Europe 09/21 – Merlin’s Kinderwelt

Day 14

Finally free from the grip of the stupid hotel, it was time to celebrate and add some new countries to our count on our way to Energylandia.

The plan was to visit Merlin’s Kinderwelt, the largest amusement park in the Czech Republic, then slide into Slovakia to ride an alpine coaster before we finally drove north into Poland. That was the plan at least…

Merlin’s Kinderwelt

Just over the Austria Czech border, in part of a large entertainment complex named Excalibur City, lives Merlin’s Kinderwelt. Despite the park being tiny, almost certainly designed for children and what feels like a bit of an afterthought next to a massive mall and casino, the park is currently the largest park in the whole country.

We had read a few rather unnerving trip reports on the run up to our visit, mostly concerning rides not being open and sometimes the entire park being closed.

With that in mind we were slightly nervous when we arrived to an almost completely empty car park, not knowing if the few cars that were there were for the park, the mall, the hotel or the casino.

The gate into the park was open though, so we entered cautiously, not knowing if we were breaking any laws or customs 10 minutes after we entered the country.

Inside, if I remember rightly, we were 1 of only 3 groups of people strolling around, with what appeared to be nothing open and no staff in sight.

After a while we spotted a member of staff who was also strolling around looking lost and after a series of hand signals and gyrations, he knew we wanted to ride the coaster and we knew where to purchase the tokens.

I have to say, I really like the token system at Merlin’s Kinderwelt. You purchase them from little vending machines, you get deals for purchasing certain amounts and the tokens themselves look pretty cool too.

Sliding Caterpillar

As soon as we came back with our tokens, our member of staff was waiting at the coaster for us and it was time to experience the Sliding Caterpillar.

This coaster, from manufacturer unknown, was kind of amazing.

Firstly, just look at it! It really is the perfect combination of both trying too much and not enough, with it’s over the top theming crumbling around it.

Then there’s the ride experience. We’d read trip reports that this powered coaster really struggled to not roll back with a fully laddened train, oh how it’s gotten much worse now though. With just us 3 on it we came so close to stalling on the first lap I was certain we weren’t getting the credit.

Feeling like we could take on the World after adding Sliding Caterpillar to our count, it was time to try our luck with the park’s other coaster.

Once again from reading trip reports, we knew the coaster was located “over the road” from the “main park”, so that’s where we headed.

This time we were literally the only people in this area, other than a friendly lady sweeping paths, asking worked before, let’s try again.

It worked again and even better there was a token machine just outside the coaster, this is all going too easy for us.

Space Roller Coaster

Immediately the park go 2-0 in having coasters you’ll never forget.

Despite being tiny, this Chinese coaster rode so brutally that it instantly became memorable.

Just like that we were finished with Merlin’s Kinderwelt, in record time too, this becomes important later.

In the short time we were there the park and it’s staff were nothing but nice and I’m glad to have made the visit and ridden it’s unique coasters.

Now it was onto Slovakia and we needed to reach Fun Park Žiarce before it closed at 4pm, which is a stupid time to close but we will get to that.

Having got to Merlin’s Kinderwelt at opening, finished in 15 minutes, decided not to stop once on route, it should have been easy right? No…

The roads still hate us apparently, no matter where we went on this trip we had issues on the roads and today was no exception. The best the sat nav could tell us was we’d be arriving just after 4pm, so we decided to phone the “park” and tell them we were coming please could you wait for us?

That didn’t work, the bloke told us to come back another day, which wasn’t happening.

So we decided we’d rock up just after 4 and try our luck.

That didn’t work either…

Despite the fact it had only just past 4, the coaster had been fully shut down and covered for the night and the ticket office looked long closed…

So not only was the park stated to close at the stupid time of 4pm, they had gone out of their way to close even earlier, disgusting, I guess they just didn’t want our money…

It wasn’t only us that was affected either, no less than 5 cars full of people showed up and wanted to ride the coaster in the short time we were there. Nice job Fun Park Žiarce, literally throwing hundreds of Euros away just to go home early…

Don’t worry though, we can calm down on the drive to Poland, oh wait, that drive was terrible too…

Thankfully we were able to calm down when we reached our hotel for the night, which was the same hotel we stayed at the last time we visited Energylandia. The friendly lady at reception recognised us from the previous year and it was great to be back in such a nice hotel after 2 nights at the stupid hotel.

We spent the evening watching Fort Boyard and preparing our bodies for a return to Zadra and Hyperion in the morning.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 15 of my trip report where we visit Energylandia to ride Abyssus and reunite with some old friends.