Matt N

Hershey Park was the one I most worried about. They have a notoriously strict weather policy and wirth predicted thunder storms all day for both days of our visit I was extremely concerned. Storm Runner, Skyrush and Candymonium do not operate in the rain, all the other big rides close in heavy rain. We arrived with giant black clouds hovering over the entrance but Canydmonium was running for extra ride time. Our goal was to hit as many rides before the heavens opened and I had purchased fastrack as I was most worried about Hershey being the busiest, this being the weekend. 10AM, park opens, here comes the rain. We dash to Candymonium and dun dun dun, rides closed due to rain. All that time running half empty and then the moment the rest of us get in, closed. My heart sunk.
 

 
We made a swift dash to any ride that we could see with guests on and thankfully Great Bear was open. This 1998 B&M inverter, this being the second of the trip had big competition what with Alpengeist a few days earlier, its vintage is a classic, older B&M and relatively well reviewed. The operations are absolutely dire. This ride easily had the worst operations in the park with 3-5 minutes of stacking on every train. We opted for the back row and watching them, it's just not good. B&Ms are designed to be easy to run but some of these parks just don't run them like they should. 
Great Bear was alright. There are moments where it feels like the train just wants to get going but the layout just gets in the row. For example the drop off the lift hill where you helix over the midway. It's really cool actually, quite forceful but to get us to the rest of the layout, it has to rise and unfortunately loses quite a lot of speed. You drop into a vertical loop, an Immelmann and a zero g roll. These are all great in their own right but.. I dunno a bit generic of a layout. Then as the train repositions itself over the river, the train roars into life speeding through a straight piece of track (it is so weird) and into a really forceful corkscrew. Then the train meanders past Superdooperlooper to get back to the station. This ride feels like a generic inverter meets auto complete. And thats the theme for a few rides at Hershey.

 
We got on the last ride for a while. Every outside rollercoaster was now closed and... I kind of got a bit depressed. It's very hard to get out to a park that you've' heard so much about, built expectations, planned for years to visit and then you arrive and you're defeated by the weather. We waited around in the rain, hoping for some let up in the weather. It came after about half an hour where we saw Trailblazer testing. This arrow mine train was pretty bad, it felt like it was built because it was the in thing in the 80's but without any concept for how to make it interesting. The rain was still pretty heavy but we managed to get over to Jolly Rancher remix, Chris really didn't like this a it hurt his head. I like the colour and music but it's a generic Vekoma boomerang so it's not going to trouble any top tens. We rode their nebula in the rain, in which their terrible operations meant we got drenched. We then went skipped a 15 minute wait for Fahrenheit , a surprisingly good Intamin looper. The only Intamin to feature a vertical lift in this style, this is a well paced, comfortable, intense ride with some of the best air time in the park. Our first ride in the pouring rain meant we were pounded with water and couldn't see a thing. But we know we enjoyed it. 

 
Monorail was ridden which was a nice little break from the park and from this we could see that the Boardwalk area of the park was all open. After initially struggling to find it, we eventually got down there for a ride on Wildcats Revenge. This is an outstanding RMC and I echo some of the thoughts out there that this and Aeriforce One in Atlanta are the very limits of what we can take in air time. Wildcat hurts. It is a violent, intense and vicious ride that rag dolls you across its layout and never lets up. No moment is wasted, not a single seat delivers a mediocre ride. I was incredibly impressed and this rates as my second favourite RMC after Steel Vengeance. It had great operations, a sublime layout with pace and some wild air time. I loved it. We then took a little walk to the mid way and had a go on Superdooperlooper which was on one train. This was average and also has the auto complete option on. Waste of a layout. Comet is a great old style woodie and highly recommended. Also one of the most consistently busy rides. 

 
Skyrush. Is a moment. It is vile. I don't mind out of control feeling rides, heck Wildcat is exactly that kind of ride. But Skyrush is nasty. It has this horrible feeling, like you're riding a horse and it's just trying to throw you off into the bushes. On a side seat is is rough and that feeling off being thrown to your death is amplified. Was also slightly concerning when you sit in the break run and your seat releases slightly. Not a fan. To make up for this ride, it was off to Candymonium which was walk on so we had three goes round. I think Candymonium is excellent. The evolution from Apollos Chariot to this ride shows how much better the B&M hyper has become and Candy is full of air time and nice little moments. Chris's description was 'they built Candymonium to apologise for Skyrush.' Rather apt I think.

 
The final ride before the rain returned was Storm Runner, the 2004 intamin accelerator. I was slightly disappointed to be honest. I've been spoilt by Stealth which has an excellent and faster launch. Storm Runners lacked the punch that even Rita has. The layout is okay on paper but it felt rather lifeless to me. I like the colours of the ride more than the ride itself. With the rain back we opted for a few more rides on Wildcat and then riding Lightening Racer, both sides. I liked both sides of the GCI even if Thunder is the side that always wins no matter what. Now, Laff Trek. What am embarrassment. Hershey should do this ride a favour and shut it now and put it out of its misery. Absolutely atrocious. Poorly run in every respect. Maurer spinners are not good enough for any park like this and this needs to be wiped off the map.

 
We did a second day here and topped up our ride counts, particularly on Storm Runner and Candymonium. I think the prospect of the rain had put a lot of people off visiting, it being a Saturday in the holiday season, queues were perfectly reasonable with walk on Skyrush and ten minute Candy waits. We both agreed that Hershey Park is a great park but Chris felt that it had an okay ride selection but nothing they have is the outstanding ride, the top tier attraction. And I sort of agree. The boardwalk type of park is one that doesn't appeal much to me, the Blackpool, ride on top of the other has never been a firm favourite. But I can see why this park would have such a following. Weather aside.. Yeah. This review feels rather mixed but the key is on those days, two weeks ago, this is what the park delivered.
 

 
 

The little invested Six Flags America is an interesting place to me. It was by far the least refined of the parks visited on this trip and yet it had a certain local park charm. The main purpose of this visit was to get on the first B&M ever constructed. While B&M as a team and worked on other rides, this was their first ride under the B&M name. The previous day, Firebird had been closed all day. So I was concerned about that but my worries were unfounded. Firebird was open on time and ready to go. 
 

 
It initially being a stand up, this is the third stand up model I have ridden that has been converted to Floorless. Unlike Patriot this layout was okay and pretty substantial. However it doesn't ride particularly well with some rough moments scattered throughout. But it does have intensity and it's easy to see why this ride was just the start of a world leading company. We got three rides including the front and there wasn't much difference between them.
 
 
Superman - Ride of Steel almost feels like a relic from the past compared to what Intamin can do now. This is a very odd layout with long straights and giant helixes. It was running one train (which is all it needed) and rode pretty well. Surprisingly enjoyable without being outstanding. And thats a great review. I personally prefer Goliath at Wailibi Holland which is a snappier layout but Ride Of Steel is fun.

 
I managed to trick Chris onto Jokers Jynx which is a clone of Flight of Fear but outside. He hated it just as much as the other version. I preferred the other version just because of it being inside. Not much to say although it definitely needs a repaint and refurbishment.
 
Batwing the Vekoma first generation flying coaster was fascinating and if it wasn't for downtime and reliability would have ridden a lot more. But I'm thankful for the one ride we did get. This was great but it felt so dangerous. The vest restraint is substantially different to the B&M version with essentially two flaps being seat belted together in the middle. Bizarre. This was great to get on with really unique sensations and a very different layout. Just not enough go's around to really get a good feel for it.

 
We did a couple of flat rides as this isn't really a rollercoaster park and the staff were great. Less of this corporate feel like Cedar Fair and Disney has and the more raw local park flavour. I personally liked that it wasn't generic 'want to go faster' stuff and this tailored feel. it's hard to describe but it was just more what I value from guest interaction.
 

 
We got to Wild One, one of the parks two wooden coasters. This was a classic wooden coaster built in 1917 and relocated in 1980 to Great America. Randomly on two trains this was the most popular ride at the park and it felt like it was going to collapse. Needs a bit of work as a lot of the paint has chipped away over the years. I really respect Americas treatment of their classic wooden rollercoasters, it feels like every park has one dotted away somewhere and they are always consistent, some of the busier rides at the parks they are in.


 
Unfortunately both Rajun Cajun (Reverchon spinner) and Roar (GCI woodie) were closed so after a couple of re rides across the park we decided to leave early and get some classic American Mexican food. 
 
Would I revisit this park? Again, if the investment was put into it yes. But it is clearly a bit of an ugly duckling of the Six Flags chain. Thing is though, this is one of the better operated park across my visits. Each ride was well staffed and they were getting trains out at pace. It just needs some love. 

The threat of thunderstorms dominated day two. Cloudy skies and the threat of torrential rain was testing me as we made our way to the Old country. This is a park that is always looked at fondly for its stunning looks. I've never been the biggest fan of Busch Tampa, it just makes me feel hot even thinking about it. but Williamsburg is very different. Its European influences bring a different charm to other American parks and its cozy entrance makes you feel comfortable. The threat of rain meant we just wanted to hit the big rides quickly before anything shut down from the weather. We headed straight to Apollos Chariot, the first B&M hyper coaster. They have got better, let's put it that way. I think for 1999 this was probably an impressive ride but hyper coasters have come a long way. This was weak and I'd say my least favourite rollercoaster at Busch. I didn't even expect Pantheon to open to be honest. I'd heard that it rarely opens on poor weather days so when I saw it running with people on, I was straight on. It was also walk on.
 

 
There's quite obvious comparisons with Toutatis which is an absolutely sublime ride and whilst the highs on Pantheon aren't as good, there's something to be sad for Pantheon. it's a really good rides. It's nowhere near as aggressive as Toutatis, but thats fine. Pantheon hits you with much more sustained air time moments such as the banked curve which is as graceful as it fun. The top hat is also untrimmed so you get the full force of the air time compared to its French cousin which deliberately slows you down. It hits the breaks at the end pretty hard which makes me think it could have done more. A really great ride and I just adore the spikes on these rides. They are so. good.
 
Next was Verbolten (RIP Big Bad Wolf). I'm going to pin myself here and say I reckon Verbolten is the better ride. It's just so much fun, full of force and really good moments. The sudden drop isn't as seamless as Thirteen but these drops are so punchy and such great moments that I'll forgive it. The iconic drop isn't as great as the rest of the ride funnily enough, Big Bad Wolf wins here. Really enjoyed this ride, at this point I was starting to believe that BGW might have one of the finest ride line ups out there.
 
Next was Alpengeist, one of those rides that is pretty well known for its stunning first drop and not a lot else. I was hyped for Alpengeist I can safely say that it delivered in every aspect. The lift and first hill are absolutely humungous but thats not all. I love how the lift hill slows down towards the top, a trim right on the pre drop even tries to shave some speed from the train but it's not enough. The speed and sheer force as you drop down the valley is one of my favourite drops ever. It's just incredible. 

 

 
You rise into an Immelmann before diving down into a vertical loop. These are so forceful, not much more to add. You speed down into a cobra roll which just feels massive and its properly intense as well as you jerk through the snake head. The ride then takes a breather as it comes out of the valley and to a mid course. this shaves a lot of speed out of the train which is a shame but I think after the insanity of the previous parts of the ride, this might be a sigh of relief. A mid tier zero g followed by a really good corkscrew finish off the ride. This was, I'd say, my favourite ride of the trip and is definitely a top ten contender. In coaster circles we talk about how Nemesis and Black Mamba use the ground whilst American rides don't really. Alpengeist is like the best of both worlds as its uses the landscape to create this incredible rollercoaster. 


 
By this point I was full of energy. The last three rollercoasters had been superb and the next was a GCI woody. This reminded me of the Wicker Man except it had zero story or theming, no centrepiece. It was just a french themed wooden rollercoaster on a hill. It also ended up being my 400th rollercoaster credit. It was a fine enough ride but not my favourite GCI.
 
We next ended up at Griffin. I love this ride. It's just stupidly big. I know Valravn is bigger but lord, Griffin just has that fear factor. 

 
I think this ride is excellent. Like Sheikra, I think it gets slightly overlooked as just a one hit wonder but I think these rides hit like no other, especially with the older style restraint system. This has such a hit of air time, my favourite weirdly being the jump into the water pool. 


 
By this point, I was really into this park. It has a really gorgeous look to it and the rides are top notch. We took a little walk to find Loch Ness Monster and ended up at the very bottom of the valley. I was blown away by this area with three of the most iconic parts of their big rides, all next to each other.
 

 
Once we ended up on the other side, we got into Loch Ness. This did hurt a lot more then your average Arrow but its such an historic ride, it deserves its place. The helix in the dark was my favourite part of the ride.
 
With all the major rollercoasters completed we took some time to enjoy this park. Whether it was the food which was excellent, the 50 cent beer or the fantastic rides, this park was a real highlight. On day two, the rain did not hold off and as a result both Apollos Chariot and Pantheon was closed all day. Everything else though, completely walk on with what felt like less than 1000 people on site. The park ultimately closed at 4PM (it was originally 9PM when we first booked) so clearly the weather kept people away. But nonetheless we had a great second day and would recommend this park to anyone. It's world class. 
 
 
 
 

Hi there, This is just a write up of a trip that I've wanted to do for what feels like my whole life but in reality is about twenty years. When I first really opened my world to theme parks beyond Chessington, Alton Towers and Thorpe Park, there was three rollercoasters that were announced and about to begin construction. Those were Silver Bullet at Knotts Berry Farm, Storm Runner at Hersheypark and Hydra at Dorney Park. Silver Bullet was ticked off neatly a decade ago but a series of events has meant I've been waiting to hit the East Coaster for far longer then I'd have wanted.
 
With 2022, the year of revenge travel kind of over, wedding done, honeymoon and 12 day cruise done it was time to think about where to go. And I straight away aimed for the East Coast, we got planning and this trip was very much designed around the idea of rest days and giving certain parks priority over others. At Six Flags Great America in 2018. we didn't give ourselves enough time so didn't get to really enjoy our day. A power cut scuppered several rides and it felt like a missed opportunity. Here I set up the trip so that big flagship parks got the time they deserved whilst the smaller ones got a day and less car travel to the next destinations. It went like this
 
Day 1 - Kings Dominion
Day 2 & 3 - Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Day 4 - Six Flags America
Day 5 & 6 - Hersheypark
Day 7 - Dorney Park
Day 8 & 9 - Six Flags Great Adventure
Day 10 - Nickelodeon Universe
Day 11, 12 & 13 - New York Tourism.
 

 
Soo one thing that became clear on this trip is that the weather was not on our side. Unseasonable rain storms were a frequent occurrence and the sky was often grey and rainy. Kings Dominion is very much known for Intimidator 305, the Intamin giga that tries to anhailiate you from the word go. I'd write up about it but we never even saw it move. It was down for the entire time we were there and it would not be the first intamin that didn't open for us. For this park we did actually have fast lane. We wanted a relaxing day and it turned out to be a good move.
 
We started the day by heading to Twisted Timbers, an RMC that opened in 2018. I really liked it. Chris did not like it. One thing this RMC does differently to the bigger ones is that at only 110 feet, it has a higher emphasis on lots of airtime and twisted track moments. This air time is pretty brutal. You are pushed each and every time into the restraint and you do this about 16 times throughout its layout. I prefer this smarter use of layout design to some of the others (Zadra) but I can understand that the variety is slightly lacking if all you feel like you're doing is being thrown up and down relentlessly. 
 

 
Our next ride was a classic, a racing wooden rollercoaster named Racer. As we got there fairly early on, only one side was running but later in the day, both sides were operating with one train a side. I really liked this and it rides well for its age. America has a lot of classic wooden rollercoasters and its nice to see they have retained these orders rides and kept them in such great condition.
 
To keep up the wooden rollercoaster momentum we went to ride Grizzly which had some rebuilt track work in the last six months. I've come to expect that the old parts of the track are bumpy and the newer parts are silly smooth and Grizzly did not disappoint. It was a peculiar ride, very big but not particularly memorable. Chris loved it. I don't remember much from it aside from the entrance being in a gift shop. 
 
So far, so good. I was getting good feelings from Kings Dominion. The park wasn't crazily busy and the rides were running nicely. To keep the positivity up, we headed to Dominator, an absolutely huge B&M Floorless rollercoaster that used to live in Geauga Lake and then moved to KD in 2008. iIve seen POV's of Dominator and it always came across as bit weak, like the train just went off meandering with no purpose. it's nothing of the sort and I think it is actually my favourite floorless out there. It is absolutey huge, the vertical loop is a monster but I also like how the layout isn't atypical B&M. The train goes through high speed banked corners, up and over the station, down again with little air time moments peppered in there to break up the pacing. The interlocking corkscrews are full of force. This is a ride that hasn't got restrictions and is unashamedly big and bold. 

 

 
We took a dive into some dark ride that used to be Scooby doo themed, now isn't and is just sad. it was walk on so that was fine. We went to ride Reptilian, a mack bobsled which is my last one to do and I've done them all. We were about to get on when a code red was called. All rides were closed because of a thunderstorm in the area. Yes even the indoor ones. So whilst we waited around in absolutely stunning sunshine, nothing moved, nothing could be done. This closure ended up lasting three hours and that long in a park with no rides does take its toll. There was a five minute rain storm in that three hours. We didn't see any lightening or thunder. The park was in no rush to get things open is how it felt. 
 
We were about to see if there was anything we could do for our fast lane, it's not like we could just come again another day with a weather back guarantee. We then saw Dominator testing so thought we'd head back to intimidator to get on that when it reopened. We saw Backlot Stunt Coaster was back in operation so went straight on with the fast lane. These rides are just odd and I think without the Italian Job theme, just don't work. 
 
More and more rides were springing back to life. We got on Reptilian which was about what you'd expect from a Mack bobsled, got on Anaconda, a classic Arrow coaster with a terrifying dive into the lake followed by some inversions that I don't even know how the train got through them. We rode Flight of Fear which I was okay with but Chris absolutely hated. Like despised, easily one of his least favourite rides from the trip. At this point I started to lose faith that Intimidator was going to open so we did one last lap of the park getting rides on Racer red, Twisted Timbers, Woodstock Express and Dominator. We called it a day around 7pm, the weather had taken its toll on our enthusiasm to stay and something else was bothering me. The operations at Kings Dominion are not good. Cedar Fair are particularly guilty of running rides at full capacity but have you sitting on break runs for five minutes a go. Cedar Point is about the only place where the staff have energy. Here at KD they were quite happy to leave us waiting whilst they faffed around with something. 
 
So would I visit again? Not unless they add something of real value. I like Twisted Timbers and Dominator, but they aren't the solid main attraction. Maybe that ride is Intimidator 305. But that being down all day was a frustration that lingered throughout the day unfortunately. 
 

 
Thank you for reading.
 
 
 

Trip Summary
All right, then! Now I’m back in the UK after a 7.5 hour flight from Orlando to London Heathrow, I think it’s about time I posted the trip summary I promised at the end of the last report!
 
To cut to the chase; this was an absolutely fantastic trip! I loved getting back to Universal, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens after 7 years, and I loved getting on some of the brilliant new rides that have been installed since my last trip! As well as that, Volcano Bay was also a real positive surprise (I’ll touch on that more later), and I thoroughly enjoyed myself there!
 
I’ll start by ranking all of the parks I went to in this trip, and I’ll say a little bit about each:
Islands of Adventure - This is still easily one of my favourite parks ever, and I dare say that it now has possibly the most well-rounded selection of top-class major rides I’ve ever seen. I always felt that the coaster selection at IOA was one of its relatively weaker links in the past, but the additions of Hagrid’s and VelociCoaster have strengthened its credentials as a coaster park considerably, in my view, with both of these rides providing absolutely top-class experiences. The park also has some truly top-class dark rides and water rides, with Spider-Man being my favourite dark ride and Jurassic Park River Adventure being my favourite water ride out of the non-coaster offering! The theming is also wonderful throughout the park, in my opinion, and overall, I think it’s a truly stunning theme park! I’ve always loved how Islands of Adventure is a bit of a “jack of all trades”, and masters quite a number of different areas of the theme park experience, and I feel that the additions since my last visit have only strengthened that, personally! I will say, though, that if I’m being phenomenally picky, I think it can sometimes feel like the park has quite a hectic atmosphere with not much room to relax, and that is one thing that I feel the other Universal park does better. Overall, though, I absolutely love IOA; the combination of amazing rides and amazing theming make it easily one of my favourite parks ever! Universal Studios Florida - I may prefer Islands of Adventure, but it’s a close race between the two for me, and this is still definitely one of my favourite parks! The ride selection isn’t quite as varied as Islands of Adventure’s, and I don’t think that any of the individual rides quite match the best IOA has to offer for me, but there are still some absolutely fantastic headliners, with Revenge of the Mummy, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts and Transformers being real headline draws of the park for me! There are some other really solid rides at the park too, and I also think that the overall theming is better than I’d remembered. Diagon Alley is the big standout thematically, but the rest of the park is also wonderfully detailed and has loads to look at! As I inferred above, the park also has a somewhat more relaxed atmosphere than IOA, in my view, with it often feeling slightly less crowded and there being more areas to slow down and take a breather. My whole family apart from me actually preferred USF of the two parks due to the more relaxing atmosphere and the fact that they felt that the theming was “way better”, as well as the fact that USF’s rides were more “grandparent-friendly” on the whole than IOA’s. Overall, while I may prefer Islands of Adventure overall, Universal Studios Florida still has a lot going for it, in my view, and it’s also one of my all-time favourite parks! Busch Gardens Tampa - I had a great day here! The coaster selection is second to none, there are some decent non-coaster rides, with the flat ride department in particular really shining, and the park is nicer in terms of landscaping than I’d remembered, being very green! It’s not the most heavily themed park I’ve ever been to, but I also feel that Busch does decently in terms of theming in numerous places, with the Egyptian section containing Cobra’s Curse and Montu being a favourite of mine. If I’m being picky, however, I personally found the park to have a somewhat confusing layout. Something I noticed a fair amount during my day is that attractions would look very close as the crow flies, but you’d try to find them and struggle, with them turning out to be absolutely miles away in path terms, which would see you passing numerous other totally different attractions on the way. The park also lacks indoor attractions despite being faced with the ever unpredictable Florida climate, and while stormy weather wasn’t a problem on our visit, some indoor entertainment might have been nice as a respite from the humidity. Overall, though, I had a great day at Busch Gardens, and it’s a fair amount nicer than I’d previously remembered! SeaWorld Orlando - Despite this park being last, I actually find it to be a really nice park that I seem to like more than most, and I had a great day here! The coaster selection is getting to be really excellent, queues are often short, and the park generally has a really nice, relaxed atmosphere; what’s not to like? While not particularly heavily themed, the park also has nice theming in areas and generally looks nice. However, I think the reason it’s not as high as the other 3 for me is because the park fundamentally doesn’t have that much to do rides-wise. In particular, it has very little to do rides-wise aside from the coasters; the only major non-coaster I can think of is Infinity Falls (which I was unable to ride due to unreliability and lightning). Similarly to Busch Gardens, I do feel that an indoor attraction of some description wouldn’t go amiss here, both to provide some entertainment in the event of a thunderstorm and provide a respite from the Florida humidity. This wasn’t a massive problem for me overall, though, as I’m pretty content just riding coasters all day! Overall, SeaWorld is a great park, and I really enjoyed my visit! Let me move onto some of my personal highlights of the trip in terms of new stuff… there were so many, but I’ll try to name just a few!
New Highlights
VelociCoaster - My favourite new attraction of the trip was VelociCoaster, a stunning Intamin LSM Launch Coaster! This sensational ride has a stonker of a layout with some really impactful elements, including a euphoric second launch, a top hat with some sublime ejector airtime, and a final heartline roll that really whips you out of the seat and leaves you blown away upon hitting the brake run! There are also loads of other great elements including some great inversions and excellent pops of ejector airtime, the ride maintains a great sense of speed throughout, and all of this is also packaged within a wonderfully comfortable and rerideable coaster, with absolutely superb restraints! Overall, I loved VelociCoaster; I had high expectations, and it did not disappoint for me! Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Hagrid’s may not have many standout moments of extreme thrill, but what it does have is a truly spell-binding sense of pure fun throughout! Despite having high expectations, the whole thing was a huge amount more fun than I’d expected, with the launches being great fun and surprisingly punchy, the low-to-the-ground twists and turns being surprisingly thrilling, and the whole thing just being magically fun overall! This coaster always left me with a huge smile on my face, and overall, it was a definite highlight among the trip’s new experiences for me! Iron Gwazi - I may not have rated it quite as highly as many do, but my first RMC coaster was still a definite highlight of the trip for me! The ride had some absolutely ludicrous ejector airtime, it was absolutely relentless throughout, and the layout had some truly spectacular elements; that first drop in particular was absolutely absurd! I did find it a tad much for me in terms of violence and being thrown around towards the snappier end portions of the layout, which is why it wasn’t my favourite coaster of the trip, but it was still an absolutely phenomenal ride overall! Universal’s Volcano Bay - This isn’t a theme park, but a new attraction I did manage to experience and was absolutely floored with was Universal’s Volcano Bay! The consensus towards this waterpark is somewhat mixed, with the chief complaint being the TapuTapu system and associated problems. However, I thought it was brilliant, and it definitely exceeded my expectations! In general, TapuTapu worked really well for me, and Volcano Bay is a really great waterpark with some brilliant attractions; some particular favourites of mine include the Krakatau Aqua Coaster, Honu, Taniwha Tubes and the enormously fun TeAwa: The Fearless River! Overall, Volcano Bay was brilliant for me and my family; I’d firmly recommend a visit! Those are just some of the highlights; that isn’t necessarily an exhaustive list by any means! Now I’ll move on to my main positive surprises of the trip…
Biggest Positive Surprises
Universal’s Volcano Bay - I’ve already spoken at length about Volcano Bay in the above section, so I won’t dedicate too much to it here, but it was a big surprise for me and the rest of my family, so I thought I’d mention it here! Skull Island: Reign of Kong - I had never ridden this dark ride at Islands of Adventure before; it was the big new thing at IOA when we last went in 2016, but we didn’t manage to get onto it. I went into this ride with low expectations, as reviews are generally quite negative, but I have to say that this ride was a massive pleasant surprise; it’s an absolutely fantastic dark ride, in my opinion, and a real asset to Universal’s dark ride lineup! The 3D is excellent, with some awesome action sequences and a brilliant 360 degree screen, there is some excellent physical scenery (including a stunning Kong animatronic that's absolutely huge!), and overall, I just thought it was a brilliant attraction! Kong far exceeded my expectations, for sure! Ice Breaker - I had pretty low expectations for this coaster, as its reviews are generally middling to negative, but I ended up absolutely loving it! The swing launch was my first ever swing launch, and I found it brilliantly fun and punchy! The backwards spike provided some brilliantly fun floater airtime, the ejector airtime got surprisingly strong towards the end of the swing launch, the top hat provided some more brilliant (and surprisingly sustained) airtime, and the rest of the layout consisted of some more surprisingly brilliant pops of airtime and some really fun twists and turns! Overall, I thought that Ice Breaker was a phenomenal ride that was just so much fun, and it hugely exceeded my expectations for sure! Let me move onto a slightly less positive category... my biggest disappointment.
Biggest Disappointment
You may be wondering why I have named this category "biggest disappointment" rather than "biggest disappointments". Well, that is because I only experienced one new attraction that I would call a true disappointment for me. Yes, I was slightly less enamoured with 1 or 2 big hitters than most, but they were still excellent, and I think it would be terribly harsh of me to consider them "disappointments" because they were still incredibly, phenomenally great.
 
For me, I'm afraid to say that the main damp squib of the trip, by a considerable distance, was the new-for-2023 Pipeline: The Surf Coaster. I had heard some very positive initial reviews, so I went in with high hopes that it could be a top 10/20 contender and a ride that I really enjoyed. However, it just didn't do it for me. In short, the ride has everything on paper (fun layout, punchy launch, surprising airtime, an interesting new idea in the form of the jumping seats... it has so much going for it!), but it's ruined for me by the fact that it just isn't very comfortable, in my view. The "jumping" airtime is an interesting idea, but it just hurts in numerous different places for me, and in general, I think standing up on a roller coaster is an inherently uncomfortable riding position that Pipeline hasn't really improved, in my view. I went into Pipeline really wanting to like it, but it just didn't do it for me, I'm sorry to say.
 
Finally, let me display some stats:
Unique coasters ridden: 18 Unique parks visited: 4 (Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios Florida, SeaWorld Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa) New coasters ridden: 8 New parks visited: 0 Total rides: 45 Total coaster rides: 29 Total park visits: 10 (4x Islands of Adventure, 4x Universal Studios Florida, 1x SeaWorld Orlando, 1x Busch Gardens Tampa) Favourite coaster ridden: Mako (overall #1/99) Favourite new coaster ridden: VelociCoaster (overall #2/99) Favourite non-coaster ridden: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man Favourite new non-coaster ridden: Skull Island: Reign of Kong Most surprising coaster: Ice Breaker Most surprising non-coaster: Skull Island: Reign of Kong Biggest disappointment: Pipeline: The Surf Coaster So, that summarises my June 2023 Florida trip! Thank you so much for following this series of trip reports; I really hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed this trip! I'm unsure when my next trip report will be, but I should be back at you with another trip report before too long (September at the latest, as I've got a locked-in park visit booked for that month...)!

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!

Iron Gwazi- A review

Well its been a long time since I did my Zadra review on this page. So what better way to make a return than with a review for yet another RMC hyper hybrid with Iron Gwazi??
 
Intro.
So Gwazi originally opened in 1999 at Busch Gardens Tampa as a GCI dueling wooden coaster. During its opening few years it was quite well liked and proved somewhat popular with park goers until later on in its life it became notorious for offering a rough and unpleasant experience. Full disclosure, the originally Gwazi was actually my outright most hated coaster out of all the ones I have ridden. I found it completely unbearable to ride and just unspeakably rough to the point I was begging for a ride on Furius Baco. So as you could imagine, when RMC made their rise to prominence in the coaster community I was very much one of those hoping to the heavens that Gwazi would be getting the world famous conversion. Sure enough, in 2015 Gwazi finally shut for the last time and instantly the coaster community leaped on the rumours of RMC finally coming to town. Years went by with no activity on Gwazi and then finally in 2019, Iron Gwazi was announced by Busch Gardens. On opening it would become the fastest hybrid with a speed of 76MPH,steepest with a 91 degree drop and would tie with Zadra for the tallest at a height of 206 foot.

Originally booked for a 2020 opening, Iron Gwazi would be delayed due to the covid 19 pandemic which saw the entire Busch/Seaworld chain postpone all their new coaster additions across their parks back to 2021. In the midst of all this, reports stated that Busch still owed 9 million dollars to RMC for the construction of Iron Gwazi. So this further delayed the rides opening allegedly. Following a further delay, Iron Gwazi finally opened in the spring of 2022. It would open to rave reviews with many considering it the greatest coaster on the planet and the coaster to topple Steel Vengeance for RMCs finest work. So now I shall give my own thoughts on Iron Gwazi.
 
First Impressions
 
First impressions of Iron Gwazi are impressive. It is located right at the front of the park and as such is the first coaster you encounter on entering Busch Gardens. The large lift structure and drop making for one hell of a spectacle in front of you. For me personally it was a nice bonus to NOT have to trek right to the back of the park like you would have to do with Steel Vengeance and even more so with Zadra!!

On walking to the plaza area of Iron Gwazi, you are greeted to the massive purple tracked hybrid with its station building which maintains the same aesthetic of the original coaster in a nice tribute whilst also having the rides signature wave turn over station as a centre piece element for those joining the queue. All in all, Iron Gwazi makes for a good and dominating first impression
 
Queuing experiences and operations
The good news, Iron Gwazi will not make you walk for 7-8 minutes to reach the front of the queue line like its polish cousin Zadra does. The bad news?? Iron Gwazi utilises a “stereotypical American amusement park queue" of many switch backs that take you from the lower level of the station building, up a ramp which offers nice views of the prelift and lift hill before reaching the station which features more switch backs which slalom towards the airgates to board the ride. So Iron Gwazi has far from the most exciting queue design in the world. However, on reaching the station, the back of the station offers some wonderful views of the coaster in action for you to take in as you await your ride. One positive with the queue is the audio sountrack present. Iron Gwazi utilises a zoned audio system with three soundtracks playing that get more ominous the closer you get to riding. A very nice touch. Iron Gwazi also utilises a paid locker policy for any bags. You WILL need to put bags in the locker and this is quite strictly enforced. For those with smaller items however, Iron Gwazi features zipper pouches under your seat on the train.
 
Now, my negatives of Iron Gwazi are very limited. However one MEGA peeve I had with Iron Gwazi across both days I had at Busch Gardens was the operations. Now anyone who is familar with riding an RMC and have ridden either Zadra or Untamed will be familiar with the loading procedure of the rider puts JUST the seatbelt on and then the ride op does the bar. Well Iron Gwazi is an exception to the rule and allows the rider to do both. Sounds great right??. Wrong!! Once the rider puts his seatbelt on, they are made to await a recorded announcement to place the bar down.
 This announcement comes AFTER the staff have checked the seatbelt and to top it off, by the time the announcement comes, the previously dispatched train has already concluded its ride and is now sat in the breaks. So in other words, the previous train has navigated the whole layout before the current loading train has even had the bars put down. So dispatches very regularly hit the 5 minute mark. So all in all, the operations on Iron Gwazi was pretty diabolical

The ride experience
 
So on boarding the wonderful looking crocodile themed train with its familiar RMC restraints with the lapbar and shinguard which may or may not cause discomfort depending on the body time (RMC restraints don’t seem to agree with larger riders whatsoever), you are dispatched out the station with dispatch audio blasting out to accompany the train out the station. Turning round to the left, the train swoops down a small hop which may catch riders towards the back offguard before heading up the 206 foot lift hill
 
The views from this lift are fantastic with riders able to see both out to the city of Tampa and across the park. As the train hits the top, it will slow down a little to build up some additional suspense before plummeting down the 91 degree drop which yes is the steepest on an RMC hybrid. This drop is sensational. Absolutely sensational!! If you are at the front you will get a nice moment of just hanging there before quickly building up speed and if you are at the back, you are absolutely pulled up and out of your seat. Now one difference the drop on Iron Gwazi has compared to Zadra and Steel Vengeance is that the drop banks out to the right a little towards the bottom of the drop whereas the other two come straight out. The twist at the bottom will slam riders back into their seat with some pretty strong positive G force whereas the straight out exit on the other two allows the rider to be out their seat for longer. So which drop is better will be down to your own preference but for me, the mixture of force on this drop and how it suddenly goes from negative to positive G force coupled with a pretty darn good headchopper towards the bottom with the support beams means Iron Gwazi has my favourite drop on an RMC. 

On exiting the drop, the train flies up into the rides outerbank turn. Comparions with the outerbank on Steel Vengeance are inevitable here. Now, whilst I personally prefer the Steel Vengeance outerbank, the violent side to side action you get on this one can not be sniffed at and it is a very good moment of airtime offered in both front and back rows. On exiting the outerbank the train goes through another moment of strong positive G force before heading up into the rides signature element and what I personally regard as the best inversion on the planet (sorry Velocicoaster and the Mosasaurus roll!!), the death roll!!
 
The death roll is absolute amazing. With you leaning one way, the death roll whips you VERY STRONGLY in the other direction down a barrel roll drop which is both disorientating and incredibly violent. If you are in the back row, you are really going to get whipped through this violently it is simply the best inversion I have encountered. 
 
Following the death roll, the ride goes into its “second" inversion which is a cutback/overbanked turn (whichever you want to call it) which again offers a nice moment of airtime on the exit of the element as the train is pulled down towards ground level. This is one of the three advertised inversions that RMC and busch say the ride features. It is very much another inclined loop on the swarm style ones in regards to if you do or do not consider it an actual inversion. Nonetheless another good element before the train whizzes from this into another great element which is the wave turn over the station.
 
This wave turn is manys favourite element on the ride and with good reason, the riders are suddenly thrown to the right with some amazingly strong sideways airtime before having yet another cool near miss with the rides lift hill. This is a much better wave turn than the one found on Zadra as its more sustained and allows riders to take it in a little more whereas the Zadra equivalent ends before you can really take it in. Another strong airtime moment follows as does another wave turn in the other direction before the train enters a zero g stall. This zero g stall whilst the least picturesque out of this,Zadra and wildfire is actually my favourite stall on an RMC with how it rides. The train still takes the element quite fast whilst also offering a really nice hangtime moment which personally I found a pretty weird but awesome combination.

On exiting the stall, the train navigates a series of very strong airtime pops before taking a turn with yet more good positive G force before finishing with a bang as the train enters arguably its strongest airtime moment as it navigates a final airtime hop through yet another incredible headchopper before slamming into the breaks to conclude your ride on Iron Gwazi. Whilst it would have been nice to end with an inversion like Zadra or Untamed, I still thought this finale was a nice way to cap of the experience. Each airtime moment delivered with each getting stronger before the final one which was incredibly strong. So your ride on Iron Gwazi has ended. The train will then go past a nice tribute to the original Gwazi with the car fronts hanging on the wall of the shed on the right of the rider. After a long wait due to the ops, you return to the station to offload and go back round again...because why wouldnt you want to ride this incredible coaster as often as possible!?
 
Final thoughts
 
I really don’t think any compliment I can pay Iron Gwazi will do the ride its full justice. It is a pure elite level coaster. It is fast,intense,airtime filled and relentless from start to finish. Every element flows so well from one to the other with each element offering a different sensation from the last. It is most definitely the most violent and intense coaster out of the RMC I have done and yet also manages to be the most rerideable of them.

In regards to front row or back row. Honestly?? They are both as good as each other. Where Steel Vengeance is definitely a back row coaster and Zadra is a front row coaster, Iron Gwazi is every bit as amazing regardless of front or back. The front row offers the greater sensations of speed and intensity where the back offers the more whippier and stronger airtime experience. Iron Gwazi offers front and back seperate queues so it is easy to get your desired row if you are willing to wait longer and I definitely recommend trying both.
 
The use of headchoppers and near misses on this ride also massively add to the experience. It is simply one thing that RMC have perfected in their coaster designs. The drop and wave turn offer arguably the best headchoppers on the ride and when you have hands up, you do genuinely feel you are inches away from smashing them off the supports. This coupled with the rides ferocious 76mph speeds really does make for some incredible moments.
 
Even though the drop to break duration is around 45 seconds, Iron Gwazi by no means feels short when you ride it. A lot of shorter duration coasters can somewhat leave you feeling short changed when you hit the breaks. Iron Gwazi is certainly not one of those coasters. You very much do feel you have got great value out of the coaster when it concludes.
 
There are two big questions that often associate with Iron Gwazi. Is it the best RMC and is it the best coaster in Florida?? For as great as Iron  Gwazi is, the answer to both is no. Velocicoaster for the sheer package offered with that to go with the already immense coaster means I lean more towards Velocicoaster for Floridas finest. That being said, Iron Gwazi joins Velocicoaster and to a certain extent Mako at seaworld in making a trio of elite coasters to be found on any Florida outing
 
Now in regards to best RMC, the sheer length and amount of airtime found on Steel Vengeance still means that remains my top coaster. However, Iron Gwazi compares VERY favourably against the similar Zadra.
 
Does Zadra have a better drop than Iron Gwazi? – No
Is Zadra more intense than Iron Gwazi? – no
Does Zadra have better airtime? – no
Are the inversions on Zadra better? – no
Is the wave turn better on Zadra? – no
 
So all of these means that to me whilst Zadra is also an amazing coaster, it is completely outgunned by Iron Gwazi. That being said, all three of the RMC hyper hybrids offer an amazing ride and despite all having similar height and speeds, excel in their own area. Steel Vengeance brings the airtime and length, Zadra brings the speed and pace and Iron Gwazi brings the intensity and variety. They are amazing coasters and no matter which one you prefer, the others will also amaze.

So awful operations aside, Iron Gwazi definitely lives up to its hype and is an absolute must with any visit to Florida!! It takes its place as my third favourite coaster behind Steel Vengeance and Velocicoaster and will likely be a top three for a long long time!!
 
10/10
 
 

Welcome to part 2, my list and ratings will now continue. 
7/ Busch Gardens  Home to three excellent B&Ms, a good RMC and other mostly decent rides that complement the lineup. Busch Gardens was one of the parks I was most anticipated about.  Well, the rides I can happily say met their expectations. Montu is a fine invert and Sheikra is probably my favourite dive coaster. Iron Gwazi may be the lower of the three RMCs, but it’s still awesome. Cobra’s curse was disappointing but the water rides weee good.    Now, for some reason or another, there felt like something missing here, and for once I don’t think it’s the rides. The place seemed to lack atmosphere for some reason, like there was nothing there. I don’t know why this was the case, but would controversially say some of the UK parks are better in that regard.  Secondly, the operations. Bad, maybe not terrible but still bad. Most coasters were stacking with 4/4.5 minute dispatches that make Merlin’s look like Europa Park :o. The food was ok, but probably the weakest of all the parks out there.    It’s a one day park that can’t be overlooked if you are into decent rides. But I was perhaps expecting a little more.    6/ Sea World  Busch somewhat didn’t fully meet my expectations. But Sea World kind of exceeded them. To some, there will always be controversy held against this park, due to the Orca captivity. However one must remember the park’s mission to preserve and help such wonder lis creatures.  Moving on, the park is certainly taking the right direction now, by focusing more on themed rides and experience to distance itself from it’s original roots. The calibre of attractions are mostly good. Mako is absolute bliss, Kraken definitely one of the better sit down loopers and Journey To Atlantis a well rounded attraction. Mantis wasn’t my favourite coaster, but it packs some interesting elements and Ice Breaker is just one slightly flawed train design from being an ideal family coaster.  Must get on Infinity Falls someday! 5/  Universal Studios  Now, this is where it starts to become more difficult, because basically the top 5 is full of parks I largely adore.   The first (and original) of the two Florida Universal parks. The studios packs a lot into it’s action filled park. Unlike Islands Of Adventure, the park doesn’t feel like it has too many contrasting themed areas, although they do exist. Diagon Alley is definitely the flagship area of this park, with it’s stunning theming, shops, entertainment and culinary treats. Escape from Gringotts is a phenomenal attraction from the moment you join the line until when you exit. I think Diagon Alley is better themed than Angry Birds Land. Sorry Josh! The rest of the park is hit and miss I guess. You have older classics rides which feature greater theming and details, then you have the newer stuff which is a lot more screen based. Men In Black was Fun and the ET ride was lovely. Revenge Of The Mummy was adorable and I enjoyed the Simpsons ride for what it was (I like the show). Transformers was ok, but there are better out there. Don’t bother with Fast & Furious, it makes Derren Brown’s Ghost Train look like Rise Of The Resistance! Maybe. 4/ Epcot Weirdly enough, Epcot was probably the Disney park on this I was most excited for.   It’s basically a park of two halves. Future world which houses the majority of the park’s attractions in pavillions and world showcase, which I will get back to in a second. The selection is strongly varied. You have the classic attractions which are seemingly more educational and the newer items which are more tied to their catalogue of popular IPs. A blend I think works perfectly well. Spaceship Earth (not to be confused with Eurosat) is a highly educational attraction and charming one at that. It reminded a little of the Spirit Of London, which was likely inspired by this resultantly. Guardians Cosmic rewind was incredible and felt like a mix between Crush’s coaster and (the Paris) Rock N Rollercoaster. Mission Space was intense but better than expected and I largely enjoyed Test Track. Living with the land was interesting but maybe drags on a little. I felt slightly disappointed with Soarin to be honest. I ran out of time for Figment.  World showcase is the more unique and picturesque area of the park, featuring numerous themed areas to several countries of the world. Each area is unique, beautiful and even features cast members from that region working there. Numerous places serving food and drink are also there. The pizza in Via Napoli located in the Italy Pavilion was sublime. Numerous attractions also operate within World Showcase. Frozen Forever After is a highly sophisticated attraction which features stunning animatronics and set pieces. Even if one isn’t a Frozen fan, it’s worth it, so don’t let it go (couldn’t help myself). Ratatouille is almost identical to the one at the Studios park in Paris but still good. The Cabalerros boat ride was an uplifting attraction.    3/ Disney’s Hollywood Studios  We’re on the final three. There’s something I like about parks themed to movies and this place is no exception.  This park has clearly seen much expansion and redevelopment in the last 5+ years and I would guess most of it may be for the better. Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge is more than just an area, featuring some stunning theming, effects and places selling unique beverages. Blue milk was rather nice but pricey. Rise Of the resistance is nothing short of a masterpiece and Smugglers Run is also enjoyable.  The rest of the park isn’t too over shadowed either. The original tower is just spectacular in every way and I hope it’s left alone. Toy Story Land is a pleasant area, Slinky makes for an excellent family coaster and Midway Mania is fun. I prefer it to Maus if I’m honest. Star tours is wonderful and surprisingly doesn’t look out of place despite being another Star Wars ride, Muppetvision is a joyous show.  Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway is a genius modern dark ride which perfectly balances screens and physical effects yet almost feels overlooked by the other wonderful additions in this park. Rock N Roller coaster was alright, but it isn’t a patch on the one that used to be in Paris. Shame.    Whilst the park seemingly gets longer lines and potentially lacks some ‘filler’ a lot of the attractions are actually worth their wait IMO.  2/ Animal Kingdom  One of the more relaxing parks you’ll find in Florida. Animal Kingdom may lack the ride selection of other parks have, but it compensates this with some stunning shows, theming and rides. Avatar Land is one of the most stunning areas ever created. Flight Of Passage is super immersive, I loved it and I’m no massive Avatar fan. The boat ride was nice enough too, alongside exploring the whole area. Kilimanjaro Safaris is both entertaining and educational, to levels Zufari wishes it was. Dinosaur is a great dark ride that I think sometimes gets overlooked by the others and the Kali rapids are mostly decent.  Now, Expedition Everest. The ride looks good, the setting, the theming is all very nice. The ride? I’ve got to be honest was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, there are worse coaster out there (much worse), but for me it just didn’t do much and rides like Slinky Dog and Big Thunder I personally preferred.    It has some good shows, I liked Tough to be a bug and the entertainment in the Harambe area. All it really needs now is another major roller coaster to fill in the gap the Primeval coasters left and the park will be great!   And before I announce the winning park, here’s some of the other bits and pieces there are to do, besides the parks.    Old Town Kissimmee- An old western style town with shops, bar, restaurants and more. It’s very American and very lively, however I wouldn’t recommend the Pizza Hut at all.  Disney Springs- It’s basically a giant shopping outlet, but somewhat Disneyfied. It has a vast selection of shops and restaurants ranging from Lego, Planet Hollywood and Raglan Road (an Irish pub). Theres also several Disney based stores there including the giant World Of Disney. More substantial than say the Disney village at DLRP, but maybe lacking the charm.  City Walk Universal- Universal’s answer to Disney springs but substantially smaller. Has a nice vibe and outlets, Voodoo Donuts are nice and I do like a Hard Rock Cafe.    Icon Park- Not a bad place to chill, assuming no crazy people are holding protests but otherwise nothing special. All your usual Merlin midways nestled under one roof. I wouldn’t bother with the 7D dark ride unless your trying to kill time. The adventure golf 2 minutes away is decent though.   I didn’t do the Kennedy Space centre, nor Legoland Florida. I know some of you will be disappointed by this.    And now, our winning park is (drum roll). 1/ Islands Of Adventure  This was probably always the park I was most excited for, but yet it still managed to exceed my expectations.  This place basically has everything I want in a theme park, thrilling roller coasters, immersive dark rides and more whilst perfect nestled within several immersive lands. Plus Mythos, my favourite theme park restaurant without a doubt.  I love Veloci-coaster, which is easily my favourite non-RMC coaster and perfectly blends itself as something between Helix and Taron. Hogwarts is a beautiful area with a stunning dark ride and magical coaster which now makes for an excellent tribute to one the films best characters (RIP Robbie Coltrane).  Pop eye is without doubt the craziest yet stunning rapids out there and I also adore the Jurassic River Adventure, even if it is starting to show it’s age in places. I’m not the biggest of Marvel fans, but Spider-Man was amazing and you could say I’m something of a fan myself. Hulk I enjoyed, but for a 6 year old B&M, it was a little bit rougher than I was expecting, which concerns me slightly. Kong was ok and Zeus’s landing is fun for what it is. Sadly got spited by Dudleys.  Dream trip, complete! Maybe I’ll return one day. Maybe. 

Creek’s Orlando Adventure- Park Ranking
Orlando! A prime tourist destination and a paradise for lovers of theme parks. After nearly 5 years of waiting, I was finally able to experience this wonderful place. In what is without doubt my favourite park trip to date.    Having experienced numerous attractions out there, rather than write full on reports which might be longer than the upcoming Avatar sequel, I’ll just condense it into a rating list. Where I’ll focus on the main aspects.    Right let’s begin.  13/ (Un) Fun Spot Orlando  Probably the most depressing and underwhelming park experience I’ve experienced to date. Lack of atmosphere with next to no crowds, tonnes of rides closed with staff who are clearly bored. The GCI & inverting afterburner ride were fun, but everything else was largely forgettable. We were done in just over an hour and happy to leave. 12/ Fun Spot Kissimmee  Definitely the better of the two fun spots. This one had crowds,atmosphere along with more rides running. The sky swing is better here, but it’s all about the sky coaster, which is the tallest you’ll find out there. It was honestly the craziest thing I have ridden in my life, but awesome too.    Sadly their wooden coaster Mine Blaster has aged like curdled milk and is remarkably rough, very concerning for a 5 year old ride. They should rename it Spineblower by this point! Almost as bad as the Pizza Hut in Kissimmee. 11/ Typhoon Lagoon What this place may lack in slides, it makes up for in vibes. The wave pool is nothing short of incredible, alongside a soundtrack comparable to WWTP radio in some ways. The lazy river is highly enjoyable and decent in length and the slides generally good all round.  10/ Volcano Bay  Right, the first water park and major attraction. Volcano bay with it’s theming, setting and interactive features should be something of a stellar attraction. That’s before considering the vast selection of slides, the drop ones at the top of the volcano are great.    Now there’s one slight problem deterring this places rating, the mismatch of the Tapu tapu system. On paper, this should be a blissful development helping one to have an easier and enjoyable day at the place. Unfortunately in reality, it’s something of a mess, unreliable system with errors and loop holes making what should be a more chilled attraction more stressful.    Want to ride the water coaster? Get there first thing or you may miss on your lifetime trip!   Edit/ My second visit was generally better, but I still lay by the fact that Tapu needs improvement. The water coaster was actually underwhelming if I’m honest but still fun.    9/Aquatica  Ok, I see the visible confusion seeing this as my favourite Florida water park. But I can explain. Typhoon Lagoon has the quality and Volcano Bay has quantity, whereas there’s something of a compromise here.    Highly enjoyable slides, including the iconic dolphin ones, a decent wave pool and several fun lazy river courses and overall good vibes. The place is also much more relaxed than say Volcano Bay, so can rightfully say it’s eligible for a rest day.    And now we get onto the main parks.    8/ Magic Kingdom  Magic Kingdom, the busiest and (arguably) most iconic theme park in the world. Disney’s flagship attraction; Supposedly.  If you enjoy fast thrilling rides and experiences, this place isn’t really for you and the likes of Universal, Sea world and Busch Gardens would definitely be much more appealing. But anyways, the park certainly has a vast selection of attractions crammed into it’s ‘first floor’ park space.   The classic attractions are pleasant enough for what they are, but Paris ones are arguably better. Big Thunder Mountain lacks those extra ‘frilly’ sections, POTC is more condensed and It’s A Small World lacks the grand facade amongst being plonked opposite the ridiculously popular Peter Pan’s Flight. Haunted Mansion was great though.   Now for it’s flaws, this park still has its upsides. There’s much more to do than the Paris park and the staff are definitely friendlier. Splash Mountain was highly enjoyable even-though they are clearly running it into the ground. I didn’t get chance to do Jungle Cruise unfortunately.   The one concerning thing though here was the surprising amount of wear and tear, especially for a Disney park. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen far more rundown areas, but when there numerous broken effects, chipped/worn queue lines/buildings and places around it doesn’t go down well. Buzz Lightyear was an absolute mess with it’s broken animatronics and ceiling that looked like it needed decorating. Chapek needs to go! Spited by this one, May well need to go back after all.   
  Part 2 coming real soon. 

My 100% favourite thing about rollercoasters is that sometimes, just on that odd occasion, something will completely take your breathe away. Something will remind you that your hobby is the best in the world. This trip was a little out of the blue. Initially, we were supposed to go to Towers but once we learned that the Saturday was fully booked and Sunday was supposed to see a high amount of travellers, we took the quick decision to book a ferry to Dunkirk. Plopsaland is a quick drive across the French/Belgium border. There's lots of loveliness to Plopsaland, I was a particular fan of the dinosaur themed log flume and Heidi the mini GCI wooden coaster. But frankly, there was only one ride that bought me here. 
 
The Ride to Happiness is one of those odd rides that does stick out like a sore thumb. I read the dedicated thread that said this ride does dramatically change the dynamics of this cute little family theme park. Whilst that is true, I actually think that its a good thing that there is something like RtH at the park as it definitely has something special about it. The queue line is a simple affair, two dedicated rooms with little theming areas and a little area under the break run that was never used. On our visit, the queues were minimal with about a 5 minute wait for the ride. Which was perfect to get a real proper feel for the ride.
 

 
The station is nice and open and it becomes very clear quickly that this is a ride where it doesn't really matter where in the train you ride, the experience is similar. With that being said, the air time on the back carriage is probably the greatest. Like many of Mack's newer rollercoasters, the restraints are near perfect. Not too tight but enough to feel secure. The trains are exactly the same design choice as Time Traveller. With everyone seated and checked, the train is dispatched and your first inversion is a jo-jo roll. It's hard to describe because the sensation of being upside down whilst spinning is so peculiar and unique. It sets up the ride perfectly, this is no normal rollercoaster. Unlike most Mack launches which are normally pretty tame, this feels pretty forceful because of the spinning element and as a bonus, the train is forced to spin near the end of the launch track and it is fantastic. The train travels upwards into a top hate kind of element, the track is slightly banked which encourages the spin to continue and then you just fall. Oh the drop on this is sublime. It catches your breathe quite unlike any other rollercoaster. On a couple of rides, we were on the back carriage and it was in the right position to go down this track backwards and let me tell you, the ejector was exquisite. Absolutely superb. The ultimate adrenaline hit. I adored it and it became one of the many highlights in a ride full of them. 
 
The train traverses the banana roll which admittedly, was not my favourite part of the ride but the thing is, it was always excellent. With every ride just being that little bit different it always felt fresh and exciting. The vertical loop quickly following this was funky. I enjoyed doing it sideways or with a slight spin. The zero g is also excellent encouraging the train to spin just that little bit more each time. Just fantastic.

 
Up next is the bunny hop second launch area which just gives the train that extra kick to get into the signature element which surrounds the entrance to the rides queue line. Just wow. Sometimes it was easy to see where the train was going, sometimes the carriage was spinning so much it was hard to tell just exactly where you were. Just completely disorientated. The train drops down over the area, around a lake and finishing off with two ejector filled bunny hops. Packed to the brim with air time you hit the break run happy. And thats really the key to this ride. It reminds me of the first time riding Taron, hitting the final breaks and just smiling. It was wonderful, it was a shock to the system, it makes you want to run round to do it all over again. And that, was what a lot of people were doing that day. There was a lot of us going round and round on this thing to experience it as much as possible. With each ride being so unique and different it was fantastic to just experience it. 

 
I've never known a ride like it. It was just something special, something completely unique and enjoyable. Huge smiles that I could not hide after each ride. Just hitting that break run, wanting to run around and experience it again. Sheer joy. I'm so grateful for what Blue Fire did for the Mack company back in 2009 because we are now really seeing the fruits of their labour. And what I love about it is that whilst it is forceful and a fast experience, it never feels overwhelming. Whilst spinning around on it, you can see the joy from all your fellow riders faces. We met a person who had been on it over 1900 times and still isn't bored. I've got this far and haven't even talked about the fantastic soundtrack which fits the ride to perfection. Themed around a music festival in Belgium, this could have easily failed but it works perfectly with the rides pacing. Gives me chills.
 
 
Ride to Happiness isn't just a wonderful ride, it is in my opinion, the finest ride in Europe. 

Good morning. With Monster becoming my 351th rollercoaster credit it also has the distinction of being my 50th B&M in total. And as a celebration of my absolutely, 100% favourite rollercoaster manufacturer ever, this blog will be relatively brief and a look through the 50. 
 
1. Nemesis Inferno - 2003. Ah Inferno. Not the bang start but as a ride this has got so much better over the last two decades. Great solid ride.
 
2. Nemesis -2004. My favourite rollercoaster, one of the best B&M's ever built, in fact just one of the best rides ever constructed. Renewal secures its future for years to come.
 
3. Oblivion - 2004. One hit pony but it is a great hit. Ironically, one of the best dive machines out there despite the advances the ride type has made.
 
4. Galatica - 2004. This is okay. One of the weakest in Europe and other of its type are far superior.
 
5. Silver Star - 2006. A real grower, I wasn't initially a fan but now I find this a really solid crowd pleaser. Capacity and Efficiency to die for.
 
6. Black Mamba - 2006. I really like Mamba. It does have a weak finale but the theming and excellent makes this a stand out inverter for me.
 
7. Superman de Acero - 2007. For a long time this was one of my top five rollercoasters. I really like the long layout and darting off into the fields of Spain is actually better then it sounds.
 
8. Batman la Fuga - 2007. Not the biggest fan of this version. Just a bit meh and its theming doesn't extend beyond the queue and station.
 
9. Manta - 2011. Wonderful ride, very intense. I love a pretzel roll, give me more.
 
10. Kraken - 2011. This has grown on me since my initial ride. It's new colour scheme is a bit jerk but nonetheless, a great example of the flourless ride type.
 
11. The Incredible Hulk - 2011. The refresh has worked wonders and this is a fantastically intense and brutal Sit-down. Really great.
 
12. Fire Dragon - 2011 (RIP). The better of the two and I was fortunate enough to ride them when they duelled. Much missed.
 
13. Ice Dragon - 2011 (RIP). I hate JK Rowling. The loss of these two is enough to hate Universal actually. 
 

 
14. Katun - 2011. An excellent example of an American style B&M but in the hot Italian sun. Fantastic ride and full of force.
 
15. Raptor (Gardaland) - 2011. A really nice low to the ground wing rider. Love how B&M nailed the concept with their first attempt. 
 

 
16. The Swarm - 2012. I love the Swarm and the one I've ridden the most. A little short but has aged wonderfully with a very intense helix.
 
17. Oz'Iris - 2012. Excellent. Near perfection. Varied, unique and different layout and an absolutely perfect zero g roll. Beautiful theming. Three trains What's not to love?
 
18. Dragon Khan - 2012. An iconic ride. I think this could do with a retracking as legend has it its starting to show its age. Very aggressive ride.
 
19. Shambhala - 2012. The TPW famous ride, I remember loving this and its fun layout. I'm not PA's biggest fan but this ride alone would attract me back.
 
20. SheiKra - 2012. Never understood the dislike for this. I really love the absurdly big look of the ride and have always enjoyed it.
 
21. Kumba - 2012. Retrack please. It rode amazingly but wasn't great when I went in 2017. Absolutely iconic.
 
22. Montu - 2012. Really not a fan. After the great start, it just meanders around at the end not doing anything particularly special. Batwing is over-rated.
 
23. Dæmonen - 2013. Very cute. Yeah it's not substantial but at such a short queue and in such a beautiful location its hard to dislike this ride.
 
24. Medusa (Discovery Kingdom) - 2014. I really liked this car park coaster. Lovely and unique inversions and pretty forceful. Worth going to DK for.
 
25. Tatsu - 2014. Fantastic ride. It works so well flying above the hills of Magic Mountain and its strange layout really is unique and inspired.
 
26. Riddlers Revenge - 2014. Another fantastic, long B&M. Unique in one of the last stand ups out there. Really enjoyed it despite the crippling capacity.
 
27. Batman The Ride - 2014. Ridden backwards so not a true reflection. This was okay but these things should be done facing forwards.
 
28. Scream - 2014. Under-rated. American B&M's have an advantage in being very long and forceful. This has had a refresh since my visit so looks great now even if its still a car park.
 
29. Silver Bullet - 2014. Bit meh. It has some nice moments but its a bit too soft for my liking. Rumour has it that it has got a lot better since I rode.
 
30. Baron 1898 - 2017. Excellent. One of the best rides out there. The story engages me on every level and I could ride it all day. So much fun.
 

 
31. Monster (Walygator) - 2017. American style B&M in a field. Very good as only slightly better then Raptor at CP because it has no mid course break run.
 
32. Mako - 2017. I didn't think this would be for me but it was actually a lot of fun and a really good hyper. The mid course kills the pacing though.
 
33. Oblivion: The Black Hole - 2018. I liked this. One of the longer dive machines out there and its got a nice bit of decoration around the drop.
 
34. Flug der Demon - 2018. One of my favourite wing riders. Really nice use of the landscaping to create a varied and interesting ride. Great air time as well.
 
35. Krake - 2018. Dull. Almost as basic as Oblivion but without the prototype excuse. I like the Krake monster but thats it.
 
36. X-Flight - 2018. Wish I'd ridden more, we got a front row on the first ride so it probably wasn't at its fastest. Basically the Swarm but longer and more inversions.
 
37. Raging Bull - 2018. Very unique. Not surprised no more twister style hypers were made as this is a real odd attraction.
 
38. Superman Ultimate Flight - 2018. Boring. It has one stand out moment in the pretzel and the rest is just meandering around above the ground.
 
39. Batman the ride - 2018. The original inverter and absolutely fantastic. You can see why this was cloned so much based on the quality of this version. Hasn't aged at all.
 
40. Gatekeeper - 2018. I love this ride. Instantly re-rideable and instantly iconic over the entrance of CP. 
 
41. Raptor - 2018. One of the more aggressive rides out there. What it lacks in variety it makes up with its just sheer force and speed. Recommended.
 

 
42. Rougarou - 2018. This is just alright. I'm not sure if the flourless really adds anything to a layout based around being stand up.
 
43. Valravn - 2018. Boring. The vest destroys any air time and in a park full of big drops, it's not really interesting or unique enough to stand up. Rubbish capacity as well.
 
44. Leviathan - 2018. Great first drop, the rest of it is very much meandering territory. Legend has it Fury 325 does the concept much better.
 
45. Behemoth - 2018. An absolute classic. Very good ride full of airtime, great setting over the river and a really long ride. The seating doesn't add a whole lot.
 
46. Valkirya - 2018. Aside from being a longer dive machine, the vest restraint just kills it for me. Why it couldn't have the normal restraints, I don't know.
 
47. Fenix - 2019. I really like this, its one of the more forceful versions of the wing rider. Great setting as well.
 
48. Flight Deck - 2022. Interesting getting back on an older B&M. It rides really well despite its age and I hope it finds a new home.
 
49. Patriot - 2022. Will probably be scrapped. Is now showing its age and it isn't the most inspired of layouts.
 
50. Monster (Grona) - 2022. I adore this ride. How they managed to fit it in is just magic. The elements are just so odd and you get crazy elements of intensity in some of the oddest places. 

 
And therein lies my truth. Here's to the next 50.

2022, we’ve seen many hellos and goodbyes this year especially the latter. 

Carters Steam Fair, as we know it is another which will end in 2022. Although it won’t disappear completely, the current owners (The Carter family) intend to sell the collection to a permanent site. Making this year their final tour. 

I was thankful to get a chance to visit them in Croxley Green (near Watford), where they have stopped for a number of years. 
 
The last time I visited may be as far back as 2012. Where life and numerous commissions or setbacks likely prevented future visits, so a return was massively overdue. 

In that time, there have been some changes. The ride selection has been refined somewhat, no dive bomber? They have also reverted to a token system over real cash, which has its ups and downs. 

Thankfully, the warm friendly atmosphere and interaction from the staff remains very much the same. Something you probably won’t get at your usual fun fair. 

A number of rides are available (albeit maybe not the biggest white knuckle ones). The Octopus offers quite the swirling sensation and is enjoyable both on and off-ride. 

The Skid offers a thrilling sensation, especially if you time it correctly with the car pedals. It’s a mixture between a whip and a Walter mostly. 

They have a charming carousel 

A surprisingly thrilling Chair-O-plane, packs at a lunch. 

The crazy Steam Yachts (which I didn’t ride I’m afraid) 
 
There is also a classic set of dodgems, filled with the retro charm and character you will find throughout the fair. 

Other attractions include swing boats, jets, a classic arcade and numerous children's rides. They have something for most. 
 
Tokens are £3 a piece, which gives you access to one ride, which are all the same price. I recommend buying in advance online, as you can get free rides included depending on how many tokens you buy. 
 
This concludes my tour of Carters. They are in Croxley for an extra weekend and will then tour numerous places until their final stop in Reading around mid October. You can find their dates here/. Insert. 
 
Visit if you can, before they gallop away into the sunset! 
 

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!
 

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!

I finally did it: I finally went to America for some creds. Before my trip at the start of June, I'd only done European parks, so it was hugely exciting.

Before getting to it, here's a setting the scene sorta dealy.

This trip had been a long time in the works. Early plans can be traced back to March 2021, which was going to be a Cedar Point + others trip. But that fell through. Still wanting to go out to the States for some creds, I looked at other possible ideas. I could do Orlando / California or similar, but not being a big Disney fan, their draws were weak, and I didn't really have a clue where to start with booking that sort of trip. Resorting to the easier-for-me-to-plan road trip, I quickly honed in towards flying to Philadelphia, and then hitting up some of the big parks there.

The plan was to fly into Philly, have a day to get accustomed to the country, then do Hersheypark, Kings Dominion, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Six Flags America, Knoebels and Dorney (in one day) and Six Flags Great Adventure. There were some long journey times between the parks, but heyho, I've done long drives and was fine, so I'm sure this'll be fine.

The build up to the trip was...hectic. The day after I landed, I was moving flat (for a new job I started last week). My mum is also in the process of moving flat, so I'd been helping her out too. I had finished my temp job only a couple of days before flying out too, which didn't give me much time to generally sort out everything in life.

But anyway, I made my way to Heathrow bright and early...and headed to the wrong terminal. My flight was from Terminal 3...I got off the free shuttle bus at Terminal 2. D'oh! Fortunately, it's only a short walk between the terminals, and soon enough I was checked in and in a long security line. Small spoilers: the security queue was one of the longest of the trip! But soon enough, I was on the plane and ready for the 7-8hr flight.

Long haul flying was fine for me. Wasn't quite sure how I'd find it, but my American Airlines flight was comfortable, the food was acceptable, and I was able to pass the time by watching Stranger Things 4. Soon enough, I'd landed in Philadelphia.

And oh boy, it was hot. Midday local time and it was 35C (oops, I'm in America now, that's....95F). I'm not someone who particularly enjoys the heat (another reason why I was unsure about doing a trip to Orlando). But hey, I'd manage, America has aircon in most places, and I'd adjust soon enough...

I collected my hire car no problems. This was actually the first time I'd ever hired a car, and my first time driving on "the other side" of the road. On top of that, it was my first time driving an automatic, and only the third different car I'd ever driven since passing my test 4 years ago. So just a few firsts. I took my time to get used to it before heading off to a nearby-ish Walmart to get some drinks and snacks. This 20 minute drive to Walmart didn't serve me well though. Driving wasn't difficult, but I made the odd little mistake and just didn't feel wholly comfortable whilst driving. I guess that's understandable and to be expected within context, but still, it played on my mind a bit.

I carried on to my first motel of the trip and arrived in one piece. Woo, much success. But I still didn't get that comfortable feeling with driving. My excitement and elation for the trip and parks ahead turned to one of worry. "How on earth will I manage all the driving to come feeling like this?". Of course, I was hot, bothered and tired. And then thoughts came flooding into my head..."If I feel like this now, how will I feel after 8 hours outside at a park, then having to do a 1.5-2hr drive?", "How will I manage that for a week straight?", "I'm not sure if I can do this". I'm, err, not the most confident person, and I think this whole thought process shows that.

I tried to cast these thoughts to one side and had a spot of dinner from a lovely little restaurant just opposite the motel I was at. But these thoughts played on my mind still. I tried looking at all the drives I had for the next couple of days to try and ease my concerns, but that did little to help me. The first two parks were to be Hersheypark and Kings Dominion, and they weren't a short distance apart. Knoebels and Dorney, parks much closer to Hersheypark, were shut the day after my Hershey trip, so I couldn't change the order to do shorter drives before doing longer drives.

In the end, I got inside my head so much that I changed the trip a bit more dramatically. I hadn't booked park tickets due to my lack of organisation. Most of the motels/hotels I booked were free to cancel until 23:59 the day before arrival. So I wasn't going to lose any money.
Gone were Kings Dominion, Busch and SFA, the three parks which were a huge drive away.
The one motel I couldn't cancel was one which was between Dorney and SFGAd.
So the trip changed into:
Hersheypark: 2 days
Knoebels
Free day
Dorney
SFGAd

It made the trip feel less daunting with the driving. It did take out a big chunk of creds, and I was particularly looking forward to Busch / Pantheon. But ultimately, in the moment, I just didn't feel I could do it. In hindsight, it all feels a bit stupid. I'm sure everything would have been fine. I got more used-to and comfortable with driving quick enough. Maybe I should have planned the trip better to build up to longer drives? Maybe I should tried hiring a car on a smaller like (like my recent Hamburg one, where I changed my mind late on about driving too)? Maybe I should have gotten out of my own head / slept on it? Maybe I should have booked everything earlier to force me to do these things? Whatever I should have done, it's done now.
 
And now onto Day 1, which was my first day at Hersheypark...
 
It was June 1st, and again it was hot. The drive from my motel to Hersheypark was about an hour, so I set off in good time. I passed Dutch Wonderland en route - a park which was closed on that day, but I made a note that I could possibly do it on my free day if I wanted. The drive to Hershey wasn't without stress, with my phone losing internet connection just before I was due to go on Route 283, making me very nervous I was going the wrong way. Fortunately, I rolled up at 10ish - huzzah, I was finally at my first American park!

I really enjoyed the entrance plaza area: smart and well-presented, with the lovely view of a B&M hyper to boot. Plus, with the shop open, the hour before open flew by.

Whilst waiting for the park to open, I realised I hadn't planned out my day at all. I knew roughly what creds the park had, but didn't know the layout of the park or anything. Candymonium was open for season pass holder ERT and right by the entrance, so that was a no-go. Skyrush is bound to be popular, so maybe not there. After a brain wave, I remembered about a particular ride which gets long queues. So whilst the masses made their way to the park's hypers and whatever else, I made a beeline to...
Laff Trakk! Yep, my first American coaster was an indoor spinner. It was...okay. There's an attempt with theming and all that, but it just comes across as a bit tacky sadly. And the layout didn't really do it for me. So very much a one and done for me.

Carrying on the theme of low-throughput, bog standard coasters, I ticked off the nearby Wild Mouse. It was bog standard. Jesus, I've flown 3500miles for some tacky rubbish I could have gotten at the British seaside...It's time to throw in something better. So it was time for Wildcat. GCI's first coaster - a fact I'd forgotten at the time - does have a decent layout, and is filled with some neat moments. At the same time, it does give off vibes of 'Our first coaster', but you can see what they wanted to do, and how they've refined their coasters with newer models. A decent family-thrill ride for the park.

The park had only been open 15 minutes, and I'd ticked off 3 creds. The temperatures were soaring, so now felt like an appropriate time to ride Celsius.
Wait, no, I'm in America. Let me try that again.
It felt like an appropriate time to ride Fahrenheit.
An Intamin multi inversion coaster with a vertical lift and beyond vertical drop - it's either going to be amazing, or bloody dreadful right?

It was at this point I learnt to not trust the Hersheypark app too much. The app does give queue times for all the rides, but it said Fahrenheit was only 5 minutes, despite it clearly being more. I hesitated a guess at around 20 minutes, and an update came from soon enough advertising 15 minutes. Ended up taking a nice, round 40 minutes. Ooft. Thank goodness for the misters in the queue line though - they were a godsend!

I'll channel my inner MattN now...how was the ride? Well, it wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bloody dreadful. It fell firmly into the "good" category. The layout is surprisingly fun, and the airtime towards the end of the ride took me by surprise. The cobra roll was extremely "vibrate-y", but not in a rough way, which was...odd. I wasn't a fan of the clunky restraints though. So it was definitely good, but this was also something that really needed a reride at some point to determine just how good.

It has a pretty colour scheme too

I then double-backed on myself to go to the park's duelling woodies: Lightning Racer. I hadn't done them earlier as they opened late, but now seemed like a good time to pick them up. And I have to say, I really enjoyed these. Quick-paced, nice interaction with each other and great coasters in their own right. I wasn't a fan of how it seemed like the Thunder side would win every single time; seems like a bit of a flaw there.

Whilst I didn't want to make immediate comparisons, I make it no secret that I love Joris en de Draak at Efteling, so it was hard not to. And to be honest, Lightning Racer definitely feels like an attraction that walked, so Joris could run. Joris sees what Lightning Racer does, learns from its mistakes, and refines what it does well. Hersheypark is filled with "learning GCIs" it seems.
Aside #1: I didn't take photos of Wildcat or LR. Clearly I have something against taking bad photos of GCIs.
Aside #2: The Lightning (right) side of Lightning Racer was my 250th. Yay.

With the creds in that area ticked off, I went a bit more centrally into the park. With stomach grumbling, I decided to pick up a snack. Oooo, finally time to try out some American park food!! A funnel cake standard was nearby, so naturally I gravitated towards there...
It was blooming huge! Is this just American portion sizes? Are they meant to be shared? Did I buy a sharing one? I dunno, but I wasn't going to complain.

After eating a bit more than expected, I decided another cred might not be best straight away, instead opting for the nearby shooting darkride, Reece's Cupfusion. I like shooters, and I was intrigued by this. I was taken back a bit by the layout going up and down; thought that was a bit quirky. But the best way to describe this (from a European's standpoint) is like a discount/budget Bazyliszek at Legendia. It has screens as well as 2D props (some move, some don't). But it all feels a little bit on the cheap side, and a little bit lazy. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, and I had fun, but really, for a park of Hershey's size and grandeur, I was expecting something a bit better.

With that done, it was time for another cred. And I opted for hopeful quality over 'just a +1', and went to Great Bear, the park's B&M invert...
Another 40-ish minute wait for this. And I didn't really enjoy waiting for this. Obviously queueing becomes more boring when you're alone, but with no sort of themed music (just generic pop music, which was fine, but meh all the same), and limited views of anything in a painfully dull cattlepen queue, it does drain you a bit. Wasn't helped further by the fact operations were pretty poor, partially due to slow staff, partially due to people being idiots and faffing. Oh well.

Anyways, I was on and sat near the back. What followed was a decent, albeit unremarkable, ride. It very much peters out by the end though. Before this trip, I'd ridden 4 B&M inverts: Oz'Iris, Nemesis, Black Mamba and Nemesis Inferno. These are all fantastic examples of the ride type. Great Bear is an example which shows B&M Inverts are good rides, but can also be incredibly paint-by-numbers. "Let's chuck in a big drop, a vertical loop, a zero-g roll, a corkscrew and something else, boom, there's your B&M Invert". That's possibly a little harsh, but really, that's what it is. It doesn't have the location/terrain of Nemesis and Mamba, It doesn't have the scale and 'extra-ness' of Oz'Iris. The layout isn't as polished as Inferno. It just does every part well.
It'd be interesting to know what my reaction would be if this was my first B&M Invert. Maybe I'd rate it higher. But for me right now, whilst I enjoyed it and don't have anything overly negative to say about it (ending aside), it just doesn't do it for me.
Following the path along, I stumbled across another cred, the comically named Sooperdooperlooper. Obviously the historical nature of the ride shouldn't be ignored, but it very much feels like a ride which was designed to have the loop and nothing else. Literally after the loop, the ride feels like it was designed by RCT's "auto complete" feature, to get the track back to the start in a weird and funky ride.

Next up was the big attraction of Hersheypark, the famous Intamin known by Skyrush.
Since it had a surprisingly short queue (probably about 2-3 trains' worth of wait, if that), I opted for a front row ride. This turned out to not be the smartest idea, since after 3 cycles, it shut down for a bit. I decided to stick it out for a bit, and 10 or so minutes later, it came back up. And shortly enough, I was on.

And WOW. This thing lives up to the hype and is insane. You get lifted / chucked out of your seat every couple of seconds. It's relentless. And yet it remains glass smooth, and even 10 years after opening, hasn't developed an infamous Intamin roughness. Yes, the extreme airtime does kill the thighs - and that does take away from the experience a little bit for me - but that's the point of the ride. Skyrush is clearly a ride designed to try its absolute best to fling you out your seat so you land into the lake, whilst not compromising and things like speed. And it makes a spectacle out of its elements: there's no mini airtime hills that you'd find on a RMC, say. It's loud and proud with what it does. There's no stand out element either, because so many elements are just incredible in their own right. I also liked the mini lapbar release it does whilst on the brake run - much appreciated.

Given the lack of queue, I decided to run round for another ride, and got to do a back row ride. Again, bloody insane - moreso with some of the intense airtime moments too. I just about preferred the front, just for the pure thrill of getting the wind in your face, and it being slightly more comfortable. But damn, it's a bloody good ride.
The lift hill is comically quick too

Hopefully it's clear here that Skyrush is a ride I rate very highly. It's easily a "Top 10%-er", and even a "Top 10-er". For me, it slots nicely into the Top 5 too, slotting above Helix, but below Taron, Taiga and Untamed. Ultimately, the ride comfort is what stops it going above the others, but the craziness of the ride definitely cements its place.

From one hyper to another, it was time to ride Sweetsmonium.
Wait, no, I keep forgetting I'm in America. Let me try that again.
It was time to ride Candymonium.
(I'll stop with these terrible jokes now, promise)
I'd been keeping an eye on the ride's queue time during the day - despite not really trusting the app - and it had seesawed between 20 minutes and 180 minutes. I decided to risk it on a supposed 20 minute wait.
This was my first experience of a "no bags in the queue line" rule, which they were being strict on. Interestingly Skyrush has the same rule, but wasn't being applied. I'm fine with the rule and like the free lockers, but it felt like there weren't enough screens and lockers, and having to wait for a locker was painful.

After about a 30 minute wait in the warm tin shed queue, I was on. Given how slow the operations were, I dread to think what it would be like if bags were allowed in the station. I'm understanding to how hard it is to work on rides in hot conditions, but when you have a coaster running 3 trains and you have the 2 out of the station stacking every single time, something ain't quite right sadly.

Anyways, I'd managed to bag a back row ride for my first go on Candymonium. And this was my first B&M hyper too. I was quite excited for this. Andddddddddd....it didn't live up expectations. To be honest, all I really remember from this first ride is fixating on the two trims that are on the ride. They are extremely noticeable, and it disappointed me quite a bit.

I'll leave my review of Candymonium there for now, but note I will come back to this later!

There was now just over an hour left before the park shut. Despite having agreed with myself I'd be back tomorrow, I wanted to try and get all creds done in one day (just to see if my original plan was possible). So I went over towards Storm Runner - arguably the last major cred in the park. It had been closed all day, but I had noticed a couple of test runs. En route to the Intamin accelerator, I found Trailblazer, the park's Arrow Mine Train, looking very shut, and with fencing blocking off the entrance. Well, there's one spite.

There were staff stood outside Storm Runner too, that was also shut, and they said it probably wouldn't open today. I didn't press for a reason, but I wonder if it was down to the heat - I know the likes of Stealth and Rita struggle in 30C+ heat, and at 33-35C, maybe it was just too much?

To settle that disappoint, I decided instead to ride...
Jolly Rancher Remix
Previously known as Sidewinder, the park's Vekoma Boomerang received a makeover for this. Because of my immeasurable disappointment about missing out on 2 creds, I didn't take any photos of it on this day.
The retheme is nice and vibrant, and the ride gives me 'Speed of Sound at Walibi Holland' vibes: they've taken a Boomerang, added some flashing lights and loud, thumping music. The presentation for it works. The ride itself is an above average Boomerang, which is still a below average ride.

I then ticked off the park's kiddie cred, Cocoa Cruiser, and rode the park's old skool woodie, Comet. Really these were just a quick +2 and nothing more to me, though I guess Comet was pretty neat, and also my first taste of a Philadelphia Toboggan Coaster.

With a bit of time leftover, I rounded Day 1 off with a couple more laps on Skyrush. Still a breathtaking ride.
I possibly could have gotten a couple more goes in, but it broke down again. Intamin, ey?

My hastily arranged motel was only a 15 minute drive from the park, close to shops and restaurants, and was reasonably cheap. Huzzah!

So Day 1 Hersheypark thoughts: I enjoyed the park. It was busier than I expected, and the heat was a bit much at times. It immediately gets points for the amazing Skyrush, and even though there were some rides which didn't live up to expectations, others beat expectations, so swings and roundabouts. I was certainly looking forward to a second day, getting some rerides on the good creds, and trying some of the non-cred things I missed, all in a more relaxed setting.

I have two bugbears about Hersheypark. One is their queue lines: they are all so boring, and the coaster queues don't give you views of the rides. Two is the lack of themed audio. Their newer areas (Chocolate Town and Jolly Rancher Land...not its official name btw) do a good job at creating a cohesive area with some neat audio bits. But really, the atmospheres in and around the stations for the likes of Skyrush, Great Bear, Fahrenheit would all be infinitely better with some loop of special audio. I know it's kinda an American thing, but still.  
I returned to Hersheypark the next day. It was another hot one, of course, but it was a bit more overcast. I did a strange thing, and arrived at the park even earlier than yesterday though. Why, you ask? Well, to visit Chocolate World of course!

Located outside the park, and I guess extending the exterior of their 'Chocolate Town' area, Hershey's Chocolate World is I guess the American answer to Cadbury World (not that I've ever been there, mind!). There's loads of stuff in there to do: a 4D cinema, create your own chocolate experience, plus tram tours and other things. All of that along with a huge sweet shop and a couple of food outlets. Chocolate World opens at 9am (2 hours before the park). I wasn't bothered by the upcharge stuff, but there is a free attraction:  
Hershey's Chocolate Tour is basically a dark ride, taking you through the process of how the chocolate is made. After seeing the quality of the park's dark ride, it was nice to see how well-polished this is: lots of neat effects and animatronics, and all-in a fab little experience, definitely showcasing the place off well. The queue line serves as a walk through too, giving the history of the company. And at the end of the ride, you get a piece of Hershey's chocolate for free.

Resisting the temptation to go round again for the sake of another freebie, I had a look round the shop to kill some time, picked up a Blueberry Muffin KitKat (which, sadly, wasn't all that nice), and then went back outside to get in line before the masses descended to wait for the park to open.

Unlike yesterday, there was entertainment outside the gates. Well, I say entertainment, a single member of staff tried rallying some people up to get them excited, and got some kids to play a game. Or something like that, I don't know: he had a microphone, but it wasn't working. Anyways, at 10.45, he got everyone to do a countdown from 10 to 0, at which point.......nothing happened. A couple of staff behind the gates ran around panicking, wondering what was going on. I don't know what on earth was meant to be happening, seems like no one did. But in any case, this countdown to 0 did nothing, and the park opened bang on 11.

Noting that the park felt a bit quieter, and not being in a rush to get creds, I decided to head to Candymonium first - maybe it's a morning ride? I got a front row ride and...
Damn, that was impressive! Going in knowing a couple of the airtime hills had trims, I didn't fixate on them, and instead was able to just...sit back and enjoy. And it was just great fun: some nice floater airtime, but also some pops of ejector too. It was a class ride, and just really fun from start to finish.

I'd've loved to jump straight back on and see what on earth was up with this hot and cold ride, but everyone was making their way over, so I decided to leave it and make my way to something new...
Storm Runner was storm running (best pun I have, sorry), so made sense to tick it off before it got a potential long queue. This was a ride I was quite looking forward to, and it kind of lived up to the expectations. It was a nice, fast-paced ride which does what it sets out to do. It's short, but doesn't need to be any longer, as it packs in some cool elements. But at the same time, it doesn't quite hit the 'Wow' moments it should have for such a short, punchy ride.

In part, I think it's because coasters have come along quite a bit since this was made, and so there's more modern, quirky elements out there. I can imagine that an RMC-inspired Intamin could make a much more fun Storm Runner today, for example. Also, the restraints are a bit restrictive, and do take away from the experience a bit.

I then returned to another Intamin, Fahrenheit, for my much awaited re-ride. It provided a fun ride again, but was perhaps a bit weaker than my original ride. So it cemented it as a "good, but not great" ride for me, and probably not something I'd bother with again for the day.
The "theme" (if you can call it that?) of Fahrenheit confused me. I get the idea of it being a 97 degree drop and using it as a temperature and angle (that's clever), but I thought the idea was it was also a 'blazing hot' ride? So why would the temperature be falling? And why am I overthinking this so much?

Moving away from coasters, I went to something new and different:
Mix'd Flavoured by Jolly Rancher, to give it its full name (sigh) forms part of the new Jolly Rancher Land, and is a Zamperla NebulaZ - one of these new rides which seem to slowly be becoming all the range. They're pretty neat to look at, and though I don't like spinning, I thought it looked tame enough to give it a go. Ultimately, it wasn't awful, but by the end of the cycle, I did feel queasy. The good thing is, though, is as much of a spectator ride as this is, it's still pretty fun to go on too!

Turning my attention back to coasters, I then went for to take my reride on Great Bear. The big thing that stood out to me was that it had a much shorter queue, and I now realised how much quieter the park was compared to yesterday. Maybe not having to wait 40-ish minutes for the ride in blistering heat would make me more fond of the ride? Nope, not really. In fact, it just cemented my thoughts, and meant it was another ride I could tick off as "Don't need to ride again".

I decided to get a snacky-American-sized lunch:
The bucket of pulled pork chips gets my seal of approval

Still adjusting to American-sized portions (or just eating sharing portions and not realising it), I opted away from creds for a bit. I ticked off the park's log flume, which was good fun - I particularly liked the calm looking section which was actually on a gentle slope, creating a fun few seconds, and the nice camel hump at the bottom of the drop. I then returned to Reece's Cupfusion, the park's dark ride
I decided to try out a feature with the park's app, HPGO, which you can link up with the ride. Basically, it's a free wristband with a QR code. You can use it to load up photos, Fastpass things and all of that. But you can also scan it just before you board Cupfusion, and it then sends your score and on ride photo to the app for free.

As you can see, I get very focused on shooters, even if their quality is patchy.
Clearly not that good though, ranking 12th of all signed up players of the day, after only a couple of hours of park-opening.

That's enough time without creds, so I went to GCI corner of the park to, well, reride the GCIs (ignoring the bog standard Wild Mouse and tacky spinner). A solid duo/trio of woodies there, and I found myself enjoying the Lightning side of Lightning Racer a bit more than yesterday; a good choice for 250 in the end!
I even took a terrible photo of Lightning Racer, see!

Something I had only learnt the previous day, and that had only truly dawned on me the previous night, is that Hersheypark has a zoo. And whilst it has its own separate ticket, you also get it included for free in your day ticket. So why not have a quick wander through I thought! It's a nice area, not too big, away from the park but not too far away, and a good way to break up the day. Didn't take any photos, but yeah, was nice.

Anyways, it was time for creds again. And I surprised myself with how restrained I was in getting back to the one and only...
Skyrush!

Remember how I said yesterday they weren't enforcing the no-bags-in-queue rule? Well today they were. Eurgh, fine. Don't see the need really; the stupid station design means bags vs no bags is a mute discussion in my mind. Anyways, I got a couple more rides in, including at the back again, and it lived up to my memory from the day prior. Absolutely fantastic experience, and well and truly cemented itself as my #4.
Not wanting to completely wreck my thighs one park in though, I left the yellow beast for now to return back to Candymonium, and see what on earth was up with this hot and cold beast. Fortunately it didn't have much of a queue, only 5-10 minutes, and I decided to mimic my ride from the previous day and go for the back row. And you know what? It was fantastic again! It was a ride that was just a ton of fun, and filled with neat airtime moments. Whatever disappointment I had yesterday had dissipated, and I truly liked this sweet ride. I went back round again and bagged another front row ride, which I guess shows my enjoyment of it.

So now for my Candymonium review. It's a really fun ride, with lots of neat airtime moments. It's got good pacing with it too, which is great. And what I realised, most importantly, is that whilst it has trims at two different moments, those trims are needed. You still get some good airtime on them, and if they weren't there, you'd be getting airtime more akin to Skyrush's. That wouldn't be a bad thing for the ride really, but it then means you have two rides offering the exact same experience, which you don't want. The trims help differentiate Candymonium from Skyrush, and give the rides separate identities, whilst not taming down Candymonium. Huzzah!

My one concern about Candymonium - I really enjoyed my rides where I didn't have to queue, but didn't get the same sense of fulfilment when I did queue. That could also be put down to first ride expectations. So whilst I rate Candymonium, would I be willing to queue for it? Honestly, I don't know.
The Kisses fountain is a bit abstract, but I can see what they tried to do.

As the photos show, the clouds had become a bit more ominous-looking after my rides on Candymonium. And sure enough, the dreaded "R" word followed....rain. It wasn't unexpected by me: the forecast did predict a short shower. But checking my weather app, it said this shower would last for a good 1-2 hours now. Bugger. Hersheypark close their big outdoor rides in the rain; certainly anything I wanted to re-ride was down. After a quick snack and think, I decided to do what a good chunk of people had done, and ride one of only two indoor rides on park. Not wanting to bother to trek to the other side of the park, I went for another go on Reece's Cupfusion...
I got another delightful, free mugshot
More importantly though...
I claimed the current high score for the day...BOOM! Guy at the exit said he hadn't seen a score above 300k for a while too - whether he said that as a generic customer servicey comment thing, or if he was genuine, I don't know, but yeah. Take that everyone who visited Hersheypark on June 2nd! (I'm not competitive at all......)

I had hoped the long wait and doing the ride would mean the rain would pass, but it didn't. It was still going strong. I really wasn't interested in doing Laff Trakk again, so I decided to wander over towards Skyrush, find somewhere undercover, and see what happens. For reference, at this point, it was about half 4, and park closed at 6. So I sat, and I waited. Rain still coming down. I don't mind the rain, but with little to do, I didn't see the point in wandering around too much aimlessly. In hindsight, now would have been a good time to do the zoo, and I could have used my earlier zoo time for rides, but oh well.

The rain stopped a little after 5 - woohoo, the clouds have been kind! I didn't know what the rules would be exactly with rides reopening, but I hung back and waited patiently for Skyrush to come back to life. 15 minutes later, still no sign of life. Hmmmm, that's less good. Asked the staff at the entrance whether it would reopen - turns out it wasn't set to reopen for the day. Well bugger. Did it die before the rain? Was it a post-rain thing? No idea. Ah well, back to Candymonium then....
Or not, that was also closed. And there was no committed answer as to whether it would reopen at this point.

Other bigger rides were running around the park. But I didn't have much inclination to go on something like Great Bear or Fahrenheit again. The app listed Storm Runner as shut, though I wasn't wholly convinced. Equally though, whilst it would be nice to get a reride on it, I wasn't that fussed in tracking back and giving it a shot. So I decided to call it a day, with only 20 minutes of park time left.

So though my visit to Hersheypark finished on a bit of a damp downer, it was still a fantastic couple of days. Skyrush and Candymonium are a great one-two punch for the park, and they have a wide variety of "good" rides too. There's obviously a solid selection of flats too, which I didn't really go on, and an included water park, which isn't my thing. So it's super well rounded too. I hope they continue going for the more 'themed area' approach, even if only lightly, as Chocolate Town and Jolly Rancher Land are wonderful, cohesive pieces. I'd also love to see them get another indoor ride - there's definitely scope and potential for something really cool.
Wait no, I'm in Hersheypark.
There's definitely scope and potential for something really sweet. 

Coming soon: Knoebels, filled with nice food...and not-so-nice spites...

I wouldn't say that Californias Great America is a park that anyone has a huge itch to get to. Unlike some others in the Cedar Fair group, its investments are on the lower end of the scale. Flat rides are the name of the game and even its planned hyper that it was rumoured to get was given to another park instead (Orion).
 
Eight years ago, it was either this or Discovery Kingdom and bizarrely I chose DK. I thought that was a great little park, but this time it was CGA's turn. It's relatively easy to get to, sitting in San Jose and it took about two hours of train journey from San Francisco. I'd heard very little about this place before so upon arriving I didn't really know where anything was or what support rides there were. The entrance for example looks very similar to other Cedar Fair parks but also Six Flags Great America. I've since learned that and CGA were once owned by the same group.
 
Our first destination was Flight Deck which has the distinction of being B&M's first custom inverted rollercoaster. Built in 1993 the ride features three inversions and is a very old school B&M. It looks stunning in its bright red attire and the ride looked well maintained. My first reaction was how small the station was. It's very cramped and its the same with Patriot and many of the original gang of B&M's are the same (Batman clones tend to have tiny stations too). Also, for all the criticism I saw that Emperor has no station at Seaward, well.. there isn't a station here either. Geek, be consistent.  Once getting on, after waiting one train off we went. Very positive G Force heavy, really nice inversions and a well paced layout. There is an odd bit in the middle of the ride where the train travels in a straight line over the station which felt at odds with everything else. The ending is particularly great with an intense helix over a small lake. There was no second train. Unlike Cedar Point which runs three trains to a fault or Silver Bullet which had its second train in bits scattered all over the break run, Flight Decks second train doesn't seem to exist.

 
This isn't an extra-ordinary inverter and neither is it a dud. It's a good, solid B&M which has clearly served the park well. It just made me so glad we have Nemesis. I know its very easy to compare every inverter to Nemesis but the reality is, Nemesis is outstanding. From a layout perspective, a theming perspective, an efficiency and capacity perspective. Every park could learn a lesson from our grubby white alien.
 

 
I next wanted to get on Patriot but we went the wrong way and ended up exploring all the park instead. Some of my favourite flat rides passed (KMG Afterburner, Huss Breakdance) before we just ended up getting lost. I checked the app and it said that Railblazer was 0 minutes. Staying cautious we decided to take a chance. Now this has two trains running. Which is good as at 8 people a train it has serious capacity issues. We ended up waiting half an hour which I was pretty happy with. To be honest, as good as it is, it's too fast. It zooms through the layout at break-neck speed and it feels very hard to take it all on board. Air time hills, inversions. it's like a blur. No major park should get the off-shelf model. It's too popular for what it is and it just cannot handle a park with crowds. The legend that is Josh C has been tweeting about Jersey Devil, so when he reviews, I'll be very interested in that one.

 
With that out the way we took a ride on Demon, an arrow looper. I like the old arrow loopers. Whilst rougher then most modern rides there's something about a ride with janky track design that just appeals to me. As they start to arrive at the end of their lives, I'm just glad to have got on some of them.
 
Next was Patriot. This used to be a stand up before it got converted to a floorless (like Rougarou and Firebird). Whilst I do get why parks are running away from stand up, I dunno. The floorless train doesn't add much beyond making the ride rideable? Maybe thats the point. My husband made the observation that if it wasn't for the height restriction, this would be an excellent 'starter' rollercoaster for an aspiring thrill seeker. And it got me thinking about rides like this and Daemonen at Tivoli Gardens. And he's so right in the observation. Very few inversions, mildly intense without being mind-blowing. Considering this is a B&M from 1991, its aged pretty well from what I could tell. Still, no second train to be found.

 
After lunch it was time for the wooden coasters. We started with the CGI Wooden coaster, Gold Striker. This had a second train! wow. This was a fantastic ride. Really fast and intense. And with most of the ride hidden from the walkways, it took me by surprise. It probably sits just under Wodan for intensity. Some of the turns it was doing, for a traditional woody, were fabulous. Heavily recommended and the best ride at CGA by a country mile.
 

 
And onto our final new rollercoaster Grizzly. Quite easily the worst operations I have ever seen on a ride. It took over seven minutes to unload, load and dispatch a train. Part of this seemed to be staff training, the other part was sheer incompetence. You're running one train around your mildly interesting rollercoaster. This shouldn't be that difficult. But it was. What looked to be a twenty minute wait ended up taking around 70. I was done after this, Didn't even want to attempt the low capacity Arrow wild-mouse which was displaying a 40 minute wait. 
 
So instead we went on two flat rides including the breakdance. Every park should have a breakdance. They are the best flat ride by far. And we called it a day around 4pm. This park needs investment. On the surface everything looks fine. But it provides a middling day out in a state that has Disney, Knotts & Magic Mountain. Hard to compete, yes, but CGA isn't really even trying. It has great support rollercoasters in Flight Deck and Gold Striker but it needs that killer, triple A attraction to make the difference. And two trains on its rides. 
 
 

Hello and welcome to part two of my solo holiday trip report.
 
After feeling somewhat underwhelmed following my 90 minute trip to Bakken, it would now be time to revisit Tivoli Gardens. 
 

I visited here back in 2019, so it felt nice to be back. Even if on my own. 
 

The thing I love about Tivoli Gardens is their dedication and preservation to their history and character. The Rutschebanen (sp) at over 108 years old and such a phenomenal attraction! The way it ploughs through those corners, through the lovely mountain facade. And most importantly, has a brake man. My favourite scenic railway! Bakken being my least. 

Daemonen is not the best B&M, but it’s got its charms. Not to mention looks beautiful, especially within it’s pretty eastern setting. 
 
Since last time, they have actually opened a new powered coaster, a replacement of the old one they used to have. This one has a space theme and is apparently built higher as well. 
 
It honestly packed a punch in places amongst some interesting interaction. Probably my third favourite after Rhombus and Alpen. 

Other attractions include two dark rides. The Flying Trunk (a Mack omnimover) was just as delightful as I remembered and The mine one, very random. In a rather charming way. 

They have quite a lot of flat rides, including Fata Morgana. An iron condor type ride. Others include an alright S&S drop tower, a sky flier, a nauseating inverted carpet ride and Tic Tac. I didn’t ride Tic Tac. 

Villa Vendetta is a scare attraction, nestled away in the corner. It’s included in the ride package too. Whilst not the most actor heavy, it packs in quite a few surprises and features a decent set piece design. Was getting Hotel Gasten vibes here. 

Last but not least, they also host. Fountain show, Illuninations. This takes place on the main lake and is basically a smaller scale Aquanura (albeit with it’s own charms). 

The one thing I adore about Tivoli is the fact it had so much charm. It’s a place where you can just sit down somewhere by yourself and still enjoy things. 
 
Whilst I was happy to leave Bakken, departing from Tivoli felt a lot more difficult. It was just wonderful to be back here once more. 
 
Until next time adios. 
 
P.S I would strongly recommend Tivoli Gardens, regardless if you like rides or not. 
 

Life, the last number of years have been something of a disappointment to many for a number reasons. Mostly Covid. 
 
Now having, an outstanding flight voucher following many cancelled trips, an idea came to me. A solo holiday/adventure. After much debate, I decided to return to Copenhagen. Whilst not the cheapest, it’s a city I had liked previously and also felt reasonably safe from what I remembered. 
 
The flight from Gatwick was a little bumpy. From the hideously long security queues, boots having no meal deals and what might have  been the roughest landing I have experienced to date. Mr fish special. 
 
After working my way around the clean efficient M2&M3 (not near Thorpe), the adventure had properly. Urban house was my base for the trip, a rather trendy yet conveniently located hotel literally in the city centre. Very close to Tivoli. 
 
Attraction Parks:
There are two amusement parks around Copenhagen. Bakken & Tivoli gardens. With both being danish amusement parks and somewhat close, you’d think there would be many similarities. Think again! 
 
Bakken/
The oldest amusement park out there. Bakken is a short train journey away via the central station. The park is literally located in the middle of a large park/woods and is surprisingly concealed. You wouldn’t know it was there if you were looking for it! 
 

Despite the pretty woods setting, the park isn’t picturesque or interesting in any sort of way. If anything it’s a little characterless, dull and maybe underwhelming. 

There are a number of rides and attractions in this place, including five roller coasters. One of those was the Rutshebanen (sp), the park’s wooden roller coaster. 
 
As past reviews highlight, the ride had a modification to remove the brakeman with new trains. The ride was honestly ok, not great but just ok. The automated braking definitely had an impact on the pacing, being familiar to a go kart race maybe. The tunnel on the other hand was highly interesting with it’s position. 

Tornado, perhaps one of the park’s bigger draws is an intamin spinning coaster. It literally launches you up the lift hill into what can be described as a crazy bumpy spinning sensation. It is not in anyway a smooth or comfortable experience, but a rough one indeed. 
 
The park’s other coasters include Mine Train Ulven. A decent mine train coaster featuring a fun layout. There is also an acceptable wild mouse and ladybird coaster too. 
 

So, what else is there besides coasters? 
 
Well, they have two random dark rides, a dodgy ghost train and a random Safari shooter ride, was the least terrible of the two. 
 
Several flat rides incorporate the place, including a fun polyp ride, those “crazy” spinning rides and one of those axis rides everywhere is getting now. Although it was quite fun. 
 
They also have a small yet powerful S&S shot tower, which packs a punch. Also in the queue line it seems, given it tore my jacket! 
 

Does this look familiar? 
 
They also had a largely enjoyable fun house, featuring an array of effects and a broken piano. Shame it was broken. There was also a flume ride, although I didn’t go on this. 
 

So, I managed to complete and wrap up my visit here in less than 90 minutes, including re-rides on 3/5 coasters. On what must be one of my shortest stays at any park. So why didn’t I stay to long? 

To be honest, Bakken is potentially one of the most bland and generic parks I have been to, nothing comes across as striking. It just doesn’t feel photogenic in any particular way. 
 
The place just feels like a large permanent fun fair. And not in a good way. There was just no charm or atmosphere at all. 
 
Despite its plus points, it is no doubt towards the bottom-end of parks I’ve visited so far. And you know it’s not a great place, when a part of you is even happy to leave too. 
 
Visit for the creds, visit for Tornado. Maybe visit if you want to see new parks and like funfairs. Otherwise, you aren’t missing out on too much here. 
 
Stay tuned for my Tivoli review soon. 

28th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 2)
Day 2 today! I know I said that we were planning to have a more relaxed day today, but we had more left to do rides-wise than we’d previously anticipated, and if I’m being honest, I am quite naturally drawn to rides compared to Europa’s other stuff, so I’ll digress that that did go out of the window somewhat as the day went on. It wasn’t quite as intense as yesterday, however; there were less coasters involved, and my parents said it felt more relaxed than yesterday.
 
We did oversleep slightly, and my parents weren’t feeling ready to enter the park early, so I did enter the park on my own at a little before 10am. As with yesterday, I was compelled to start on…
Wodan Timbur Coaster
Wodan was on an advertised 20 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go. The queue ended up being a bit longer than advertised, taking around 35-40 minutes. So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 9, and it was just as phenomenal as yesterday, being blisteringly fast and packed with airtime:



After an awesome ride on Wodan, I decided to have another try of the other coaster in Iceland…
Blue Fire
Blue Fire was on an advertised 30 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go. Interestingly, the ride once again had a brief breakdown while I was in the queue, but it must be said that it was resolved very quickly; only one empty train cycled and then people were back on it! Operations were also phenomenal; for some idea, 20-seat trains were launching before the train in front had even hit the final brake run, which is really quite nuts! So, how was the ride? Well, I was seated in row 8, and it was similar to yesterday; a very good, fun ride with some nice inversions and hangtime:

After Blue Fire, my parents entered the park, and we headed together to ride…
Arthur
Arthur was on a 35 minute advertised queue time, so we decided to give it a go seeing as we hadn’t done it yesterday. The queue for this was quite long compared to other rides in the park, and it took a little longer than 35 minutes (perhaps closer to 45 minutes to an hour), but it was very well themed (although that is admittedly the case for most queue lines at EP)! So, how was the ride? Well, I must say it was a very pleasant surprise! I went in anticipating quite a tame, kiddified ride, but I’ve got to say that it was really quite a fun dark ride roller coaster; the dark ride portion was brilliant, with some great scenes, and the coaster element was more thrilling and more substantial than expected! Overall, Arthur was a really fun attraction that we all thoroughly enjoyed; certainly a pleasant surprise:


After Arthur, we sauntered around the Austrian lake for a bit before riding…
Josefina’s Magical Imperial Journey
Josefina’s was nearby, it had a very minimal queue, and my mum had expressed desire to ride it, so we decided to give it a go. I’ll admit that this was slightly different to what I was expecting from having viewed the Austrian lake yesterday; I thought riders had water cannons to shoot passers-by with, but it turns out that that was a completely different ride! Anyway, how was Josefina’s Imperial Journey? Well, I thought it was a really nice attraction; nothing too thrilling for sure, but a very nice way to relax for a few minutes, with wonderful scenery and some really cool fountains! Overall, we really enjoyed Josefina’s, and it was certainly a nice little ride for what it was:


After our ride on Josefina’s, we decided to trek over to Greece to have a go on…
Pegasus
Pegasus was on an advertised 25 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. This was one of the 4 credits I was missing, and the only non-water coaster remaining at that point, so I was intrigued to try it. I did notice that Pegasus appeared to be one of the lower capacity Europa coasters; with only one train of 18 riders, it wasn’t throttling people through at quite the same rate as the others, so the queue ended up perhaps being longer per the amount of people in the queue than some of the park’s other rides. That’s not to say that it was at all slow, mind you; as is usual in Europa, the staff certainly didn’t hang about when the ride was parked, and the train appeared to be sent in very little time at all; great job, guys! Anyway, how was the ride? Well, it was quite a pleasant surprise! I was expecting something akin to a Vekoma Rollerskater like Hippogriff, but the actual ride was very fun, very smooth and a fair bit more thrilling than expected; it reminded me more of Thirteen’s outdoor section, with perhaps even a tad more punch than that, and on the back row (where we were seated), it had a surprisingly fun pop of airtime on the drop, as well as in one other area that I remember! Overall, I thought Pegasus was a very fun ride, and definitely a pleasant surprise:

After Pegasus, we decided to tackle the other Greek roller coaster, and our first water ride…
Poseidon
Poseidon was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. This was our first water ride of the trip, so I was interested to see what it was like. Before getting onto the ride itself, I must talk about a rather embarrassing moment that occurred in the queue. I was taking photographs with my phone, and I was prepping to take a photograph of a boat splashing down the first drop. However, I didn’t realise that the queue was designed in such a way that the waves could come over into it, so as such, I got caught off-guard and got surprisingly drenched! My phone was fine, but things certainly got off to a pretty wet start on Poseidon! It must be said that the queue and general area are stunningly themed; I think the whole bit around Poseidon is a truly stunning vista within Europa, and the queue is fantastic! So, how was the ride? Well I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a fan at all. I was intrigued to see how the coaster sections rode on Poseidon, as my only previous experience with a Mack Water Coaster was Journey to Atlantis at SeaWorld Orlando, whose coaster section is not especially extensive, but I’m sad to say that I didn’t especially enjoy the coaster bits of Poseidon. It was similar to Euro Mir in that it seemed to get hideously rough whenever it sped up or turned (although perhaps slightly less bad than Euro Mir), and I was bashed around like hell. And even on the straight bits, it seemed to vibrate in a rather uncomfortable way that hurt my bottom a bit (I know that sounds weird, but that’s what I genuinely felt). Wetness-wise, I got pretty soaked; my trousers were soaking wet through! However, we’re not talking anywhere near a Valhalla level soaking or anything; it was still within the comfortable realm of wetness, so I’d say it delivered as a water ride. Overall, while Poseidon looks beautiful, I wasn’t really a fan of its on-ride experience; it was too rough for me, I’m afraid:


After Poseidon, we had a bit of a sit down in France with some delicious baked goods; we had pretzels from the boulangerie, and they were delicious!
 
After that, we walked for a bit, and headed onto…
Piccolo Mondo
Piccolo Mondo was on a walk-on queue, so we decided to give it a go; it was a new dark ride that I thought looked intriguing. So, how was it? Well, I thought it was quite good fun; it was certainly quirky, but it had quite a fun vibe about it, and it had lots of fun animatronics and scenes! All in all, definitely a fun little ride:

After Piccolo Mondo, we decided to try the other dark ride in Italy…
Geisterschloss
Geisterschloss also had a very small queue, so we decided to give it a whirl. I’d heard that this was very similar to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, which I really liked, so I was interested to give it a try. So, how was it? Well, I can definitely see the similarities between HM and Geisterschloss (not least the stretching room pre-show, which was almost an exact replica of its Disney inspiration), but it was surprisingly dark and gory in comparison to Haunted Mansion, with a lot of heads being cut off and dead bodies. It also appeared more reliant on jumpscares than HM, and while it was a nice dark ride, I’m not sure I liked it quite as much as its Disney sibling:

After Geisterschloss, we cut through an alleyway to get nearer to the entrance of…
Silver Star
Silver Star was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so we decided to give it a ride. As with yesterday’s rides, the queue moved at phenomenal pace, and I’m not sure it even took 15 minutes! So, how was the ride? Well, we were seated in row 7, and it was just as phenomenal as yesterday, being packed full of awesome airtime:

After Silver Star, we sauntered steadily over to Portugal to do our final new coaster, and our next water ride…
Atlantica SuperSplash
Atlantica was on an advertised 35 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, this was somewhat understated, and it ended up taking close to an hour all in, which was the longest queue of the trip so far. That’s not through the fault of the ride team, however; the queue still moved fast, and there are many theme parks where I’d be thrilled with an hour’s wait, so I guess Europa has just spoiled me over the last 2 days! So, how was the ride? Well, it was perfectly all right, but not something I was particularly thrilled with or something I’d rush to do again unless it had a short queue. The main drop was quite good, and the airtime hill was a fun moment too, but the ride didn’t do an awful lot, and I thought the coaster functionality didn’t really serve much purpose; it just kind of existed, and it didn’t really add a lot to the ride for me. Don’t get me wrong, Atlantica wasn’t a bad ride by any means, and I did get pretty wet on it, so it certainly served its purpose as a water ride, but it wasn’t a favourite of mine, and I think my parents agreed. It looks beautiful, however, and is very well themed:


After Atlantica, we sat down for a few minutes before deciding to do another water ride while we were still wet…
Fjord-Rafting
Fjord-Rafting was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. We were going to do this yesterday, so I was intrigued to see what it was like now that we’d vowed to do water rides today. So, how was it? Well, I thought it was a very enjoyable rapids ride; there were loads of good waves, loads of good effects, some really nice theming, and it was overall a really good, fun rapids that was decently wet while still being within the realms of fun! I definitely liked this rapids a lot! (I apologise, as I realise I forgot to photograph Fjord-Rafting…)
 
After a fun ride on Fjord-Rafting, I split off from my parents; they went to the paddle steamer in France for some drinks, while I had one last ride on each of the big 3.
 
I initially started with Silver Star, where I scored a back row ride; it was absolutely sublime, with tons of phenomenal airtime!
 
I then trekked over to Iceland, where I joined a 25 minute queue for Blue Fire. I scored a back row ride on this too, and similarly to earlier, it was good fun!
 
I then finished the day with a ride on Wodan. I was seated in row 9, and this was possibly the most fast-paced Wodan ride yet; the ride felt absolutely unstoppable!
 
Having done the big 3 in quick succession, and having done multiple rides on each now, I am definitely noticing a hierarchy emerging in terms of how I rank them. Silver Star is top dog (a truly spectacular ride that is packed with fun and infectiously rerideable!), Wodan is a very close second to Silver Star (absolutely relentless, and so much fun!), and Blue Fire is a more distant third (still an excellent coaster, but lacking a certain something to take it into that truly top tier alongside Silver Star and Wodan. Nevertheless, the last inversion is truly excellent, and the ride is certainly great fun!).
 
After my rides on the big 3, I headed back to our hotel, where I met back up with my parents to close off the day with a lovely evening meal in Restaurant Castillo.
 
So, that was day 2! We had a great day today, and I thoroughly enjoyed ticking off more attractions we hadn’t done, including some slightly different ones compared to the rather coaster-heavy first day!
 
Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed my report from day 2! Day 3 will be coming tomorrow, and my mum has already strategised a plan of action for us tomorrow that involves ERT and getting on some of the remaining rides we haven’t done, as well as rerides on our favourites and possibly a show or two as well!

27th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 1)
Today, our first day in the park finally arrived! It’s a day I had dreamed about for ages, and quite literally dreamed about within the last few months… although unlike in my dreams, no vloggers stopping me from boarding rides or university staff with cricket bats were here to ruin it for me (if you don’t know what I mean, check out the theme park dreams thread)! And it was a very exciting day for sure… let me get straight to the good stuff!
 
We did not go into the park for ERT this morning, instead opting for a more relaxed start to the day. We headed into Europa at a little after 9:30am through the hotel guest entrance, which was very quick and easy:

After getting into the park, we initially considered starting with Alpenexpress Enzian, but we could not find the entrance, so we instead decided to start with a nearby ride that we were all hotly ancitipating…
Wodan Timbur Coaster
Wodan was on an advertised 40 minute queue, so we decided to join it. I was very excited to ride Wodan; Wicker Man was my #3 prior to visiting Europa, so I naturally had high expectations for its bigger, badder cousin. The queue for Wodan is an attraction in itself, with very elaborate theming throughout, and we also had the bonus of it only being 20 minutes as opposed to the advertised 40, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, we rode in row 8, and I thought it was absolutely phenomenal; the pacing was truly relentless like no other ride I’ve ever ridden, and every bit of the ride felt like it was trying to fling you out of the seat in some way, including some very unexpected moments of airtime! Interestingly, I thought it encapsulated elements from all 3 of the modern wooden coasters I’ve done previously (Wicker Man, Mine Blower and Megafobia); the initial sequence of elements reminded me a lot of Megafobia with the sustained air on the way down the first drop and the big turnaround directly after, while the fun twists and turns, the relative smoothness and the comfy trains reminded me a lot of Wicker Man, and the awesome little pops of air at the end reminded me a lot of Mine Blower. And it integrated all of these elements wonderfully to make it an absolutely phenomenal wooden roller coaster; Wodan definitely became my favourite wooden roller coaster I’ve ridden (yes, I concede that I definitely liked it more than Wicker Man), and it has definitely blazed its way into my top 3 for sure! My parents loved the ride, too:



After Wodan, we headed to the other major roller coaster in Iceland…
Blue Fire
Blue Fire was on an advertised 20 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. Seeing as Icon was my #2 prior to visiting Europa, I was very interested to ride the prototype Mack launch coaster. Many had told me that Blue Fire was superior to Icon, so I was interested to see what I thought to it given my Icon love. The wait took a tad longer than 20 minutes due to a breakdown, but that certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the ride team; trains were being hammered out, and as I later found would be the case with every ride at Europa, the queue moved very quickly, and the boarding/checking process took very little time at all; they don’t mess around! So, how was Blue Fire? Well, I thought it was a very fun ride; it was smooth, the inversions were nice (particularly the first and last ones; the last one is challenging for my favourite inversion), there were some nice transitions and it was overall a nice, fun coaster! However… I did think it was lacking a little something relative to Icon. I can’t quite put my finger on what, but I wasn’t getting quite the same wow feeling that I get from a ride on Icon. It could be that it’s not the most airtime-y ride, and I do enjoy airtime on this style of coaster, so I was missing a little air on there, but I’m not sure that was entirely it; while it was a terrific coaster, I did think it was missing that little spark to make it a true 10/10 tier ride for me. That’s not to say that Blue Fire isn’t a great ride, though; I thoroughly enjoyed myself on it, and it still makes my top 10! Neither of my parents seemed overly keen, though; my mum said it was “sick-making”, and said she isn’t riding again this trip, while my dad said that it felt slow for a ride of 62mph:


After Blue Fire, we decided to wander for a bit and see where the path took us. It took us to Scandinavia, and Fjord-Rafting was initially considered as our next ride, but we then made the conservative decision to leave the water rides for a hotter day on our trip (tomorrow and Friday are due to be hotter), so we instead chose to ride…
Snorri Touren
I didn’t actually know how long the queue for Snorri Touren was, but I thought it looked intriguing, so we joined the queue. For such a hidden away attraction, I thought the queue was very nicely themed, with lots to look at and odd appearances from an octopus who I’m guessing is Snorri (?). So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was a fun little ride for what it was, with some nice theming, a catchy soundtrack, good projection mapping, and a rather surprising and clever section that almost resembled a simulator-style ride, which I thought was interesting! Overall, I thought it was a fun and intriguing ride, and my parents seemed to agree:

After Snorri Touren, we decided to head to another dark ride that I knew a little more about…
Piraten in Batavia
Piraten in Batavia was on an advertised 20 minute queue, so we joined it. We thought the queue looked rather big from the outside, as it was spilling out of the building into the plaza, but it turned out that the sign was right, as the queue moved at a very fast pace and took no longer than advertised, perhaps even slightly less! The queue was also incredibly well themed, with some surprisingly massive rooms and lots to look at, which is always good! So, how was the ride? Well, I didn’t know too much about it other than that it was similar to Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney and replaced an older attraction of the same premise, so I went in (relatively) blind aside from people telling me it was brilliant. And I must say, I thought it was a truly excellent dark ride, and perhaps controversially, I’d take it over its Disney source material any day of the week (well, the WDW version). There was lots of theming to look at throughout, the scenes were really excellent (with some being surprisingly grand in scale), and other tools such as smells and projection mapping were also used very effectively in there; I thought it was a fantastic dark ride, and it seemed to be a hit with my parents too:

After Piraten in Batavia, we headed to our next roller coaster, which was very nearby…
Euro Mir
Euro Mir was on an advertised 15 minute wait, so we decided to give it a go. The ride looks very impressive from off-ride, with the huge glass buildings and the big rocket giving it a very strong presence within the surrounding area. The ride also has an… interesting indoor queue, with some fun UV lighting and a soundtrack that is bound to be stuck in one’s head after riding (as is the case with a surprising number of Europa’s rides)! So, how was Euro Mir? Well, I was interested to see what I thought to it, as it seems quite marmite; I’ve noticed that people seem to either really like it or not think much to it at all. And sadly, me and my parents all fell quite comfortably into the latter camp. Europa had certainly been buttering us the right way up to this point, so I hate to say it, but… oh dear. This was genuinely horrible, and I don’t think any of us enjoyed it at all. I thought it was quite a strange coaster, with an interesting start with some controlled spinning and a very long lift hill given the height, which was intriguing. The aerial turns were OK, providing some nice views of the park… but that’s where the ride went hugely downhill, both literally and figuratively. Interestingly, it didn’t spin at all in the main thrilling body of the coaster, so nausea wasn’t really an issue, but whenever it sped up or turned, it got horrifically rough. Me and my mum were facing forwards, and we got bashed around a hell of a lot (particularly our shins/knees, getting bashed against the hard side of the car), but my dad, who was facing backwards, seemed to get the brunt of the bashing, with him saying that it really hurt his shins. Granted, Euro Mir is a fairly forceful coaster for a ride of its type, and it’s certainly novel, so I probably shouldn’t be so harsh, but none of us especially enjoyed it at all:


After Euro Mir, we wandered into the Great Britain section of the park, where we had a spot of lunch in the sports bar before having a little stroll around the Great Britain area while working out where to go next:


I’ve got to say, Europa is the perfect park for just strolling around; it’s truly beautiful throughout, and never feels too busy given that it gets over 5 million guests per year!
 
After a brief stroll through Britain, we stumbled into Switzerland, where we boarded our next attraction:
Schweizer Bobbahn
Schweizer Bobbahn had a 15 minute advertised queue, so we joined it. I was interested to ride Schweizer Bobbahn; I’d remembered really liking Avalanche at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, so I was hopeful for quite a fun little coaster. So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was rather good fun myself, with some nice helixes and turns! I didn’t think it quite stacked up to Avalanche, though; it didn’t seem quite as fast, and it had a slight rattle in some of the more forceful sections that I don’t remember Avalanche having, which detracted ever so slightly. Nevertheless, I thought it was a fun little coaster for what it was, and certainly something I enjoyed:


After Schweizer Bobbahn, we headed to do the other coaster in Switzerland…
Matterhorn Blitz
Matterhorn Blitz had an advertised 20 minute queue, so we decided to join it and give it a go. The queue felt like one of the longest queues of the day, however; Matterhorn Blitz is not the highest capacity ride at Europa, and the ride did appear quite popular. It was a fairly nicely themed queue, though, with a very nicely themed indoor section at the end, although I’ll digress that I found some of the animatronics a tad disconcerting! Putting aside the queue, though; how was the ride? Well, I thought the elevator lift was really interesting, and it was relatively smooth for a wild mouse, as well as well themed, but I don’t generally rate wild mouse coasters that highly, so saying it’s my favourite wild mouse coaster is damning with faint praise a tad. With that being said, though, I did like the theme, and it certainly looks pretty; this style of ride just isn’t really my thing, so I’m not sure I was ever going to rate it super highly:

After Matterhorn Blitz, we took a stroll and found ourselves in Greece, where we got in line for…
Abenteuer Atlantis
I thought Abenteuer Atlantis looked intriguing, and it was on a 1 minute advertised queue, so we decided to join it and give ourselves a brief respite from coastering. The queue board certainly wasn’t lying; we literally waltzed straight on, and interestingly, we boarded entirely by ourselves, with seemingly no host there at all! So, how was Abenteuer Atlantis? Well, I thought it was a fun little interactive dark ride, with some excellent theming and animatronics and an overall fun vibe; I really liked it, and my mum and dad seemed to as well. Mum & dad scored well, with them getting scores in the 20,000-30,000 ballpark, but being as shocking at interactive dark rides as I am, I got a truly abysmal 701; I have very poor aim, so I never score particularly well on these. Nevertheless, we all found it a fun little ride:

After Abenteuer Atlantis, we initially pondered riding Pegasus, but we were instead drawn to a somewhat more anticipated coaster located right next to it…
Silver Star
Silver Star was on an advertised 15 minute queue, so we decided to give it a go. One thing I must say about Silver Star is that I think it is quite possibly one of the fastest moving queues I have ever stood in; we were initially doubtful about whether it would actually take 15 minutes, as the queue looked quite large, but the sign wasn’t wrong, perhaps even a little pessimistic; we reached the station in around 10 minutes. I was going into Silver Star with very mixed expectations and feelings. My pre-Europa #1 was also a B&M Hyper Coaster (Mako at SeaWorld Orlando), so I had high expectations for SS, but I also had somewhat low expectations too, as it never seems to get very positive press; it appears to have marmite status among Europa’s coasters at best, with a fair percentage of people not rating it very highly at all while another percentage likes it, but doesn’t love it. As such, I was wondering whether to expect a pretty rough coaster lacking in airtime more akin to The Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as a number of reviews had implied Silver Star to be quite rough and severely lacking in airtime. I was excited to ride Silver Star, but also quite nervous as well. Would the B&M Hyper experience live up to my glorious memories of Mako from 6 years earlier now that I’ve ridden considerably more rides?
 
Well, I shouldn’t have worried. Unlike the similarly marmite Euro Mir, me and my parents fell firmly into the “love it” category with this ride, and I thought it was truly spectacular! I was a tad skeptical about how our first ride would be, as we were seated in row 5 (slap bang in the middle… not usually the best spot on airtime coasters) but it was absolutely breathtaking! The first drop provided stunning sustained floater, and it bought all of those glorious Mako memories flooding back. Each successive hill had glorious sustained air for seconds and seconds, and I thought the ride was pretty smooth and comfortable too (admittedly not quite the same wonderful level of glass smoothness as 2016 Mako, but that’s to be expected given that Mako was brand new when I rode it, while SS is 20 years old). The ending was excellent too; we got properly yanked off the MCBR with a phenomenal and surprisingly abrupt jolt of airtime, with each successive hill in the post-MCBR section being similar, and the s-bend rode pretty well too! Overall, I was truly blown away by Silver Star, and my parents appeared to be too; they both raved about the experience:


After an epic ride on Silver Star, we headed to the other roller coaster in France…
Cancan Coaster
Cancan Coaster was on a 25 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. As with many rides at Europa, this had a beautiful queue, with tons to look at, and it moved quickly too; what more can you ask for? So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was really good fun, and definitely a surprising one; the ride was very smooth, and packed surprising pace throughout, with some really fun turns being packed in there too. I also thought the theming was very fun and whimsical, and I did like having the can can playing to you while you were riding! Overall, I thought Cancan was great fun; definitely one we all enjoyed:


After Cancan Coaster, we decided to relax for a bit and sit down in the town square in France to watch the fountain show for 10 minutes or so:

I must say, Europa’s France section is beautiful; it had a very nice atmosphere, and was lovely to spend time in! The fountain show was quite a fun watch, too!
 
After our sit down, we decided to spice things up with another random ride we stumbled across…
Madame Freudenreich’s Curiosities
I thought Madame Freudenreich’s Curiosities looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a go. As with Abenteuer Atlantis earlier, the queue was walk-on, which is always a bonus! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was quite a fun little ride! Certainly quirky for sure, but it was certainly a fun little detour, with some fun animatronics, a fun storyline, and surprisingly excellent theming:

After Madame Freudenreich’s, we decided to take a gradual stroll down to Deutsche Allee, Europa’s very nice entrance area:


We didn’t just stroll down to EP’s entrance area for the sake of it, however. While in the area, we took a ride on…
Voletarium
Voletarium was on a mere 5 minute advertised queue, so we decided to give it a go. The queue for Voletarium is almost an attraction in itself; it’s absolutely stunning, with some huge rooms and tons to look at! However, we didn’t get a lot of time to look at anything, as we practically waltzed straight onto the ride! So, how was Voletarium? Well, I thought it was a really nice ride, with some good cinematography, nice smells and some nice special effects on the side; definitely a good fun dark ride:

After Voletarium, we took a bit of a stroll through the gardens area by Europa’s entrance, as in all honesty, we weren’t really sure where we were going at this point:


We eventually found ourselves in Austria, where we briefly sat down to look at the fountains:

After our brief sit down, we headed over to ride…
Alpenexpress Enzian
Alpenexpress had a 15 minute advertised queue, so we joined it. VR was in operation on this ride, but on our train, there were no VR riders, so we managed to score a ride towards the back of the train; always a bonus with these powered coasters! So, how was the ride? Well, I thought it was really good fun, with two surprisingly fast helixes; it’s probably up there with Alton Towers’ Runaway Mine Train as one of my favourite powered coasters:


After Alpenexpress, we decided to gradually stroll back over to Iceland to take a second ride on Wodan. I was seated in row 7 for this ride, and it was just as phenomenal as earlier; in fact, it was possibly a tad faster, and I was genuinely somewhat worried for my unzipped jacket’s life over some of the airtime hills!
 
After that, I split off from my parents to go for one final ride on Silver Star. You don’t think of EP as being overly big, but the walk from Iceland to France is surprisingly hefty! In terms of my second ride on Silver Star; I scored the back row, and it was even more phenomenal than earlier! Even with the trim brakes biting somewhat, every hill had a truly phenomenal yank of airtime over it, and the ride was absolutely exquisite from start to finish!
 
You may notice that I have thus far steered clear of doing a direct comparison between Silver Star and Mako. So, has Silver Star dethroned Mako as my number 1 coaster? My answer is… not quite, but there’s phenomenally little in it; that verdict was not reached easily, and my rides on Silver Star today certainly had me second guessing Mako’s #1 placement more than any other ride has since Mako. It was a very tough decision, but I ultimately decided to keep Mako on top because while Silver Star is absolutely spectacular, I don’t think any individual element on it had quite the same wow factor as elements like Mako’s sublime first drop and first camelback hill, from memory, and while still very smooth and comfortable for the most part, Silver Star doesn’t ride quite as exquisitely as Mako did in 2016, and Mako’s completely glass smooth ride was one of the things I loved about it. I know that those sound like very pedantic reasons, but when two rides are both that good and it’s the top spot being fought for, I’m afraid that it has to be pedantry that ultimately decides which ride comes out on top. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a phenomenal coaster that truly took my breath away, and that back row ride in particular certainly had Mako quaking in its boots!
 
After a glorious ride on Silver Star, I met back up with my parents, and we headed out of the park for the day:

After that, we headed to Hotel Colosseo for a lovely meal in Pizzeria de Romantica before heading back to our room, saying goodnight to Europa Park for the day:


So in conclusion, we had a wonderful first day in Europa Park! The park is absolutely stunning, with stunning rides and stunning theming; it’s certainly a phenomenally well rounded park, in my view, and I can’t wait to see the rest of what it has to offer over the next 2 days!
 
I’m aware that our schedule was quite intense today (I was possibly further down the rabbit hole of “new park stress” than I’d have perhaps liked), so we agreed that we’re going to have a more relaxed day tomorrow, with some shows scattered in alongside rides we haven’t done yet (including water rides and the remaining 4 coaster credits), as well as rerides on our favourites.
 
Thanks for reading (apologies for the length; if you read it all, you deserve a medal!), and I hope you enjoyed my report; I’ll be back tomorrow with day 2!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!