Germany 06/17 – Hansa Park
Kleine Zar looks like a mighty +1 / I need more Kärnan in my life.
I’ll leave it to the imagination as to what was the real motivation here.
This spare day we now had seemed to be the perfect opportunity to head back over to Germany and tear up some Autobahn.
Day 3 – Hansa Park
I am yet to experience Hansa Park without it being a ghost town, so there’s always a quaint atmosphere to walking around the place, with gardeners outnumbering the guests while they eternally tend to their impressive foliage displays. The quietness also enhances the incredible theming experiences they have on offer here.
A typical morning here starts with a token lap on Nessie Superrollercoaster and Rasender Roland as they always open first. I do love how often the effort is made on despatch time to create the interaction between the two rides, with Roland passing directly through Nessie’s vertical loop.
I wasn’t a fan of this Gerstlauer Eurofighter previously, but was willing to give it a second chance today. If anything, it had only gotten worse.
Both the queue and dark ride sections of the experience are really good and I do enjoy singing along to “Novgoroooooooooooooooooooood”, but it’s just such a poor piece of hardware that doesn’t do itself justice. These trains don’t ride very well at the best of times and the layout is so uninspired after the initial launch and hill, and then again after the vertical lift, it simply judders around doing nothing.
I suppose I like to at least think it was a learning experience and necessary precursor to the ridiculous monster that came after it.
2016
2017
I didn’t particularly have an issue with the old look of the tower because it’s just so overwhelming and I can’t believe it exists. It now looks both ridiculous and amazing.
Schwur des Kärnan blew me away on my first visit. On my very first ride I had the queue, fancy loading sequence and train all to myself and I was shaking so badly from fear and anticipation throughout the entire indoor tower section. I’ve never had that sort of reaction from a ride before.
What have they done to this gamechanging Gerstlauer Infinity since? Made it even more intense of course.
The outdoor queue area has been beefed up with some intense castle theming, full of intricate details and it’s own custom series of documentaries.
There’s a whole new indoor preshow section to the queue with the King of Denmark shouting about many things while effects are going off before you get to the brilliant bag room.
The backwards drop on the lift hill feels much more legitimate after they did some tweaking. It was a very controlled feeling previously that, while insane and unprecedented as a feature on a coaster, didn’t provide much in the way of pure thrill.
It’s just plain scary now, with the power to back it up. This ride toys with you so much in that tower that it almost becomes unbearable, in the best way.
From the first traditional drop onwards, it’s a fantastically violent machine with some very intense moments and all kinds of forces going on.
It’s a tad rough, particularly in the outside seats and the lap bars unavoidably clamp your legs so hard from the moment you leave the tower, but that’s all forgiven for what you get in return.
They’ve also added a little bit of ‘you’ve made your peace with the ride’ music (like the final note on Hex) with some fancy lighting as you walk up the exit path into the ride shop. The full soundtrack is now available in the main shop. So happy.
#1 Kleine Zar is a cute little kids coaster. If you’re gonna get a cheap ride, you might as well put a little effort in around it, and they have.
It also has most ridiculous enforcement of a no glasses rule I’ve ever encountered. If I could tell tales of the things mine have ridden…
Time passed quickly through many encounters with Kärnan and a sit down with a cheap, tasty pizza (I don’t often do food shoutouts, but – Italian place in the middle of the park, highly recommended).
Soon it was time to blast back up to Billund for the flight home.
What a bonus. I loved being able to spontaneously enhance the trip with an extra park visit like that. Seems more often than not that I’m rearranging plans for rides that spite.