Mark9

A Lift hill? Lad, we don't need no stinking lifthill for our wing-rider. I'm thinking a funky lift from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with lights and lasers and effects. Would be AMAZING. If people cared that much about the updates, they'd go to the park.. or wait for a handy TPM update

Asleep whilst waiting for Mammut. Awww.

Hes hinting at the excellent Raptor announcements declaring THOSE WITH WIDE GIRTH MAY BE UNABLE TO RIDE. And yes, Raptor is pretty restrictive in the large department and just gets tighter as the ride goes on. I'd imagine Swarm will do the same.

Gardaland - The Merlin wonderAfter another morning of getting hopelessly lost, we finally arrived at Gardaland with time to spare. With paying for parking done our first moment of intrigue was not being directed where to park. It was a free for all so I chose near the entrance. From the moment you hit the park there is the sense that this is a sort of prized possession with Merlin. With Alton Towers you get greeted by people trying to sell you photo passes and drink capsules and fastback. At Gardaland you get treated to a show with the parks mascot dancing with some dressed up females.With confetti exploded and the Italian national anthemn played, you're let into the park and it was without a shadow of a doubt which ride we would go to first... and of course the only ride people will really care about as I saw when I entered TPM chat on Friday evening.As you may be aware, Thorpe is getting one next year. With Raptor looking so gorgeous during construction, it became the main reason for the trip, the reason we left Gardaland till last. And so, the first thing you really see of Raptor is the Jurassic Park like fences that try and keep you out. It creates the excellent effect that this really is a caged animal trying to keep you out. Of course, curiosity gets the better and you enter the area. It is just incredible how small and compact the ride area actually is. It looks massive in pictures but actually it zooms back and forth, covering the same area. The only part that leaves the plaza is the first trip and its return over the rides entrance.The queue line is very similar to Saw efforts with barbed wire over the top of chain metal fences. Whereas I always find it a joke at Thorpe, it becomes menacing when you couple it together with Raptors concrete bunker. Loading is very effective with 14 people sent to each side of the station to board the train. It is so easy to get front row on Raptor due to their being no front way queue. I got on it three of my eight rides.Seating is atypical B&M. Seats are comfortable and the restraints are remincisent of Air but slightly different. The jacket that moulds itself around you can become quite tight during the ride, but that is the only flaw with it. It's very strange riding at the same level at the track, particularly as it feels like you could just touch it. You're let off to the sounds of a Raptor roaring, round the corner and up a speedy lift hill. It's very short actually, getting you up in half the time of a normal inverter. The back seats get the wonderful air-time, its in bucket loads on the first drop, whilst the sensation of speed is amazing on the front. Some vibration can be felt in the centre of the train as it turns back on itself and curls into a corkscrew. Some of the supports get so close to the train you can almost feel your feet being taken off.A small air-time hill takes you over the rides entrance plaza, a trim tries to slow the train down to any barely effect before the train helixes over a pond with water effects taking on the right hand side riders. These effects are excellently executed, each one sending a small trickle onto its riders. It always get you by surprise to. The ride eventually enters its swan song by doing an elongated inline twist through some supports, a tree and a small cage to capture the creature. Unfortunately for me these near misses didn't really do anything for me. But the inline twist was absolutely gorgeous. Think Colossus's hang time but take out the pain and add in glorious sensation as you meet with the top of the restraint in an aerial move that is slowly performed but brilliantly executed. Definitly a round of applause moment for a very daring ride. There's a very good reason why the B&M wing-rider has sold four in two seasons whereas the lone Furious Baco continues to attempt mass murder on Port Aventura visitors. Raptor is sheer quality from start to finish and Merlin have done an admirable job and definitely their best large roller coaster to date. There are obvious limitations with the wing-rider, it can't perform its aerial dogfight at fast speeds and it certainly needs near misses and obstacles to maximise the ride position. It also doesn't help that Gardaland have hit every target with a bullseye when building Raptor. It looks the part, it sounds the part and more importantly, It rides the part. It will be interesting to see whether Swarm, Wild Eagle and X-Flight will be able to deliver as satisfying an experience as Raptor has proven to do.Raptor - 8/10I shall cover the rest of Gardaland later.

To be honest thats quite understandable; even though we like all kinds of rides as enthusiasts, there needs to be that starting hook to really get you in the mood to pay a lot of money to do something. Before this year, there was only really Katun and as awesome as that ride is, the cost to do it would not have made the trip worthwhile. With a second B&M and a brand new park, it suddenly become far more worthwhile then just visiting Europa Park again (As much as I love Europa.. even that needs a break sometimes)And with that being said, the next part of the trip. So we had a few more hours in Miribilandia, a quieter day for the park where we found out some rides open up to 2 hours after parks official opening time. Case in example, Reset. Now Reset, is awesomely themed and has its own little area tucked about behind a Depth Charge clone. But it has a major problem in its execution in that the ride story is not made explicit in the ride. Now, even if the story was shouted at us in Italian we would have been no closer to understanding it.. but it wasn't. The queue line videos seemed to imply something with a scientist but we didn't queue, so you miss it. The ride makes no effort with tales of death and destruction. That and the shed is so obvious. Reset - 5/10With Reset done, we had lunch and left the park. The temperature was now at a soaring 39 degrees so I picked up a coffee, we aired out the car and off to Verona we went. The drive was pretty good, despite taking a long detour around Ferrara. Eventually we did find out way and ended up in a rather lovely studentesque hotel room with a balcony. A trip to the shops were had where we stocked up on Kinder goodies, Milka bars, cheese and all those all important beers for me. After a week of sobriety it was time to relax. Long coaster discussions were had overlooking Verona. One of the best parts about being a coaster enthusiast is that it isn't just a geeky hobby we do on the internet, it introduces us to new viewpoints, new people and builds bridges across forums. We're lucky to have a fandom that just loves to have fun whether it be being bashed in the head by a Vekoma SLC, or being inverted beautifully on a B&M wing-rider. After attacking Benin in the night with a Miribilandia duck, we slept and used the next day to rest our feet and chill out whilst watching Total Wipeout and X-Men. We took a trip into Verona the next day to see Juliets windowsill and to try and sneak into the George Micheal concert, to no avail. And then it was sleepy times and ready for the final park, The Merlin wonder that is Gardaland.

It is.. absolutely gorgeous isn't it. Really wanted a Fanta afterwards as well

Exactly. Cold be worse..

One of my favourite quotes of the year was "If I wanted grass and trees I'd go to a garden centre"That being said, every park I've ever been to as large grassy areas and trees. Thorpe is the exception.

Thats totally what I was thinking.

Looks gorgeous. Will they be closing Blue Fire and Atlantica to complete it?

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Day 3 - Driving to Revanna.Having experienced nearly 12 hours of Rainbow goodness, the day consisted of driving over to Revenna for hotel number 2. As the driver, I couldn't photo much. SO I'm hoping Benin will be able to cover this part adequately. The photo I did take was after walking for what seemed hours to find McDonaldsThe drive itself tests every part of skill you can muster, driving up and round hills, through Italian revines and around epic mountains. All this while being menaced by Italian drivers. And the best part? The road we had chosen took us past Miribilandia with Katun and I-Speed goodness poking into the sky it certainly built up the excitement. Ravenna had epic food times where we had amazing Chip, Sausage and Ketchup pizzas and the most amazing Gelato I will ever have. So good. Day 4 - MiribilandiaThis park is probably the second most known park in Italy and it's a bit hard not to see why. The park really came to light when Katun opened in 2000. It was followed up in 2009 with I-Speed and both rides do very well in the Mitch Hawker poll with Katun at number 9 and I-Speed at number 10. I'll speak about these later in the report.In we go and to start, the new ride for 2011 was Master Thai, an Intalian made ride in which cars almost duel around a very small compact circuit. It's the kind of ride that has the best of intentions but probably isn't what the park expected. An intriguing thing is that the ride is a bit like Grand National at Blackpool. You start on one side and come back on the other side. You don't even have to get off, they just send you round again. Which was interesting. As a family rollercoaster it fits the bill well with only one real wet bit.The next two rides are very Chessington esque with one being essentially Rattlesnake and the other Runaway Train. Except both lacked that little magic. Explorer, the mine train clone is just awful. Yucky bucket type seats, a very slow ride, no theming and an exit line longer then the main queue. It was just abysmal. Pakal was a little better. Better throughput then Rattlesnake and very nice and fast. It's only flaw is that it took the last few corners with little to no braking and it hurts.The Rapids were very solid.. and came off much more favourably then Rainbow's purely because we didn't queue 90 minutes for it.. The Auto-Splash log flume less so. I dunno, a log flume really has to do a lot to impress me, especially after Splash Mountain and as wet as we got... it was just a bit weedy. We had a go on the other rides around park, watched the stunt show which after the language barrier, was far better then other parks equivalent. Lots of effects and things going on to distract. And funny as well.And now we hit I-Speed. This Intamin is relatively young and has some awesome things going for it. It's very well paced with the train maintaining a very fast speed throughout.. living up to its name. It's got an awesome lay-out which feels long and dangerous, taking you through really air time packed hills and brilliant inversions which take you by surprise even after your third go. It has an excellent throughput to. It was only running two trains when we went but the queue moved consistently. It seems to have the ability to run three trains for those extra busy days. And it looks the part to, the bright red top hat pointing into the sky, daring you to ride. But it has one flaw.The restraint system. It is ludicrous that after five/six years Intamin have not attempted to change their awful restraints on these rides. Rita wouldn't be that changed by new restraints because it's an awful ride anyway, but I-Speed is so utterly trashed by the restraints trying to behead its riders and it was the one time where I would have given I-Speed a 10 purely for its excellent pacing. But Intamin just do not have the ability to see it through. I've seen in Blue Fire that these launch rides can work with a simple OTSR system that doesn't restrain you at the neck. Especially as the two rides were built in the same year, it really lets I-Speed down. I wanted to give it a 10 but riding with a grimmace throughout the whole ride brings it down to a low 8 Such a shame. I-Speed - 8/10And finally Katun. It worked out to be my 100th rollercoaster and what a ride to hit the century on. The appearance of it is more akin to American B&M's. It sticks out over the rides entrance and you'd think it would lack the theme and cosnsitency of rides like Black Mamba and Nemesis. Not the case, Katun looks wonderful with its Stargate's wrapped around the lift and break run and its Aztec queueing area and station. The ride can run three trains but on our visit it only needed one. The queueing area can only hold about four trains worth of people anyway making some other queuelines look like monstrosities (Rita and Nemesis Inferno). The ride team would only send trains when they were completely full so on the quiet days it took a while for the first train to leave. But eventually it does and for our first ride we chose the back row. I'm so used to lift hills being short and breezy. Not the case with Katun as it works its way up the 164 foot lift hill. A short pre-drop lulls you before dropping majestically to the left. My god. The first drop is just amazing, a sheer wonder making the swooping drops of every other Inverter I've been on look crap. Somehow, there isn't much room for the pre-drop so the train sorts of ambles down, throwing its riders to the side and delivering some gorgeous air time. This is rare on Inverters and was so good. Reminded a lot of Superman de Acero in Madrid. The ride drops into the fairway into an excellent Vertical Loop, full of g force and out into a wonderful in-line twist. Normally in-lines are quite low to the ground, but not this one. The train rises a good 60/70 feet tempting you with its negative g's before throwing the train upside down and out. Beautiful. You drop back down, bank to the right before dropping even further down into a small cavern and up into a Cobra Roll. With Stuntfall, Dragon Challenge and Katun under my belt, I can safely say I prefer the inverted cobra rolls which have a little kick as you head upside down. Sit down rides just feel to slow in comparison. The ride drops out, into a MCBR which was working over time to keep the train at the right pace. Another pop of air time before two corkscrews, a rise and down into a ground hugging, forceful helix and into the break run. After my first ride I was a little taken back. Katun was quite unlike any other B&M inverter I've done, and I've certainly done quite a few these days. But Katun was something different, something special. We all came off quite taken aback. In some way's its the absolute polar opposite of Nemesis. Whereas Nemmy hugs the ground at relentless speed, Katun sticks out and knocks you aback with intense moments that come out of nowhere. It makes for an awesome comparison as both rides are seen as the best of their class and both rides compete for the highest position in coaster fans top tens. For me it narrowly beats Nemesis purely because everytime I rode Katun I came off feeling absolutely exhausted and blown away by the rides sheer quality. I only wish it was in the UK so that I could ride it every week. Katun - 10/10

Day 2 - Rainbow MagiclandFor some reason, coaster forums haven't really taken to Rainbow Magicland and I don't really understand why. For all it's worth it is a park that is really attempting to be unique and different but also having a bit of Disney familarity at the same time. Entering the park is easy and rather cleverly the entire car park is covered, essentially keeping your cars out of the hot hot sun so when you return they are nice and cool.The parks mascot is Rainbow cat.. and his intentions are rather clear.Yes, they have an opening ceremony. I adore these, I really think it starts the day off so specially. After years and years of parks just opening the gates and letting you in, 2011 has really changed my perception of what parks are pushing the boundaries on guest expectations. Speaking of boundaries, some of the theming attempts at Magicland are absolutely sublime. Really top notch and on some levels, easily beats Islands of Adventure.RestrauntSo it was onto our first ride of the day, a Maurer Sohne launching X-Car called Shock. Now I've done a fair few number of these now (G-Force, Abismo and Hollywood Rip, Ride Rockit) to know that the concept is very good. And Shock gives off a very good start, launching up and over the pathways in a way that is very similar to the Incredible Hulk.The biggest shame was the queue because really it was just a bunch of cattle-pens behind the rides station. Luckily, we'd got to the park on time and we only queued 15 minutes. The start is shocking, if you excuse the pun. It's obvious that more was to happen at the start but budgets clearly got in the way. The car ambles back and forth in a rather bizarre kind of way before hittling the launch section and chucking you into a massive air-time hill that throws you and up and out of your seat. You dip downwards and up into something resembling a norweigan loop but not really one because instead of going in one way and out the other, you sort of do an over-complex banked turn before falling in the same direction. It lacks the punchiness of HRRR at Universal Studios. The next turn is crazy with the train taking a small banked turn at stupidly fast speeds. I'd be surprised if it wasn't tearing the cars apart actually. You go upwards into an MCBR before tumbling back to earth in an excellent inline twist and into the break run.An excellent ride for a new park to own from the word go. Shock - 8/10Next ride we came to was yet another Maurer, this time a spinning rollecoaster called Cagliostro. Now, I haven't a clue what the park was thinking when they built this because it doesn't utlise it's space in the slightest, the ride itself is so bad it hurts and the queueline is an absolute nightmare for an up and coming park. The outside theming continues the parks amazing theming levels to the empth degree. The cars themselves are ugly as sin. People have criticised all the Maurer spinners for lack of Winja esque theming but at least most spinners fit their respective rides relatively well. This doesn'y, an ugly shade of purple appearing briefly in the Italian sun for all to see before whisking back into the building.Once seated with three other adults (Chessington take note), the car takes you up a lift, outside and then back indoors where it meanders back and forth inside a large squarish building. It doesn't attempt to interact with anything or go high or low. It just wonders without a care in the world, barely spinning or challenging you beyond what it's already doing. You end up in the break run thinking, what the hell was that before a second lift hill actually takes you back up to the loading area. All a while you're wondering, is it a Maurer requirement to throw randomness at you in any direction they can think off. Cagliostro - 4/10Huntik is the next generation of shoot em up games. There is just no question that Huntik is a gem of a ride and makes full use of guns and 3D technology. The building the ride is housed in is amazing. It almost deserves to be cherished on that merit alone.Our only sadness was the Italian people had started to destroy the inside queue theming. Polystyrene lay all over the floor and parts of the wall painting was stripped bare. A real shame when you consider the park's effort in this attraction. I won't say much more about Huntik, it would give away the surprise. But to say it made Rainbow Magicland grow in our estimations.. is an understatement. Huntik - 9/10The rest of the park had some quite atypical rides such as Vekoma Dutchmans, Madhouses and a Flying Island that soared over Shock. But what struck all of us is how efficient which ride team seemed to be. A system we should adopt in our parks is a loading screen which lets a certain amount of people through a turnstile at a time. It looks like thisand allowed the staff to batch the rides effectively and with incredible precision. All three Italian parks adopt this system, keeping queues down to an absolute minimum. One thing that became quite clear is that the park was busy. The minimum we queued was 15 minutes for Shock at the beginning of the day. Nearly every other ride we queued 30 minutes for. The rapids ridfe, Drakkar, we queued 90 minutes for (As well as battling some queue-jumpers who just wouldn't get the message that they weren't getting through), a fairy dark ride we queued 50 minutes for and even the parks rollerskate was packing some heavy waiting times. No surprises either, the park was open from 10am to 11pm at night. To keep up the momentum the park seems to have already created, it needs to back up Shock with another solid, well designed rollercoaster. It could also work on its queueline shading as some, especially the rapids and the junior rollerskater, it was lacking. But all in all, we all agreed that Rainbow Magicland is a very fun, worthwhile attraction that is only just beginning its theme park journey. I will re-visit in a few years and see just where the park has gone. It's rare to visit a park in its first season.

As is well known, Italy has seen a whack of investment in it's theme parks of late. Gardaland saw the first of what is turning out to be a very successful product for B&M and a new theme park opened up near Rome. Being the canny git that I am, decision was made to visit Italy with the intention of seeing what the country has to offer. Benin, Peep and a theme park worker who I won't name ( ) all set off last Friday with this in mind. Trip itenary belowDay 1 - Fly to Rome, Hire car and see the sightsDay 2 - Rainbow MagiclandDay 3 - Drive to RevennaDay 4 - MiribilandiaDay 5 - Miribiliandia in the morning, drive to VeronaDay 6 - Verona rest dayDay 7 - GardalandDay 8 - Drive to Venice, fly home.So to start us off, we flew into an Airport which is a bit of a challenge to say, Fumiccino. We'd hired out a car so we could see the sights. We'd gone for a Volkswagon Polo but we got something a little bit bigger...A Lancia Mazzia! Having never been on the opposite side of the road before and having only driven one car in my entire life, it was safe to say that as the driver.. I was pretty nervous. And with the Italian road drivers reputation, I'll admit how scared I was. Nonetheless, to the roads we went. Italians don't really run their cars in the same way. Whereas the atypical British driver will let you filter in and give way, Italians push and barge their cars into any nook and cranny they can. Road- markings are more of a guideline then the rule of the road as they cover two lanes, driving dead centre so you cannot over-take. It was very frightening and getting lost in the middle of Rome was no fun at all. Eventually we did find our delightful hotel. With crazy lifts.We headed into Rome quite quickly and the first real challenge was the heat. The temperature rocketed to a good 35 degrees every day which for us British people is rather hard to take. We walked through the blistering sun to the Metro station to take us to Colosseo. Unlike the London Underground, Romes system is rather more simplistic with just the A and B lines. So we get off the train, come out the station and BAMThe Colosseum hits you in all its ancient glory. It is well and truely a magnificent structure. Hard to belief it's been standing for all this time and is a testament to the Roman Empire. This was a recurring theme with the builings in Rome. They are on a scale we can barely conceive.. just take a glimpse of some of these piccies.We then headed over to the Vatican. It's truely massive. I was a little bit overwhelmed. The best part though? COSTUMED CHARACTERS! In all seriousness though, never seen a Monk before so yeah, very special.It was time to eat. I pretty much had Pizza and ice cream every day of the trip. Twas amazing.Amaazing. And with that, it was off home we went, early night and off to a place of joy...

On the other hand you could save yourself the money, visit Croydon on a Friday night. You get the benefit of real fears and no white tents anywhere..

A themed tent maybe, some kind of facade perhaps. Not just a tent pretending to be a boat.

Goodbye peeps. Forever.SAVE ME SIMPSON, SAVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Some may say some members who post crap on TPM are untalented idiots but I'm saying nothing....

I''ve re-read this a few times and I'm still not 100% what you're saying. Stealth was an accident because Alton Towers didn't know their own height limits.No Stealth was planned first, was always going to be a high and fast accelerator rollercoaster. We saw the idea of it first in 2003 in the parks Mid term development plan. Rita was almost an after thought at the park. Lazily designed, lazily themed and Alton's worst coaster by far.

Looking good. I'm very excited for the wing-rider concept. Afterall, it took years for the potential of the Flying rollercoaster and Dive Machines to be untapped. We're just seeing the beginning for the wing-rider with four very different parks taking on the challenge.For a point of reference, the Inverted coaster saw one in its first year, then 1993 saw a clone and Top Gun (Now Flight Deck). Year after saw another two Batman clones, Nemesis (you know, that world renowned rollercoaster ) and Raptor. Wing-riders have legs, can't wait till parks like any of the Florida parks or a tiny obscure European park tries the concept.

Months of testing the train on the circuit, getting themeing ready, sorting out the electronics, finishing pathways and fencing, queue boards, effects. The list goes on. Building the track is the easy part.

Do you think B&M have ever delivered the wrong train, like a floorless train arriving for a B&M inverter layout.Just saying, we get mispicks at work quite frequently

Woop.