In terms of an attraction lineup it has received a bit more love than most of the other parks across the globe, the most interesting being their Zierer family coaster, which we headed to first.
This is no ordinary Zierer, it has the nicest trains they have to offer with elevated open seating and comfy lap restraints. The first half of the layout isn’t exactly thrilling, but it contains a couple of good moments.
There’s also a surprise feature in the form of a drop track section. The train enters a cave and stops in front of a screen. Two mountaineering lego figures are hacking away at some ice and suddenly the track drops from beneath you, taking you down with it with a fantastic lurch. There aren’t many of these elements in the world and they’ve never failed to delight me.
With the distance dropped, there’s almost no height left to continue the momentum of the ride, so it crawls out of the cave past a few figures and into the other more unusual theming – a cave containing real live penguins that also houses the brake run. Polar X-plorer is a good all round attraction with a bit of something for everyone and very refreshing to see in a park like this.
The Temple is a shooting dark ride featuring a jarringly simplistic layout that consists of a single circle around various lego set pieces – you can almost see the whole ride from one position. When shot, the targets on the ride often trigger some animatronic effects to keep things a bit more entertaining and scoring often becomes secondary to me as I try to see what everything does.
A common theme for any Legoland is the castle decoration and Dragon rollercoaster. They mostly begin through a dark ride section with a few impressive scenes, smells and usually one big lego namesake as the star of the show. This version was no exception and looked noticeably more well maintained than what I was used to back in Windsor.
The ride itself is a Mack powered coaster that traverses a mostly uninteresting layout once outside in the trees. It is a crowd pleaser of course, but all about the decoration to me really.
I was a little disappointed by the rapids. They might have had it on safe mode for the wintry weather, but special features such as the elevator lift didn’t manage to make it crazy enough for my liking. I’ve had a lot more peril on the one back home.
Ghost excited me. Drop towers and dark rides have the ability to go extremely well together but this one didn’t really deliver sadly. The walkthrough section and batching area was novel, just when it came to the hardware there was very little force to be found and I didn’t really catch the plot – just some Lego bloke spinning around and shouting in front of us for the entire duration.
The latest dark ride is Ninjago the Ride and almost as if to counter The Temple, it’s another shooter, though this time with some newer technology. Instead of guns, the shooting is completely hands free, requiring riders to wave their arms about frantically over sensors in the front of the car, with the hope of channeling a ninja enough to taking down the bad guys. The scenery between screens was impressive and overall it was a lot of fun, if a little frustrating to get the hang of.
I thought that the park had the Atlantis submarine simulator found at others, as there was a Lego statue of one outside the entrance to the aquarium and even a seated preshow, but it turned out it was just that – an aquarium.
The following morning found us at Germany’s only theme park by the sea. Coming from a nation with a ton of coastline, much of it not very good, I hadn’t really considered how much this country was short of beaches per capita. I’d trade it all for what they have instead though:
The pair make for a pleasant start to the day. The Schwarzkopf looper is reasonably forceful and fun, enhanced by old school lap bars in an inversion – the two seldom met in the past. To add to the charm, there’s a speedometer in the station to tell you how fast the last lap was – can you beat it?
The highlight of the two attractions is the interaction though. If you’re lucky enough to get both trains passing through the loop at the same time (and they do actually try and make this happen), complete with excitable riders, you’re in for a real treat. I love moments like this. How to make a Vekoma junior special.
Schwur des Kärnan
So I already liked the place and I hadn’t even begin to consider the absurdity that was waiting for me around the corner. How is this a thing again?
Kärnan is a very special rollercoaster and I had a very special experience on my first ever lap – an empty train to myself. You can get a full taste of what I went through in a review here, but to summarise – I love this ride. It’s completely one of a kind in both theme and ride experience, it’s ridiculously intense and it hurts my legs.
The staff member at the entrance was impressed with my stamina as I limped round for countless laps during the day, except they weren’t countless – he was adding up for me each time with a cheery grin on his face. Proud of what he was representing, as he damn well should be.
Oh how I wish I could say any of the above for Kärnan’s predecessor. I really wanted to like this attraction but the hardware is just so shoddy. It does have another banging soundtrack – the highlight being 30 seconds of a Russian man singing the word Novgorod repeatedly, which is actually built into the awesome first dark ride section of the layout.
The Gerstlauer Eurofighter car, with it’s horrible restraints and clunky movements, drops awkwardly into the dark, pitching you forward in your seat before even more awkwardly snapping your head back again as you hit a rolling launch. It’s really powerful, but it’s just executed all wrong and ends up as something to endure, even more so when it ends with a sharp right hand snap of a corner.
A single moment of strong airtime follows over an impressive hill but, of course, the restraints just dig into your shoulders at this point and say “down boy, no fun for you.” The remainder of the layout is, to be frank, embarassing.
The car rattles around this extended corner sequence with absolutely no purpose before taking a slow inversion that drops your body onto each individual shoulder and leg, in turn, further increasing the discomfort and putting you out of kilter for what remains. What remains is a now uncomfortable indoor vertical lift hill with somewhat cool projections and effects, though I’ve usually lost the plot by this stage. How is the potential energy of this lift hill expended? By a single drop and corner into the final brakes. They ran out of things to do. It bothers me so much that it would have turned out better to just not try as hard – do the final dark ride sequence on a piece of flat track at the end.
That’s enough negativity for this park, there’s a laser show around the corner that played intense rave music in true German style and put me right back in good spirits. There was also a 4D theater with a POV film of an animated cat in a haunted house – it was decent and the seats dropped, better than Novgorod.
Two more creds to get. The standard wild mouse almost lets the side down a bit by being so generic, but there’s a band of animatronic hillbillies playing music to keep it entertaining.
And the other is the second Hansa & Gerstlauer masterpiece. Two laps of a cracking little family coaster with a lift hill intensely decorated by projections, smoke and plot and some great outdoor theming to dodge.
In case you couldn’t tell, I really liked this park. The visit presented me with a perfect blend of relaxed atmosphere and a strong lineup of attractions – a combination that is usually hard to come by due to inherent popularity. I get the impression that Hansa Park really care about what they’re doing and I can’t state enough how important I think that is for this industry.
Ever since I had been an owner of the Merlin Annual Pass, a certain park in Germany had been on my radar. Merlin acquired Heide Park in 2007 at the same time as the UK parks and often told passholders that if you ever managed to make it out there, you could get in for half price!
Of course several years after I stopped owning one, I went to check it out, amongst other things.
Day 1
We landed in Hamburg and spent the first day in the city. Not straight to a park? Not quite yet, decided to visit Miniatur Wunderland first.
Very glad we did too, it was great. Not sure if the pictures will do it justice but this first area was a proper wow moment to me upon entering. The sheer scale of the spectacle and then the intricate detail beneath. I thought model villages would be a bit dull and I was dead wrong.
It has something for everyone, this fully operational airport with live arrival and departures board was mind blowing. The model planes just take off and land through a hole in the wall, all on schedule – pure magic.
Make that two. Las Vegas’ famous Togo coaster is hiding back there as well. The other cool feature about the place was the rolling day and night modes, with each scene lighting up in wondrous fashion a few times each hour.
Not often I suggest visiting something that doesn’t contain rides, but here you have it – highly recommended.
Day 2 – Heide Park
Our car was collected the following morning and we hit a relatively brief stint of autobahn before arriving in a nice empty car park.
One of the reasons it was so empty was that it was a little on the chilly side – no more than 2°C. After a slight interlude and welcoming announcement from the park, the flood gates were opened for not many people to head on in.
The Intamin launch coaster and clone of Rita at Alton Towers was the first open ride we encountered. Due to the poor weather they were starting things up in a very gradual and nervous fashion.
Desert Race rode a lot smoother and more comfortably than the original but that only really served to highlight the fact that it just isn’t a very interesting layout. There was the slightest sensation of airtime in the humps that change your direction between endless banked corners, but the most interesting part for me was the very ending, after the first set of brakes, where the track deviates slightly with a nifty little manouevre to avoid a taller building than Rita has to.
My most anticipated ride in the park was the Intamin pre-fab woodie. Only 4 of these exist in the world and they are often heralded for having the best wooden airtime money can buy. I had ridden the other one in Europe (Balder) and came off very impressed. How would the first installation fare?
Not well. It’s an intimidating structure with the massive lift hill and turnaround, but the first drop doesn’t quite disappear from under itself in the severe fashion that I had expected. Cresting the first two big hills provided decent ejector, but in between these the ride was marred by a terrible crunching roughness in the dips. The turnaround didn’t help this, the speed hill did almost nothing and then the train hits a mid course brake run. The worst part of the ride follows – a meandering helix that offers no thrill and only wastes energy. If the track was well looked after it would have been just boring, but at this moment it was quite jarringly uncomfortable the way it shuffled around all over the place, eventually becoming quite amusing as I observed everyone in the train rocking rythmically back and forth either looking fed up or saying ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! The final hills were good, but not in the same league as the equivalent steel versions on Intamin and I hit the brakes a little disappointed, having been let down by a legend of the industry. They haven’t treated it kindly.
Desperately wanting to like the ride, I learnt over the course of a few laps that the two seats in the middle of each 6-seater car provided a better experience for not being positioned directly over the wheels. Unfortunately German guests are too efficient at batching themselves and getting everyone to fill empty spaces on trains, so even though I would aim specifically for these seats, more often than not I would get enthusiasically waved through the lines into the wrong row, then regret it as soon I sat down.
The weather was quite grim again so we nabbed the slightly indoors Mack powered coaster Grottenblitz for a brief respite, followed by the smallest in the park – Indy-Blitz for less sensible reasons.
The 2 B&Ms were next priority but they were struggling to open Krake in such poor conditions. As we passed it, a test train was sent and probably came the closest I’ve ever seen a ride to stalling, hitting the splashdown and barely making it through the next element without rolling back. Running it on the edge.
They had managed to open up the wing coaster though. Flug is an impressive looking specimen, very nicely integrated into its area. The entrance pathways are up high and look down over the pit of the station with the track swooping around itself. A sinister theme plays throughout the vicinity, one I had already become accustomed to before my visit. I find it’s very gratifying to hear good ride music in person when you already know it.
The ride shares the same wing-over drop that I was used to from the Swarm, but amps things up immediately after with a blur of a speed hill under a near-miss bridge into another floaty inversion. The ride gets intense again from this moment onwards and remains so for the rest of the ride, alternating between tightly banked corners that cause the other seats to bounce with force and three more disorientating inversions. A very solid package.
Continuing up the hill it was time for a ride on Scream. This Intamin gyro drop tower provides amazing views of the park and surroundings with its rotation at the top, before packing one of the strongest punches I’ve ever encounted in a drop tower. Just look how horizontal those legs are. The other feature I have to praise Scream for is the way the queue winds around the ride in true spectator fashion. Around the outer perimeter of the structure there are barriers that quake with a thunderous boom every time the ride drops and forces large volumes of air into them. It makes for a fantastic scare to anyone nervous about riding, enhancing the whole atmosphere of the attraction.
After a spot of lunch, the weather warmed up a little and the B&M dive coaster was finally open for business. Like it’s neighbour, Krake has a strong and sinister soundtrack that I was famliar with and it had me buzzing with excitement as I stumbled through the queue. As with Colossos, the station immediately greets with many Germans waving frantically at me – fill those empty seats! Straight in the back row before I’m ready.
From this position, you get less of an opportunity to appreciate the beast beneath the drop but the force with which you are lifted out of your seat is enhanced and more sustained. The splashdown is an unusual feature for a ride of this scale, common instinct for every rider is to raise their legs as if they are going to get wet at this point. The scoops on the side of the train kick up two big plumes of water that make for a great off-ride visual and occasionally soak the outer most seats if you catch a bit of bad luck. A swift immelman follows (unless it’s too cold) before a satisfying surge of airtime over the next hill. Sadly it all ends too quickly, but at least there’s something to appreciate other than just a drop and the train moves with a lot more purpose than I had come to expect from the ride type. Krake immediately became my favourite of its kind.
Oh wait, no. We were about to board this little boat ride when the skies suddenly opened and pelted the park with a torrential hailstorm. With only ourselves and the lone operator in the station, we had a bit of a laugh together and watched it all unfold. All the rides had shut down very quickly and almost immediately after, the top of Krake was legitimately struck by lightning in front of my eyes. I had never seen anything like this before.
It all disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Announcements were now playing throughout the park – they had taken the decision to close everything down and asked everyone to go home several hours earlier than planned. This was bad news for me – I hadn’t got all the creds! I had been taking it easy all day, not expecting to encounter any issues and suddenly the opportunity had been snatched away from me.
They were handing out rainy day guarantee passes at the entrance, but I wasn’t certain that I could return within the designated time frame. I explained this through a quick chat with guest services – they were interested to know where I had travelled from and they took my details and said they would be in touch.
It’s a long drive from Gothenburg to Kolmården and it felt all the longer when what we called ‘the main road to Stockholm’ became single track lanes through dense forests. With no confirmation either way from the park about whether they had fixed the issues with thier new ride yet, we were continuing the trend of the trip and taking it easy, 50:50 on whether we might just be wasting our time at this point.
As we approached the particularly beautiful and scenic part of the country that houses a hidden zoo and RMC, we saw several signs which seemed to indicate there had been either low level protests or strong showings of support to the construction of the ride. Hay bales and paint on trees spelled out the name. This amused us.
What didn’t amuse us, after finally reaching the car park, paying for parking and walking to the entrance was hearing the staff break the bad news – Wildfire was not open yet and wouldn’t be for another week. As we now knew we would HAVE to come back another time, the obvious choice was to walk away, not use the pre-paid tickets already ordered online, get back in the car and drive to Stockholm to buy some cheese.
I’m certainly no stranger to spite in this hobby, but this was by far the biggest blow I had ever experienced. Don’t get me wrong, I was having a great time on this fantastic trip, but my primary goal of the whole week was to ride this thing and it didn’t happen. What hurt a little more was the conviction with which the park had advertised the opening of the ride and unusually for me (I rarely care about anything before it’s built) I had been hanging on their every word. During construction, Wildfire had a massively detailed documentary series put out by Kolmården every few days showing every step of the build. They released cinematic trailers of grizzly men battling hard against all odds to piece the wood together, covered in sweat, mud and rain. Fires raging through forests – Wildfire… is… free… One particular video that stood out was the park manager himself declaring ‘I’ve just walked the track of the completed ride and it WILL open on the 18th June. Steal a car, buy a boat, hire a plane – do what you MUST to come and ride the greatest wooden rollercoaster in the world.’ This quickly became a great source of parody for us as we had done exactly that, and it was closed.
Day 5 – Gröna Lund
We dropped the car off in the centre of Stockholm the following morning, at the smallest hire premises imaginable. They had a single space outside in which to park and no one was making it easy for me – road works on all sides, two men carrying a pane of glass like a comedy sketch and cyclists getting angry at me merely for existing. From there it was a short tram ride to the final park of the trip.
I started off the day really happy. All these coasters crammed together into such a tight space – it’s ride interaction heaven here, right up my street. Sweden have it so good. Or do they?
I loved the look of this ride, a classic Schwarzkopf diving in and out of the tracks of 3 other creds. Riding its big brother Lisebergbanan on the same trip made it seem rather underwhelming on the whole though. Moments that look strong from offride only do so from certain angles – you get up close and it all feels a bit tamed down. It was fun, but nothing special.
As was my first Gravity woodie. The restraints were slightly off on this, coming in almost over the chest meaning what airtime it had was mostly eliminated by having to brace my rib cage. Whether it’s the wheels or the steel supports, having to queue inside such a tight structure is loud to the point of obnoxiousness and it also gave me a headache both on and offride.
The positives – I really do admire how long this ride feels to go on for, given the size. With less than 50ft of drop to begin with it just keeps on finding things to do. It also has an exhibition of other wooden coasters from around the world throughout the queueline. If you could shut the noise out, recognising and reading about these was great fun.
The Gerstlauer bobsled is another of the intertwiners here, though my time on it never seemed to capitalise on any exciting interaction. As a model they have their odd moment of success, but most of the way it’s a glorified wild mouse.
No more than a few weeks prior, I had ridden the brand new installation of this same Vekoma SFC layout at Paultons Park. Being older and seemingly not that well looked after, this version paled in comparison.
Even if Twister hadn’t given me a headache, this abomination would have. The Intamin zacspin is an evil invention, the seats can flip freely as the cars negotiate the horribly lurchy layout. Pitching head over heels and being dropped onto your brain in sudden bursts of random force is unpleasant at best, damaging at worst. I dread the fact that more of these exist and that I need the creds.
Talking of creds, there were two more baby ones to tick off. Nyckelpigan – a small Zierer Tivoli with a fun name to say and Tuff-Tuff Tåget – a Zamperla that barely qualifies as a coaster. If you’re at all worried about the embarassment of riding children’s rides as an adult, it’s tough tough to get. Yeah, that one’s fun to say too.
BlåTåget is a traditional ghost train with some bonus modern features in the refurbished cars. I can appreciate that it was a good example of the genre, but the ride hasn’t left a lasting impression on me.
Gröna Lund has almost as many towers as it does coasters. We did both of these. Fritt Fall on the left is a huge Intamin drop tower that packed a massive punch over a long period of time – one of the best of its kind. Eclipse on the right is an even huger Wave Swinger, once the tallest in the world. If chairoplanes don’t scare you any more, getting on a 400ft version just might. I wasn’t nervous until I looked up and considered how thin the chains look. It sure is windy up there, buffeting all over the place.
I was a little disappointed with the park on the whole. That initial buzz of excitement I had was soon washed away in a sea of middling rides and noisy guests. It didn’t have the charm of the rest of the country – something just didn’t click with me and there’s nothing outstanding enough to make me want to return for another attempt. As it was only ever getting busier and louder as the day wore on, with a concert being set up for the evening, we didn’t feel like queueing longer for anything again so headed out a little earlier than anticipated for some food and a relaxed train to the airport.
This trip followed much of the same route I had taken 1 year prior, with the added extension of a one way car hire and driving over to Stockholm. The main draw for me (aside from revisiting Liseberg and Helix) was the planned opening of Wildfire at Kolmården – Europe’s first RMC.
Day 1
In what was to be a very long first day, we arrived in Copenhagen and headed straight to Tivoli Gardens. After finding somewhere to store luggage we took a quick lap of the park ticking off all the major attractions, to be safe, before jumping on another train to Bakken.
Bakken was much as I remembered it from before, with slightly less rain. The atmosphere isn’t great, always having lots of old people in restaurants staring at you, seemingly judging you for being young and having a good time. The rides aren’t very good either, though Tornado is a unique Intamin spinner, the standout is an unassuming mine train.
Tivoli couldn’t be more different – a gorgeous park with a lovely atmosphere and two worthy coasters that I could just bounce off all day (Daemonen and the correct Rutschebanan). We returned for a wonderful evening of rides and some extra magic happens at night when the place lights up. You just can’t go wrong here.
As midnight approached, we still needed to lug our luggage back out of the park and board a train bound for Malmö, over the border in Sweden. The process had changed slightly since my last visit and there were extra checks for border control, so we were barely managing to stay upright by the time we reached the hotel.
Day 2
Scandinavia knows how to look after us though. Late park closures also mean late park openings so we still had more than enough sleep. We had heard that Kolmården were having some troubles with their new ride and that it hadn’t actually opened yet. This was concerning, and we spent the rest of the morning doing some digging. The website wasn’t much help – stay tuned for more details, or words to that effect. Never mind, Liseberg.
Took the satisfyingly casual drive up to Gothenburg, parked at the perfect hotel and jumped on a tram to my favourite park in the world. Helix reaffirmed that to me that it was still the best and Mega-Lite got a new favourite, that’s all that matters. The best nights in the industry are found at Liseberg.
Day 3 – Skara Sommarland
As Liseberg is so easy and demands 2 evenings of your life, minimum, for any visit, there was an abundance of time to check out another few creds a couple of hours to the north east. So as we begin to question whether this report is actually going somewhere, here’s a new park for you.
Just when I think things can’t get more relaxed, this place is more summer camp than theme park, with friendly staff just cycling around without a care in the world.
#1 Tranan
The main draw here is a unique S&S Free Fly. It has a winged train with cars on each side that can pivot and swing horizontally as it traverses a somewhat uneventful layout. Don’t be fooled though, even a normal looking piece of track can cause this ride to provide some surprising sensations. If they ever try to step one of these up a notch, I’ll be all over it. For now, as it stands – a bit of fun, nothing more.
Something less fun is the park’s stock model Maurer spinner, #2 Spinner. The standard wild mouse layout just doesn’t seem to suit these usually superior spinning cars very well, resulting in a rough and awkward ride.
#3 Gruvbanan
Last up is a Mack powered coaster. From a spectators perspective, you would think the layout consisted of straight flat lines, but there’s a big helix through a weird and wonderful warehouse with a completely random assortment of objects (theming?), providing plenty of charm.
With that mission declared a success, it was back to Gothenburg for life changing experiences.
Walibi Holland are slightly off the rails, in a good way. Let’s just say the park themselves know how to have a good time. I can’t think of a better investment to represent that than this. Hard Gaan.
Lost Gravity was the first ever installation of a Mack big dipper. I’m a massive fan of Mack rides, not least because they made my favourite coaster on the planet. Their restraint and seating system revolutionised the modern inverting coaster giving an unparalleled sense of freedom and comfort even against the most extreme of forces, teaching the world once again that you don’t need these poxy shoulder restraints everywhere.
These same seats made it onto this new model of ride, on which the easiest comparison to draw for the cars would be to a Gerstlauer Eurofighter. In a head to head, they fix absolutely everything about them, from the awkward restraints to the clunkiness with which they rattle around. On top of this, the outside 4 positions can be described as wing seats, as they stick out over both the edge of the car floor and the actual track, letting your feet dangle. Wing seats like this can be a powerful ally to a ride, effectively doubling any lateral forces in a snappy transition as physics has to move you, the rider, further to keep up. The advantage of single 8-seater cars on a coaster such as this, as opposed to full trains is that tighter (and snappier) manouevres can be attempted without (less) serious engineering issues.
The theme for the ride is in the name. Gravity has been lost and the scenery throughout the queue and the ride area is a random assortment of objects, vehicles and containers that are upside down and strewn all over the place. The entertainment highlight as you move through the queue is an escalator that no longer moves. Instead, if you happen to be standing on it while waiting, the floor intermittently vibrates underneath you, in a hilarious fashion. There’s always some intense dance music playing throughout the area, fitting perfectly with the vibe of the park and I believe there was a dedicated DJ situated near the ride entrance at some point.
The ride does have a song written for it and it’s one that I have a great attachment to, though sadly I’ve never heard this played in situ. The other highlights in theming are a couple of flamethrowers that go off viciously every so often, enough to give people in the queue a good fright. You can’t beat a bit of fire.
On to the actual ride then, it begins with a wickedly steep and twisted first drop that just disappears from underneath you, throwing you particularly hard if you’re in the correct wing seat. Before you’ve had time to recover from that there’s a silly little hill, no more than the size of a speed bump, which produces a very amusing and odd sensation of airtime.
Nobody should know what this element is supposed to be. Some semblance of a top hat, but the shape is just so warped and again produces some rather unique forces, although slower this time, before you hit another big violent hill of pure ejector.
The train then enters a flat turnaround up high, ending in a mid course brake run which tugs at the pace a little into the dive drop that marks the second half of the ride.
The ride gets more twisty now, navigating a series of tight corners, another well placed inversion and a final punch of airtime before the end.
I was very happy with the final product. I like a mixed bag of forces on a ride and I always implore designers to try new things, be different and unique. It did everything I could have asked for really and instantly became my favourite attraction in the park. Although Goliath was an old friend of mine it just can’t compete with the simplicity of what it delivers in comparison to a ride like Lost Gravity.
What holds it back from the elite though? Because it isn’t up there with the best of the best for me. That’s a question I find hard to answer. I believe it comes back to the Eurofighter comparison from earlier. Though Mack fixed everything I thought they could about it, there’s something more inherent about these rides with single cars instead of trains. What you gain in manoeuvrability you lose in grace, they just don’t… flow as nicely. The momentum and rhythm is different, much more stop-start and, for want of a better word, it feels gimmicky.
Still loved it anyway, bought the T-shirt to prove it. Not the one that says ‘Ask me about Lost Gravity’, but please do.
On my first trip to Efteling, this ride was nearing the final stages of being built. They certainly weren’t afraid to show it off to everyone and get them excited for what was coming to the park – not a construction fence in sight.
It excited me too, though I wasn’t a local. This was a time in my life when B&M were the most consistent manufacturer I had come across and from what I had already experienced that day, I was sure Efteling could produce something really special.
A couple of years later I was back in the Netherlands and of course took the opportunity to see how things had turned out, soon finding myself standing in the queue that was once mud.
The area that the ride lives in is wonderfully presented and fits right in with the overwhelming aesthetic and charm of the park. Drawing strongly on their experience with Vliegande Hollander, theming becomes the most dominating part of the attraction and Baron takes it a step further by even having it’s own preshow – something very few coasters do. This is also a good time to mention that there was an extensive soundtrack composed for the ride, which I always admire, but in this particular instance none of the melodies have ever really stuck with me, unlike certain attractions.
In Efteling style, the preshow tells a tale of the Baron himself, the opening of his gold mine and the Witte Wieven that haunts it. Now the scene has been set, guests move into the station to board the Dive Coaster trains which are to be your mine cars. You’re now a part of the story.
The train pulls out of the station into another room, where impressive projections and physical effects continue the story. Trouble is afoot, the ride can begin. It’s hard for me to feel intimidated now in these comfy B&M seats as they ascend the lift hill. At the summit, the signature holding brake of the ride type dangles you over a misty pit.
The train releases and you plummet down the near vertical drop into the ground below. Baron is comparatively tiny for a dive coaster, not quite reaching 100ft off the floor and it shows here in that the defining moment of the ride is not as effective at launching you out of your seat or providing the sustained sense of freefall that I would have expected. The pull out of the drop is almost instantaneous.
With your face full of sweet mist, the ride navigates two consecutive inversions that are pulled off rather nicely, before entering a helix that seemingly serves no real purpose other than to burn a bit of speed. Moments like this in a layout do bother me as, with my mindset, it just feels like wasted potential.
The final element is a slight airtime hill that is somewhat satisfying and you hit the brakes far sooner than expected.
While solid fun as a coaster, there was nothing truly spectacular about it. The theming remains the most prevalent feature of the experience, which I’m fine with, but it could have been something really special if the hardware had lived up to it. I can only assume they were erring on the side of family thrill to suit the park as a whole, which makes the choice of ride type seem a little unusual – other than for the look and to fit the narrative. Dive coasters by original design were to be dominating, powerful and scary, the prototype literally being themed to fear. It’s refreshing to see one used in a different way, but it didn’t quite meet my expectations on all fronts.
This was a revisit to the park for me and a first time visit for Mega-Lite. Although I already adored the place, the most persuasive factor in my returning was their new coaster Baron 1898, of which you can find a review here. We had an amazing time and the park was as lovely as ever.
The next day didn’t go very well and I have only one picture to prove it ever happened. For some reason we decided to hit both of these parks in one day, to maximise our time and I assume because we thought neither lineup was particularly significant enough to warrant sticking around.
We crossed another easy border out of our centralised hub in the Netherlands and into Belgium for the day.
Day 4 – Walibi Belgium
We opted to head for the park’s new coaster to begin with, Pulsar, the first ever installation of a Mack powersplash. It’s a shuttle ride using their larger water coaster boats to power you both forwards and backwards up spikes of track before cleverly letting the water that surrounds the ride flood directly in front of the boat to produce a massive splashdown effect at the end. The queue was particularly interesting as we raced through it, with many of the actual walls having violently pulsing and vibrating sections to denote the theme. It wasn’t the most thrilling of rides, the size of boat makes it all a rather lumbering experience, but it was rather fun to try and we got absolutely soaked for the privilege.
There’s another shuttle coaster nearby called Psyke Underground. This time it’s a Schwarzkopf shuttle loop, with the added features of being entirely indoors and having replacement Gerstlauer trains fitted. It consists of launch, loop, spike, backwards loop, spike, end and simply wasn’t very interesting.
Calamity Mine is a standard layout Vekoma mine train that was worryingly better than Colorado Adventure earlier in the trip. With more than one train running, the two lift hills side by side and interaction of track between the two halves of the layout makes for good entertainment.
Cocinelle is a great name for the British to say and a small Zierer Tivoli. +1.
We were now at the back of the park where the shooting dark ride, Challenge of Tutankhamon sits. Excitement had built for this one as it was meant to be rather good and it didn’t disappoint. Navigating through various haunted Egyptian scenes, shooting as you go, the ride provides a number of either effective or amusing scares by use of animatronics. It also has the intelligence to split cars off and take them through different end sequences based on your score. Because of this, and how good it was, this was the only attraction here we did twice, though we failed to score too well both times and got the same ending.
The other dark ride is a Vekoma mad house. Le Palais du Génie had an interesting preshow, with guests gathering round a central area of the room and some trickery on the ceiling. The ride portion was par for the course on these attractions, the highlight often being other riders reactions to believing that you are genuinely going upside down.
Even though we still had a lot to cover for the day, we had been putting off the major coasters at the front of the park, the main reason being that one was a Vekoma SLC and another was a Vekoma boomerang, both prolific clones in the theme park world that I’m not sure anyone has ever enjoyed rather than endured.
Realising that time was now against us, and that they were all holding significant queues, we purchased a single fasttrack for each – a horrible thought to be paying extra for such rides.
Vampire is the SLC, where we were immediately let in through a secret back door into the station. It wasn’t the worst version I’ve ridden, but it wasn’t good either.
Cobra is the boomerang, where we stood in confusion at the exit for a while before being let on. It wasn’t the worst version I’ve ridden, but it wasn’t good either.
Finally it was time to try Loup-Garou, hoping for something better from the park’s Vekoma woodie. At least it was unique. Unfortunately I didn’t get on with the positioning of the awkward lap bar restraints very well and spent the duration of the ride bracing myself against that rather than taking in any of the layout. I believe it had the potential to be quite good, it just wasn’t for me with those trains.
With that, the park was complete and we hurried out to the next destination.
Bobbejaanland
Our master plan was relying on the advertised operating hours of this park, it was due to close at 18:00 but on our arrival at the ticket desk, even though the car park was heaving, we had struggled to even find a space and it was still the school holidays in Belgium, they bluntly told us they were shutting at 17:00. Being madmen, we reckoned we could still manage everything in the remaining time and bought tickets anyway – we’ve come this far.
We started at Typhoon, the biggest coaster in the park, an older Gerstlauer Eurofighter. It’s an unattractive ride, looking more like it belongs at a fairground than a theme park, but then Bobbejaanland had been unattractive thus far as well. It fits. The queue was unpleasant and barely moving, we lost our first half hour here. The signature vertical lift and beyond vertical drop starts the ride, throwing you into a vertical loop where you immediately to notice that these trains are clunky and ride poorly. Some strangely high up turns and slow inversions go against the grain of what I have experienced previously on the ride type so it’s an unusual layout at least, but not really any good for it.
For some reason the only ride I have a picture of for this day is Dizz, perhaps in false hope that this Maurer spinner would be any good. It wasn’t. Another slow half hour queue for a ride that barely gained any speed throughout the uninspired layout and therefore didn’t really spin either.
With time slipping away from us, we had to get a bit tactical, bypassing the wild mouse which, if we did fail to ride everything, we would be the least bothered about missing. We also skipped past the indoor coaster which had a new Virtual Reality overlay advertised, knowing that the VR plague always destroys the throughput of any coaster it touches.
Which led us to the back of the park and Dream Catcher, a Vekoma suspended coaster. Like Dizz, it had a grim half hour queue and like Dizz, it barely gained any speed throughout the uninspired layout and therefore didn’t really swing either.
Oki Doki was, concerningly, the best ride in the park. I also declared it the best coaster in Belgium, which was ridiculous but also true at the time. The custom layout Vekoma junior had a fun first drop in the back and little else to offer.
We now decided to backtrack to the rides we had skipped earlier, starting with the indoor coaster. While walking through the queue, a ton of guests came pouring out of the ride towards us, having being kicked out, loudly shouting and making X symbols with their arms. It’s closed then… what’s the time? 16:30.
How about the wild mouse then? As we reached the entrance, the gate was being shut and a sign hung in front of it. Closed. As well as cutting short the opening hours for the day, they were also shutting half the park early while it was still really busy. Why?
Defeated, we aimlessly wandered onto something that was still open nearby, a King Kong flat ride. It’s an amusing ride, with a large angry ape picking you up in a bus, shouting and tipping you from side to side sedately, but it didn’t particularly raise our spirits at this time. Though we had played our part to the best of our ability, Bobbejaanland had let us down.
As a slight bonus, though we had written it off, the park’s powered coaster Bob Express was still open until 17:00, not 18:00, so we took our final and uneventful +1 for the day.
Having not liked the place anyway, the most annoying part was the thought that I would have to come back one day and finish it.
The final day consisted of another revisit for me, this time spurred on by the opening of Lost Gravity – review here. This really was a good year for new rides and they proved to be the driving force for a cracking trip overall.
There’s an unavoidable sense of awe around this Intamin multi launch coaster, particularly if you enter it from the direction at which you can look down on most of it from above. Taron has the most ‘crossing points’ of it’s own track over itself, on any coaster in the world. I could stand and look at it for hours. How they fit all of this ride into one of the most immersively constructed lands out there defies belief.
Because you can just enter Klugheim as if it existed first, the section of Phantasialand that it is located in. It’s like a small viking town with shops, a bar and a cafe. All the while this dominating presence of a rollercoaster is just there, seemlessly integrated with it. And it’s not just the visuals. The noise that the launches on the ride make echo throughout the area with an almost vicious anger and it’s deeply satisfying to hear, even more so once you’ve experienced the ride.
That’s why we’re here though right? The ride. It’s amazing. I have to admit though, I find it hard to comprehend and quantify the experience, so bear with me. The trains are new ground for Intamin, in a way they emulate the Mack launch coaster, with a comfy lap restraint that comes in over your head, slightly raised seating that leaves most people’s feet dangling, though still with a floor beneath them and most importantly – a very open sensation, lots of room for the top half of your body to move around with relative freedom. This sensation is important, because of what Taron relies most upon.
Once you’re on board, the train pulls out of the station and onto the first launch track, teases you for a second and then fires away with a quick burst of speed into a sharp corner around some rockwork. There’s a lot of those.
From here, it’s the transitions that make up the majority of the ride experience. In the way that the track twists and turns around itself, more often than not the direction changes are very sharp and this is what provides the force of the ride. The near misses with the scenery can have you independently ducking and diving as much as the train.
The second launch is potentially my favourite moment on any coaster. The way the ride violently drops into it, at the bottom of a pit, is just so unique and satisfying. It’s already fast, but it’s about to get a whole lot faster. With no hesitation at all, you accelerate to what feels like a million miles an hour through the trench, with the train and seats vibrating and shaking beneath you with the raw power of the LIMs – the power that makes the wonderful noise that echoes through Klugheim. It’s nothing short of exhilarating. I find myself throwing my arms wide open and just screaming “AHHHHHH!” at this moment. That’s not a very me thing to do.
As a rule to myself, rides cannot be measured by single moments alone and this becomes Taron’s downfall. It has to be about the whole package for me. Launches aside, the rest of the ride is a good little sit down, a bit of tossing and turning, but it’s never truly intense and it never really excels at anything else in any particular way. I have never found any notable airtime on the ride and without any focus on that, I think having specific elements could have also helped to give it a bit more for me to rave about.
The trim brakes at the end of the ride also act against it for me. It contradicts what I said earlier about the wonderment of fitting everything into this land. They almost found design perfection, but they had to compromise somewhere to make it fit in a forced manner and it’s a bit of an anticlimax to an otherwise spectacular ride.
I love the music for Taron, it’s one of my most listened to soundtracks and hearing it in the ride area always gives me a buzz.
I despise the queue, it starts out great, meandering through rockwork and track supports but ends up in front of what looks like a multi storey car park with a massive section of cattlepen. As it was with other queues in the park, the guests are all overly packed into this tight space but this time they’re also always chainsmoking. A literal haze forms over the queue from the amount of smoking that goes on here and it puts me right off.
So that’s Taron, almost perfection. One of very few coasters in the world that has caused me to return to a park that had built no new attractions since my previous visit. The lure of a night ride is that strong.
The next morning found us bombing down the autobahn towards the only German park of the trip. The border from the Netherlands to Germany can easily be missed, unless your car is clever enough to tell you that the speed limits have suddenly changed.
We were one of the first cars to arrive in the seemingly tiny car park and nabbed a space next to a hut directly opposite the park’s second entrance, which lets you straight into the rather attractive looking Chinese area.
Day 2 – Phantasialand
Often described as the best theme park on the planet, first impressions were that although some areas did look amazing, it was all very tightly packed. On a good day this could be seen as immersive, on a bad day – more clasutrophobic. This was a weekday past the end of the local school holidays and we were surprised at the crowd levels that were beginning to build and obstruct our journey around. There were also staggered openings of certain ride areas that meant turning up early didn’t particularly help our cause. If we wanted to be among the first into the new land, it would have meant queuing an hour anyway just for it to open up.
After reaching the central plaza and getting our bearings, we opted to start the day on Maus au Chocolat, which was billed to open half an hour after the park had. The queue was a little lighter and contained strange acts from guests including producing boxes of hard boiled eggs out of nowhere and proceeding to eat them/drop them on the floor. This shooting dark ride was amazing. You can tell from the smell, the moment you walk in and wind your way down the stairs that you’re in for a treat. The vehicles stop at several screens on their journey at which you get to play fun shooting games with chocolate and mice of course. The sections in between the screens are what steps it up a gear as an attraction, just being plain mesmerising to look at.
A strong start, what next? We headed through the archway towards Wuze Town, which was to open within the next half an hour (not that long now, having been on our first ride). The pathways suddenly became a lot quieter and more pleasant, until we headed indoors.
This indoor section is home to a pair of Maurer spinning coasters and the queue for these rides was nothing short of grim. Again, tons of people had turned up before it was open and begun packing their way into the dark, dingy, loud and sweaty maze of a queueline, where we couldn’t even tell what was what.
These spinners are both special in that they have a few magic tricks up their sleeve and each one of the two has it’s own unique feature. They both start with an elevator lift, which houses a single car and brings it swiftly up to the highest point of the ride, also unusually tilting it at an angle ready to drop upon release. If you are facing backwards in the car, this is particularly thrilling. The layout begins sprawling out through the building, with one of the sides having a particularly notable airtime hill past a waterfall. They then enter a traditional wild mouse style section of sharp flat turns, up high, that kill the pace a bit before heading onto the long spiralling helices around the theming centrepiece of the indoor area. The final magic comes at the end of the rides, where both have a ‘trick track’ section, on which the car comes to a stop, and the track itself moves with you to position you in a different way. They also have a wonderful ‘bounce’ effect where the track appears to temporarily give from underneath you while you’re on the final brake section – don’t ask me how this is done.
I was disappointed to only get a single lap on each of these very intriguing creations, but it simply wasn’t worth suffering the queue again for more and we would eventually just run out of time.
In the same vicinity is another indoor coaster, Temple of the Nighthawk. This strange Vekoma navigates a pitch black warehouse through three separate lift hills, with a very sedate experience between each one. It’s a bit of an outlier for the park and is regularly billed for removal at some point, but I didn’t dislike it.
The other supposed outlier also here is Hollywood Tour, an indoor boat ride around various film scenes. I liked it. It doesn’t really fit the park at all, but it’s generally impressive or otherwise tacky in an always entertaining manner.
I don’t think we could wait for the new attraction any longer, so we headed into the wonderful Klugheim.
The other claim I didn’t mention at the beginning of the report is that Taron has the most ‘crossing points’ of it’s own track over itself , on any coaster in the world.
The ride itself is ridiculous. Due to the lack of height differential it maintains it’s speed almost endlessly from the first launch, darting this way and that, seemingly without any plan or purpose at all. The second launch doesn’t even feel necessary as you’re already moving with such a pace, but sure enough you lurch down into the deepest depths of the area and you’re suddenly going twice as fast again – the way the whole ride shakes while this is happening, combined with the sheer elation of knowing there’s another half to this experience as you accelerate ever quicker towards it, stirs a reaction in me like almost nothing else.
Somewhere amidst all this is the family coaster that opened at the same time, Raik. Another remarkable achievement in itself, this Vekoma junior boomerang intertwines itself with big brother Taron. It lacks a little in the force department, but it’s a satisfying ride if only for the views and the interaction.
A massive drop tower and dark ride all rolled into one sounded like my kind of attraction. Mystery Castle was a let down though. A confusing start lead to angry staff members. The ride sequence itself was weak, suffering from a strong controlled sensation that eliminates the point of a good drop tower. The visual spectacle when the roof lit up with lightning and highlighted all the other vehicles around the ride, giving an impressive sense of the scale of the whole thing was by far my favourite part.
Sadly my dominating memory of Chiapas, the intensely themed log flume, was that of the restraints being awkward. Unlike traditional flumes, this uses a lap bar, supposedly to combat the fact that this ride claims the steepest drop of its type in the world. The bar goes nowhere near my lap however, directly pinning down the middle of my thigh, so my feet are forced into the floor. When that floor is inches deep in water, this isn’t pleasant. Part of the fun of a water ride for me is trying to save yourself from a soaking, in whatever way possible, but being doomed from the moment you sit down to sink your foot into a small lake, cramped in with many other guests and have it remain that way throughout the entire experience put me off a bit.
Things went from bad to worse after we got lost trying to find Colorado Adventure. A highly themed mine train with incredible interaction should have been really good fun, but we ended up in the front row where the train has a roof. The tracking of the ride was awful in this position, jerking uncomfortably all over the place to the point where I hit my head hard on one of the pillars of the train. That put me off more than a bit.
Geister Rikscha was a haunted house style omnimover dark ride, with Chinese mythology. Not much of the experience jumped out at me, but like with Hollywood Tour it had a certain charm about it that I couldn’t help but enjoy.
We’re still missing a coaster in here somehow, the park really is hard to navigate.
I think we could be forgiven for missing it. Taron may have had impressive immersion, but I think the theming of this B&M invert is a bit underappreciated these days.
It blends into its environment so well that you can barely get a picture of it. This level of landscape interaction makes for an amazing ride, with the train hurtling around entrenched corners and into surprise inversions without you ever knowing what’s coming next.
It doesnt quite have the moments of intensity found on some inverts, but it more than makes up for it through a sense of sheer disorientation. I couldn’t even describe to you how the layout works, and I like that.
Our day was fast coming to a close at this point, with no real time for rerides on anything. It’s partly the number of quality attractions that we had to get through, but the amount of queueing did feel like a sufferance on more than one occasion, for what should be the most efficient country in the world on a supposedly quiet day.
We wanted to find a shop to buy some merchandise before we left, but at the point of ride closure announcement, staff members were driving round on golf buggies and shouting at people to get out of their park. All the shops had promptly closed as well and we suddenly felt very unwelcome. You weren’t even allowed to relax and take a stroll out of the park at your own pace, instead they had to sour the day with a poor attitude. This coupled with a few other incidents throughout the visit left me with a final impression of Phantasialand that was less than favourable. Which is a shame. They’ve got some cracking rides.
