Europe 08/20 – Majaland Kownaty

The only other coaster of significance in Poland right now is at a new branch of the Plopsa (Studio 100) franchise and was conveniently located along our escape route out of the country and back into Germany, so it felt like a good opportunity to have a look.

Day 9 – Majaland Kownaty

Half the park is located inside this giant building, sharing that common indoor feeling found at several of their other properties.

In here is the first of two creds – a family Zierer. The narrow tunnels lead to a larger enclosed space within which most of the ride (a couple of Vikings and a bear) happens.
The rest of the building contains a large number of family flat rides and the like. It all looks rather new, shiny and impressive, but that’s not why we’re here.

We’re here for Poland’s only actual wooden coaster. Sadly a (mirrored) clone of Heidi at the big boy Plopsa park, although today I was slightly less bothered by that fact. Due to various misfortunes we only got a single lap in at de Panne so it was nice to get a clearer impression of the ride, in another form.

I was impressed with the aesthetic of the station and ride entrance area. A bit of a mild spooky theme going on – Wilkołak means Werewolf as you can probably already see.

Inside the station looks good too and, though it looks like I didn’t get a shot of it, the same goes for the train which had a few more slash marks on it. I assume we’re the hunters in this narrative.

The same can’t be said for the rest of the ride as it unglamorously spends the whole layout outside the park perimeter in a wasteland with skips, a service road and an old caravan.

Maybe the werewolf lives there. It looks better without the scream shields at least.

I’m neglecting the actual ride review here but – it’s decent. Exactly how I remembered Heidi, a bit un-GCI, though that could be considered a good thing at least half the time these days. I consider it a watered down version of the baby Gravitys and I could happily ride it all day.
Lots of fun little bouncy hills of all shapes, sizes and angles, with double ups and double downs in a simple out and back layout. Not much in the way of the signature twists and turns as it doesn’t ever carry the speed to pull this off, but the airtime delivers enough.

Construction – get excited.

Ended up on a socially distanced Disk’O just for something else to do, and they suck.
Fun fact: even if you don’t acknowledge them as creds on coaster count, you still get the rare points for ticking it off, so obviously that was the real reasoning behind it.

The park had very little else to offer us and even with many rerides we didn’t last long, though it was a perfectly pleasant place to be.

Day 10

Europe 08/20 – Legendia

The entrance to Legendia is a rather understated affair. A crude car park and a stroll past some abandoned buildings.

Day 8 – Legendia

I knew this was a city park but for some reason I expected more trees. I haven’t exactly looked at photos in detail in before (apart from the 1 we’ll talk about below) so I didn’t know that if you look behind yourself at any point – big ugly tower blocks. Early indications were also that the place was going to be a ghost town today. It’s like being back in China.

In the same manner, the tantalising view of a gorgeous looking cred across the lake does make up for this though. We opted for a leisurely stroll in the counter-clockwise direction, taking us past the slightly more themed but closed Zyklon Galaxi. I know there’s 2 of them here but that’s still a spite.

So the first cred of the day became this Soquet looper.
I’ve since learnt that this ride is an old relic from the UK and was at one point tied to the TV show Gladiators, so I’ll be a little more lenient, but… why?
The restraints are shared across two people. This bugs me because shoulder restraints are there for ‘security, comfort, peace of mind’ the usual rubbish, but if the 2 guests are disproportionate in size then that all goes out the window, like with a common lapbar, only that’s a benefit (unless you’re Thorpe Park), this isn’t.
Meandering drop, two loops and we’re turning and we’re… turning some more.

Thankfully rides have come a long way since then, though perhaps not in the restraint department for some manufacturers. I’m finally here to judge this thing for myself, to ride without prejudice.

The preshow is a nice touch that I didn’t expect. A man rides a big bird while a woman looks on, just like we’re about to do. The station was always empty and only ever one train so didn’t get to experience it inverting over our heads, a feature I have often admired from afar.

Something else I’ve admired from afar is that first drop. Construction pics don’t usually get to me but I saw one of that vicious-looking beyond vertical twist when it was first craned into place and it stirred a reaction in me like few other rides had. This was the early days of the buzzing excitement around Vekoma’s new era – they’re changing the game (technically this started back in 2010, though it went rather awry and then most likely ended up better for it), but I remain a doubter.

Having now experienced every model they’ve opened since then? (checks) Yes! I get the sense that they’ve developed a knack for making rides that look amazing, but the actual experience just doesn’t match up. There’s a certain something missing, whether finesse or character, I haven’t managed to put my finger on it yet, but I’ll keep on trying them anyway – hopefully that Firestorm one next.

I’ve diverged a bit there with some spoilers for my review but the first drop was surprisingly unremarkable. The way the track folds under and away from itself actually detracts from what should have been pure violence. I wanted Expedition GeForce, Kärnan & DC Rivals to be quivering at the thought of this element but it felt like they used the auto-heartline feature in No Limits – it’s perfectly engineered for comfort, not thrill.

From there I will admit it’s a masterful layout. Bouncing between inversions, tight turns and airtime, most of which deliver. The water, the castle and the big nest are all great moments of interaction.

It was notably intense, to the point at which I’d have to think about pacing myself after several consecutive laps as I was beginning to see stars out of the first inversion. Generally I admire this trait in a ride – right now I can only name on one hand the other coasters that have done this to me (and it’s a motley crew), but to justify this the experience has to offer other things on top that make it worthwhile. I’m not sure Lech did.

So here we go – the restraints. They don’t directly detract from the airtime moments – I still had full leg contact stopping me from flying out of my seat on that big hill towards the station and it was great. But. They encourage you to ride in a very specific position, there’s no real freedom of movement in the upper half of your body (something I value hugely on all of my favourite rides) and I find that to have a detrimental impact on what the coaster is capable of doing to the rider. Strong positives, a couple of negatives, very little in between.

I like it, I don’t love it, and my excitement for their upcoming projects has been massively reduced by this revelation, so hopefully they’ll now be a pleasant surprise. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Continuing on the loop we started to notice how the park is turning into a barren wasteland. Closed flat rides, the shells of former flat rides, fire damaged flat rides. Things don’t look encouraging.

The last cred was the other Zyklon Galaxi and I was wondering why they were being so keen in beckoning guests up the (7 person) queue to fill every car. The answer came hilariously in that our car, with only 3 people, didn’t have enough momentum to engage with the chain lift and we were treated to a little rollback and valley. The ops came striding over the grass and supports towards us with a look of ‘not this again’ and manually gave us a good running shove up onto the chain a second time. Crrrrr…BANG. “Eyyyyyy!” +1.

Struggling for things to fill the time, we hopped on the ferris wheel for some views. I spent a while imposing my own ideas on what rides should fill the vast empty spaces littered around the lake to help this place compete with Energylandia. Gravity woodie there, Mack launch there, custom raptor there – you know how it goes.

Behind that was the new-ish shooting ride Bazyliszek. Not the giant snake, the dumb looking chicken headed monster. I was hoping this was good, we needed to seriously up our dark ride game on this trip. The trackless aspect is entirely pointless other than to look cool in the station. Aside from that it’s a bit cardboard cutout, a bit screeny and sadly a bit below par for this sort of thing (though the queue is a decent effort). The dragon shooting one at Lotte World kept springing to our minds – it shares that same cheaper feeling, but it’s a lot better than this.

Almost forgot they had a rapids to do. But how could I?! It’s a Hafema. I loooooove them. Sadly the park has managed to suck the fun out of one of these too. ‘I think this one just goes round, bro.’
I can picture the scenario now – the Hafema salesperson arrives in the meeting room with a book as thick as the pages are wide and SLAMS it on the table. As they flick through the pages with excitement – “here’s all the weird and wonderful things we can do with water rides. You can have elevator lifts, you can have vertical drops, you can have people fearing for their very lives. Which of these take your fancy? How about all of them?”
“No, we just want rapids.”
“But this stuff is our speciality, we’re world leaders in innovation, it’s where we excel. This is why you chose us, right? This attraction can put you on the map again, it’ll make a statement to those louts at Energylandia, show them who’s boss, with their two rapids… the Italians? How poxy. And don’t get me started on Intamin, they don’t even know what size to make their boats.”
“No, we just want rapids. We can say…” hands breaking from thoughtful pyramid to gesture a small rainbow, “new for 2020. People will come.”
And Yaga Valley was born.

As there was still a HUGE amount of the day left and, though slightly discouraged, we had had our heart set on a few pseudo-night rides on Lech Coaster, we went to see what the hand stamp situation was, planning to kill some time elsewhere and come back for that. Sadly their policy is to give you a piece of paper that says you have to come back within 30 minutes and they were even reluctant to let all of us go out to the car at the same time.

With that bright idea shot down we went back to Lech to give it another few goes before leaving for good.
I started off wanting to keep riding it, wanting to love it, wanting it to push my body to some sort of limit but we reached a certain point where I just had to say we’re not going to get anything more out of this and a tl;dr statement if there was any – ‘Let’s go get a +1 instead.’

Park Kolejowy

And what a +1 it was. We drove past mountains and castles to arrive in front of what looked like a hospital. On closer inspection it was more like a retirement home and there was an actual dead body being wheeled out into a van to greet us as I cautiously trundled into what I assumed was the car park. There was one car.

But also this banner. It is the right place!

We headed round to the back of the building to find overgrown grass and an assortment of outdoor miniature railway tracks. The only person in sight was happily mowing away, he stopped upon seeing us and gave a friendly greeting, arms wide – “no speak English”.
“Ah, hi, umm… Rollercoaster?” I happened to be wearing my Kärnan shirt on this occasion – it has a bit of coaster track on it and is great for situations like this. Instead of people thinking you’re just strange and lost, they know why you’re here, though they still think you’re strange.
He threw a polite gesture towards the far end of a field, where some yellow track was winking at us. We’re in.
It hadn’t yet clicked that this man WAS Park Kolejowy and as we headed off towards the ride, he went in the opposite direction. While we got stuck at a dead end behind some abandoned dodgems, he had actually been to get the key to run the coaster, soon catching up to us and escorting us to what could loosely be described as the platform.

We had expected some form of transaction to take place before this, but clearly enthusiasts don’t have a reputation for being petty thieves (just child abusers) and we were invited to sit straight on the ride and enjoy a few too many laps on this wonderful creation.

Staggering back out of the train from the adrenaline rush, Mr. Kolejowy declared “1 person, 9 zloty.”
“Ah, umm… can we pay by card?” For what I’ll claim to be covid reasons rather than incompetence we didn’t actually have the cash. Had he required it I would have been happy to drive an hour to the nearest town to find a cashpoint because the man was a legend. Instead however, he gestured back towards the entrance and escorted us to a little wooden hut. Inside was a small shop and, of course, a card reader.

That’s right Plohn. A Polish man in a field has a card machine and you don’t.
I thought I was over this.

Day 9

Europe 08/20 – Energylandia

The coaster lineup here at Energylandia currently sits at 15 and they were all running perfectly, so the park managed to top my previous record for most creds in a day (13) without even breaking a sweat (something even Magic Mountain couldn’t handle). It felt unsettlingly easy though. I’m already thinking I want to break that again with something rather more challenging (but where?)

Day 6 – Energylandia

With 996 creds to my name and plan of action in my head we headed straight to the far end of the park to find the newest and nicest looking area.

Started strong on this little thing. The views were a little distracting and I forgot what happened.

Vekoma Junior #1 for me was Frida. I like the colour and the owl logo, but the fact that this has its own exit shop and line of merchandise is pushing things a little bit.

Zadra became #999 and is, of course, an amazing ride.

Because they’re just so damn good I’m getting extra picky with these now and for me personally it needed a few more significant airtime moments spread throughout the layout to truly compete with the best of the best.

The larger inversions and other elements, though visually impressive, lacked a little substance, but it builds to an epic climax that’s almost too much to handle.

This ending reminding me of both Untamed and Lightning Rod and it was this sequence of 3 vicious twisty hills, a quick upwards inversion and a ridiculously fast slam into the brakes that I loved most about Zadra. Goes out with a bang.

I wonder how many people spot this little shrine to the construction (or collapse) of the ride, just inside the queue entrance. It’s easy to miss if you’re rushing past out of excitement.

Now it was time for a good 10 minute walk to the opposite end of the park to Hyperion in order to make it my one thousandth coaster. I had made the conscious decision to make it this over Zadra because I was already a massive fan of both the actual winged Intamin hypers (not that I’m not a huge fan of the other boys too, this just sits in a little more of an exclusive club right now, plus I already had an RMC at #800).

The humongous first drop, first hill and dive loop sequence alone made me prefer this to any other more traditional hyper that I can think of, Intamin or otherwise.

This hill contains both so much ejection and so much sustain that actually I felt my brain caressing my skull, and I think I liked it.

But my favourite part was the dive loop – back right seat. This was the only true moment of the ride trying to kick me out sideways. I wanted more of that.

With the outside seats not quite delivering the same effect as Skyrush and Flying Aces it never quite lived up to the true insanity of what makes those rides so special but it gave it a damn good go.

The return leg is noticably weaker, though once the train gets low and stays low at such high speeds it really is a lot of fun and the final hill provides a very strong finish.
I’ll weigh in on the rough train discussion I’ve seen around – I definitely noticed it on one of them but to be honest I enjoyed it more when it did happen. It was a similar sort of bouncing/shaking to what you get on B&M wings when they’re doing the more forceful turns, only much quicker and this just served to make me laugh and give Hyperion an even greater intensity.

As a stark reminder of what my life will start (continue) to look like if I ever hope to reach the next thousand, #1001 was the park’s Wacky Worm.

From there it was a simple tick box exercise through the Vekoma catalogue with Junior #2.
This one had lockers. Again, excessive?

Junior #3 (but a boomerang).
They’re building another don’t you know.

And an SLC. Yawn.

My excitement for the third best ride in the park Formuła had been mostly diminished by riding Celestial Gauntlet in Changsha at the beginning of this year. They share mostly the same layout, differing only in a launch vs a lift hill and the latter has an extended hill sequence at the end, looks 100x nicer and is simply better.

You know I don’t say this nearly enough, but from a purely selfish perspective I wish that we never had clones and copies of major rollercoasters as it diminishes their impact to anyone who rides multiple versions (me) and this was a clear example of that effect.

It’s solid fun, but I’m starting to think that these ‘new gen’ Vekomas look deceptively better than they actually ride. A certain spark is missing and though the vests aren’t uncomfortable they definitely have both a physical and psychological impact on freedom of upper body movement, which matters in the end game. As much as the upcoming multi-launcher Abyssus excites me, I feel that if it rides like these ones it may end up being a disappointment.

There’s a similar situation with the neighbouring Vekoma SFC that started out as a humble layout in Denmark and is starting to appear everywhere I go. While a decent ride for the size, there will always be something better to do here, particularly when it isn’t unique to the park.

The SBF crawl of shame followed – through the densely themed family coaster

The questionable life choices of this contraption.
I hit my head on the tail of this on the first lap so had to lean forward for the remainder. Operator was amazing here, using the restraint un-locker to blow air in people’s faces.

And the 3rd ‘MX609 3 Loops’ spinner of the trip so far.

To end up at their larger spinner model that for some hellish reason has over the shoulder restraints. I tried to brace but the ear knobbling was seemingly unavoidable. Likely gave me a concussion as I forgot to collect my belongings at the end. No, I’ll blame the poor station layout for that – it has separate offload and you have to slither past the op box back into onload to reach the cubby holes.

Tactics had left this until last – my 3rd Intamin water coaster with wacky elevator lift, set complete? (checks) no… damnit Turkey! It was time to don a disposable mask to avoid ruining the one I was wearing regularly, get a good soaking and then spend the evening drying off with many laps on the star attractions.

Generally the operations at the park were very efficient, but they seem to have developed an unnecessary over-keenness to remove trains from the big rides the moment the queues dip down to 10- 15 minutes. An announcement will be played, 10 minutes will be lost in the process and all the while the queue builds back up again. In one case they literally removed and added one in the same sequence upon realising the immediate impact on the wait time. This got a little frustrating as we were trying to specifically time our evening marathons with the sun setting about half an hour before close for a pseudo-night ride or two.

I was surprised at how nice a lot of the park looks, previously imagining a lot of it to have been thrown together with the rate the park has been growing. There’s plenty of decent scenery around and some greenery is starting to develop nicely in a few areas. Although the unorthodox US city grid-like path layout is a little haphazard it makes the park surprisingly easy to navigate around (Tripsdrill) with no real dead ends to speak of.

It also means all roads lead to Hyperion, which is where the first night ended with a glorious ride just after sunset.

A second day of riding nothing but the two big boys all day and an evening of Zadra trying to murder me it became clear to me that I preferred the RMC in the end (no regrets), but they’re both spectacular coasters well amongst some of the best in Europe and so far the best one-two punch I’ve encountered of any park in the world, finally taking the title from Wanda Nanchang.

Day 7 – Zatorland

We did this the following morning before our second day at Energylandia, because of course.
I haven’t done a park beginning with Z before so that was an added bonus for the list.

In and out in under 5 minutes. That’s the way.

Day 8