Europa Park July 2012

[Mattgwise]

Just got back from a fantastic trip to Europa Park. Seriously makes the UK parks seem poor in terms of the way they are run and themed.

The park is just beautiful, flowers everywhere, lovely buildings and very picturesque. It was a bit tricky finding your way around the park but with two monorails and a railway with trains every 5 - 10 minutes you could just jump on and see where it took you.

What's also nice is that although very busy the queues move very fast as all rollercoasters have at least 3 cars. Most many more. The trains are dispatched extremely fast too, I counted 25 seconds on Alpenexpress (Runaway train) between lap bars going up from previous ride to the next dispatch. They don't faff about checking every bar is locked, just a quick look and no thumbs up business before dispatching. (Why do they check every bar here anyway, surely the computer won't allow a ride to start without bars locked anyway) The only rides bars were checked on was Wodan and I think Silverstar.

Wodan is my favourite wooden rollercoaster, had lots of airtime, and seemed to maintain a good speed throughout.

Silver star was amazing, Pepsi max big one is the only other hypercoaster I had ridden and of course being B&M was so much smoother, and got thrown up out of my seat a few times due to the airtime.

Blue Fire was brilliant. It looked a lot slower than I had thought but once on it, it was breathtaking. Felt like I was literally going to come out of the seat several times, and again once on it maintained its speed throughout making the inversions quite fun. The use of lapbars (with pulse readers) made the ride better too. Also had onboard audio which played a nice soundtrack.

Also really enjoyed Euromir (amazing soundtrack) and Eurosat, both much better than I thought they would be. Eurosat reminded me of an insane Black Hole.

All of the water rides were thoroughly enjoyable too, and believe it or not got wettest on Fjord Rafting, (rapids). A million times more fun than Rumba.

Sorry I have run out of time so couldn't do a big trip report. I may edit when I have more time.

Below is a link to some photos, they're not great but feel free to have a look (they should be accessible to all - let me know if not):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151093344060342.485432.701145341&type=3

[AstroDan]

Fascinating photographs. I have been to Europa-Park many times over the years, and it keeps on improving with age. It really is stunning - it's hard to pick faults with it at all. Even with big crowds, queues aren't too ghastly and they move so quickly. It makes the likes of a 2 hour Stealth queue or 3 hour Swarm queue (as it was one day last week) seem, well - almost impossible to contemplate.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts about the park - did you visit the hotels? Camp (Tipi) resort? Was ride close extended beyond the standard of 6pm?

[Mattgwise]

I was actually on a tight budget so stayed in a nearby village called Grafenhausen and ran out of time to look at the hotels, plus my friends couldn't be assed with looking at the hotel areas. I spent the Tuesday and Wednesday in the park and the park closed at 7:30pm with the longest queue of the day around 40 minutes for Wodan. Most queues were less than 10 minutes - walk on by 7pm. On the Wednesday the park closed at 8pm but it was much busier. At the end of the day walked by Euromir, Bobsleigh run and Eurosat and all still had queues of around 20 mins.

If Stealth or swarm were at Europa Park, then I am sure a one hour queue at Thorpe would easily be halved to 30 minutes, with its speedy loading and no fasttrack.

[AstroDan]

Great! It's a shame you didn't see the hotels - they're some of the very best you'll see. Especially Hotel Colosseo and the new hotel, Bell Rock.

There's always next time, eh!

[Mattgwise]

And there definitely will be a next time.

[Mark9]

If Stealth or swarm were at Europa Park, then I am sure a one hour queue at Thorpe would easily be halved to 30 minutes, with its speedy loading and no fasttrack.

Even with big crowds, queues aren't too ghastly and they move so quickly. It makes the likes of a 2 hour Stealth queue or an hour queue for Nemesis fastrack or a 3 hour Swarm queue (as it was one day last week) seem, well - almost impossible to contemplate.

Comparing the best park in the world against Thorpe Park doesn't sound right to me. It's like comparing your Sainsburys basic carrots against your top of the range restaurant presseco. I also added some Alton Towers nightmare queues for balance.

[Mattgwise]

Fair comment, It just comes naturally to compare to Thorpe Park as it is the park we all discuss here, but yeah you are right, they are very different like the carrots.