Matt 236 Posted February 7 Report Share Posted February 7 Coaster Studios listed their top 25 European parks. Here’s mine: 1/ Europa Park 2/ Phantasialand 3/ Energylandia 4/ Disneyland Paris 5/ Parc Asterix 6/ Alton Towers 7/ Liseberg 8/ Tivoli Gardens 9/ Efteling 10/ Thorpe Park 11/ Tover Land 12/ Blackpool Pleasure Beach 13/ Legoland Billund 14/ Paultons Park 15/ Plopsa Land 16/ Chessington 17/ Hellendoorn 18/ Drayton Manor 19/ Legoland Windsor 20/ Great Yarmouth PB 21/ De Wasrbeck 22/ Flamingo Land 23/ Tivoli World Spain (now infamously abandoned) 24/ Bakken 25/ Oakwood Should probably try and visit a few more there. But long haul is more of a priority right now. I won’t be updating my dark ride list yet, but can safely say Pirates In Batavia 2 is arguably the best dark ride I’ve experienced outside of a Disney or universal park. It’s incredible! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshC. Posted February 7 Report Share Posted February 7 Top 25 European parks? oooh, that's a doozy of a question... 1. Phantasialand 2. Parc Asterix 3. Efteling 4. Thorpe Park 5. Walibi Holland 6. Walibi Belgium 7. Djurs Sommerland 8. Heide Park 9. Legendia 10. Alton Towers 11. Movie Park Germany 12. Linnanmäki 13. Toverland 14. TusenFryd 15. Hansa Park 16. Plopsaland 17. Fårup Sommerland 18. Tivoli Gardens 19. Hellendoorn 20. Legoland Billund 21. Liseberg 22. Chessington 23. Energylandia 24. Legoland Windsor 25. Bellewaerde This was difficult and probably would change order. Legendia I visited 6 years ago, and I hear the park isn't as good as it was then. So that may change. I'd be interested to go back to Liseberg and see how I feel about it; I just didn't vibe with it when I visited 7 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt 236 Posted February 8 Report Share Posted February 8 19 hours ago, JoshC. said: This was difficult and probably would change order. Legendia I visited 6 years ago, and I hear the park isn't as good as it was then. So that may change. I'd be interested to go back to Liseberg and see how I feel about it; I just didn't vibe with it when I visited 7 years ago. I’ve been to Legendia twice, in 2021 and 2023. It was definitely a park with charms and a stunning flagship coaster, however the park seemed rundown with a number of attractions either looking on their last legs or SBNO. We were actually evac’d from the twin looping coaster on our front trip as the chain snapped. I mean Liseberg is nice, I like their flume ride, Balder is incredible and the rest of the ride lineup is generally staple. I stayed in the Grand Curiosa hotel during its opening with the ECC and consider it one of the nicest park hotels I’ve done so far. The Oceana water park looks promising too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted February 9 Report Share Posted February 9 Aside from literally Lech which is excellent Legendia is a mess! Visited last two summers and run down, broken rides, SBNO and just a sense that they are massively struggling. Both visits a major issue with the twin looper including a chain snap and almost having to have fire brigade called to get me out of the restraint manually on the lift. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt 236 Posted July 20 Report Share Posted July 20 Well, I probably should wait until Drayton’s new coaster opens. However there’s just too many top 10’s to update at this point in time. Right. Top 10 UK Roller coasters: 1/ Hyperia 2/ Nemesis (Reborn) 3/ Wickerman 4/ Icon 5/ Nemesis Inferno 6/ Swarm 7/ PMBO 8/ Stealth 9/ Big Dipper 10/ Mandrill Mayhem Top 10 Mack Roller Coasters: 1/ Hyperia 2/ Voltron Navera EP 3/ Blue Fire 4/ Ride To Happiness 5/ Icon 6/ Helix 7/ Euromir 8/ Slinky Dog Dash 9/ Trace Du Hourra-Asterix 10/ Poseidon- Europa, Top 10 overall Roller Coasters: 1/ Steel Vengeance 2/ Veloci-coaster 3/ Zadra 4/ Toutatis 5/ Mako 6/ Hyperia 7/ Iron Gwazi 8/ Nemesis Reborn 9/ Voltron Navera 10/ Wodan Honourable Mentions: Taron, Hyperion, Millenium Force, The Beast, Maverick & Oziris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt N Posted August 19 Report Share Posted August 19 Following my visit to Thorpe Park yesterday, the first new addition of 2024 has graced my top 10! Since I last posted an updated list in this thread, I’ve also rejigged the order of my rankings a bit, so the order is slightly different to what it was before. With this in mind, my current top 10, with a coaster count of 123, is as follows (new addition in italics, altered placements underlined) : Mako - SeaWorld Orlando: Even 8 years after my first ride, this coaster still reigns supreme for me, and my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld (where I had 5 rides on it) reinforced that! The sustained airtime is absolutely biblical (particularly in moments like the first drop, first airtime hill and speed hill), the sense of speed is wonderful, it's blissfully smooth, and overall, it's just such a fun, thrilling and rerideable coaster that I could (and indeed tried my darnedest to) sit on all day! I truly love this ride, and on my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld, it didn't disappoint! 10/10 Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: It may not quite be #1, but my goodness was it close, and VelociCoaster would certainly be a worthy contender for the top spot! There is so much that this ride does well; it packs a great sense of speed throughout, with the second section in particular feeling ridiculously fast, there are quite a few sublime moments of ejector airtime that really whip you out of the seat, there are some truly brilliant inversions, and overall, it's just a truly stunning, spectacular coaster, in my view! In terms of some specific highlights; it's hard to pick from the wonderful array of sensations on offer. But if I had to choose a few, the second launch is absolutely obscene, packing a euphoric thrill like few other rides I've ever experienced, the top hat is sublime, packing some breathtaking ejector airtime on the back in particular, and the mosasaurus roll is an absolutely mind-blowing inversion that throws you out of the seat with some sublime sustained negative g-forces and ensures that you fly into the final brakes blown away! Overall, VelociCoaster is a truly stunning coaster, in my opinion; its blend of stunning airtime, impactful elements, fun, comfort and rerideability certainly make it a firm favourite of mine! 10/10 Silver Star - Europa Park: I had quite low expectations for this coaster given that it's not overly well liked, but I have to say that I was blown away; I absolutely adored this coaster! It has wonderful sustained airtime, it's smooth and comfortable, it has an awesome sense of speed, the ending is absolutely brilliant, packing some phenomenal ejector airtime (particularly the MCBR exit), and overall, this is a stunning coaster that I absolutely loved! I did rank this below Mako of the two B&M Hypers I've ridden due to my feeling that its airtime, while stunning, never has quite the same impact as some of Mako's strongest moments, in my view, and while smooth in its own right, it isn't quite as blissfully smooth as Mako. I also felt it to be slightly less consistent, as I did have 1 or 2 slightly weaker rides on it during my trip to Europa. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a stunning coaster with phenomenal sustained airtime, and I love how it is incredibly rerideable and keeps the thrills going right to the end with that awesome post-MCBR section! 10/10 Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa: This ride is phenomenal! In terms of some key strengths, it’s absolutely relentless in pacing and has some of the strongest ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced, and some of the big hitters in the layout like the first drop, outerbanked turn, death roll and wave turn are truly sensational elements that are right up there with the best, in my opinion! The first drop in particular is insane; whipping you far out of the seat with ejector airtime for a surprisingly sustained period of time never gets old! There are also some absolutely top-drawer moments of ejector airtime elsewhere in the layout, and the ride is smooth and rerideable! In terms of why I moved it up when I haven’t reridden it, this is because in retrospect, I think I was overly harsh on Iron Gwazi at the time, fixating on its very tiniest imperfections to try and quantify the slight disappointment of it not quite living up to my wildly high expectations on the very first go. This is going to sound odd, but Iron Gwazi is a coaster where the more I sit back and think about it, the more I actually love it. Thinking back, it grew on me considerably the second and third times I did it once the weight of expectation was off its shoulders, and it is genuinely a top tier ride that is more than deserving of a top 5 placement for me! 10/10 Hyperia - Thorpe Park: What a sublime ride! I was excited for Hyperia, and it did not disappoint! I love a good hyper, and Hyperia is a phenomenal one! For starters, the ride is primarily designed around weightlessness, and it delivers this excellently; you seem to spend half of the ride pinned out of the seat in some capacity! The first three big elements on the ride are an obscenely perfect sequence. The first drop is absolutely unhinged and so, so good, delivering excellent sustained ejector, the non-inverting Immelmann is sublime and offers both brilliant speed rushing up into it and top-drawer sustained ejector coming out of it, and that outerbanked turn into the inversion is wild and pins you right of your seat with top-tier sustained sideways ejector! The zero-g stall is not quite up there with the other elements, but it is still excellent, with sustained hangtime, and the final two elements after the trim were surprisingly excellent, with both the outerbanked turn and the final airtime hill delivering! Overall, then, Hyperia is an absolutely sublime coaster, in my view, and it definitely lived up to the hype for me. It’s so good to have a coaster this brilliant 2 hours from home, that I can most probably ride at least once annually! 10/10 Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park: Wodan strikes the perfect balance between pure demented insanity and amazing fun factor and rerideability, in my view! It’s an absolutely relentless coaster, with phenomenal pacing right to the end, and it has quite a few really surprising pops of ejector airtime, including an excellent first drop, but it’s also a really smooth and comfortable wooden coaster, and it just manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun! Overall, Wodan is such a fast, airtime-filled and fun coaster that I absolutely loved on my visit to Europa Park! 10/10 Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: Dismiss this as a “family” coaster all you want, but I think such quick dismissal would be a huge mistake, because this ride is phenomenal, in my view! Of the rides in my top 10, I’ll admit that this one probably has the least tangible reason to be there. However, the key reason why Hagrid’s ranks so highly for me is that purely and simply, it is a phenomenally, impeccably fun roller coaster! In terms of some specifics, the low-to-the-ground turns were a lot more thrilling than I expected and the launches were surprisingly punchy and great fun, but unlike many coasters, my love of Hagrid’s is for a much broader reason than any specific features of the ride layout. It is just so, so fun, and the ride will always leave you laughing hysterically and smiling on the final brake run, and that for me is really important. Riding Hagrid’s taught me a crucial lesson about my taste in coasters; it taught me that a coaster does not necessarily need greatness in the form of tangible elements for me to love it, and that fundamentally, all a coaster needs to be is fun. Hagrid’s is not the most intense ride by any means, but if you want pure fun, I’d struggle to recommend many better coasters than this one! 10/10 SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa: I had remembered liking this ride back in 2016, but my reride in 2023 was even better than I’d previously remembered! I love a B&M Dive Coaster, and this was a fantastic one! The sustained airtime over both drops was absolutely phenomenal, and the sheer size of them produced a brilliant sensation of speed throughout the ride! You typically think of Dive Coasters for their initial vertical drop, but interestingly, I actually thought that the second vertical drop on SheiKra delivered just as much as the first if not more! Overall, SheiKra was phenomenal, and a really pleasant surprise; I often said that I preferred Oblivion, but I’d now say that I comfortably prefer SheiKra, as I do feel that the added height and length really add something to it! 10/10 Wicker Man - Alton Towers: Wicker Man is a fantastic GCI coaster that I absolutely love! It may not look like much on paper, but I find it to be an enormously fun and rerideable coaster that never fails to put a huge smile on my face! I find it to be a really fast-paced coaster with some really fun twists and turns and some surprising pops of airtime, with some particular favourite elements of mine being the initial s-bend drop, where you gain brilliant speed incredibly quickly, and the big drop out of the high u-turn and following airtime hill, with both elements providing some excellent airtime that really whips you out of the seat! Overall, I find Wicker Man a hugely fun and rerideable wooden coaster with awesome airtime, twists and pacing, and I think it’s a ride that is definitely far more than the sum of its parts, personally! I decided to bump it up a few spots after my most recent visit in 2024, where it was running so well on the 2 rides I had; the airtime was kicking, the ride was blisteringly fast-paced, and it just made me laugh and smile so much! Somewhat similarly to Hagrid’s, Wicker Man just takes the raw fun factor to a whole new level for me! 10/10 Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando: I had pretty low expectations for Ice Breaker, as its reviews are generally middling to negative, but I have to say that it massively exceeded expectations for me; it was a phenomenal little ride that I absolutely loved! I should say that the much-maligned “comfort collars” have been removed, so I experienced the ride without them, but I found it to be fantastic, with a fun and punchy swing launch, a backwards spike with some brilliant floater airtime, some surprisingly excellent pops of ejector airtime in places, some fun twists and turns, and a smooth and fun ride experience throughout! The trains are a little tight to get into and out of, but I found the restraints unobtrusive when I was sat down enjoying the ride, so I didn’t find them to be an issue overall. All in all, I thought Ice Breaker was a fantastic ride that hugely exceeded my expectations; it may not have quite been my favourite coaster I rode in Florida, but I dare say that coaster-wise, it was possibly the sleeper hit of my 2023 trip in terms of how much it exceeded my expectations! I expected very little, but I ended up absolutely loving the ride, personally! 10/10 The unfortunate casualty of the most recent addition to my top 10 has been Icon, which has now dropped out. I do love Icon to bits, and it’s still just about a 10/10 tier ride for me (it’s now the lowest ranking ride in this tier), but it’s the ride that’s tended to bear the brunt of the collateral damage of new additions to my top 10 in recent years. I do love the airtime, the fun factor and the way it all flows and meshes together wonderfully and encapsulates a lot of different elements, but one thing that’s become more evident as I’ve ridden more coasters is that it lacks any particular standout “wow” elements compared to things I rank more highly. For a ride to really stand out for me these days, it has to either take the fun factor to an entirely new level (e.g. Hagrid’s, Wicker Man) or it needs a couple of real standout elements, and compared to other rides in the 10/10 tier, I don’t think Icon delivers on either of those things quite as well, so I have found it sliding down the rankings in recent years. There could be a bit of recency bias at play here, as it’s easily the 10/10 tier ride I last rode the longest ago (my last ride was in 2019), but those are my current thoughts. For those interested, my wider top 30 is currently as follows (I’ve also done a bit of rejigging here…): Mako - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10) Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10) Silver Star - Europa Park (10/10) Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10) Hyperia - Thorpe Park (10/10) Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park (10/10) Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10) SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10) Wicker Man - Alton Towers (10/10) Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10) Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (10/10) Oblivion - Alton Towers (9/10) Stealth - Thorpe Park (9/10) Montu - Busch Gardens Tampa (9/10) Nemesis Reborn - Alton Towers (9/10) Nemesis Inferno - Thorpe Park (9/10) Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Studios Florida (9/10) Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts - Universal Studios Florida (9/10) Blue Fire - Europa Park (9/10) Mine Blower - Fun Spot Kissimmee (9/10) The Swarm - Thorpe Park (8/10) Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10) Kraken - SeaWorld Orlando (8/10) Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park (8/10) Rock’n’Rollercoaster - Disney’s Hollywood Studios (8/10) Cheetah Hunt - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10) Sik - Flamingo Land (8/10) Thirteen - Alton Towers (8/10) Rita - Alton Towers (8/10) Eurosat CanCan Coaster - Europa Park (7/10) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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