Denmark 06/17 – Legoland Billund + Tivoli Friheden by Mega-Lite

In summer 2017, me and Heartline went on a weekend trip to Denmark. This was to be my second trip to the country, after visiting the parks in Copenhagen in 2016 and falling in love with it. This trip had been on the cards for a while and the opening of DrageKongen was the reason for committing.

Day 1

After an early flight out of Heathrow, we landed in Billund. Seeing Polar X-plorer from the runway was really strange and got me thinking, how many other coasters can you see from runways? In almost no time at all we were in arrivals and after too much car hire faff we were on the road for the extremely short drive to Legoland.

Legoland Billund

I haven’t cared much at all for Legoland parks in years, so why did I go to the effort of begging Heartline to let us pop into Legoland Billund for a couple of hours? Simple, I’ve been dying to ride Polar X-plorer for ages.

We got to the park and began to get worried when the main car park was full and we had to park 2 miles down the road in the overflow car park. We only allowed ourselves a couple of hours max at Legoland, so this was the last thing we wanted to do. After walking the entire length of the park from the outside to reach the entrance, it was time to buy tickets. Via some amazing luck combined with typical Merlin confusion, I managed to get into the park for free, which was handy because I had to buy Heartline’s ticket to get him to agree to this idea.

Now in the park and it was heaving with people as far as the eye could see. Heartline, who had visited before, powered us over to a queue board, 30 minute queue for the powered Dragon and everything else 10 minutes. This strange occurance of rammed park, no queues, would become a staple of this trip thankfully.

I’m no good at remembering the order we did things in, so I’ll just recap the attractions we experienced.

Dragen – Mack powered version of the classic Legoland star attraction, the dark ride section before the coaster begins is in a much better condition than it’s Windsor counterpart, as for the coaster itself, it is what it is.

Ghost – ABC drop tower rides normally pack a suprising punch and produce amazing on ride photo reactions from me. We will put it down to this one being tamed down for children but I came away pretty disapointed.

Ninjago – Quite fun for what it is but nothing too special. It is pretty amusing flailing your arms like crazy though.

Polar X-plorer – What a fantastic coaster Zierer have created here, this is what Windsor needs, but I’m not sure it deserves it. The coaster section before the drop track is great fun, with some good forces and nice pops of air. The drop track section to me feels more forceful than Thirteen and you really do get ejected out of your seat, with alot of help from the brilliant train design. I got 3 laps on this and loved it every time.

Temple – If you think Windsor’s Laser Raiders is bad (and I do), this is even worse. A dark ride with almost nothing happening, while fully aware you’re just doing a big pointless circle in a warehouse.

X-treme Racers – I don’t remember Jungle Coaster riding this poorly. This clone Mack Wild Mouse was slow, jerky and an absolute chore to the add to the count.

While it’s completely fair to say I only visited the park to ride Polar X-Plorer and that in no way Legoland is targeted to me, my impression of Legoland Billund was quite positive. Friendly Danish staff, well maintained effects and theming and a general feeling of life to the park. All of the above are missing from Legoland Windsor.

We drove about an hour from Legoland to the next park and due to no parking being available we parked in the car park for a massive baseball stadium, then walked a couple of minutes down pretty Danish streets before arriving at Tivoli Friheden.

Tivoli Friheden

Whilst I was begging on my knees to ride Polar X-plorer earlier and my hype levels for the rest of this trip were at a critical level, Tivoli Friheden was only on the trip as a means to knock it off the list. I went into this unique little park with unfairly low expectations and then walked away rather impressed.

As before I don’t recall the order we did things in but interestingly this park has really stuck with me.

Cobra – This strange little one off Italian SLC was all kinds of messed up. Was it as brutal as a Vekoma SLC? Yes! Was it more interesting and memorable though? Certainly.

Orkanens Øje – Pinfari single loop coaster that has since left the park. It can’t have ridden too badly because we managed to spend the whole ride discussing plans and then it was over.

The main draw of the park is their famous SCAD tower attraction, where you are taken to the top of a massive tower, then free fall completely unaided many feet into a catch net at the bottom. I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t feeling up to it but Heartline took his turn while I ate ice cream.

Because we had time to spare after riding everything we wanted, we took a break from rushing around and wasted an hour or so attemping to play the park’s crazy mini golf course.

So you are probably thinking to yourself, low quality credits, you didn’t do the park’s best attaction (SCAD tower) and you spent an hour playing golf, why exactly are you saying you walked away impressed? I believe it comes from the combination of friendly staff, a pretty setting and the sights and sounds of everyone in the park having a great time.

Thank you for reading, please click here to read day 2 of this Denmark trip report, where we hit up Farup Sommerland and Djurs Sommerland.