strongest coasters for airtime in the UK, in my opinion; it’s a shame it’s so rough in places, as I think I’d really like it if it were smoother:


    After Saw, I decided to break up the coastering with a flat ride…
    Rush
    Rush was on an advertised queue time of 40 minutes, so I decided to have a ride on there. This ended up being pretty accurate; always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I may have talked above about drop towers being an exception to me not generally being a huge flat ride fan, but Screamin’ Swings are another notable exception; I really enjoy Rush, and today’s ride was no exception! I really like the gorgeous pops of floaty airtime at the top of each peak, there’s a great sense of speed in each trough, and it’s also nice and thrilling without being overly intense, which always gets me on side! Overall, Rush was great fun; it’s always a ride I thoroughly enjoy, and today was no exception! Perhaps controversially, I'd take it over either of the gyroswings I've ridden any day of the week, and it's not even close for me:


    After Rush, I had a reride on Nemesis Inferno, as it had a mere 40 minute queue. I was seated in row 2 this time, and it was every bit as good as earlier; Inferno is just an incredibly solid ride, in my opinion, and really good fun! It’s definitely one that has considerably grown on me over the years:


    After Inferno, I sat down to eat my packed lunch on a bench near to Derren Brown’s Ghost Train, timing the throughput of Detonator as I ate (I had a very good vantage point!).
     
    After that, I took a bit of a walk to my next ride…
    The Swarm
    The Swarm was on an advertised 40 minute queue time, so I decided to have a go on it. This queue ultimately ended up taking a bit longer, taking close to an hour in the end. But how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 5, and I’m sad to say that while enjoyable, it was probably one of the weakest rides I’ve had on Swarm. I like Swarm, don't get me wrong, but I don't really love it any more like I used to, and I think today's ride reinforced that. It is a slightly frustrating one for me these days; there are still many elements of it that I absolutely adore, but there are a few niggles that do take away from it a fair bit for me these days. The first is its smoothness; this wasn't too much of an issue today, as the ride was fairly smooth on my inner seat ride, but it's definitely not the glossy smooth ride it once was, and I've had outer seat rides that were really quite bumpy. The second is the fact that I always grey out for several seconds on the helix over the water when I never used to; I know that some people like this, so I'm probably being overly picky, but I don't personally find it an overly pleasant sensation, and it does take away from my enjoyment of the ride somewhat for me. The third, and to be honest probably the main one, is the vest restraints. I used to really like them when I was young, but I'm afraid to say I'm not particularly fond of them at all anymore, and they do detract from the ride a fair amount for me. I'm not personally a fan of how rigid they are and how much they tighten during the ride; they seemed to particularly detract today, even taking some of the sting out of that awesome final inversion. It's a real shame, as Swarm was my first real Thorpe Park love; it spent a 2 year stint as my number 1 coaster of all time (yes, had I joined the forums prior to riding Mako at SeaWorld Orlando in 2016, Swarm would have been the coaster I'd have gushed about endlessly!), and it's also my most ridden coaster of all time outside of Alton Towers (some of those Towers classics are in another league of ridership numbers, really...). And there are still many elements I really love about it; the sense of speed, particularly on that first drop, is absolutely phenomenal, and that last heartline roll over the station is just absolutely sublime! Overall, while my ride on Swarm was still enjoyable, I'm afraid to say that it fell a bit flat compared to some of my phenomenal experiences on it in the past. I know I probably come across very picky here, so I apologise for being overly harsh, but I cannot lie about my own thoughts:



    After my ride on Swarm, I headed for a reride on Stealth at an advertised 50 minute queue, which ended up being closer to 70 in reality. I was once again seated in row 5, and it was just as fantastic as it had been earlier; Stealth really was riding excellently today, and I've really fallen back in love with it! I really need to get back on the front row at some point... my one experience of the front row, in 2020, sticks out in my mind as being my most enjoyable ride on Stealth by a fair margin:

    After my ride on Stealth, I headed down to Lost City to ride...
    Colossus
    Colossus was on an advertised 50 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. Now anyone who has read my posts for a while will know that I do not hold much love for Colossus, but by this point it was one of the shorter advertised queues on park, and I also hadn't done it yet today, so I thought it might be worth giving it a spin. This turned out to be a slightly poor choice... because the queue ultimately took 110 minutes, meaning that I waited nearly 2 hours for Colossus and ultimately frittered away any opportunities to ride anything else today (I joined the queue at about 4:15pm, and by the time I exited the ride at about 6:05pm, I had to dash back to my parents in the drop off zone). Ah well; it can't be helped, and I'm sure that the ride staff were certainly trying their darnedest to shift the near 2 hour queue! But how was Colossus? Well, I'm afraid to say that I didn't enjoy the ride at all; I was seated in row 10, and it was incredibly rough and uncomfortable; I got very sore ears and a properly good headache out of the experience. I also find the cars/restraints extremely uncomfortable, and I'm not a fan of the consecutive series of slow heartline rolls. On the plus side, I think the layout of the first half is quite strong, and I did get a very, very slight tickle of airtime on the ride's airtime hill, which I've never had before! Overall, though, I do not find Colossus enjoyable at all; it's definitely one of my all time least favourite coasters. I apologise if that comes across harsh, as I know some of my reasons for disliking it are very picky, but I feel like honesty is the best policy when it comes to my opinions on these things:


    After Colossus, it was just gone 6pm and my parents were waiting in the drop off zone, so my day ended there:

    I had to rush out pretty abruptly, as I was informed that my parents only had 9 minutes left in the drop off zone... after I reached the car park, we all headed home.
     
    So, that sums up my day at Thorpe Park! I had a really good day; I was very pleased with my ride count of 9, and it was great to get back on some of my favourites! Inferno was awesome, Stealth was great, Detonator was fantastic, Rush was really fun, Swarm was good... there were loads of really good rides today! Thorpe is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, and today was no exception; I had a great day!
     
    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed my report from Thorpe Park! That's probably going to be my final trip report of the 2022 season (I don't see myself going anywhere else this year), so... trip reports wise, I guess I'll see you in 2023!
  17. Matt N
    19th June 2022 (Alton Towers Day 1)
    Hi guys. After having started 2022 with some slightly more unusual (compared to what I usually visit, anyway) parks, I today returned to slightly more familiar turf; Alton Towers, my most visited theme park of all time! My mum found a very good deal on an Alton Towers Hotel stay, with 1 night in a standard room with park tickets only costing £107pp, so we thought it would be an absolute no brainer to go and spend 2 days at Alton Towers! Interestingly, my Nan has also joined us for her first Alton Towers trip in 3 years (she came with us in 2019), with a ride on Wicker Man in her sights after it was closed on her 2019 visit (it was one of her most anticipated rides after we’d hyped it up).
     
    We left Gloucestershire at around 7:30am, with us getting to the resort at a little after 10am. One key upshot of staying in a resort hotel was that we were able to walk in through the hotel guest entrance, which I have never done before! As such, we were in the park by 10:30am:


    After entering, we headed to our first ride…
    Galactica
    Galactica was on an advertised 25 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. Interestingly, this queue ended up being vastly overstated, as we waltzed straight into the station and only had a one cycle wait; always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I’ve got to say that Galactica isn’t my favourite coaster, as I find the flying position and some of the extended elements on your back that come with it a bit uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem quite as uncomfortable as my last ride was, for some reason, which was good. Also, we got front row, which is always a bonus! Overall, while not my favourite ride, Galactica was all right, and a good way to start the day:


    After Galactica, I tackled the other Forbidden Valley B&M…
    Nemesis
    Nemesis was on an advertised 5 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. The queue times board didn’t lie; it was a station wait! So, how was it? Well, I was seated in a row 3 outer seat, and it was good! Just the right amount of force, no headbanging; great stuff! There was a light rattle, but this was very negligible and had no major impact on enjoyment. Overall, it was a great ride:



    After that ride, I actually decided to go straight back round again for another ride on Nemesis; with a queue that short, it would have been rude not to! This time, I was seated in row 4 on an outer seat, and unfortunately, there was some headbanging present on 1 or 2 of the inversions, as well as a bit more of a judder than the last ride, which detracted from it a tad compared to last time. Still, this impact wasn’t major, and the ride was still very enjoyable!
     
    When all is said and done; as much as I don’t rate Nemesis nearly as highly as I know many do, and inverts aren’t as much my kind of thing as some other types of ride, it is a cracking coaster, and I’m very glad they’re saving it. Many of my niggles with Nemesis at this point are more signs of age than anything inherently wrong with the ride, which I’m hopeful the retrack might go some way towards rectifying. I look forward to seeing how it rides when it’s been retracked!
     
    After Nemesis, we met back up, and we headed over to…
    Duel
    Duel was nearby and on a walk-on queue, so we decided to give it a go. My mum tried to coax my Nan on Duel, but to no avail; my Nan refused to go in, so it was just me and my mum. Interestingly, the ride actually broke down for around 5 minutes shortly after we sat down in our vehicle. This meant that even when the ride did restart, we crawled through the initial scenes at a staggeringly slow pace, with the themed audio being replaced by a continuous loop of “please remain seated; the ride will restart shortly”, which made for an… interesting experience, to say the least; the themed audio didn’t start until a good couple of scenes in! So, how was the ride? Well, given that there has been a considerable amount of discussion online surrounding the ride’s future and the state that it is currently in, I was expecting it to be pretty awful, with a lot broken… but I didn’t think the ride looked nearly as bad as online comments suggest. Sure, it wasn’t working perfectly (a few targets were broken, and my mum’s blaster cut out halfway through the ride), and it is perhaps showing its age a tad now, but all of the main jumpscares were working, and overall, I thought it was a good, fun ride that still delivered on its intended theme and premise very well; my mum commented on how she thought it was surprisingly scary, so it’s clearly still delivering its punches! The breakdown also benefitted my score in an unexpected way due to the slower speed giving me more time to rack up points in the initial scenes; as such, I got a new personal best of 11,500:

    After Duel, we met back up with my Nan, and we headed on a little further to ride…
    Runaway Mine Train
    Runaway Mine Train was on an advertised 25 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. This ended up being pretty accurate, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 10, and it was great fun! The ride kept up good speed throughout for a powered coaster, and that tunnel helix never disappoints! My Nan liked it as well; she commented on how “it’s faster than it looks”! Overall, I think RMT is a great, fun ride, and a definite guilty pleasure of mine; it’s definitely one of my favourite powered coasters, and a ride that definitely punches far above its weight in fun factor given its calibre, in my opinion:

    After Runaway Mine Train, we decided to head over to Mutiny Bay and warm up in Sharkbait Reef, as it was drizzling and getting surprisingly fresh at this point in the day given it’s the middle of June. It is a nice walkthrough to use as a 10 or 15 minute time killer; it’s well themed and has a surprising amount of animals in it:

    After Sharkbait Reef, we headed to a hotly anticipated ride…
    Wicker Man
    Wicker Man was on a 30 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. Now this was a hotly anticipated ride for everyone in our party; my mum and me, perhaps controversially, share it as a favourite ride on park, and my Nan was keen to ride after missing out on it on her 2019 visit; it was closed both days, and she’d been slightly bitter about it ever since! I was also very interested to ride Wicker Man again because since my last visit to Alton Towers, I have visited Europa Park and ridden Wodan, a larger GCI that really blew me away, so I was interested, and somewhat nervous, to see whether Wicker Man still held up for me. The queue time ended up being somewhat understated, with us ultimately waiting 45-50 minutes; the ride appeared to be struggling more than usual to maintain a consistent dispatch interval, and I think there may have been some form of reliability issues while we were waiting. Anyway, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 8, and I shouldn’t have been worried, because the ride was absolutely phenomenal; that was easily one of the best Wicker Man rides I’ve ever had! The ride was absolutely relentless, and had absolutely stacks of airtime; there were so many bits where I was hurled out of the seat brilliantly, and I wasn’t even on the back! The ride was brilliantly smooth as well, and really comfortable as woodies go; perhaps surprisingly given that I’ve now ridden Wodan, the ride honestly fared better in my memories than I’d remembered from my previous visit, and I’d genuinely say that there’s less of a gap between Wicker Man and Wodan than I’d previously thought! I’d still give Wodan the edge, as I think it does have slightly stronger airtime and a certain dementedness that Wicker Man can’t quite match, but there’s not tons in it by any means; Wicker Man was phenomenal, and my Nan thoroughly enjoyed it as well:



    After Wicker Man, we sat down and ate lunch for 20 minutes or so before I headed off to ride…
    Oblivion
    Oblivion was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. I split off to do this while my mum and Nan were finishing lunch, as my mum hates Oblivion with a passion and my Nan instantly ruled it out on the basis of how thrilling and intense it looked. The queue only took 15 minutes instead of 20, which was a definite bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, it was fantastic; I do absolutely love Oblivion, and today’s back row ride was no different; the sustained air off the drop was absolutely sublime, and the sense of speed in the tunnel was truly unrivalled! Not to mention, the bonus airtime pop into the brake run delivered a surprising amount as well! Overall, Oblivion was running very well indeed, and it truly cemented the ride’s high rating for me; I apologise if this is controversial, but it’s my favourite UK B&M:


    After Oblivion, I briefly met back up with my mum and Nan before once again splitting off to ride…
    The Smiler
    The Smiler was on an advertised 30 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. As I was riding alone, I decided to do something I’ve never done on Smiler before, and use a benefit very seldom seen at Merlin parks these days; I used the single rider queue! As such, I ended up halving the advertised queue time, only waiting 15 minutes as opposed to the advertised 30; great stuff! So, how was the ride? Well, I was situated in an outer seat on the front row, and I’m afraid it wasn’t one of the more pleasurable rides I’ve had on The Smiler. It did seem quite rough for a front row ride, with a fair few head bashing jolts, and when combined with the fact that the ride makes me feel somewhat strange anyway even when it’s riding smooth, it did leave me feeling a bit battered and bruised getting off. This might not have been helped by the fact that the restraint was surprisingly tight on my… sensitive area, and it got a proper walloping during one of the jolts, which did leave me feeling somewhat in pain getting off. Smiler is a ride I really want to like, and I do try to go on it with an open mind every time I ride it, as I do like the idea of the layout for what it is and I think it’s a very inspired piece of design, but I’m sorry to say that I never really warm to it, and that was exacerbated today with the fact it wasn’t overly comfortable either:



    After Smiler, I met back up with my mum and Nan, and we headed over to ride…
    Gangsta Granny: The Ride
    Gangsta Granny was on a 30 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. Me and my mum thought that Gangsta Granny was a ride that Nan might like, so we were intrigued to see her response. The queue didn’t look very long at all at first glance, but did end up taking the advertised 30 minutes, as it moved rather slowly; I did not time the throughput, but it can’t have been very high. So, how was the ride? Well, I really enjoyed it; I thought it was a very nice dark ride when I rode it in 2021, and I thought the same today; there’s some very nice physical set pieces and some very nice screens as well, and I do quite like the ride system! Nan liked it as well! On a side note, did it always have a bubble machine? I swear it didn’t have a bubble machine in 2021…:



    After Gangsta Granny, we headed over to Dark Forest to ride…
    Thirteen
    Thirteen was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. This wait time ended up being pretty accurate, which is always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 8, and I have to say that that might have been the best ride I’ve ever had on Thirteen; it was absolutely brilliant! Thirteen, while never devoid of it by any means, was never a ride that I would have described as having overly strong airtime. But today, there were 1 or 2 pops of airtime that properly yanked us out of our seats and properly surprised me! The first drop was excellent, with a brilliant pop of airtime that had me well out of my seat, and there was an airtime hill elsewhere in the outdoor section that really threw me up in the air, as well as the odd fun tickles of floater air that Thirteen has always been good at providing! The ride also had good intensity throughout both the outdoor and indoor sections, as well as impeccable smoothness and comfort! Not to mention, that drop track and backwards section were a great laugh as always! Overall, Thirteen was fantastic; it’s a ride that has grown on me a lot over the years, and today’s ride took it up another notch in my estimations. Yes, it might not be the most intense coaster, but it is brilliant fun; I have grown to like it a lot:


    After Thirteen, my mum and Nan were growing tired and headed on to the hotel room, leaving me to my own devices for the reminder of the day. As such, I then went and rode…
    Rita
    Rita was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so I decided to give it a go. The queue ended up being slightly longer than advertised, instead taking nearly 30 minutes, but this wasn’t really an issue; I was hardly pressed for time. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 5, and it was good fun, although a touch more rattly than many of my recent rides, which detracted slightly. It must be said, though, that the ride remains a damn sight smoother and more enjoyable than I’d remembered it being in years gone by; the rattle that it had today was more a minor niggle than a true dealbreaker like its pre-2016 roughness used to be for me. And putting that aside, I actually think Rita has a surprising amount going for it. Yes, the layout isn’t the most interesting, but the launch is brilliantly punchy, the ride is fast paced, and an often overlooked element of Rita that I think really delivers is its airtime. There are 2 or 3 legitimately strong moments of ejector airtime, and even though the ride has OTSRs, these still deliver! Overall, I had a good, fun ride on Rita; yes, the rattle detracted a tad for me today, but I still really enjoyed it overall, and I think it gets a very unfair amount of criticism, myself:

    After Rita, I went for a walk-on reride on Oblivion. I was once again seated in the back row, and it was once again awesome, with some biblical sustained air and speed:

    After my Oblivion reride, I closed out the day with a reride on Wicker Man. Even though I was seated in the middle, the ride was just as phenomenal as it had been earlier; the pacing was relentless, and I was almost standing over some of the airtime pops! It was a truly brilliant ride to close out the day with:


    After my ride on Wicker Man, I made my way to Towers Street and exited the park to head back to the Alton Towers Hotel for my first stay in 3 years. Interestingly, we were upgraded to a Moon Voyager Room in spite of having only booked a Standard Room, and I’m certainly not complaining; the room is lovely:


    After a sit down in the hotel for about an hour and a half, we headed back down the golden path for an evening meal at the Rollercoaster Restaurant. I’ve dined at this restaurant 3 times now, and I absolutely love it; it’s such a brilliant novelty, the food is perfectly nice for what it is, and it’s possibly one of Alton Towers’ greatest nostalgia moves, in my opinion; all the old concept art and footage of coasters is absolutely captivating:


    After our Rollercoaster Restaurant meal, we headed back to the hotel and closed out our day.
     
    So in conclusion, we had a brilliant day at Alton Towers! I got a fair amount done (14 attractions in total), and there were some brilliant rides ridden! Wicker Man was phenomenal, and on absolute top form on both rides, Oblivion was fantastic, Thirteen was surprisingly brilliant… I could go on, because there were so many great rides today!
     
    Thanks for reading! Join me tomorrow for Day 2 of our trip!
  18. Matt N

    Drayton Manor 9th June 2022

    By Matt N,


    Drayton Manor
    Hi guys. Today was a rather exciting day; my first visit to Drayton Manor in 4 years, and my first ever solo train trip to a theme park! I was keen to do this after noticing that my university train route (Lydney-Cheltenham Spa) had trains running directly to Drayton Manor’s nearest station, and I’m so glad I did it! It was one heck of a day, so let me kick off right from the beginning!
     
    Today started quite early, with a 7:24am train from Lydney, my local train station, to Wilnecote, the nearest train station to Drayton Manor. This took around 1h 40m, and all went well. Interestingly enough, this was my first ever time travelling north of Birmingham New Street on the train (albeit only slightly north of it):



    After getting off the train, I did a roughly 40 minute walk to the park, and got there at around 9:45am. The walk was very easy, and left plenty of time before opening:




    After a brief 45 minute wait, I was admitted into the park, and I headed to my first ride. I initially pondered doing the new Vikings area first, but I ultimately found myself stumbling onto…
    Apocalypse
    Apocalypse was on a practically walk-on queue (only a group of 4 were in front of me), so I thought it would be rude not to give it a go! One of the things bringing me to Drayton in 2022 was this ride’s final year, and sadly, I think you can tell that the ride is coming to the end of its life. Of the 5 towers, only 1 sit-down tower was operating (the others looked like they were completely broken and hadn’t operated in some time), and the queue never got above 1 cycle or so all day; the ride was often waiting for the tower to fill. Putting all this aside, though; how was the ride? Well, as much as I’ve never entirely gotten the enthusiast hype around Apocalypse, I’ve got to say that it was awesome; the drop was really good and punchy, and on the whole, it was a real rush, and a great way to start the day! Most interestingly of all, no one joined the queue after me, so I rode Apocalypse completely on my own; I was legitimately the only one in the entire ride area, which was quite surreal:

    After Apocalypse, I headed to my first coaster of the day…
    Accelerator
    Accelerator was right there next to Apocalypse and appeared pretty empty, so I decided to give it a go. I waltzed straight onto this, and the host gave me free rein on where I wanted to sit; I headed for the back row. So, how was the ride? Well, I’ve got to say that it was a fun little coaster, and more enjoyable than I’d remembered! It was very smooth, packed a solid pace, and overall, it was just a good, fun ride! I’m not the biggest fan of shuttle coasters, but this was perfectly good fun:


    After Accelerator, I decided to head into the new for 2022 Vikings area to ride…
    Jormungandr
    Jormungandr was nearby and looked quiet, so I decided to give it a go. Yet again, I waltzed straight onto this; my Drayton Manor day was going very well so far, as I’d only been riding for 10-15 minutes and was already on my 3rd ride! I’ve got to say, I think they did a nice job with the Viking overlay of this ride; it looks much nicer than it did as the Buffalo, the music is really nice, and I really like the new train design! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 7, it was a perfectly fine little powered coaster; it does the job for what it is! There were some sections where it actually picked up some decent speed, although it did seem as though it was struggling somewhat in others; it felt like it was nearly going to stall up some of the inclines. Nonetheless, Jormungandr was a nice enough ride for what it was:



    After my ride on Jormungandr, I headed to my first of the new for 2022 rides…
    Loki
    Loki looked pretty quiet, so I decided to give it a go. This ride was where the advantages of being a single rider began to present themselves; I was admitted straight on, as there was a seat going spare! So, how was the ride? Well, I was intrigued to try it, as I’ve never done a Zamperla Nebulaz before, but I’m not sure I was the biggest fan, in all honesty. It is a really cool visual piece, what with all the arms interacting with each other, but it was quite spinny; some people might like that, but I have quite a weak stomach for flat rides, so while it wasn’t the most nauseating flat ride I’ve done by any means, it did make me feel a bit odd. Nevertheless, it was nice to experience such a unique ride type for the first time, and I can see the appeal of it; it's quite the visual spectacle, and good if you like spinning:


    After Loki, I did the other new flat ride in the area…
    Thor
    Thor was walk-on, so I decided to give it a try. I’d never ridden a Zamperla Disk’O before, so I was interested to see how it rode, although I’ll digress that my aforementioned low spin tolerance did make me apprehensive as to whether I’d enjoy it. So, how was the ride? Well, I’ve got to say that in spite of my apprehension, it wasn’t as bad as expected intensity-wise, and was actually quite enjoyable! I still wouldn’t have said it was one of my favourite rides, but it was enjoyable, and well within my low spin tolerance; certainly not as bad as it looks, for my money:


    After Thor, I left Vikings and headed over to the other side of the park to ride…
    Shockwave
    Shockwave was the only non-kiddie coaster I hadn’t ridden at Drayton Manor at this point in the day, so I was keen to give it a go. I was interested to retry it, as I’d remembered quite liking it in 2018; I remember thinking that the standup riding position, while a bit weird, wasn’t as abhorrent as many make out, and the ride had some good elements and was fairly smooth. So, how was it? Well… I’m afraid I didn’t like it as much as I’d remembered. It wasn’t the standup riding position that caused me issue, though; I maintain that the position, while a bit weird, isn‘t abhorrent by any means. What my issue was was that it was a fair bit rougher than I’d remembered in 2018; the bottom of the first drop had an unpleasant jolt, and there was some horrid ear bashing in a few sections. Also; since when has the brake run been so harsh? I remembered it being a bit abrupt, but it’s so sudden that it always threw me forwards and really did my shoulders in. With that being said, I do like some of the elements on there; the zero-g roll in particular is a phenomenal inversion:

    After Shockwave, I decided to stay in Adventure Cove and do a flat ride…
    Maelstrom
    Maelstrom was walk on, so I decided to give it a go. I didn’t do Maelstrom on my first visit, so it was a completely new ride to me, and it seems well liked, so I was intrigued to try it, in spite of the fact that I didn’t overly enjoy Cyclonator, the first gyroswing I did at Paultons Park last year. So, how was it? Well, I’m afraid to say that like Cyclonator, it wasn’t really for me, so I think gyroswings in general are just a bit of a controversial dislike of mine. I do think I preferred Maelstrom to Cyclonator, though, as the restraints were more comfortable and it didn’t seem quite as intense spin-wise. It did still make me feel a bit strange, though, with the strong focus on intensity and spinning not being the best for my personal spin tolerance, and there seemed to be some rather uncomfortable doses of positive g’s in the troughs of each swing. I’m sorry to be a downer, but I think this style of ride isn’t really for me:

    After Maelstrom, I decided to try the other flat ride in Adventure Cove…
    Air Race
    Air Race was on a short queue, so I decided to give it a try. I was interested to try it again; I’d remembered it being absolutely vile in 2018, but I’ve done a lot more rides since then, and I wondered whether I might have built up a greater intensity tolerance over time. So did I enjoy Air Race more this time? Sadly not. Unfortunately, I found it equally vile in 2022 as I did in 2018; I could literally feel stuff moving around in my stomach with each slow flip (a proper churning feeling), and I came off it feeling horribly nauseous. I get why people enjoy it, as it is an intense ride, but it’s not really for me, I’m afraid:

    After Air Race, I needed a sit down, so I sat and had my lunch (it was getting to 12:15pm anyway), timing the throughput of Shockwave as I ate (I had a very good vantage point!). Once I’d eaten, I decided to go for something different, and perhaps unexpected given today’s not exactly hot weather…
    Stormforce 10
    Stormforce 10 didn’t appear busy, and I’d never done it before, so I decided to give it a go. I’ve got to say, this is a very nicely themed ride; I walked through it too quickly to get any real look at it due to the low crowds, but the queue appeared to be incredibly detailed, and really well themed! The station appeared well themed as well! So, how was the ride? Well, I’ve got to say that it was a really good water ride, although perhaps a mistake given the weather and how wet I got! One of the drops was a surprising soaker; the first and third drops (the forward ones) weren’t too bad (a decent spray, but nothing overly wet), but the second backwards drop got me pretty drenched, which was completely unexpected! Another interesting thing about my ride on Stormforce 10 was that it was my second lone ride of the day; I was seated in row 2 (the ride staff expected me to sit in the middle of the row as well, for some reason), and I went round Stormforce 10 completely on my lonesome! Overall, though, I did think it was quite an impressive water ride; in all honesty, I’d say it’s probably my top UK water ride that’s still operating (I always loved Logger’s Leap), or at very least up there with the best:


    After my ride on Stormforce 10, I took another ride on Shockwave to dry off. I was seated in row 5, and it was similar to earlier.
     
    After that, I rerode Accelerator. I rode in the front this time, and it was great fun, just as it had been earlier:

    I then took another quiet ride on Apocalypse. I was not alone this time, however; I was accompanied by a group of Year 6 boys, one of whom asked me to hold his hand on the way up, which I did. In terms of the ride itself; it was as awesome and punchy as ever:

    I then tried to ride The Haunting; I waited outside for about 10-15 minutes, but everyone was then ushered away due to the ride experiencing a technical issue. With that in mind, I decided to try the other dark ride right next to it…
    Sheriff Showdown
    Sheriff Showdown was completely empty, right next door to The Haunting and a ride I’d never done before, so I decided to give it a go. Interestingly, this ended up being another lone ride; with there being noone in the area other than me and the operator,So, how was it? Well, I thought it was a good, fun interactive dark ride! There were some nice animatronics, some great sets, and I actually found the game element quite a bit easier to interact with than on other interactive dark rides I’ve ridden; my score was 5,800, which I was pretty impressed with given my shocking aim and the short ride duration! All in all, Sheriff Showdown was definitely a fun little ride:

    I then had a reride on Jormungandr. I was seated in a similar seat to last time, and the ride was very similar to earlier:


    I then headed back over to…
    The Haunting
    The Haunting had reopened, so I decided to join the small crowd waiting outside. After a few minutes, we were admitted to the attraction; one interesting thing I noticed is that it’s batched differently to other Madhouses I’ve done. It wasn’t like Hex or something, where one group can occupy each room; only one group was allowed to be in the whole attraction on The Haunting. It wasn’t an issue by any means, what with the low crowd levels, but it was just an interesting observation I made. So, how was it? Well, I’ve got to say that I was very impressed! The story of a paranormal investigation is told very well and very clearly, and it is genuinely quite unnerving at points; this is going to make me sound like a right baby, but as someone who doesn’t overly like horror, it was toeing the line of my scare tolerance at times. I did find bits of it quite scary, and it definitely vindicated my belief that I wouldn’t like an attraction that goes beyond that level of scare, such as a scare attraction; a scare attraction is a vastly intensified version of that, so god knows how I’d react to that type of thing with actual people! Overall, though, I thought that The Haunting was a very well done madhouse; it impressed me, for sure, and of the 4 I’ve done, I’d genuinely be inclined to say it’s my 2nd favourite behind only Hex:


    After The Haunting, I had another great ride on Apocalypse:

    That was swiftly followed by another great, and practically walk-on, ride on Accelerator; I was seated in row 7 this time, and it was great fun! An interesting thing that happened on this ride was that in the queue, I met a potential enthusiast in the making; I was tapped on the shoulder by a young boy who enthusiastically said to me “excuse me, but I just wanted to tell you that the back provides the best experience on this ride!”. I told him that I’d enjoyed the back earlier, and he seemed very impressed and in agreement with me. He then boarded the back in my train, and when we got off, he said “That was awesome! I’ve done it 15 times!”. That might seem small, but that’s how theme park enthusiasm often starts!:

    After that, I headed to a ride I’d never done before…
    The Bounty
    The Bounty was walk-on, so I decided to give it a whirl. I hadn't done a pirate ship in a while, but I always used to enjoy The Blade at Alton Towers, so I was looking forward to The Bounty. So, how was it? Well, it was a fun enough pirate ship; it had some good swinging, some decent tickles of weightlessness, and overall, it was a fun ride:


    After The Bounty, I decided to have another ride on Shockwave. I bagged the back row this time, and it was quite similar to the other rides, although it possibly seemed at its roughest yet on the back. That zero-g roll still packs a great punch, though:

    After my reride on Shockwave, I, possibly against my better judgement after the soaking from Stormforce 10, decided to try another water ride...
    Adventure Cove River Rapids
    Adventure Cove River Rapids looked quiet, so I decided to give it a go. It opened after my last visit, and I'd heard some rave reviews (a lot of cries of "best rapids ride in the UK!" get thrown around), so I was interested to ride it. Interestingly, I was not allowed to ride as a single rider, so I had to wait for another group to join me. This didn't take too long, and I was quickly off on the ride with a mother and her young son. So, what did I think? Well, I'm afraid to say that perhaps controversially, I was somewhat uninspired by this rapids. I'll grant them, the Adventure Cove buildings are painted very nicely, and it is quite nicely themed, but it's the only rapids I've ever walked off of bone dry. Even the likes of Congo River Rapids and Rumba Rapids, in the UK, get you with a couple of waves splashing into the boat and a little light spray, but Adventure Cove River Rapids gave me nothing; there didn't even seem to be any water splashing into the boat (if there was any, it was perhaps one tiny splash). Granted, I was somewhat glad to remain dry on this occasion, but I would have rated it higher had there been a couple of waves that came into the boat and did splash the riders somewhat. In fairness, though, I could have just gotten it on a weak ride, or Drayton might not have wanted it to be a wet rapids, so it's probably unfair of me to judge too harshly:

    After Adventure Cove River Rapids, I had a reride on Jormungandr. I was seated in the second row from the back, and it was perfectly good fun:


    After Jormungandr, I had another ride on Apocalypse, which was once again awesome; I like drop towers a lot, and Apocalypse is a very good one:

    After that, I had another fun ride on Accelerator. I was seated in row 8 this time, and it was great fun:


    I then had another ride on Shockwave. I was seated in row 4, and it was very similar to my earlier rides; the brake run seemed to hit particularly hard on this ride, for some reason:


    After that, I bought a cup of Diet Coke, and sat down for a few minutes to drink that. I then did another new ride...
    Drunken Barrels
    Drunken Barrels was a ride I'd never done before, so I was interested to try it. I knew that this was a unique style of tea cups, so I thought it might be worth a try. So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was quite good fun; the tilting platform added a very interesting dimension to the teacups ride experience:

    After Drunken Barrels, I had yet another great ride on Apocalypse:


    I swiftly followed that up with another fun ride on Accelerator, in row 8:

    I then had another ride on Apocalypse:

    That was swiftly followed by a ride close to the front on Jormungandr:

    I then closed out the day with a final ride on Apocalypse:

    After that, the 4:30pm ride close had arrived. I went to the Walhalla food outlet to buy a Crunchie Blast ice lolly before heading out of the park and back on my way to Wilnecote station.
     
    I then closed out my day with a 1h 7m train ride home, from Wilnecote to Cheltenham Spa; I had to get picked up from Cheltenham due to the train to Lydney being cancelled:


    So, that was my day at Drayton Manor! I had a brilliant day; I was very glad to have completed a park visit on my own via public transport, and the park itself was a pleasant surprise too! I was expecting the park to be busy when I saw a plethora of school trip groups arriving, but my fears were unfounded, as the park was phenomenally quiet; nothing had more than a 1 cycle wait all day, and I got a surprising number of lone rides! If you weren't keeping track, and wondering whether all this riding had seen me break my personal ride count record (which previously sat at 21, obtained on my last day at Europa Park); my personal ride count record was not only broken, it was well and truly thrashed to death! If you weren't keeping track, my rides today were:
    Apocalypse x7 Accelerator x5 Shockwave x4 Jormungandr x4 Loki x1 Thor x1 Maelstrom x1 Air Race x1 Stormforce 10 x1 Sheriff Showdown x1 The Haunting x1 The Bounty x1 Adventure Cove River Rapids x1 Drunken Barrels x1 That makes for a final ride total of 30 rides in 6 hours! Yes, I managed thirty (!) rides between 10:30am and 4:30pm today! As a result, I did 26,000 steps today, which is my highest Fitbit step count by some margin, and I am somewhat achey, but I had an awesome day; my first UK park visit of 2022 couldn't have gone better!
     
    Thank you for reading! I'll be back at you with another trip report very soon, as I'm headed to Alton Towers on 19th/20th June!
  19. Matt N
    Right then; it's about time I did part 2 of my North American investigation! And in part 2, I'll be working out... what coaster selections in North America have the strongest top end?
     
    Yes, I'll be focusing solely upon the parks' most highly rated coasters in this question! As I got a few comments about the slightly weird results in part 1, I'm thinking that this question should hopefully correct that and produce results more akin to what you might typically expect, as I'm focusing only upon "the interesting stuff" here!
     
    So how did I work this out?
     
    Well, I used 3 different ways of attempting to measure this.
     
    The first method I used was...
    Mean of Top 3
    The first method I used was calculating a mean of each park's top 3. For those of you that don't know, the mean is the calculated average of each top 3, and the formula is as follows:
    Mean of Top 3 = Sum of All Ratings/3 (as the top 3 is being focused upon here, the count of ratings will always be 3)
    When this formula was applied to each park's top 3, the highest rated top 3s came out as follows:
    Ranking Park Mean Rating of Top 3 (1dp) Top 3 Coasters in Park (with ratings out of 10) 1 Cedar Point 9.8 Steel Vengeance (10.0) Maverick (9.9) Top Thrill Dragster/Millennium Force (tied at 9.6) 2 Six Flags Magic Mountain 9.6 Twisted Colossus (9.8) X2 (9.7) Tatsu (9.4) 3 Busch Gardens Tampa 9.5 Iron Gwazi (10.0) Montu (9.4) SheiKra (9.1) 4 Six Flags Great Adventure 9.4 El Toro (9.9) Nitro (9.2) Kingda Ka (9.1) 5 Six Flags Fiesta Texas 9.3 Iron Rattler (9.7) Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster (9.5) Superman Krypton Coaster (8.8) 6 Kings Dominion 9.3 Twisted Timbers (9.9) Intimidator 305 (9.8) Dominator (8.2) 7 Hersheypark 9.3 Skyrush (9.8) Storm Runner (9.2) Candymonium (8.9) 8 Busch Gardens Williamsburg 9.3 Pantheon (9.7) Griffon (9.2) Alpengeist/Apollo's Chariot (tied at 9.0) 9 Silver Dollar City 9.3 Outlaw Run (9.7) Time Traveler (9.5) PowderKeg (8.6) 10 Canada's Wonderland 9.2 Leviathan (9.4) Behemoth (9.3) Yukon Striker (9.0)  
    Let's move on to the second measure...
    Median of Top 3
    The second measure I applied was the median of the top 3. The median is the midpoint of a dataset (I.e. the middle value), so as we're talking about top 3s, the median value is the 2nd highest rated coaster at each park. When I searched for the median of each park's top 3, the top 10 were as follows:
    Ranking Park Median Top 3 Coasters in Park (with ratings out of 10) 1 Cedar Point 9.9 Steel Vengeance (10.0) Maverick (9.9) Top Thrill Dragster/Millennium Force (tied at 9.6) 2 Kings Dominion 9.8 Twisted Timbers (9.9) Intimidator 305 (9.8) Dominator (8.2) 3 Six Flags Magic Mountain 9.7 Twisted Colossus (9.8) X2 (9.7) Tatsu (9.4) 4 Six Flags New England 9.5 Wicked Cyclone (9.8) Superman the Ride (9.5) Batman the Dark Knight (7.2) 5 Six Flags Fiesta Texas 9.5 Iron Rattler (9.7) Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster (9.5) Superman Krypton Coaster (8.8) 6 Silver Dollar City 9.5 Outlaw Run (9.7) Time Traveler (9.5) PowderKeg (8.6) 7 Kentucky Kingdom 9.4 Storm Chaser (9.7) Lightning Run (9.4) Kentucky Flyer (6.2) 8 Busch Gardens Tampa 9.4 Iron Gwazi (10.0) Montu (9.4) SheiKra (9.1) 9 Six Flags Over Georgia 9.3 Twisted Cyclone (9.7) Goliath (9.3) Batman The Ride (7.8) 10 Canada's Wonderland 9.3 Leviathan (9.4) Behemoth (9.3) Yukon Striker (9.0)  
    After those two measures, I used one final measure of my own...
    Matt N Formula for Top End Strength
    The final measure I used was my own formula. You might remember that I used my own formula to denote consistent strength in part 1. The formula for top end strength is slightly adjusted compared to that, only taking into account the highest rating and the upper quartile. The formula I'm using to work out top end strength is as follows:
    Matt N Formula for Top End Strength = (Highest Rating + Upper Quartile)/2
    This formula does require me to touch upon the entire selection again as opposed to just the top 3, but the use of the upper quartile and highest rating mean that I can hone in exclusively on the more highly rated coasters while also considering the strength of the top end as a whole. For all intents and purposes, it's the average of the highest rating and the upper quartile, so the lowly rated coasters within a park's lineup still aren't considered.
     
    When this formula was applied, the top 10 parks were as follows:
    Ranking Park Matt N Formula Score (1dp) Highest Rating Upper Quartile (1dp) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Busch Gardens Tampa 9.5 10.0 9.0 10 2 Silver Dollar City 9.5 9.7 9.3 6 3 Cedar Point 9.5 10.0 8.9 16 4 Six Flags Great Adventure 9.4 9.9 8.9 13 5 Carowinds 9.4 9.9 8.8 13 6 Busch Gardens Williamsburg 9.4 9.7 9.0 9 7 Six Flags Fiesta Texas 9.3 9.7 8.8 9 8 SeaWorld Orlando 9.2 9.6 8.9 6 9 Kentucky Kingdom 9.2 9.7 8.6 6 10 Hersheypark 9.1 9.8 8.3 14  
    So, what did we learn in this part of the investigation?
     
    Well, I can quite decisively crown a winner for the park with the strongest top end based on my 3 measures, and that is Cedar Point. The park came out on top in 2 of the 3 measures, and even in the measure it didn't win, it still came 3rd. And I'll be honest, Cedar Point was literally a hair away from the top spot; the difference between Cedar Point and the winner in that measure, Busch Gardens Tampa, was only 0.05. (The reason the top 3 are all listed as 9.5 is because I rounded the Matt N Formula Score to 1 decimal place; there was a difference between each of their exact scores, albeit a very small one)
     
    Before I close off, here's my spreadsheet once again, so that you can peruse my workings at your pleasure:
    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D_Zv3-Nb3B8oV7WRe3_G34tWDeAde_rJ8cMSeDN6KpM/edit?usp=sharing
     
    Thank you all for reading part 2 of my investigation into North America's major coaster selections, where I attempted to find the coaster selections with the strongest top end. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope the results are more in line with what you were originally expecting than they were in part 1!
    TL;DR: I attempted to find the North American coaster selections with the strongest top end. I used 3 different measures to calculate this: the mean of the top 3, a calculated average; the median of the top 3, the midpoint value; and the Matt N Formula for Top End Strength, which calculated the average of the park's highest rating and the upper quartile. The winner was determined to be Cedar Point, which won 2 of the 3 measures and came an extremely close 3rd in the measure it did not win.
  20. Matt N
    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. Some of you might remember that I recently did a multi-part data analysis investigation on Europe's major coaster selections; the topic is here if you don't know what I'm on about: 
    In that thread, I asked numerous different questions about Europe's major coaster selections. So I thought that a natural next step would be to try North America; it would be rude of me not to pay the Americans a visit given how many coasters and parks are in the USA alone, let alone the rest of North America!
     
    But for those of you who have no idea about my previous data analysis investigation, let me just introduce what I'm doing...
    Introduction
    There are a lot of theme parks in North America, as well as a lot of roller coasters. So naturally, people (myself included) tend to ask questions like “which park has North America’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 North America’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 May 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 the effect of that upon this investigation is quite minor; only 1 or 2 parks/rides were affected. Off the top of my head, Tumbili at Kings Dominion and Wonder Woman Coaster at Six Flags Mexico (bizarrely given it opened in 2018) are not scored on CC due to their ridership being too low, therefore the investigation excluded them, but all the other new rides that have opened are counted. So the likes of Iron Gwazi, Ice Breaker, Pantheon, VelociCoaster etc are all included. However, one inconsistency is that Captain Coaster has a somewhat inconsistent definition of what it considers a kiddie coaster. Using some examples from my home continent of Europe, 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. I could have taken kiddie coasters into account, but I could not think of a fair way to do it, as rides that fall into this bracket that slipped through the cracks seem to have wildly varying scores. 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 searching through RCDB for theme parks that met my criteria, as well as cross-referencing with Captain Coaster to ensure that the criteria were met in terms of scoreability, I found 41 theme parks with 358 roller coasters between them. These parks, as well as the number of scoreable roller coasters they each contain, are as follows:
    Six Flags Magic Mountain (USA, California): 16 Canada's Wonderland (Canada): 16 Cedar Point (USA, Ohio): 16 Six Flags Great America (USA, Illinois): 14 Kings Island (USA, Ohio): 14 Hersheypark (USA, Pennsylvania): 14 Six Flags Great Adventure (USA, New Jersey): 13 Carowinds (USA, North Carolina): 13 Kings Dominion (USA, Virginia): 12 Six Flags Over Texas (USA, Texas): 11 Six Flags Over Georgia (USA, Georgia): 10 Six Flags New England (USA, Massachusetts): 10 Busch Gardens Tampa (USA, Florida): 10 Six Flags Fiesta Texas (USA, Texas): 9 Lagoon (USA, Utah): 9 Knott's Berry Farm (USA, California): 9 Six Flags St Louis (USA, Missouri): 9 Busch Gardens Williamsburg (USA, Virginia): 9 Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (USA, California): 8 Six Flags America (USA, Maryland): 8 La Ronde (Canada): 8 Dollywood (USA, Tennessee): 8 Six Flags Mexico (Mexico): 8 Kennywood (USA, Pennsylvania): 8 Six Flags Darien Lake (USA, New York): 7 Valleyfair (USA, Minnesota): 7 Morey's Piers (USA, New Jersey): 6 Worlds of Fun (USA, Missouri): 6 Michigan's Adventure (USA, Michigan): 6 Silver Dollar City (USA, Missouri): 6 Dorney Park (USA, Pennsylvania): 6 SeaWorld Orlando (USA, Florida): 6 Kentucky Kingdom (USA, Kentucky): 6 Luna Park (USA, New York): 5 Indiana Beach (USA, Indiana): 5 Great Escape (USA, New York): 5 SeaWorld San Antonio (USA, Texas): 5 Knoebels (USA, Pennsylvania): 5 Disney's Magic Kingdom (USA, Florida): 5 Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park (USA, New Jersey): 5 Disneyland (USA, California): 5 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...
    What is North America’s most consistently strong coaster selection?
     
    Yes, I’ll be finding out which coaster selection in North America is the most consistently strong! For clarity, this focuses on the entire scoreable selection and sees the consistent strength of a park’s lineup. This is not weighted solely towards a park’s more highly rated coasters (I’ll be examining the top ends of selections on their own in a separate question), but instead considers the consistent strength of a park’s whole selection. I’m basically asking “to what extent does each park in the dataset have a consistently strong, good quality lineup?”.
     
    There are numerous data science techniques we can use to find this out.
     
    Let’s start with the first one…
    Mean
    The first statistical method we can use is the mean. For those that don’t know, the mean is a calculated average, where the sum of all a park’s coaster ratings is calculated and then divided by the number of scoreable coasters in that park to work out the average rating. The formula for the mean is as follows:
    Mean Rating = Sum of all Ratings/Number of Scoreable Coasters
     
    When applying the mean to each park in the dataset, the top 10 most consistently strong coaster selections in North America were as follows:
    Ranking Park Mean (to 1dp) Number of Scoreable Coasters 1 Silver Dollar City 7.5 6 2 Busch Gardens Williamsburg 7.3 9 3 Dollywood 7.0 8 4 SeaWorld Orlando 7.0 6 5 Cedar Point 6.6 16 6 Six Flags Magic Mountain 6.6 16 7 Busch Gardens Tampa 6.5 10 8 SeaWorld San Antonio 6.4 5 9 Six Flags Fiesta Texas 6.4 9 10 Kennywood 6.4 8  
    But mean is not the only statistical measure I can use…
    Median
    Another statistical measure we can use is the median. For those that don’t know, the median is the middle value in a dataset; the midpoint, if you like. For instance, in a dataset of 9 scoreable roller coasters, the median value would be the 5th highest rated coaster, because there are 4 coasters rated higher than it and 4 coasters rated lower than it.
     
    When applying the median to each park in the dataset, the top 10 most consistently strong coaster selections in North America were as follows:
    Ranking Park Median (to 1dp) Amount of Scoreable Coasters 1 Silver Dollar City 8.6 6 2 Busch Gardens Williamsburg 8.3 9 3 SeaWorld Orlando 8.1 6 4 Busch Gardens Tampa 7.4 10 5 Dollywood 7.3 8 6 Six Flags Great Adventure 7.2 13 7 Cedar Point 7.2 16 8 Disney’s Magic Kingdom 7.0 5 9 Dorney Park 7.0 6 10 Six Flags Magic Mountain 6.9 16  
    However, there’s one final statistical measure of my own that I’d like to test out…
    The Matt N Formula for Consistent Strength
    So far, I have used two pre-existing statistical measures; the mean, a calculated average, and the median, the midpoint value. However, each of these has its own flaws and things that it doesn’t really consider.
     
    The mean is flawed in that it can be quite easily skewed by a small number of data items on the extreme ends of the spectrum, thus not providing an accurate picture of the whole selection. Whereas the median, while possibly providing a more accurate picture of the general quality of a selection, does not take the extreme ends of the spectrum into account at all; if a park's coaster selection had a median rating of 6/10, the top value could be a 7/10 or a 10/10 and it would make no difference.
     
    With that in mind, I decided to come up with my own formula to determine the consistent strength of a selection. A formula that takes into account both the extreme ends of the spectrum and the general quality across the board. So let me present The Matt N Formula for Consistent Strength; the formula is as follows:
    Matt N Formula for Consistent Strength = (Highest rating + Upper quartile)*(Lowest rating + Lower quartile)
     
    I included the highest rating and the lowest rating to take into account the extreme ends of a selection, while I also integrated quartiles to provide a stronger picture of general quality throughout a selection.
     
    Those of you who followed my Europe data analysis might remember that I initially attempted to use this formula to work out strength in general without really quantifying what strength was, but I later decided that this particular formula would work better to determine consistent strength.
     
    When I applied the Matt N Formula for Consistent Strength to each park in the dataset, the top 10 most consistently strong coaster selections in North America were as follows:
    Ranking Park Highest Rating Upper Quartile (to 1dp) Lowest Rating Lower Quartile (to 1dp) Matt N Formula Score (to 1dp) Quantity of Scoreable Coasters 1 Dollywood 9.9 8.0 3.9 6.4 183.0 8 2 Silver Dollar City 9.7 9.3 3.5 6.0 180.7 6 3 Kennywood 9.3 7.2 4.2 5.2 155.3 8 4 SeaWorld San Antonio 8.8 7.6 3.4 5.6 147.6 5 5 Knoebels 9.4 7.5 2.7 5.9 145.3 5 6 Busch Gardens Williamsburg 9.7 9.0 1.1 6.4 140.3 9 7 SeaWorld Orlando 9.6 8.9 0.7 6.7 135.8 6 8 Cedar Point 10.0 8.9 1.5 5.4 130.6 16 9 Six Flags Magic Mountain 9.8 7.8 1.3 5.4 117.9 16 10 Disney’s Magic Kingdom 7.1 7.1 1.9 6.3 116.4 5  
    Let’s now summarise what we’ve learned…
    Summary
    So, what did we learn from this investigation?
     
    Well, while the methods used did differ the results somewhat, there were some names that universally appeared in the top 10 regardless. And there was one park in particular that did shine, scoring highly on all 3 measures.
     
    As it came top when using 2 of the 3 measures and came second in the measure that it didn’t win, I am saying that my data concludes that Silver Dollar City has North America’s most consistently strong coaster lineup. When a park comes out on top 2 out of 3 times and comes second the 3rd time (and a very close second, at that), it’s hard not to declare it the winner!
     
    I’m aware that the results might not be what some expect, and in some ways, they weren’t what I would have expected either, but it is worth me reiterating that this is asking what North America’s most consistently strong coaster lineup is rather than what the strongest coaster lineup is in terms of the park’s highest rated coasters. If I honed in exclusively on each park’s strongest rated coasters (which I will do in a separate question), I can sense these results would look very different.
     
    Also, just because my algorithm is saying that Silver Dollar City wins this, that’s not “the correct answer” by any means; it’s all down to personal opinion. The answer I’m showing here is merely the conclusion that my data analysis came to based off of the average opinions of a subset of coaster enthusiasts.
     
    Just for reference, here is a box plot I created using Python’s MatPlotLib library to show the spread of ratings for each coaster selection and how they compare to one another in a visual way:

    I’m aware that that’s a bit of a mess, so just for some idea, here is the order in which the parks appear, from left to right (the number at the side is the number of scoreable coasters the park has:
    Six Flags Magic Mountain (USA, California): 16 Canada's Wonderland (Canada): 16 Cedar Point (USA, Ohio): 16 Six Flags Great America (USA, Illinois): 14 Kings Island (USA, Ohio): 14 Hersheypark (USA, Pennsylvania): 14 Six Flags Great Adventure (USA, New Jersey): 13 Carowinds (USA, North Carolina): 13 Kings Dominion (USA, Virginia): 12 Six Flags Over Texas (USA, Texas): 11 Six Flags Over Georgia (USA, Georgia): 10 Six Flags New England (USA, Massachusetts): 10 Busch Gardens Tampa (USA, Florida): 10 Six Flags Fiesta Texas (USA, Texas): 9 Lagoon (USA, Utah): 9 Knott's Berry Farm (USA, California): 9 Six Flags St Louis (USA, Missouri): 9 Busch Gardens Williamsburg (USA, Virginia): 9 Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (USA, California): 8 Six Flags America (USA, Maryland): 8 La Ronde (Canada): 8 Dollywood (USA, Tennessee): 8 Six Flags Mexico (Mexico): 8 Kennywood (USA, Pennsylvania): 8 Six Flags Darien Lake (USA, New York): 7 Valleyfair (USA, Minnesota): 7 Morey's Piers (USA, New Jersey): 6 Worlds of Fun (USA, Missouri): 6 Michigan's Adventure (USA, Michigan): 6 Silver Dollar City (USA, Missouri): 6 Dorney Park (USA, Pennsylvania): 6 SeaWorld Orlando (USA, Florida): 6 Kentucky Kingdom (USA, Kentucky): 6 Luna Park (USA, New York): 5 Indiana Beach (USA, Indiana): 5 Great Escape (USA, New York): 5 SeaWorld San Antonio (USA, Texas): 5 Knoebels (USA, Pennsylvania): 5 Disney's Magic Kingdom (USA, Florida): 5 Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park (USA, New Jersey): 5 Disneyland (USA, California): 5 And here is the spreadsheet with the complete raw dataset, for your viewing pleasure:
    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D_Zv3-Nb3B8oV7WRe3_G34tWDeAde_rJ8cMSeDN6KpM/edit
    Thanks for reading part 1 of my analysis of North America’s major coaster selections! I’m hoping part 2 will be on its way before too long, and in that one, I’m planning to dive a bit deeper into the top end of these parks’ coaster selections, to see which parks have the strongest top tier; part 1 focused on the selection as a whole, but I know there is a lot of interest in the top tier of these coaster selections in isolation.
     
    But if any of you have any suggestions for questions about this dataset you’d like me to try and answer, then I’m very happy to accept suggestions!
  21. Matt N
    30th April 2022 (Europa Park Hotel Resort, Travel Home and Trip Summary)
    Today was considerably less busy than the last 3 days, so as such, my report of our actual day will be far briefer. We had no 4th day on our entry tickets to Europa Park, but our flight out of Baden-Airpark was not until 7pm, so after checking out of our room at 11am, we had time to kill. And as we were on a huge resort and hadn’t explored too much of the other hotels aside from our own (Castillo Alcazar), we decided to have a relaxed amble around the Europa Park hotel resort for the day.
     
    As we didn’t really have anywhere to be, we didn’t leave our room until close to the 11am checkout time. After breakfast and packing were done, I spent my time timing the throughputs of various different rides out of the hotel room window; I could see Wodan, Blue Fire, Atlantica, Euro Mir and Silver Star very easily, which made for perfect dispatch timing conditions!
     
    After leaving our hotel room, we initially had a little amble around El Andaluz and the exterior area of that hotel:

    Then, we crossed over the road and strolled over to Bell Rock to take a look in that hotel:


    I’ve got to say, all of Europa’s hotels are stunningly themed; we were looking around Bell Rock, and that has so many stunning little details, but on reflection, all of them do!
     
    After a stroll around Bell Rock, we headed down a path into the town of Rust to briefly explore, passing by the other side of Bell Rock while we were there:

    We then headed into Hotel Colosseo, where we ambled around the piazza area for a bit. We wandered back up to the Colosseum to take in the views of the surrounding area, including of Rulantica and of the piazza and fountains:


    After that, we sat and watched the fountains for a good few minutes. I must say, they really are captivating to watch, and such a cleverly designed little touch! (I apologise, as after the Colosseum, my picture taking stopped for a good few hours…)
     
    We then headed into Pizzeria La Romantica for some lunch after having a delicious evening meal there on Wednesday. I’ve got to say, sitting outside in Colosseo’s piazza eating lasagne was a very nice way to kill time; it’s such a nice environment!
     
    After that, we then went inside the Hotel Colosseo lobby and had a look in the shop before having a sit down and also looking at all the pictures on the walls (the IAAPA Wall of Fame and such). The Mack family have certainly hosted a lot of celebrities at Europa over the years, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a theme park before that displays its array of industry accolades so prominently!
     
    We then headed into the Colosseo cafe for a little dessert. I had a lovely bowl of caramel ice cream, and that was certainly a nice way to finish off our trip!
     
    After that, we headed back over to El Andaluz and sat in the lobby for a few minutes just taking in the surroundings:

    After our brief sit down, we then headed to our car to leave Europa Park Resort and head to Baden-Baden for our flight back to London Stansted. Interestingly, the travel home is where we encountered quite possibly our longest wait of the trip; getting out of London Stansted took nearly 1.5 hours all in.
     
    So, that was our final day! I apologise for today’s slightly dull report; I tried to make it sound as interesting as possible, but we really didn’t do that much. It was a nice relaxing end to a wonderful trip, though!
     
    To add a bit of heft onto today’s slightly dull report, I may as well do my final summarising thoughts…
     
    Trip Summary
    Well, the trip has now ended. And what a trip it’s been! As most of you probably know, it’s one I had been planning for some time, and it was my first ever trip to Europa Park, a heavily revered theme park and a place that was high on my bucket list!
     
    So, did Europa Park live up to the hype, and was it worth my many years of wishing to go there? Definitely. Without a doubt, it was all worth it.
     
    Europa Park is truly phenomenal. Stunning. Breathtaking. Joyful. I can think of so many superlatives to describe it, and when I say them, I mean every single one of them. In my opinion, Europa Park is a truly exceptional theme park for so many reasons, and despite my sky-high expectations, it did not disappoint in the slightest! It delivered in so many different ways for me, and there is so much I could say about it, but a few particular things that stood out to me were:
    The ride lineup is phenomenally well-rounded, and incredibly expansive: Europa has an incredibly well-rounded and expansive ride lineup. Rides-wise, you’re totally covered regardless of your taste. Europa has a plethora of coasters, including some absolutely phenomenal thrill coasters, yet it also has an expansive lineup of dark rides, a solid selection of water rides, and a wide array of very light-hearted, relaxing filler rides to stumble across! Yes, it might not be the most thrill-packed theme park on earth, with giant drop towers and huge coasters around every corner, but the thrill rides they do have are excellent, and more than satisfy anyone yearning for thrills, in my opinion! Silver Star is intensely rerideable, and such an epic ride in my opinion, and if you get bored of riding Silver Star, you’ve got Wodan, which is an exceptional coaster in its own right, and even though Blue Fire isn’t quite on the same level of brilliance as the other two in my opinion, it’s still a really excellent coaster, and an incredibly solid ride for thrillseekers! And I think EP caters to the whole family demographic wonderfully; I can think of so many Europa rides that would have young children, teenagers and grandparents alike all stepping off with huge smiles on their faces! So all in all, Europa Park has a exceptional ride lineup with almost universal appeal, in my opinion! The park as a whole is phenomenally well-rounded: Building upon my point about the park’s phenomenally well-rounded ride lineup; I think the park is extremely rounded in other aspects too! Everything has been thought about with Europa; ride hardware is not everything here. The theming and presentation are absolutely impeccable. The food is really nice and there’s a wide variety of things to pick from. The park is filled with nice little touches of flair and things to notice and look at. The atmosphere is lovely and relaxed throughout. I don’t think there’s one element of theme parking that the Mack family haven’t thought about and attempted to include within Europa Park, and for that reason, I would challenge anybody to visit and not find something to enjoy. Even if you’re not overly into rides, there’s a hell of a lot you can enjoy at EP. It is a true chameleon of a theme park, more so than any other I’ve yet visited; you could have totally different days at Europa Park and they would all be equally fulfilling. Do you want to hammer coasters non-stop? You can do that! Do you want to ride dark rides and discover wonderfully random rides you never knew existed? You can do that! Do you want to have loads of different food & drink? You can do that! Do you want to just sit back and take in a really pleasant atmosphere without overly exerting yourself? You can do that! At Europa Park, you can spend a day doing just about anything and it will always be fulfilling! The theming is surprisingly phenomenal: One thing that did surprise me about Europa Park was just how phenomenally well themed it is throughout. With it not being a Disney or Universal park or having the same kind of budgets, I was unsure how well themed it would actually be, but I was stunned at how beautiful every area is and how much effort is put into theming each ride and making it really special. The theming is absolutely exceptional at Europa, and while it’s not as grand in scale as the best parts of the likes of Disney and Universal, it’s very consistent, and there are so many little details interwoven around! I’d go as far as to say that while it doesn’t hit the highs of the big 2 theming-wise, I’d argue that Europa is generally more strongly themed than, or at very least matching, a fair proportion of Disney & Universal stuff. I certainly think the general level of theming and detail at Europa is at least up there with, if not above, some of the more weakly themed parts of the big 2, which really surprised me. The park has a wonderful vibe throughout: Interestingly given it’s quite a big player with huge visitor numbers, Europa feels remarkably relaxed throughout, and the vibe is absolutely wonderful in every area of the park; even as someone who doesn’t particularly like large crowds, I did not find one moment in Europa even vaguely stressful! Also, the park has a real feeling of warmth throughout that I can’t quite place my finger on; in a bizarre way, it almost reminded me of the warmth of somewhere smaller like Paultons Park, and it was very endearing! There are so many things I could say, but those are just some of the main ones!
    So all in all then, I was blown away by Europa Park. The place felt special; the second I stepped through the gates each day, I just felt my face curl into a grin of wonder! I probably looked quite silly, but it was truly brilliant and it truly made me happy; I could have spent many more days there! There are just so many things I loved about the park, and it truly resonated with me on so many levels. For that reason, I’m going to drop a far more decisive bombshell than last night’s, that I don’t see myself u-turning on tomorrow morning; Europa Park is my new favourite theme park in the world, of what I’ve visited. There, I said it. I love the theming, I love the coasters, I love the dark rides, I love the atmosphere; there’s just so much I love about it! Islands of Adventure (my previous favourite) is without doubt a phenomenal theme park, but Europa’s raw breadth of attraction lineup, consistent theming quality and phenomenal coasters are just something else for me!
     
    In terms of some key stats of interest; let me just break it down:
    New coasters ridden: 12 Coaster count after trip: 91 Favourite ride: Silver Star Favourite roller coaster: Silver Star (#2 overall out of 91… after some careful thought, Mako remains top dog) Favourite non-coaster: Piraten in Batavia Favourite dark ride: Piraten in Batavia Favourite water ride: Fjord-Rafting Overall ride count: 50 (over 3 days) Highest 1-day count: 21 (on 29th April 2022/Day 3) Most ridden ride: Silver Star (ridden 10 times)  Thank you for reading this report over the last 5 days! I’ve loved recounting my first experience of Europa Park to you each day, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my reports!
  22. Matt N
    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!
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