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.
The opening of Taron at Phantasialand resonated particularly strongly with me this year. Aside from the almost unprecedented levels of theming that looked to be going into such a high thrill attraction, the park decided to stake out the claim of ‘fastest multi-launch coaster in Europe’, taking the title from my favourite ride in the world, Helix, who never claimed to care about such trivialities. It demanded to be checked out and a trip was promptly planned around it, flying into Amsterdam and picking up a few new parks and rides along the way.
Day 1 – Drievliet
Our first stop was this unassuming Dutch park, hidden away in what mostly resembles an industrial estate. We initially parked on the wrong side of the grounds, getting stuck behind a fence and staring in at a wild mouse ride in confusion. With some further guidance, we drove back around the perimeter, through some iron gates and across loose tarmac into the actual car park.
It was a whirlwind tour of the park once we finally managed to step foot inside, as we had other places to be the same day.
The first thing we came to was Twistrix, an unconventional Maurer spinner with a train of cars rather than their usual single 4 seaters. It’s a little on the small side and this results on not much of anything happening, but it’s a different experience at least.
Formule X
The star attraction here is undoubtedly this Maurer X-Car. Though a short ride, it manages to pack a surprising amount of fun into a small footprint by use of a quick launch and many unconventionally shaped elements that weave around each other. It never quite gets intense at any point, but the forces it provides are certainly interesting. If anyone needed a good gateway coaster into the world of inversions, this would probably be my most recommended.
The wild mouse we were staring at from the outside earlier is called Kopermijn, the 3rd and final Maurer coaster in the park. Very standard stuff, nothing to report.
Dynamite Express is a Mack powered coaster, bucking the loyalty trend. Again nothing out of the ordinary here, another good family ride.
And with that, the park was complete. Certainly worth the visit for Formule X but otherwise entirely unremarkable in the grand scheme of things. I’m not sure they can do a whole lot to improve anything either, seemingly being rather landlocked by their inelegant surroundings.
We soon hit the road again to what was billed to be the more significant park of the day.
Toverland
Our first impressions of the place weren’t great, entering through what can only be described as a warehouse. The website would have you believe they were marketing themselves as a fantastic fairytale of a park, like a smaller Efteling, which is a dangerous comparison to draw upon.
Within this warehouse was cred number 1 – Boomerang. Thankfully it isn’t an actual boomerang, but a custom Vekoma junior. It was surprisingly rough for the size but otherwise inoffensive.
As you move into the outdoor section of the park, things begin to look a little nicer.
The area surrounding the front half of their GCI woodie is nicely themed. The queue leads you into the centre of the structure and then up the stairs into the loading gates, where the exhilarating fly-through portion of the track can be witnessed – a train loudly bursting through the upper half of the station and scaring the anticipating next riders.
Troy was my 200th rollercoaster and though a solid package, it did leave a little to be desired. It’s fast paced throughout and rides with the slightly rough and ready vigour that all good wooden coasters should do, but my main issue lies in the fact that there are no standout moments whatsoever. Previous experience with GCIs had shown me that they can have unpredictable forces in their strangely shaped corner transitions and their generally twisty layouts often favour this type of sensation over any more traditional airtime. Troy lacked either of those things and while I can’t say it was a bad ride by any means, I have no way of really defending it either.
A ride I can comfortably say is bad is the Vekoma motocoaster. Getting into the motorbike seats is difficult and the resultant riding position is just hard to enjoy, with your back bent over by an awkward lump of a restraint that keeps pushing against you and any force on the ride only enhancing the discomfort.
The Mack spinner was much better. The fairytale aspect of the park finally shines through in the intricate station for this ride and some onboard audio in the trains makes it even more enjoyable. In terms of the coaster itself, the spinning was a little unpredictable. Over our three laps, we only had one in which the rotation properly got going and the ride got particularly enjoyable and intense because of it. The times that the cars didn’t spin so much, it did feel like it was holding back from its otherwise good layout.
With all the creds done for the day, we had a late lunch in the indoor section before queuing for Maximum Blitz Bahn. The ride is a Bobkart – a single seater vehicle in a trough track, externally powered like a dodgem car that the rider is able control, to an extent, throughout the layout. What makes this one stand out is the incredible theming in the queue. Strong smells, an incredible attention to detail and wacky contraptions line the tightly enclosed pathway and far outweigh the actual ride experience, which due to throughput was stopping me from going full speed at any point and therefore competing with the ‘best times of the day’ board at the end.
I liked Toverland enough. It had a decent set of attractions, nothing outstanding. There are some signs here and there that show a good effort towards being the type of park they appear to be aiming for, but there’s still a fair amount of work to be done to make it more cohesive.
Admittedly it wasn’t the best of planning on our part, but it all went a bit wrong today. The park wasn’t due to open until the afternoon, so we did some general sightseeing in the morning.
Not usually our cup of tea but it was rather nice.
We arrived at the park entrance before opening time and joined a reasonably hefty queue, dodging some unnervingly huge ants while we waited. There’s also a zoo here so we remained hopeful that not everyone was going to be here for the rides. Time wasn’t going to be on our side – we had a plane to catch later.
Day 2 – Parque de Atracciones de Madrid
As well as the very late start in opening hours, we discovered once inside the park that there were also several staggered timings for some of the major attractions, making our life even more difficult. This was our first encounter with the chain owner Parques Reunidos and the operations were, in a word, dire.
Abismo
This is the only Maurer sky loop in the world that isn’t just a loop. Worryingly for me it has had an incident of becoming stuck upside down on the lift hill – my absolute worst nightmare. It quite easily earns the nickname of Abysmal as it is far from a comfortable experience. The restraints are attempting to be a lap bar design, but they are rather large and generally fold up as far as your chest, at an angle, and continue to tighten against you throughout the ride duration.
The vertical lift and slow upside down crawl are deeply uncomfortable, of course. You then drop into an extended version of what the standard model would consist of, entirely filled with positive forces. As the restraints have already tightened so much from this sequence, the following airtime hill, though very powerful, fails to deliver with any satisfaction because you’re just so pinned down and restricted in your seat. If anything, you’re just going to take it lung first. Not much else happens, a slightly awkward turnaround and then being thrust into the brakes at far too high a speed that can only result in either relief or disappointment.
On paper, Tornado was to be the most significant coaster of the day. A rare Intamin invert of which there are only 3 in the world. As one of the main rivals in terms of manufacturers, we were interested to see how they could compete against B&M who had established themselves as king of the invert. Sadly the result was far more comparable to a Vekoma SLC. The trains have a rigid build, with pairs of rows being joined together in a fixed straight line. This makes the whole thing ride a little awkwardly. Though not rough in any way it lacks the grace and smoothness I usually associate with the ride type. Aside from this, the layout was entirely uninspired. Dissatisfying inversions seemingly for the sake of it, and corners. That’s all I can really describe. Apologies for the lack of pictures, we really were prioritising getting things done.
TNT Tren de la Mina
What turned out to be the best ride of the day was this Gerstlauer mine train. The queue was awful, just awful. We seemed to be waiting around forever with very little movement. By the time we reached the station we could see why – the two ride attendants who were supposed to be checking restraints and loading guests into and out of the train in a timely fashion were animatedly chatting away to each other the whole time, more often than not completely stopping what they were supposed to be doing to continue their conversation. I have rarely seen ride staff quite so distracted. (Future note: so it came to me as no surprise that there was a full on train collision on this very ridelater in the year). It’s a shame, because the ride itself is good. Similar to the Mack on the previous day, it’s a clear cut above your average family ride package with smooth tracking and surprisingly significant forces.
The terrible operations continued onto Vértigo, a standard Mack wild mouse being run in a very non standard fashion. They would load 4 cars at once, all in the station, then send them off in block sequence, waiting for all of them to return again before unloading and starting the procedure again. Usually you can achieve a constant flow of guests on a ride like this, but with the method they chose to enforce it was painfully slow and stop-start.
Tarántula
The custom Maurer spinner was the only other coaster we managed to achieve a single lap on. It wasn’t particularly interesting as a layout and didn’t seemed designed very well in order to initiate any good spinning, which is a shame, as I thought it looked rather fun.
There were 2 very small creds here, one of which was closed all day and the other had a huge rowdy queue of families. We weren’t 100% on the park’s policy for adults riding such child sized rides and didn’t really want to risk putting up with another long wait only to be turned away for silly rules that they would no doubt have, so in that sense we failed to finish the park.
The only other attraction that there was time for was a walk on – a spider shooting dark ride called Cueva de las Tarántulas. It followed a particularly claustrophobic series of tunnels without any more open areas of scenery, which was quite impressive and befitting of the theme.
It was now time to rush back to the airport for our flight, somewhat disappointed that the weekend hadn’t ended as well as it had started. I wasn’t impressed with this park at all, everything about it was just a bit shoddy, seeming to actively work against us having a good time at every turn. The lineup is poor and I can’t foresee coming back for another attempt.
Madrid is home to two sizeable parks that should make for a good weekend away. They both open at a reasonable time in March and as much the rest of the world seems to be getting lazier with operating periods, it seemed like a good trip to kick off the new season.
There wasn’t much distance to cover and the second day is really a city park, so we opted to stick to public transport for the weekend. A straightforward train journey and subsequent bus ride took us to our first destination.
Day 1 – Parque Warner Madrid
We didn’t have the best of luck in terms of attraction availability here. It turned out that two major coasters were closed for the duration and while neither of them were the main draws for the place, it was a bit of a disappointment.
The first spite was the park’s Giant Inverted Boomerang. There aren’t many of these in the world and they have a bit of a reputation for being broken all the time, this one staying true to form. I was lucky to be able to ride my first of these a couple of months ago in China, so wasn’t particularly bothered other than the obvious lack of +1 and making it difficult for me to one day complete the set.
The other unexpected closure was Coaster Express, the only wooden coaster in the park. Generally this ride gets very poor reviews, but I never like to let that put me off. Experiencing something for yourself is the only sensible way to form an opinion and we wanted to see what the fuss was about.
So that’s the negativity safely out of the way, what was actually running today? Leaning heavily on their IPs and the fact that this park is owned by Warner, the two smallest coasters are both situated in a Looney Tunes area.
Correcaminos Bip, Bip
Roadrunner’s contribution is a Mack youngstar, a model which I find to be rather superior in the world of family coasters. The ride is always butter smooth and elements like the pictured overbank turn have significantly more vigour than the more common hardware for this type of attraction. It just feels well designed.
Tom y Jerry
The larger models of Zierer Tivolis are always amusement for the ridiculous length of their trains.
At the back of the park, the superhero rides sit by side, what would be a very common sight over in the USA.
Batman la Fuga
As would this particular attraction. This B&M invert is known as the Batman layout, named after the first that was built at Six Flags Great America in 1992 and then also the fact that the many, many clones that followed (12 currently operating) more often than not ended up sharing the same name and branding. But this was my first encounter with one, so I wasn’t going to let that bother me and I really, really enjoyed this ride. The theming is very impressive, entering the attractive looking asylum for an indoor portion of queueline. Overall there’s a great aesthetic about it, even from just the foliage.
What matters most is that it’s ridiculously intense. The first loop immediately reminded me of the signature characterisic of these inverts in that they feel like they’re trying to rip your dangling feet off with their strong positive forces. Before you can catch your breath, you hit a snappy zero G, immediately followed by a second loop. This loop is even more intense than the first, but the foot sensation doesn’t go away when it’s over, it stays, entirely sustained throughout the following tightly banked corner. The length and consistency of this force was ridiculous, almost to the point of being unbearable and all I found myself doing was laughing and instinctively punching my legs as if to restore a sense of feeling to them. The remainder of the layout is a densely packed series of turns complete with two more satisfyingly whippy inversions. You can see why it became a popular layout to buy from the way it fits such a high level of thrill into a relatively small area, I just wish more parks had the creativity to try something new each time.
Superman / la Atracción de Acero
The other big B&M is a floorless – again with more dangling feet, but this time above the track. This one also had a nicely themed queue, entering through the Daily Planet, with plenty of decoration to represent the franchise.
The remainder of the surroundings are a little less attractive as the ride just heads out into open desert beyond this service road, but this doesn’t matter as it was another highly enjoyable ride. The characteristic feature of many B&M first drops is that they don’t enter them directly out of the lift hill, instead having a little stress easing section of track and this particular one provides a satisfying surprise kick of airtime, most prominent in the back row. The layout is a simple sequence of 7 inversions, only really broken up by a single hill after the cobra roll. Though not the most inspiring, every element flows very well together and nothing feels particularly wasted (even the trim brakes were more amusing than jarring – I heard them more than I felt them), resulting in a solid experience from start to finish.
The park’s signature dark ride is Hotel Embrujado, a Vekoma mad house and I am beginning to learn that these were more common than I thought. The preshow and overall presentation was impressive, it just lacked a little of the storytelling spark of British rival Hex, though that can partly just be put down to language barrier.
The water ride lineup here was strong. An Acme themed rapids back in the Looney Tunes area was good fun, with much wacky theming and many moments of water based peril. We also tried Rio Bravo, the log flume out in the Western section of the park. It contained a great surprise moment of an indoor backwards drop complete with airtime hill (log flumes can do that?) which really made it stand out from the crowd.
The final attraction of note was their exceptionally huge S&S shot and drop towers, which we rode just for the sheer size. While height helps the overall spectacle, it doesn’t always result in more significant on-ride sensations – there’s further to travel and less opportunity to catch you off guard with any punchier moments.
Ride closures aside, I was impressed with Parque Warner Madrid. We had a lovely day here with a very relaxed atmosphere, racking up many laps of Batman and (vs?) Superman well into the evening. Operations were decent, the supporting lineup was significant, nothing else to complain about at all really. Save that for tomorrow.
After clearing out every CD shop in the city, we found time in the evening to go to an observation deck and have a lookaround.
The view was at the top of ’63 building’, which I knew of from a KoreanTV show. It’s an obscurer/quieter/cheaper alternative to the main touristy towers.
There was also a garbage ‘art’ exhibition up here which was comprised of pathetically mundane photographs trying to pass as something they weren’t. We had some fun giving them names such as ‘woman forgets jacket while leaving london taxi’. I’m sure they’ll stand the test of time.
Day 11 – Children’s Grand Park
With the magnificence of the trip coming to a close, it was time to spend the final day dusting off the rest of Seoul’s creds. Started at the scenic entrance of Children’s Grand Park, a massive green space and took the long walk to the small amusement section right at the other end.
Grabbed some tickets for the 2 creds and ticked them off in mere minutes.
#1 Crazy Mouse
The first was a slightly off wild mouse contraption and was mildly interesting, mainly for the struggle up the steepness of the lift hill.
#2 Family Coaster
The Vekoma SFC clone had a rhythmic shuffle to it and was mildly interesting.
Still managed to take some time out to revisit every CD shop in the city before heading to the final park.
Seoul Land
After a long straight walk past many many vendors all selling exactly the same selection of fruit’n’veg and fried… things, we got to the ticket office for a road train that takes you to different entrances of the resort(?). There’s a zoo and other attractions here but we want the one with the creds of course. Another tourist discount was up for grabs at this place making it dirt cheap. Cheers again.
The Koreans were out in full force again today. After a quick scout out, we resigned to being in this park for the long haul.
#3 Black Hole 2000
First up was a 2 hour wait for this large looper of unknown origin. Half old vekoma, half jet coaster and the whole layout 100ft in the air, it was a bit something and nothing.
#4 Colombia Double Loop
The other looper of known origin (Senyo Kogyo) was next with a more manageable 1 hour queue. Not sure why the popularity between these two rides was so different as they are pretty much the same beast, this one may even be slightly better with the haunted tunnel. Half old vekoma, half jet coaster and the whole layout 100ft in the air, it was a bit something and nothing.
#5 Crazy Mouse
An hour for this weird, weird mouse ride with the wrong style track and trains. Being oddly smooth and uneventful as a ride, it didn’t really do the job it was trying to sell by appearance.
An hour for #6 Tobot Train, the last of the powered dragon saga. Worth it.
An hour for #7 Tikitoc Train. A great variation on the wacky worm layout with some brutal forces. Best ride in the park, no joke.
Finished the day off with a go on the pirate themed dark ride shooter. I got the best score in Asia.
Seoul Land took some dedication to complete with those queues, but they were never unpleasant (I can think of many places where they would be). It’s a terrible line up with a great atmosphere. Everyone’s out for a good time, just how it should be.
This was a fantastic trip overall, I can’t stress enough how much I love these countries completely regardless of their theme park industry (though that’s an added bonus of course) and it took a lot of willpower to board the plane home. Of course I was already making plans to return.
Having only had the 72 hour transit period through Seoul, of course we weren’t done with Korea yet.
Day 9 – Lotte World
The park website had confirmed that their infamous Intamin Aquatrax was back in business. “Let’s hit it on the weekday” we said, “it’ll be quieter” we said… We were back in business ourselves with the tourist card. It was supposed to give us another 30% off here, but through some happy miscalculation, it made the ticket price 30%.
By the time we had sorted the tickets and moved swiftly through the indoor section of the park, the queues had already started to explode. We grabbed a Disney-style fastrack slot for already pushing 17:00 and joined the already pushing 50 minute queue for Atlantis Adventure. It must get them on a regular basis, but it isn’t built to take a big queue. They batch at the entrance gate for a short walk and a 10 minute wait by the station, the rest of the queue is made up of a roped off section of one single straight and then just masses of guests forming an orderly line throughout much of the outdoor section of the park, round shops and even other queues. At the point it had reached 200+ minutes in the early evening, it was hard to distinguish it from the scream shield gyro swing line of 100+ minutes. No thanks.
#1 Atlantis Adventure
Loved the station. There’s a sign up saying 140 phones have been lost on this ride so far today, which I could have believed from the locals (it stayed the same number all day, so just for effect sadly). To save you clambering over the cars, a trolley is pushed up to the vehicle for your loose articles. The staff then clap and sing you out as the ride dispatches.
The coaster itself is a bit of a mixed bag. It has a fantastic start with the launch and vicious indoor airtime hill and there are some other really strong moments throughout but these are punctuated by some dodgy pacing issues. There are trims galore, some of which completely kill momentum, then there’s a weird middle section of slowly drifting past theming + the transfer track and a seemingly redundant slow LSM lift hill.
An hour into the day now and the other coaster in the outdoor section (though it’s an indoor coaster) had run out of fastrack already. Queued at least 90 for it, spending most of the time trying and failing to figure out where the ride fits.
#2 Comet Express
This ride was a surprise hit. The confusion/mystery as to what it is and where it came from only adds to the fun. We think it’s an Intamin, we know it spins and thats all you need to know. As soon as it starts leaving the station, the crazy spinning begins and never lets up. The ride is a long blur of theming, intense dizziness and laterals and from the many brief glimpses you get of your neighbouring cars you can see everyone is absolutely loving it.
#3 French Revolution
Headed back inside for a 2 hour queue at the Vekoma looper. Opted out of the Virtual Reality, why miss all the intense indoor interaction?
It had an interesting layout and rode quite well, just wasn’t particularly good because of what it is.
All the creds, which had all the big queues, were now ticked off. Time to see what else was on offer.
Dragon Wild Shooting was a great little dark ride and seems to be underappreciated. Took a second lap but failed to get the winning screen at the end on both occasions. Don’t mind losing to those cute dragons.
The Adventures of Sinbad was a really impressive story-telling dark ride in boat vehicles. I didn’t expect much from the size and indoor location, but theyve definitely worked some magic to pack so much goodness in there, particularly a seemingly huge drop.
There was even more magic afoot with a full blown rapids ride being somewhere halfway up a building. This was also great for the novelty.
Pharoah’s Fury was closed. I’ll take that as a reason to return.
Fantasy Dream was one of those classic dark rides full of slightly out there characters and sets with a love it/hate it song containing the name of the ride, sung many times. Once was enough.
By then it was finally time for the fastrack reride on Atlantis, sneaking past a good 3 hours of queue. Loved it, but it didn’t do anything to sway my earlier opinion.
That rounded off the day nicely, it was all very enjoyable in spite of the queues. Again the locals always seem to have a good time in their parks regardless, so it’s not really an issue as long as you join in with the spirit.
Some obsessive album hunting/shopping began that evening and consumed most of the following 72 hours. Life changing stuff, but I won’t go into detail.
We also went to the ‘rainbow bridge’ that night, which was meant to be one of the wonders of the world supposedly, but were hilariously underwhelmed by the spectacle. As part of a ‘show’ it played some traditional music while the fountains supposedly shot water and blinked LEDs in time. The music was bland, you couldn’t really tell what was happening and every time a song ended and we thought it was over, another one came on with exactly the same effect.
There were a couple of different types of ticket machine in Osaka. One type were friendly and were easy to use. The other type didn’t like us so much. The train station we used today only had the unfriendly ones, so there was much confusion. After a short battle with one, a wonderful passer-by noticed us and came to help us out. She gave us a detailed explanation on how to earn the trust of these machines and successfully got us some train tickets to Hirakata.
Oh look, another ferris wheel.
Day 8 – Hirakata Park
Having needed to fit in a special mission in the morning, time was not on our side for this park. With the flight back to Korea being later that afternoon, everything was done at an amusingly fast pace.
The first stop was #1 Fantastic Coaster Rowdy. It did inspire some rowdiness, due to a comedic sense of urgency and needing to take several shopping bags on board with us. It’s a small coaster with not much going on.
#2 Red Falcon restored the good name of jet coasters with some great views and one particularly amusing and jarring transition in the tracking.
#3 Crazy Mouse
This spinning coaster doesn’t spin. Different experience I guess.
#4 Peekaboo Town was almost as fantastic as Rowdy and 10 times smaller again. Amazing staff was a running theme in this park.
#5 Elf
Saved the supposed best for last with this little Intamin woodie. It was a bit underwhelming really, some harmless fun at best.
Still had time for a go on the Dark Ride shooter, Return of the Garg. Was quite impressed with the ride system and unusual scenery, but unfortunately none of us got a high enough score to win a prize as advertised. This may have replaced another dark ride that was here, we never found the one on that was our to-do list.
After successfully dodging a park mascot, we headed back out to the train station. A particularly troublesome but entertaining sequence of events followed, involving: – Running out of cash for the trains (creds at all costs, too many toll roads) – Not being able to take out cash anywhere – The hotel staff giving us great advice on how to get to the airport when collecting our luggage, only to then discover it was the wrong airport – Taxi drivers not understanding the word taxi – Arriving at the right airport 45 minutes before our flight was due to leave and it not being an issue in any way
A hectic but fun final day in Japan. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was a bit of a long shot tagging this park on to the trip by means of another dedicated hire car and turned out it certainly wasn’t worth doing this time around. Every day of the trip so far had been >30°C and not a cloud in the sky. Today there was a slight drizzle in the air and umbrella signs on the roads as we trundled towards Nagoya, not too concerned. Japan had been amazing to us, thus far.
There’s a massive sign up outside the entrance with some overwhelmingly confusing descriptions of what is open, what is meant to be open, what is closed, what is meant to be closed, what opens in ‘bad weather’, what is meant to be open in ‘bad weather’, what closes in ‘bad weather’ and what is meant to close in ‘bad weather’. 3 different members of staff gave 3 different answers to these questions, but they were mostly positive responses so we went for it anyway. Even pulling into the car park, the rides were already running and the park appears to be a ghost town, so what’s the worry?
Day 7 – Nagashima Spa Land
We headed straight round to Steel Dragon 2000 – the worlds’s longest coaster and a legendary name in the industry that we were very excited to ride, with its permanent physical sign saying 90 minute wait in front of it. Joined the queue and killed some time watching some painful operations up at the station. Moved a few feet in half an hour… That sounds like a ride closure announcement. A few school kids dropped out of the queue in front of us at this point but the majority of the guests remained and the staff seemed to keep things running for a while. With the pace at which we were moving however, it was clearly going to be well over the advertised 90 minutes and we have 12 other creds to hit today! (No, just no). “There’s a thing about fastrack on that sign, let’s check it out.” Gave up on the dismal queue and went round to the ride shop to try and buy some. “The ride’s closed boys.” Seriously? In the time it had taken for us to walk around, they had begun closing it all off and sending people away. Spite Dragon 2000.
#1 Arashi
The S&S freespin was next door and actually open so we sucked up an hour queue for that, all the while saying “what the hell has become of this day?” Was sort of dreading this, with Insane in the brain, but it was actually rather awesome. It does a lot of crazy flips, particularly at the start, but smoothly with none of the horrible lurching that you get on a Zacspin, providing a very intense but in no way disgusting ride.
Highlight: The video in the queue of a couple of Japanese girls having the time of their lives on it, summed up the ride experience perfectly. Lowlight: Shouldn’t have been the best ride of the day.
#2 Corkscrew was open, with an hour queue, and the light drizzle was starting to collect on the inside of my coat. Yes, this was the point where I noticed the true extent of the damage from the underfloor heating. Given the current situation, I was not amused. Slowly descending into insanity at this stage, the ride produced similar results to Rolling X-Train in that it was unnecessarily hilarious, but I couldn’t say why.
Highlight: Comedy Lowlight: Shouldn’t have been the second best ride of the day.
The #3 Jet Coaster was open and it seemed guests were already starting to disappear from the park as quickly as they had appeared. Highlight: No queue Lowlight: The magic was lost on this one, Nagashima managed to kill the concept.
This #4 Peter Rabbit powered Coaster was the only other attraction open. Might as well.
And that was Nagashima Spiteland.
Everything else was closed and remained that way.
Had some pizza for lunch and by the time that was done (around 14:00), it had stopped drizzling and the skies had cleared, but all the school trips and other guests had left the park, leaving us to wander around aimlessly in despair. Even those few rides from earlier had since closed, with the exception of Arashi, which it looked like they were just getting practice operation laps on, still being a new ride.
No member of staff could bring themselves to tell us what was going on now. What’s the procedure here? The park is open for another 3 hours. We are paying guests. The weather has cleared. What happens?
Staff were busying themselves around Steel Dragon, both in the queue and in the control box for the ride. We got as far as walking up the exit stairs and standing on the station platform looking at the train (could have sat in the seats if we wanted), ready to ask what was happening, but they all completely blanked us for the duration, actively avoiding us. I have never seen such a poor display from an amusement park.
Lost for words, we left the park in disgust and went to get ice cream. Japan immediately redeems itself as the staff ask: “Can I sing to you while I make it?” “Yes. Yes you can.” With big smiles back on our faces, we leave it all behind.
