Port Aventura

[Mattgwise]

Had a few days booked at Barcelona and my last full day there happened to be Friday 11th April which was the first day of the 2014 season at Port Aventura so simply had to have a day there.

We took the train from Barcelona Sants train Station looking forward to a good day presuming that the park would be lovely and quiet as it was the first day and schools in Spain hadn't quite finished for their holiday. But how wrong we were.

The park was very busy and unfortunately didn't get on too many rides and have to say had the WORST queueing experience of my life. More on that further in the report

Upon arrival at around 10:15 the queue time boards were not working and as we past Furious Baco which looked empty decided to queue up for it. We past the many lines of outdoor queue line thinking it was going to be nice and quiet. Once we passed by this area we entered the massive indoor queuing area to find endless cattle pens zig zagging every where which were all full. After much faffing with the rides team and a few queue jumpers we managed to get to the ride after virtually an hour. Was it good, well the only thing that was good was the launch. After that it truly is the MOST painful ride I have ever experienced. I went on presuming everything I had heard was pure exaggeration but no, it really is awfully rough. So rough it makes Colossus seem like it glides smoothly over ice.

Upon exiting the ride the queue was well into the outdoor area and the queue boards were finally working and advertised the monstrosity of a ride we had just ridden as 2h10m!!!

Next up we past through the well themed Far west area of the park and went on all the flat rides there as well as the rapids. They were all fun and the rapids although very short was quite good, lots of speed, spinning and wetness.

After that we queued for Stampida for about 40 minutes. This was a fun ride but unfortuately it caused my Samsung Galaxy S4 to crack across the screen completley killing it so as you can imagine I was unhappy, but did not want to ruin the day so just accepted it and moved on.

After some lunch it was already 2:30 so decided to queue for Hurakan Condor which was advertised as 40 minutes. Once again lots of cattle pens and eventually 1h 20mins later we were near the front. The ride itself has stand up and sit down, however you are not allowed to pick whether you sit or stand. I was hoping I would get lucky and get one of the stand up sides as I would have been very unhappy to have had to queued all that time to then be told to go on the side I didn't want to. Thankfully I got lucky. The ride was fun and intense enough, but not as forceful as Detonator.

After this we decided to go to Shambhala as that was the one ride that was a must. This is where my worst queueing experience occured. The queue was advertised as 1h10 mins, but all but maybe 5 or 6 lines of cattlepen were filled so knew it was going to take longer. However during the wait we had at least 40 spanish people queue jump in the area around us alone. I could not believe it! People were cutting across left, right and centre and at one point when I say no to somebody trying to push past me she decided to crawl around my legs!!!! The queueing area is designed awfully and there is nothing to stop people doing it. For some reason no one was confronting all of these ill mannered people and it was just complete chaos. During the queueing the ride suffered two break downs of about 10 - 15 mins each. The second breakdown occurred 2h 10mins into queuing when I was about 100 people from the front and an attended came out and said something and everyone behind us started to leave and a few in front. At this point I was very annoyed and decided there was no way I would be moving (maybe this ride ought to be renamed Shambles). Thankfully 10 minutes later everyone started to clap and the ride reopened. 2 hours and 40 minutes after joining the queue we were finally taking our seats. Thankfully the ride was incredible and has a wonderful amount of airtime. It is now my favourite rollercoaster, but I don't want to ever ever go through the queuing experience again!!!

It was now ten minutes from closing and we managed to join the queue for Dragon Khan. This time we only queued 20 minutes and there was not any of the queue jumping experienced at Shambhala. Again another good, solid rollercoaster, another of my favourites.

So although the park gave me a new favourite rollercoaster and is beautifully themed and has wonderful scenery we still left dissappointed overall as we expected to get on much more and did not expect such inconsiderate people.

[Mark9]

If you had read any other PortAventura trip repots, all that you said pretty much goes with the territory. PortAventura could be one of the best theme parks in the world but so much their works against that. Out of interest, how many trains was Khan and Shambhala on?

[Mattgwise]

Both were on two trains. I can't imagine how they would cope with three trains as both rides had us sit in the break run for at least 30 seconds on two trains, however in their defence I suppose it would be many staff members first open day which would naturally make things a little slower than usual.