Italy 09/19 – Fiabilandia + EuroPark Milano Idroscalo
It just dawned on me again as I was thinking about that park again. 7 attractions in 13 hours. What was that, Legoland Windsor?
I left you hanging in suspense about that last kiddy cred in the park from the previous day. Well don’t worry, being such a nice park and knowing their audience, they were running all standard tickets with a come back for free the next day thing.
Meaning we left stupidly early to be sure we were knocking on the door of opening this time. For rerides or the +1? You know which.
Day 6 – Mirabilandia again, sadly
Did iSpeed again just to make sure. It was alright.
Walked on to Leprotto Express. Park complete (Desmo Race aside…)
Could have walked on to Master Thai. Hindsight.
Did Katun again just to make sure. It was alright.
Then left.
Caused a bit of a hilarious scene by powering out of the car park less than an hour after opening, while it was completely rammed full of foolish souls desperately queueing and trying to get into the place for the day.
What is it with the road system for the place? As we headed south away from the park, there was 5 whole miles of tailback, not moving.
5 miles. For Mirabilandia.
No.
Places to be.
Fiabilandia
This place has those big shady things in the car park. Off to a good start.
First cred you’re likely to come across is this one. It looks very shiny and new, but a bit plonked compared to lots of their other stuff. Where’s the mountain?
As a bit of a bonus we got E-stopped in the station after the first lap as the operator saw a kid crying. She didn’t know how to reset it, but an engineer slithered out of the trees in under a minute, manually parked it and opened the bars to let the kid off. We followed. 1 lap is all we needed.
Giant map of Europe on the floor with a couple of oddly scaled landmarks chucked in. (Not my finest caption).
More Fabbri spinners in the world. Who knew? At least they put a rocket in this one.
Now we’re talking. The World’s first Wacky Worm. Custom layout. Terrain coaster. Dark ride sections. This represents so much to the hobby.
It was amazing. The indoor cave section especially is of much higher standard than I would have imagined. They present their Pinfaris with pride here.
It has 2 trains. 2!
And people were piling in 3 to a row. None of this 1 adult per car nonsense. Beast.
The last cred is the same technology again, but as a mine train. It has a bit of a darker theme and a more intense drop. Gotta build yourself up for this one.
Took a wander round the lake where we found a goose who trolled us. It seemed like it was stuck here and was visibly trembling in fear. What can we do to help the poor guy?
I went in for a closer look and in its effort to run away from the nasty human, it comfortably backed out and waddled off.
This dark ride, Il Lago del Sogno was also amazing. It’s a train, of boats, that floats, with an external power rail thing like a Bobkart. Weird and cool.
Argh!
They did lunchtime ride closures here so we had to chill in the shade for a bit while waiting for the last one. Luckily it was a nice place in which to do that.
And that ride was Il Castello di Mago Merlino. It had some stuff going on, but spent too much time outdoors and lacked the ‘I’ve got a golden ticket’ song.
Better than Mirabilandia.
We had a bit of a stupidly long drive after that at which point we realised how much of a pain the toll road systems are when it’s a busy motorway. Queueing half an hour to pay a couple of quid for the upkeep/privilege of using a road seems counter-productive. And they’re clearly not flogging the electronic payment system enough as barely any locals use it.
We were also avoiding the manned booths like the plague after some earlier encounters with them. The entry slot for giving money is in a really awkward and difficult place for a driver to reach, they treat you with disdain and refuse to even look you in the eye while making the transaction, then they the put change down with no effort to make it any easier for you to reach out and take it, slowing everything down even more and pissing people off.
Eventually found ourselves on the outskirts of Milan, near the smaller airport I forget the name of. As we drew near to where the sat nav thought we were going, I pulled into a place that had a brown sign and the name of what we were looking for.
A confused man asked me if I wanted to park. The way the conversation went I assume it was some knock-off parking for the airport and not what we actually wanted.
The actual parking was further down the road, by a McDonalds. And in a weird old place.
Europark Milano Idroscalo
Basically a permanent funfair.
And a tasteful one at that.
Scouted out the prices and worked our way through it. Starting with this. I hope you like Jamming too.
This ride type was on my bucket list for new ride types, cos the name amuses me. And now I’ve done it. It’s hilarious.
Horrible restraints, stupidly rough and the spinning never really gets going when there’s people in it. But they’re all positives in this instance.
Sadly M&Ds with their other one has even less appeal for me to visit now.
I’m not a football man, but I assume it’s amusing that the lowest scoring for this game is represented by the UK flag.
Had a new found appreciation for this trusty +1 after riding the king of worms the same day.
This was also amazing. Looked like Wild Maus XXL until you get up close. Then something looks off.
I didn’t know Kingda Ka was a travelling ride either. It is according to that ticket booth at least.
It’s made by the legendary Interpark, known for their quality rides (interestingly enough I think the Wild Wind was the other thing on my bucket list for new ride types) and this is the only (permanent, I guess) Funny Mouse in the world.
It had a bizarre layout, laced with beautiful violence and comedy. Loved it.
The walls of the ride were mostly covered with images of RMCs, but from before people knew they were cool, like concept art for Twisted Colossus – I said they were tasteful.
But this was the exception to that rule.
Day 7