Norway + Sweden 10/18 – Tusenfryd

Is everybody in?

Day 1 – TusenFryd

Been thinking how to fit this place in for a long time – dedicated trip? Nah, not worth it. Ferry from Denmark? Nah, bit mad. One way car hire from Sweden? £400… You what?
Hang on, it’s only a 3 hour drive from Gothenburg. Easy.

Arrived in the car park to confused teenage staff staring and not talking or directing. It wasn’t until the end of our visit that we discovered we were supposed to show them our parking ticket on arrival.

With no clear instruction, we had parked up and put the ticket on the dash instead, narrowly avoiding reversing off a cliff. Parking sensors won’t save you now.

A bit of a queue had formed at the entrance. I like the framing of Speed Monster here, plain escalators must have looked pretty bad before it was built. Discussed how cool an entrance it would be if they announced the park opening as a train launched. Wishful thinking.

Headed to the Vekoma woodie first, with a rough idea that it got the bigger queues, due to only owning one train.
Didn’t know that one train was a Timberliner though, so that got me excited again. What hurt Loup Garou most for me was the uncomfortable restraints (Robin Hood just sucks regardless).

Well there we go, set complete.
It didn’t do much on the first go. Had an amusing shake throughout that drowned out any other feeling.

Gave it a second chance later on and things had greatly improved. Some proper out of the seat moments, occasional rather than constant, but much more in line what I’ve come to expect sitting in one of those trains. It’s the unsuspecting hills that do it. Ones that don’t look much as you approach, they hide under the structure, but then they get much steeper than they should. Great stuff.

Walked back over to Speed Monster. Worryingly hadn’t seen it move since our arrival, even though there were people in the station. Joined the queue. Engineer standing on the track, staring at the brakes. Staff clearing out the queue.
It’s Intamin, what can you do?

Here comes the Loopen. The Norwegian coaster scene was perfectly summed up by the glum expressions on the faces of guests returning to the station on this beast. I’ve never done this ‘travelling’ layout before, so that was a novelty at least.

The gate to the Western Expressen area was closed while they faffed with Virtual Reality headsets. A crowd was gathered, clearly excited.
For some strange reason they weren’t riding this while they waited, even though it was right next to them.

One of those rides I look at online and think I might not even get in it, but looks can be deceiving as there was room to spare with 2 adults in the car.

Wanted to head down to the Viking area for the next cred, the dark ride and the Hafema rapids that I was really looking forward to. But it was all closed, cheers for that.
It’s Parque Reunidos, what can you do?

At least the other cred had now opened. Standard Vekoma junior, not much to look at.
They’ve split the queue in two and run one train with VR as Steampunk Hunters and one without as vanilla Western Expressen.

Did both for the hell of it. VR was quite hilarious. It includes an interactive part on the lift at the start and on the brake run where you can shoot some robot bugs by aiming your face at them, which I thought was brilliant. The headset itself was probably the most user friendly I’ve come across, particularly with headphones being involved. The movement synced terribly with the ride until the end of the lift, but then it was fine and tons of crazy visuals were going on – some woman on a hover board, mine shafts and volcanos. Losing the plot as always.

Did Nightmare, which was great. Who remembers the short lived Vengeance at the London Dungeons? It’s that ride system, but much more mental. Themed to zombies and filming? in a very confusing and comedic fashion.
It might just be a really self aware ride, but not understanding it I don’t know if it’s a joke or not. You can’t tell if you’re meant to be shooting half the time and whether it’s actually doing anything. Several of the scenes have the ‘shootees’ just standing there looking at you for a good 15 seconds before deciding to come at you. It does has the moment of of bringing up scores halfway through to show who’s doing well and who needs to play catchup, but all the pictures are unrecognisable and you’re losing to characters that aren’t real. Some other great effects in there too. Loved it.

Back over to camp out Speed Monster. Oh good, it’s fixed.

It looked cool, but I wasn’t expecting much from it. Intamin, restraints, all that business.

Really surprised me how good it was, so there is still hope for these sorts of things.

You can feel the launch end abruptly before the end of the flat section, which added a bit of character.

Norway’s Norwegian Loop is a fun start, Sweden did it better though.

Got a good air time hill and two more twisty ones in there as the train winds its way back down the station, one of which seems to overcompensate itself in banking and then adjusts awkwardly afterwards, with a rather amusing sensation.

Most importantly the restraints didn’t really hurt it at all. More great stuff.

Went to have a pizza at this point and ended up waiting 2 hours for it. Everyone was kicking off about how slow the shop was being and they all had a fancy phone app to tell them when their meals were ready, while we were the only people on the day given the old fashioned lump of plastic that buzzes, not knowing if it was ever even going to work.
It’s Parque Reunidos, what can you do?

It bugs me to no end that we didn’t manage to finish the place due to closures, but that’s become a tradition for us at every park in this chain now. It does have some quality rides, but can’t see myself busting to go back there and finish it for a long time.
Never know, they might get something new one day…

So that monumental waste of time for food cut down on our re-ride opportunities, also irked me massively because I could physically feel each second eating into our time at Liseberg. And that’s just not acceptable. Got a couple more laps in and hit the road.

Liseberg

Only park in the world I get giddy with excitement to return to and it really showed here. Was my third visit and it just gets better every time. Went straight to the bae (Helix) and it’s still the best thing ever by a significant margin, 600 creds later. Also previewed the brand new #6 Valkyria and it was really impressive, more details tomorrow.
Oh, what a wonderful night it was.

Day 2