Europe 08/20 – Legendia

Day 8

Legendia

Sometimes despite our best efforts we can’t help but make assumptions about things and places that are completely wrong.

I assumed Poland and it’s people were going to be harsher and less welcoming than the other countries on our trip. I was wrong.

I assumed Energylandia was going to be an overhyped collection of rides dumped on concrete with an unpleasant atmosphere. I was wrong.

I assumed Legendia was going to the better of the 2 major Polish parks. I was very wrong…

In fact things started to go wrong as soon as we reached the car park and had to walk past abandoned drug dens to reach the entrance. I thought this park was going to beautiful but I’m not so sure anymore…

The entrance plaza looks quite nice though.

Legendia’s park layout is a massive circle around a lake and being the rebels that we are we decided to tackle things counter-clockwise.

Exactly half way around the circle is Lech Coaster, the park did a fantastic job placing this thing.

Diabelska Pętla

After passing several closed restaurants and a closed Zyklon Galaxi, we came across the park’s Soquet Looper, Diabelska Pętla. I was half expecting this to beat the crap out of us but it was completely uneventful and we managed to continue our conversation fully while riding.

Lech Coaster

Oh the wasted potential…

I’ll get it out of the way early, I’m not a fan of Lech Coaster and now I’ve got to try and explain why when I’m not really sure what exactly went wrong myself. I believe it’s a combination of things adding up that spoil the coaster for me.

Let’s start with the hype. Anyone hyping this coaster up as anything super special is deceiving you, as they did me. Lech Coaster is fine, you’ll probably enjoy it but it’s nothing World Class.

Now the looks. Lech looks stunning but looks can be deceiving. The first drop, the massive airtime hill and the roll over the station look fantastic but ride nowhere near as good as they look.

Trains next. Much like Formuła from yesterday, the vest restraints don’t ruin the ride but certainly get in the way. Lech has a couple of moments of decent airtime but they are spoiled by the clunky restraints. Inversions and the twisted first drop also suffer from the upper half of your body having no freedom to move.

Finally the forces. Lech Coaster has an unpleasant amount of positive Gs at the bottom of the first drop and into the first inversion and then nothing much of note other than a couple of decent pops of air for the rest of the layout. It’s really off putting and almost comes across as accidental. It gave me a headache and had Heartline worried about too many re-rides.

Not that I cared much about many re-rides. After about 5 laps of nothing changing or improving I told Heartline I’d keep riding until he was satisfied but I was done now.

I wanted to love Lech and even secretly hoped I’d walk away thinking it was the real gem of Poland but no, it wasn’t to be. That’s now 2 modern Vekoma monsters that have disappointed me, fingers crossed it’s 3rd time lucky when Abyssus finally opens.

Dream Hunters Society

After passing many flat rides in pieces we came across Legendia’s final coaster, Dream Hunters Society. This was yet another Zyklon Galaxi, but this one was open, despite it appearing to be in a state of disrepair. We got a bit of a treat in the form of a rollback when this piece of junk failed to engage with the chain lift, thankfully the hosts soon came powering over and got us moving, not so thankfully I managed to smash my knee to pieces on the not so well maintained brake run…

Next up was a ride on the park’s Ferris Wheel, it was here we came across the only genuinely friendly member of staff in the entire park.

Dammit Lech you make me so mad, stop looking so amazing over there, you’ll just make me come over for another lap and then I’ll get reminded that you’re not very good…

Bazyliszek

Hopefully Legendia’s much hyped trackless dark ride will save me from walking away today feeling completely disappointed. Er no… It’s not bad, it’s just not very good. The trackless ride system isn’t taken advantage of which is a real shame. Then there’s far too many screens for my liking and the theming is 90 percent cardboard cut outs.

Jaga Valley

The final ride worth our time at Legendia was their brand new Hafema rapids and somehow they even managed to mess that up. Hafema build insanely good rapid rides but only when they are allowed to go crazy and pack them full of special effects and incredible tricks. When they are tasked to build just a rapids ride with no add ons they cannot deliver an attraction worthy of putting their name on and they haven’t because Jaga Valley is a boring waste.

Count em lads. 6 rides worth riding. 1 a Ferris Wheel, 1 a Soquet Looper and 1 a Zyklon Galaxi…

So our plan now was to head out, ride some +1s and then come back later to see if Lech is any better at almost night, but there was an issue. We asked the lady on admissions for a handstamp to come back later, she got all shifty and told us we’d need to go see guest services, no problem. In there we were informed by a rude woman that we can only leave for 30 minutes and we’d be given a signed piece of paper to make sure we didn’t abuse that rule. She was also disgusted that all 3 of us wanted permission to leave for 30 minutes…

Well, there goes the little bit of respect I still had left for the park…

We ate lunch in the car and came up with a plan. There’s no way we’re going to be able to spend all day here and since we can’t leave and come back, let’s go back in, get our final fill and then leave and never look back.

The woman on admissions gave us a real filthy look as we re-entered the park with our stupid bit of paper, look we don’t want to be here either lady.

This time we travelled the loop clockwise and got to see yet more wrecked flat rides, this time featuring possible fire damage.

Back to Bazyliszek, I enjoyed it even less a second time.

Then back to Lech, where things hadn’t improved at all. I continued to join Heartline on another run of re-rides until he too got fed up and we called it a day.

And that was Legendia.

Park Kolejowy

After much discussion the +1 we decided on was at Park Kolejowy, chosen because it was the only park nearby that was pay per ride.

We punched the details into the sat nav, went on a leisurely drive and soon arrived at what appeared to be some form of hospital or possibly a retirement home. “Mate…. this can’t be the place….” As we did a lap of the car park to access the situation 2 things happened. Heartline spotted a banner declaring that this was infact the correct car park for Park Kolejowy and then an actual corpse was rolled out of the building and put into a van right infront of us. I feel dirty… right where’s the coaster?

After following the banner around the side of the building we ended up walking straight into the park. There was no entrance area, no signage, just a park full of miniature ride on trains and we were the only ones there. Well other than a friendly man mowing the grass, who immediately stopped upon seeing us and came over. Feeling slightly as if we weren’t meant to be there we timidly told him we were there for the roller coaster. He smiled, told us he doesn’t speak good english and then pointed us further into the park, where we assumed the coaster must be.

As we walked in the direction, still the only ones there, we assumed our man had gone back to mowing but as we neared the completely deserted coaster we turned around to see him following us keys in hand. He must be the park owner we thought, what an absolute hero.

Slight problem. None of us have any cash on us and this doesn’t appear to be the kind of place where we are going to be able to use a card. I hope we haven’t made this poor man stop mowing for nothing.

Without asking for the money upfront he let us onto the coaster and sent us on many laps, with each lap we felt slightly more guilty for possibly not being able to pay when this ends.

Thankfully for us when payment was requested he informed us that he did infact have a card machine and he walked us to the park gift shop in order to make the transaction, legend.

What a strange but awesome way to end the day.

Thanks for reading, click here for the next part of my report, where we visit Majaland and too many Karls.