Portaventura June 2016 Trip Report

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A few days ago I returned back from a few days at Portaventura. This is a park I had been to once before last year, however two weeks ago I was emailed a very exciting deal for the hotel and park tickets and after a quick search I found some very cheap flights and it was decided, in a week I would be back off to Portaventura! As it was such a last minute trip I couldn’t find anyone to join me, however I’m a very introverted person so I was looking forward to having a holiday by myself and taking it at my own pace.

 

 

After a sleepless night I was off to Stansted for my late afternoon flight. After being super cautious and arriving nearly four hours before my departure I was gutted to discover my flight would be over two hours late. A long time later I rocked up at Barcelona airport at about 11PM, only to find that because of the delay I had missed every coach to PA and the next train wasn’t until the morning!

 

 

I had a bit of a panic at this point at the realisation I was alone in a foreign country with nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep but I pulled myself together, found a bus into town and spent the next hour wandering around trying to find a hotel. I managed to find an area close to Barcelona Sants train station but it took a lot of walking around to find a room under 100 euros but I finally did, dumped my stuff off and went out to find food. I had some dinner in this tiny little pizza diner then found a bar, had a few Estrellas then went to bed realising I had had way more fun exploring the city than I would have had at PA that night.

 

 

Next morning at 7AM I got up, packed my things and made my way to the train station hoping to still make it to the park for opening at ten. Even though the station was huge it was surprisingly easy to buy my tickets and find the right platform and soon I was off. The train absolutely stank of green (at 8 in the morning no less!) but there were some absolutely jaw dropping ocean views and an hour and a half later the coasters started appearing on the skyline and I was pumped!

 

 

From the station it was about a five minute walk to the Hotel Caribe where I was checked in and had my bag dumped in my room in no time. From there it’s around a ten minute walk to the park entrance or there’s a land train which runs every fifteen minutes.

 

 

I arrived at the entrance at half ten and after scanning my room card at the turnstiles I was straight in and off to Shambhala. The first day was spent entirely in the park until it closed at seven then it was back to the hotel for an explore followed by dinner and some sangria.

 

 

The next day I went to the waterpark in the morning which is located right next to the entrance of the park. It was absolutely dead in there so I was able to ride all the slides with no queues, have a snooze then spend the rest of the afternoon in the park.

 

 

On the final day my flight was late afternoon so I managed to get a good three hours or so in the park getting my final rerides in then it was time to walk back to the train station and make my way home.

 

 

Overall Thoughts

 

 

Portaventura really is a fantastic park and even though I was there for three days I could have easily had one or two more before I started to get tired of the place. The theming is streets ahead of anything in the UK and combined with the gorgeous weather and the fact that on one side of the park is the sea and the rest is surrounded by mountains you can really lose yourself in the park and be immersed by the theming and the experience.

 

 

One thing to note is that the parks clientele will annoy the hell out of you. This isn’t a rant about the Spanish as there were some lovely and very polite staff there but 90% of the people there are so rude, loud and obnoxious compared to say a park in the UK. Queuing at PA isn’t a case of who enters the queue first gets to ride first, it’s a constant jostle and a race to slyly edge your way forwards past other guests. For example, if I was standing to the edge of the queue line with a gap to the side of me you could almost guarantee the group behind me would slide up into that space then if further space opened up in front of them but not me they would jump into that gap too. It got so tiresome having to constantly block people off from moving past me.

 

 

Thankfully due to the Express system queueing wasn’t much of an issue. As a hotel guest you can buy it for your whole trip for 59 Euros which is such a bargain and for me meant that unlimited Fasttrack only cost 20 Euros each day. As it’s so cheap it was obviously oversold, most rides let nearly half the train be taken by Express users and even then the Express queue was over ten minutes long but I visited on a busy few days where normal queues got to an hour and a half every day.

 

 

Caribe Aquatic Park

 

 

The waterpark at PA is great, it’s beautifully landscaped with lots of tropical foliage, there’s a bit of theming going on and because it’s in Spain the sun adds a lot to the atmosphere. In terms of slides, the two biggest are right at the back. The headline attraction is a 31m free fall slide which was utterly terrifying shuffling yourself towards the drop but once you’re plummeting down it’s so smooth and fun. Weirdly despite being so tall it doesn’t shred your back up at all and I found it really rerideable, something which I’ve never found on a speed slide before. On the same tower structure is a triple dipper body slide, there’s some really intense airtime and you feel amazed that your body doesn’t actually leave the slide but the surface is so rough against your back and there’s some huge kinks where your back smacks against the joints in the slide so despite the slide being a lot of fun you do come off pretty beaten up.

 

 

Elsewhere there’s a tower with two wide slides you can ride down in a single or double ring, these were fun but nothing too special. One part of the park I thought was interesting was an indoor section with some kiddie slides and two taller twisted enclosed body slides. These were crazy, they’re taken in complete darkness and the turns are so violent and fast, it feels like you’re going to spin a full 360 in the pipe and it’s a relief when you reach the end.

 

 

My favourite slide was probably a triple down racer you ride headfirst on a mat, if you kick off fast at the start you can get some lovely airtime over the bumps and the whole thing feels fast and smooth.

 

 

There’s also some more outside body slides, a wave pool, a slide you go down in a four man circular raft and a lazy river. It’s a decent selection of attractions and if there were queues it would take you a full day to do it all. Overall a really solid waterpark.

 

 

Ride Reviews

 

 

Furius Baco – Here’s a controversial opinion; I actually really love Baco, probably even more than Khan. It’s an Intamin rocket with winged seating which launches to 84mph then goes through an intense figure 8 circuit before a climax of a drawn out in line twist and a gracious swoop over a lake.

 

 

Looking at the ride area it’s amazing to think this was built way after the Mediterranea area was, it just fits into the surrounding buildings and atmosphere perfectly and I’d argue it’s one of the best themed non Disney outdoors coasters. It really feels like you’re in a Mediterranian vineyard. The on ride pre-show is excellent, it starts slow but watching the screens fill up with blood (or was that wine? ) with the ominious music kicking in knowing you’re going to launch any minute is a tense experience.

 

 

The launch itself is decent, it doesn’t quite have the same pull as Stealths but it’s stupidly quick and feels so exposed in the winged seating. For me the highlight is the sharp dip into the trench that follows. Entering a drop at 84mph is an intense experience and while very brief there’s a decent pocket of ejector.

 

 

The turns that follow are intense and the transitions feel so snappy in the outer seats. Before long you’re whipped round into a long drawn out inline twist which feels graceful like Swarms even though you’re going at a much faster speed. The final turn over the lake is great, it’s exhilarating looking down and watching your feet skim across the water then you hit the brakes still at a high speed.

 

 

Now if this layout was taken completely smoothly it would be an amazing coaster. Unfortunately it’s rough AF so for me it’s only great. In the front three rows or on an inside seat it’s not too bad but wherever you sit it needs to be ridden defensively to be fully enjoyable. I found the best way to ride was to hold the harness near the top and push your body back and down into the seat while leaning your head forwards to avoid headbanging (obviously this is to be done after the launch!). Once I got the hang of riding I had some amazing laps on this coaster but it really shouldn’t need a strategy to begin with.

 

 

Ice Age 4D – This was so dreadful I don’t even know where to begin. Up until a few years ago it was a simulator called Sea Odyssey which I imagine had a underwater military seabase type theme. I could figure this out because Ice Age 4D still has an underwater military seabase theme! This is the laziest, cheapest retheme I’ve ever seen, literally nothing has been changed other than the video except a few icicles and fake snow dotted about and a few models of the Ice Age characters.

 

 

You start the queue walking through some lovely cave rockwork and jungle (really well themed but how’s this relavant to Ice Age?) before heading inside to the seabase. Inside there’s some huge submarines and various machinery while some Ice Age trivia plays out on some TVs. Once I reach the front of the queue I’m clicked into another seabase themed room with some TVs. The doors behind shut, the lights dim and I get myself ready for an awesome preshow! Except no! Onto the TVs pops a long advert for Ferrari World (the video they recently released showing aerial views from around the park) followed by an even longer promotional video for the park mainly focusing on the Express sytem, the hotels and the more upmarket restaurants.

 

 

Once I’d finished being advertised to, a door in front opens and we’re led into the main ride room. The hardware is really cool, it’s a bit like the Despicable Me simulator at Universal where there’s a big cinema screen at the front then separate simulator bases that you sit in and once it got going the surround sound was fantastic. Unfortunately the ride is what I’m fairly certain is the same film they originally played at Alton Towers so for the next ten minutes I have to watch highlights from Dawn of the Dinosaurs in Spanish while my seat shakes. It completely defeats the point of a simulator as there’s no moving visuals to synch with the moving seats, you’re literally just watching a film while your seat rumbles throughout. There weren’t even any 4D effects as advertised, absolute nonsense from start to finish. For a park that does seem to pride itself on its quality they should hang their heads and be utterly ashamed of this attraction, it’s terrible and doesn’t work on any level.

 

 

Shambhala – By far the highlight of PA and by far my favourite roller coaster, this is just so so incredible. It’s a 76m tall B&M hyper, the layout is just camelback after camelback and apart from the awesome ampersand element and a turn towards the end to get back to the station there’s no messing around with helixes or anything else, it’s just airtime moment after airtime moment.

 

 

One of the things I love about this coaster is the train is so long meaning it rides really differently depending on where you sit. The front is all about being pulled up into the hills and you feel the most airtime before you reach the apex. On the back the rise into the hills is fairly mellow but you get yanked over the top and remain fully out of your seat until the bottom. Meanwhile in the middle seats you get the best of both worlds, you float very gently out of your seat as soon as you begin to crest and then land back in your seat at the end of the camelback.

 

 

Every camelback gives some great floater airtime and the return leg where you hit four airtime elements back to back before coming into the MCBR just feels euphoric. The best part of this ride is the first drop in the back row. Because of the length of the train you’re out of your seat as soon as you start going downhill and you stay that way for 76m of freefall. It’s just so sustained and so intense that it’s a genuine shock how long that drop goes on for. Anywhere else in the train the highlight lies at the speed hill just after the ampersand. It’s a very sustained pop of ejector and adds some variety to the course.

 

 

Compared to last year I thought this rode a little rougher, it’s still one of the smoothest coasters I’ve ridden but it’s not quite Swarm levels of smoothness. It doesn’t detract from the ride experience at all but I hope this isn’t an indicator of how it will be a few more years down the line. I rode this about twenty times last week and two of these rides had a noticeable rattle, I’m guessing there must be a fault on one of the trains and I rode in the exact same spot. Also the MCBR actually slowed the train down this year, last year it just tore straight through it and led to some really strong airtime on the final camelback however last week the finale just lacked that punch.

 

 

That last paragraph is just me nit picking though, this coaster is incredible.

 

Dragon Khan – Even though my picture on here suggests otherwise I’m a bit love/hate with these big cookie cutter B&M loopers. Yes they’re fantastic, forceful coasters but once you’ve ridden one you’ve pretty much ridden them all due to an almost identical layout and for me Khan is one of the weaker ones due to its twister layout and a lack of theming and landscaping.

 

 

I really adore this coaster up until the cobra roll then all the elements feel a bit samey and all merge into each other. It’s a really solid ride but it’s just a minute or so of constant intensity and positive G forces. Best bit is the zero g, it’s unbelievably snappy.

 

 

I’ve written nearly five pages of A4 here! Would never have thought I’d have that much to say about a theme park, thank you very much for reading if you’re still here. I’ll post this now and hopefully finish up my reviews when I get a moment later. Thanks again for reading guys