Europe 09/21 – Movie Park Germany

Day 21

3 weeks into the trip now and it was time to pay a revisit to Movie Park Germany, continuing our quest of riding all of Europe’s new Intamins.

On our last visit in 2017, despite the park and its attractions not blowing me away, I still walked away with a good opinion of the park. It turns out the park is quite consistent in this because today would go down the exact same way.

Movie Park Germany

Exactly like last time, we arrived in the car park to the smell of sewage and the sight of a rusting SLC, this time though we knew the park was more than just this awful first impression.

Studio Tour

Once inside we made our way straight to Studio Tour, the aforementioned new Intamin. I know they had to because the show building was located there, but Studio Tour’s location in the park is really strange, hidden in the far right of the park, behind the children’s area.

Let’s get it out of the way early, if you were to judge the park’s newest investment as just the roller coaster ride system used, which you shouldn’t, then you’d probably walk away pretty disappointed. It’s fairly tame, rather short and really could have benefitted from the use of a drop track.

If you are able to appreciate Studio Tour as a full package though, then you’re going to have a great time on this highly themed, charming, complex family coaster on a wacky journey around the Movie Park Studios. You’ll have an even better experience if, unlike me, you are aware of the park’s history, because they have gone to great efforts to throw in loads of ‘easter eggs’ for the fans which is pretty awesome.

Is it the best coaster at the park? No, but it is an excellent addition to a park that even now feels like it needs more things to do.

Excalibur – Secrets of the Dark Forest

Next up was a ride on the recently(ish) rethemed rapids.

I’m happy to say when changing the ride from Mystery River to Excalibur that 70% of the great theming survived, as did 60% of the character. Regardless it’s still a great example of an Intamin rapids and well worth riding.

Van Helsing’s Factory

Then it was time to reunite with an old favourite.

You know how during this trip report I’ve been finding the greatest Gerstlauer Bobsled yet on a regular basis? Well you need to exclude Van Helsing from that discussion (let’s go with the logic that it’s fully enclosed) because it is the greatest Gerstlauer Bobsled ever made, is the park’s best coaster and I love it.

I loved it before, but somehow experience has made this thing even better. How they managed to make something this insane that doesn’t crack 30 feet tall or 30 mph is ridiculous. Heavily themed, an amazing soundtrack and stupidly intense, Van Helsing is amazing.

Star Trek: Operation Enterprise

This made me feel a little bit sad.

I may have let my inner Mack fanboy sway my opinion when I first rode and ranked Star Trek: Operation Enterprise. That or somehow it’s now riding considerably worse than in 2017? Maybe a bit of both?

Either way, today, it really wasn’t doing all that much for me.

Then we sort of hit a wall of things to do.

Time Riders (John Cleese dark ride) was closed for Covid, the immersive tunnel was closed due to Covid, Halloween set up or it didn’t exist anymore. We didn’t want to ride the SLC, because of course we didn’t. We didn’t want to ride Bandit, in case, unlike last time, it was now the worst wooden roller coaster on Earth.

So in other words, we had many hours left in our day, with 3 things worth riding. Star Trek (which wasn’t riding well), Studio Tour and Van Helsing.

Credit to the park, we decided to stick it out, and I’m glad we did because it all came together quite nicely in the end.

At around 2/3 we took advantage of the Covid tests the park offered in their car park. We needed a negative test to get home in 2 days and were quite worried about how we’d go about getting it done.

I’m not sure how much credit can go to the park for this but the guys running the test centre were incredible. Thankfully English was spoken, the process was super quick, they couldn’t have been more helpful and about 20 minutes later we were now cleared to return home, not before 2 more days of coasters though.

Job done, let’s celebrate with a slushie.

Oh crap, we forgot to ride Area 51…

Area 51

Much like with Excalibur, I think I preferred Area 51 before it was rethemed, when it used to be Bermuda Triangle. Don’t get me wrong, it looks amazing now and is still a great ride but there was something legitimately unnerving about the previous version that I really enjoyed.

Now, let’s go get that slushie.

Despite feeling like we’d run out of things to do several times, we’d once again had a good day out at Movie Park Germany. I think it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t rush back until the park add another major investment but I once again left the park with a good opinion of the place.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 22 of my trip report, where we visit Fraispertuis City and manage to get back to the chocolate dark ride at the Swiss museum of transport.