A rainy day keeps the crowds at bay. We were directed to the ‘preferred’ car park by default due to a distinct lack of customers. This should be easy then.
Not what I want to see when entering a park.
#1 Grover’s Alpine Express
Creds though, that’s a different story. Stumbled onto this one first by mistake due to some staggered openings times of certain areas of the park. Upon arrival at the station, half a train full of kids that were already seated shouted some warm greetings and told us to board while the staff completely blanked us. Ok then.
I forgave the British flags when this sight came into view. Several coasters + a train in one shot = a win. For some reason I never imagined the rides here to be in such close proximity, in my head picturing them all set apart in their own trees.
Old Nessie was next. Foolishly went for the front row as it was walk on and got a face full of rain, but it made things funnier.
#2 Loch Ness Monster
The legendary loops are cool, but the rest of the layout was laugh out loud comedy, much like Anaconda the previous day. 1080 degree helix with wonky corners into a small hump and an almost pointless second lift hill being the highlight. Oh Arrow… you make me very happy.
Did Battle for Eire next to escape the rain briefly. Didn’t take a picture it seems, so have some eagles. Beasts.
This attraction was Virtual Reality done rather well, I’m afraid to admit. You get given a weird helmet before entering a preshow with plenty of time to set it up comfortably on your head while waiting. The preshows are really nicely done, with good theming, attention to detail and humour, particularly in the safety instruction video. Upon boarding the simulator, all you have to do is take a phone out of a cup to the side of your seat and it snaps neatly into place within your helmet with a satisfying magnetic click – eliminating that pace killing experience of taking several minutes to get a clunky headset on your face properly before resuming a story. No names mentioned. The actual ride was alright, if a little forgettable. A bit of swaying around scenes, dragons, and then the feature where you get to physically aim your face at something to shoot it near the end, which I always enjoy.
#3 Griffon
Draken’s American brother. Bit of a +1 to be honest.
They’re fun rides, with 2 significant drops being the only real highlight in sensations. Ridden both in the rain now. It got grease on my jeans.
#4 Invadr
This looked like a bit of fun too. Hopefully a Wicker dude killer.
Well yes it’s better, even if it isn’t particularly pretty on ride. It contains more of the signature GCI unexpected forces that come from the weird shaping into corners that I’ve been missing a lot recently.
#5 Alpengeist
This legendary invert was a bit of a let down. It was riding poorly in the back, about as poorly as I’ve experienced on any of its type with a bit of an off-putting vibration.
A front row ride redeemed it slightly. It has some good moments, but it’s not properly forceful from start to finish. And then that ending… barely doing 10Mph through several corners of fake snow. More laugh out loud layouts.
I did appreciate the little details: The ski lift themed supports. The skis on the sides of the trains. The way each of the wheel covers gets more and more snowy as you head towards the back of the train. The huts during the ride that have skis crashed into them. Skis.
Spite of Darkastle. A dark ride that closed forever before we made it here.
#6 Verbolten
Talking of little details. Y’all be droppin’, Bridge out and Big Bad Wolf number plates on these trains. Yes.
And this quaint little queue.
This ride is so good. The launch into the building is surprisingly powerful and provides some amazing airtime in the dark, which is followed by some fast turns about as forceful as ol’ 305. I can’t really choose between the Zierers and the Intamin at the moment on track drop sections. There’s more overall punch in the former, but the teasing double drop of Thirteen gets me just as good. I’m hoping Golden Horse will settle the dispute.
The Gerstlauer style small drop into a launch is a tad awkward and the ride does suffer from some pacing issues, using the multi launch element only to instantly lose all its speed again up into the bridge feature.
But it’s a very different experience and a ton of fun. I like you Verbolten.
#7 Tempesto
Oh good, a Premier Sky Rocket. Oh good, comfort collars. +1.
#8 Apollo’s Chariot
Which just leaves the Chariot. The first of many B&M hypers on the trip. It was good to finally sink my teeth into what they’re all about, having only ridden a rather disparate bunch previously.
So what are they about? Not a huge amount really. A battle of how interesting can we keep things between hills. This one had character. The bonus straights between hills to fit the landscape. The best airtime being the kick out of the mid course. The couple of wonky hills. Most of the other hills were also decent enough. Solid stuff. Better than Shamebhala, that’s all I really wanted.
Spite from Pompeii.
So surprisingly BGW was finished in about 2.5 hours in the rain and we sat down for a slightly too big meal to contemplate. It’s a really nice park, above average on the ‘pleasant to be in’ scale and run very well as far as I can tell. Just a bit of a shame with so many big name rides and an insanely well rounded lineup with basically no filler (unlike everywhere else around here) that none of the rides are truly outstanding. Hopefully they’ll fix that soon enough. I want a reason to come back.
Took a tour on the sky buckets before some rerides.
Y’all love a construction pic don’t you.
We were contented by mid afternoon and decided to hit the road early with the intention of a couple more evening hours at Kings Dominion (on Twisted Timbers) which we would have been driving past that night anyway. Got as far as the car park entrance to see a big display saying they had closed several hours early due to rain. Not such a good sign of things to come.
It’s been far too long – two whole months without a trip report. Terrible performance.
Getting those season passes for the US park chains at the end of last year unleashed a frenzy of opportunity, so I couldn’t resist going back and going hard, America style. Day 0
Flew into Philadelphia as it was cheap and relatively central to the crazy route we had going on. April is a bit too early in the year to find every park up and running stateside but with the huge amount of choice in the region and a bit of geographical flexibility, there was more than enough for any sane person.
Somewhat disappointed in the choice of cars again this time. It didn’t even include the dash outside to fight with others over what was left in the car park. The choice was red or white. (“Ooh red… you like FIRE!”) We’ll come back to what car it was later on in the trip, as it turned out to be an amazing omen.
Once in it, we trundled down to a place called Triangle and had a sleep.
Day 1 – Kings Dominion
Kings D eh? Let’s start with the big one.
#1 Intimidator 305
Feels like this ride has been on the horizon for me for such a long time, in a rather mock fashion. Famous for making riders black out or getting punched in the neck. It’s one of those world beaters you know.
It was fun, it wasn’t spectacular. It’s a silly thing. I’m maintaining that these big drops don’t feel significant enough. 300ft feels like nothing with that track shaping. The first corner was intense, but not to the point of unpleasantness. There’s a distinct lack of airtime due to the sheer size of the thing and, you know, it has trims too. I do respect it’s ridiculousness though.
Twisty.
(Un)fortunately they’ve changed the restraints from what I knew of them to softer straps in much closer proximity to your neck, so that bit of comedy was out the window. It did make the sharp directional changes a lot of fun without the need to brace too much against the vicious laterals which, as it was lacking in other sensations, was probably the best and most interesting part of the whole ride experience.
Volcano, The Spite Coaster. This ride closed forever before we made it here.
#2 Anaconda
The wrong Anaconda. This thing was hilarious. It ran so slowly through the second half that the train could have stalled any moment, and then provided unnerving hangtime in a corkscrew. Weird, man. It never got better than the 90s.
#3 Avalanche
The wrong Avalanche. One of those layouts that keeps killing its momentum just before it gets interesting. Set complete though.
#4 Flight of Fear
Flight of Fear was cool, other than the inconspicuous building.
Aliens and Premier Launch Coasters. Only knowing what the trains were like from RCT, I’m so glad they got lap bars now. The first inversion sequence in the dark was wonderfully disorientating and then it shuffles its way downwards in an endearing fashion, like certain other indoor coasters.
#5 Apple Zapple
You know the name. Classic.
#6 Racer 75 (North)
Racer 75 was doing a China and only running one side. It was alright, and a bit different with the exceedingly long straight section of hills to start. The tunnels at the end are obnoxiously loud and seems hard to judge the winner of the race when you end up rather far from the other track for the second half, not that it mattered on this occasion.
#7 Grizzly
Grizzly was the moment when operations hit rock bottom and a good park turned into an alright park. They managed to break the ride as we arrived in the station, causing an old woman to kick off swearing and complaining about the length of a virtually walk on queue while ignoring her child companion who seemed to not be enjoying the day out either. The ride was back up and running quickly, but was operated about as slow as possible.
Most questionable part was the fact that they let children of any size go through the air gates, sit down in the train and pull the restraint down before any height check was performed. Upon making their way down the train, the station staff would then spot these children: Stop. Slowly walk back to the front of the station where a key was lying on the platform. Pick up a height stick. Pick up the key. Use the key to unlock the restraint. Get the child out. Measure the child, with faff. Slowly walk back to the front of the station where a stash of wristbands was kept. Root around for the appropriately coloured wristband to indicate their verified height. Put the wristband on the child. Slowly walk back to the front of the station to put the key down again. Continue checking the restraints. Many times.
It wasn’t a problem, we had breezed the day and were taking it easy, but it sure was a sight to behold.
Oh, the ride. It was a thing. A wooden thing. People in the row behind us were complaining it was like a car crash and the worst experience they’d ever had by the time it hit the brakes. People were wrong.
#8 Dominator
Talking of things. I’m officially bored of these B&M Floorless coasters. But wait, it’s got a different layout. What have they done this time? A couple of corners instead of a zero-G. Loop – tick, Cobra Roll – tick, Interlocking Corkscrews – tick. There’s no character any more.
#9 Woodstock Express
This iteration of Woodstock Express was good with some surprising airtime for its size. Are these restraints what they call buzz bars?
#10 Back Lot Stunt Coaster
This was also fun. More Premier launch, more lap bars. It has a few unbanked turns to start with that make it ride a little more car-like. Another rider was shouting in aggressive confusion on the section where the car slows and some physical effects as part of a film scene are supposed to trigger, but nothing happened. This was followed by an indoor bit of track and laughably awkward trims on a hill into a corner. That’ll do.
#11 Twisted Timbers
Enough mockery, on to the main event. I wasn’t ready for how good this thing looks. Didn’t know it had a theme to be honest. All that I had in my head was ‘RMC conversion, another of those confusingly similar names that detracts from the identity of the ride + looks like wood mate.’
I thought the story it alludes to was different and interesting. There’s shirts in the shop that just say Hanover Hill Orchard which is a damn obscure coaster reference that I would love to wear one day. They also have plush apples. Good.
It kicked some serious ass. It’s like I’d forgotten how good these boys are at making rides (in the USA at least) after only a couple of months and then BAM. Three big back to back hills of insane standing airtime put me right back in it. And then it just keeps going and going.
This outwards banked hill through the structure is brutal when you don’t see it coming.
Minor nitpick: Those 2 mini ‘overbanks’ at the end don’t really do much and this bugs me ever so slightly more when the sign outside the ride specifically states 3 OVERBANKS as though that’s a big deal on a coaster.
Everything else is packed full of intensity and joy. They really got a lot out of the size. Absolutely loved it.
Let’s introduce my new feature for this report, cos Americans say the darndest things: Quote of the day (picture Jamie Foxx shouting to the air gate queues after a front row ride): “Y’all ride this thing? Naw man… it ain’t worth it”.
One train operations limited re-rides somewhat, but Twisted Timbers was enjoyed well into the night. A great way to end the day and a great sign of things to come.
Had a little work jaunt over to Ireland this week and managed to squeeze in half a day at somewhere I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Never quite had the motiviation to get on a plane for essentially 1 ride, though worryingly I am starting to reach that stage with certain trips.
A view of Dublin from the outbound ferry. Taking the boat ain’t much better.
Tayto Park
And here we are. Bit of a mismatch of styles going on at this park, didn’t expect it to require tokens/wristbands to go on the rides.
What seems to be the entrance to the main attraction is done rather nicely, but it’s also an entrance to fairground games and more ugly flat rides. All attempt at theming dies again once you enter the queue, apart from the funny bloke on the front of the train of course.
#1 Cú Chulainn
Had rather high hopes for this ride and it didn’t really deliver at all on the first few laps. The first drop was underwhelming and then it bumbled around for a very long time getting slower and slower. It was mildly enjoyable, but nothing special.
What else have we got then? Spiting Voyage was closed sadly. A themed water ride that was by far the nicest looking attraction in the park.
RMC confirmed for Tayto 2022. Sorry Gwazi.
Spite school as well. I believe it opened the day I wrote this.
#2 Ladybird Loop
But there’s another cred. This is to SBF spinners what Parc Saint Paul did to the Wacky Worm. Better themed than the big rides.
The zoo is bigger and better than I expected and a rather nice place to spend the afternoon.
Fairly sure these went extinct with the dinosaurs.
The collection of majestic birds was particularly impressive. My favourite was the Griffon Vulture which again I didn’t know existed.
This was the only ‘new for 2019’ attraction that was actually open.
It was pretty cool walking around with this lot on the prowl.
There were more than just lemurs and the, what I’m gonna call groundhogs, were even more amusing.
Back to the main event then. It kicked more ass as the afternoon went on.
Once the first drop woke up and actually ejected you from your seat, the ride sort of divides itself into thirds. The first sequence being really, really strong in chucking you about all over the place, from the tiny hill in the tunnel to the signature twisty bouncy bits up into the ‘not an inversion’ corner.
From here it’s a decent woodie for the middle third, with some reasonable air time happening here and there.
Then it does too many high up sections of track and you just kinda sit there waiting for it to end. Similar to that one in Xiamen that looked amazing but ran out of steam way too fast, not sure how Gravity Group ended up with that result against the other rides they put out.
Park was eventually dead enough to just stay on the ride each time they sent it, so it was a fun marathon and a good way to end the day.
Swung by the car place again in the morning to sort things out. They were cool with it, no additional cost. Last time we were in Osaka we flat ran out of cash taking a train out to Hirakata park on the last day (creds at all costs) and then struggled to get anywhere from there as they don’t tend to accept card payments at train stations. To add to that excitement we started heading towards the wrong airport which is at the complete opposite end of the city, realised halfway, then strolled into the correct one about half hour before the flight and still got on. This time we felt like experts, but it still seemed to take forever to get around and cash was again running surprisingly low. Japan’s a harsh mistress.
There was one more park on the cards for this trip and I had pre-planned it up to the point of getting to a station that would serve as the ‘crossroads’ between going there or going straight to the airport. We arrived at this station with an hour to spare. Asked the station guy how far it was to the stop we needed. 20 minutes each way. That leaves us 20 minutes to do the park. Eh, gotta try haven’t you. (Future note: This park closed forever less than 12 months after our visit – very glad we went for it) Chucked the luggage in a locker and jumped on another train.
Day 6 – Misaki Park
Think I confused the poor girl at the ticket desk in my rush to get inside this place and get it done. She kept asking about passports, which is also what the Japanese like to call park tickets that let you on the rides – ride passports. I kept responding with no, intending to pay per ride. On reflection, I believe she was trying to give us a foreigner discount and use our actual passports as proof for this. I think we got the discount anyway, but the numbers didn’t tie up with what I had researched previously and I was counting on that to not run out of cash again.
Yet another story of a completely deserted park with not enough staff to fill the gaps. All the ticket windows were closed and the ride ops had to be called over to run specific rides in the usual friendly manner. They also took cash in hand on the ride platform (with each transaction potentially being our last) instead of using their ticket system.
#1 New Wild Mouse Coaster
This beast was first. Doesn’t look very New any more. A sketchy jungle mouse style ride. Bit of a laugh.
#2 Jet Coaster
The most interesting one was this old 1950s Jet Coaster which was on top of what felt like a small mountain.
It had a lot of foliage to dive through and some decent speed and drops to it, even though it looks completely flat from the bits you can see offride.
Impressive stuff for what it was.
#3 Child Coaster
Last up was Child Coaster, scraping the coins together at this stage – I’m not leaving here without completion. Might be one of the rides I’ve come closest to not fitting in, it took sitting with my knees at about 45 degrees to successfully settle down. Vicious but fun little thing, as these things often are when they’re not designed for you.
Park complete in under 20 minutes and back on the train. The ticket machine was doing a Plohn and not taking coins of a certain denomination, but luckily the man in the office was willing to receive. Made it to the airport on schedule with the equivalent of £0.07 in cash left in the wallet.
Quite the cheeky +3 to close the trip. Needed that to make up for Washuzan Spiteland.
Summary
New creds – 16 Total parks – 9 Best coaster – Wood Coaster Best park – Honestly? New Reoma World Spites – 4/20 (20.0%) Might have been low on numbers, but: New ‘top 10’ rides – 2 Happy with that.
The adventure continues in yet another seemingly abandoned park. We were the second car into the car park and that was it for the foreseeable future. They didn’t have enough staff to simultaneously run both the ticket window and the turnstiles to get in, so you could have potentially just walked in without much resistance. This is Japan though, so that wouldn’t happen.
Paid our dues and headed to the back of the park for the big cred, where the quietness turned into a right pain. There were no staff at this end of the park at all, the ride had a sign about maintenance as well as there being tins of grease on the platform and dust covers on parts of the train. That… doesn’t look good.
Also to my surprise, the engineers that we saw on our way up had turned on the Ferris Wheel for the morning and then left it running totally unsupervised. I could have let myself on or gone into the control box and had a play, had I fancied.
Back to the other end of the park then, which was quite the ordeal due to the weather suddenly being a lot hotter. A small school group had just entered the park and the little cred was up and running.
#1 Imomushi-Kun
Grab that then, with it’s cute caterpillar face. And what a layout – a slow drop into a vicious unbanked corner, end.
The same maintenance sign from the other ride was also present here, just tucked to the side. So by Sherlock Holmes powers of deduction, it seemed like it was a sign generally used to shut something rather than having such a specific purpose. There’s still hope.
With that in mind, went to the little service centre to try get some information on the status of the other cred. Was greeted by an old man who, though friendly, was utterly useless. It was quite clear I don’t speak the language and my questioning was all done through what I at least believed to be universally understandable gesturing and pointing with maps, clocks, etc. His solution to responding was to speak very slowly in Japanese with zero expression on his face and absolutely no attempt to gesture or mime in return.
Though we had other places to be today, I wasn’t giving up yet. Walked once again to the other end of the park as I’d noticed other guests slowly heading that way. Maybe that will spark some life into the staff.
Breaking news in the industry – this ride is white on RCDB. It is now pink.
There was a little go karts attraction at the top and that was being alternately operated by a single guy who was also now looking after the ferris wheel. The engineers also arrived back up the hill and began to carry out what I assumed to be a ground level track walk on the cred. A good sign.
Camped it out for a good hour in the shade, watching various other activities take place like turning the chain on and watching all the links. Gut instinct said this was all ‘morning’ checks rather than full blown maintenance, though the morning was fading fast. Rather than bother the engineers, decided to have an attempt at asking the lone operator what time it would open. Luckily he knew a smidge of English and managed to say “thirteen”. 1pm then, good man.
Considering the park opened at 9 and that was another good hour of waiting, got fed up of sitting around there and went back to the car for a while, assessing the various travel options – there’s still a long, long way to go today.
But I hadn’t come here for nothing. Headed back in just before 1 to see it testing. Good.
More breaking news – it used to be called Himalaya Coaster, but is now known as Music Go- star. Isn’t that something.
The Music part is reference to these speakers in the magnificent 900° helix and it also has a shiny new fountain plaza to go with it. And wait, what’s this? 2 of the cars are now backwards! This is too much excitement to handle.
#2 Music Go-Star
So I got on it, backwards of course. It ain’t very good.
Going backwards made it a bit more interesting, but it’s a tad on the rough side and too jolty to provide legit airtime in the single drop and air time hill before it corners forever and ends.
The corner wasn’t smooth then it does that dumb early Arrow style ‘let’s keep the banking of this transition continuing through this extended straight line’, which is also the brake run, which is made from reverse kicker wheel tyres. That’s just bad planning.
Tick.
Off we go.
Brazilian Park Washuzan Highland
Was quite excited for this place. Another nice location. They’ve got one of my rides, a Togo Standup and a jet coaster with good views.
Got to the ticket window to be greeted with “English?” “Yes mate.” A map was pulled out and the phrase “rollercoaster closed” was used, followed by marking an X in pencil against the 3 creds I just mentioned. So, all of them then? Arigatō and sayonara.
The view of walking away disappointed.
Time for an esoteric reference to my Oakwood trip report.
Who needs coasters when you can have castles?
This is Okayama Castle.
Pretty isn’t it.
The day didn’t end there as we had to be in Osaka that night to drop off the car. It was gonna be intense, following the delays in the morning. The sat nav in the car was nice enough to not be up to date and we ended up losing another half hour (and probably £20 in tolls) getting lost on a brand new highway that it didn’t even know existed. “Keep right” my arse.
That was enough to tip the timing over the edge and unfortunately the people at the car hire place had gone home for the day. Managed to park it in their actual multi-storey overnight at least, planning to chuck the key their way in the morning.
Up next – more intense timing. It’s the Osaka way.
With the important rides out of the way it was time for some general credding. The outbound flight was from Osaka, which we had been to before, so it had to be an area to the west of Japan that I hadn’t yet hit. Ended up skirting round the city and onto the island of Shikoku. Only 5 hours driving, child’s play these days.
Tokushima Family Land
Follow that ferris wheel.
The first little place was another one of those Asian ghost town parks. Part of a bigger zoo resort, but we were literally the only car in the car park on arrival.
With staff outnumbering us at least 4 to 1, bought some ride tickets and headed to the first cred. The person standing nearest to it sprang into life and started the ride up for us in a friendly fashion.
#1 Mad Mouse
More quality engineering. The manufacturer of these is unknown but it seems to be a suspiciously similar to that awful one at Fuji Q.
It rode a lot better though. Rough and ready, but no headache inducing vibration. A good laugh.
#2 Junior Roller Coaster
The other cred was boring Mr. Vekoma Junior. +1.
And that was that. On to the next one.
The road to the only other park on the island took us over some lovely mountains, at which point it decided to rain on us. On arrival, the weather had technically cleared up again, but dark clouds loomed ominously close making for a rather tense visit. This could very easily go wrong and everything will shut.
For a bigger park/resort it was equally ghost town-ish. No more than 5 cars in the car park on arrival.
New Reoma World
Took the plunge and bought the entry ticket, then bravely bought ride tickets on route, with the ever present fear of approaching rain.
#3 Vivace
First priority was the big boy. A jet coaster called Vivace. The couple of older staff members in the station were happy to see some customers.
In classic fashion for this ride type the first drop is angled at about 20 degrees, but the low turn over the water was unexpectedly forceful for one of these. Overall good fun, something a bit different.
#4 Lady Bird Coaster
This one was next.
A weird little wild mouse style ride with an interesting layout. It started to rain on us on the lift hill. Oh no.
#5 Kids Coaster
RAN round to this one as it was the last remaining outdoor cred. Worryingly the operator had just walked away from the ride but we were told to wait a couple of minutes while sheltering in the station.
It was a wet experience, but they did run it. Literally couldn’t have timed it better as the weather just got worse and worse and they closed the whole area around us immediately after. Good stuff.
#6 Spaceship 2056
Which only left this beast. The indoor coaster. Now featuring Virtual Reality obviously, but at an additional cost. Politely declined the VR option, garnering a little confusion from the staff, but the only other guests in the park had appeared out of nowhere next to us and did exactly the same.
Waited around a while in the first part of the indoor queue where more guests magically materialised. They did want the VR and were batched into a second queue where they got an extensive set of instructions about putting them on, while one of the staff members was visibly falling asleep on his feet. Interesting to see the Japanese approach to hygiene for these is to supply a thin clinical looking mask with eye holes cut out, to go underneath the actual headset. I like that.
From there we were all led down some spacey themed corridors into a room with some screens. Had a bit of a pre-show talk, then got taken into a spacey themed lift with more pre-show talk. It was all rather cool in a low budget sort of way. Reminded me of a less physical Clone Zone. The lift takes you to the station, where we were separated from the guests wielding their VR. Ha, they had to wait for the next train.
The ride was small but quite fun. It starts at the top and works its way downwards to the bottom lightly jolting around in the dark, like a discount Eurosat/Spatiale Experience. It ends at a separate offload station meaning riders skip the lift hill.
Fortunately there’s a sheltered seating area at the exit of the ride as it was proper chucking it down when we emerged. Sat and watched it for a good half an hour wondering how any of these places survive in this manner, while the staff walked back and forth with umbrellas smiling, waving and closing things down.
Once it got light enough to handle, we made our escape.
It’s a nice looking place with a great setting, just in the middle of nowhere with very little to do. Needs investment, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Oh no, back here again. It almost feels like home.
Rocked up before opening time to find an unnervingly large queue forming outside the entrance plaza. It looked worse than it was however, as there were gates shut before the actual ticketing area. Soon enough those gates opened and all concept of a queue quickly dissolved as people from everywhere homed in from all angles, cutting past those who had been politely waiting at least half an hour before opening. Typical Nagashima Spa Land, nothing like the rest of Japan. Followed the hustle and bustle into the ticket booths, got a wristband fairly promptly and headed in.
#1 Hakugei
Straight to the whale.
Ah man. The early stages of this day were doing absolutely nothing to change my mind about liking this park. The operations were as dire as to be expected. A single train dispatching every 6 minutes. An average of 4 empty seats per train due to their dumb row assignment methodology. I was there in the first 200 people and it took me an hour to get on it.
Logistics – there’s a member of staff in the cattlepen area who hands out blue and red wristbands and rattles off a speech in rapid Japanese to every person. The purpose of this wristband is to get you into the locker area which is situated under the station, which you pass through both before and after the ride. Upon reaching the station you give up the wristband, basically to stop people getting off the ride and cutting through the lockers again for another go. It’s an improvement on their other rides in that it saves having locker faff within the actual station, while loading the train, but it still seems to take just as long with all the various batching procedures and airport scanners for tissues in your pockets that lead up to it.
So thankfully the ride was amazing. Enough for me to put up with all that many, many times, coupled with the fact it was the sole reason I was there in the first place. Lets see how many RMC name drops I can squeeze into a review.
It’s got one of the stronger pre-lift funky sections which are always a laugh, closest to Twisted Colossus. A big lift hill looking out at the rest of the park or over the water. A zippy little corner at the top before an up and over drop, like a third of a Wildfire. And then it begins.
It’s got length. It just goes and goes with equally good elements from start to finish, unlike Lightning Rod. There’s some really strong airtime in there, never quite as intense as Twisted Timbers, but it’s beautiful blend of sensations between each element, more like a giant Wicked Cyclone. The stall only felt particularly significant towards the middle of the train similar to Joker’s little one, it just hits it too fast at the ends of the train to give that really magical upside down moment. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though as the speed is quite surreal at times, watching it offride brought back memories of Railblazer. It just doesn’t look like the train should be travelling that fast through those elements, it’s unnatural. It’s a gorgeous ride to look at as well – that blue and white, like a giant Twisted Cyclone with much prettier trains.
There, think that’s all of mine. Let’s take a moment to behold this creation.
In all seriousness though, I loved it. It’s a hard layout to learn even over a few laps – the scream inducing airtime on some of the hills that you forget are even there. The out of control feeling I’ve been missing on some of these things is present in the exit of the first outwards banked turn thing as it twists and throws you down a double down. This bit gave me ‘poorly prepared on Skyrush’ levels of uneven pain into alternate single legs when sitting towards the back. I’ve missed that too. There’s some pretty vicious laterals out in the overbank near the end that makes it better than your average filler corner and the hills either side of this really kick ass. Possibly the best hill of the whole thing is chucked in right at the end of the ride as well, a wonky little hump hidden in the structure that was also scream inducing. Every time. Fantastic stuff, well worth the trip.
They decided to add the second train during my second queueing, bumping the wait time up to about 90 minutes. Dispatches did drop to 3 minutes so it was an improvement later in the day, but the queue just grew and grew throughout the morning. Well that’s 2 rides in 3 hours, what else has this place got again?
Took some courtesy laps on the decent stuff around, starting with Steel Dragon 2000. This was operating surprisingly well with its 2 trains. It seems to have lost its limelight within the park for now against the new boy, I wonder if that is just newness or genuine appreciation for a much better ride. Time will tell.
Pretty much how I remember it. The lift is good for the openness on the left side and the way it goes on forever. The drop doesn’t feel like 300ft and isn’t very good. It bounces through the first 2 valleys quite ferociously and there’s absolutely no sensation in either of the big hills. The corners are huge and rather pointless, bit of wind in your face – ‘yeah man, can’t beat that sensation of speeeeeeeed,’ it’s like Fury 325 all over again. Then it gets fun, awkwardly adjusting itself into the midcourse. Even though it brakes quite hard at this point, the following hills are all decent and seem to go on forever. I imagine it has to have the most consecutive straight airtime hills on any ride in the world and it is pretty joyous for that. A slight shudder, a ghost from my past, hit me as I stepped onto the exit platform. Getting onto this ride was all too easy this time.
Token lap on my ride. Ultra Twister makes me happy. It’s such a weird and complicated looking death machine but also so simple. How many rides come off of one of their rails every lap just to get through the station? And the fact they had terrifying vertical lifts (and drops) 100 years before anything else claimed fame about it.
Acrobat next. Still as good looking as ever. They were operating the other station today, so that was a novelty. Never together though. I forgot how intense this thing was. Pretzels are amazing of course, but the turn immediately after was so forceful that, to be graphic, my salivary glands failed me. I spent the rest of the ride dealing with that while it meandered around, never living up to the start again.
Time for the rest of my body to fail me, Arashi is one of the few rides in the world that still scares me. I regret it every time, sitting down in the seat with the rigid restraint uncomfortably biting into my collar bones. Feet dangling as it drags you vertically up. Why did I do this again? Oh no. OH NO. OH… *words gone*. It’s too intense to shout. The initial moments of it flipping after the lift are like no other ride. It’s so far out of my body’s control that I don’t know what to do with myself. I go into survival mode – all I can do is sit there, hold on and exist through it, hoping to be alive by the end of it. But it’s nothing like SLC survival, it doesn’t hurt, it’s just pure intensity. I love it anyway. Whether I enjoy it is a different matter.
They’ve got this new shooting dark ride that appeared opposite the whale which I thought was cool, diversifying their lineup a bit. Then I found it was upcharge. ‘Wanna do something other than queue 90 minutes for rollercoasters today? Well you’ve gotta pay for that.’ I still don’t like this park.
Time to calm down on the wheel. The views just got even better.
Would have been riding Hakugei ’til I bleed, but the operations just wouldn’t allow for it. The pain was stronger from the queueing than from the ride, though the waiting did die down a little as the afternoon went on. At least it was amazing enough to keep me there ’til the end of the day. I’d had strong ideas of leaving the park early if things had stayed how they started. As we learnt from Hershey, always persist.
Previously on my trip reports: ‘Challenge time. There’s a lot of smaller parks around Nagoya with not a huge amount going for them, but it’s always fun to see what you can mop up. With the ‘bigger’ stuff out of the way, there was a few +1s to try and hit up. This was the first, but on arrival it seemed they had given up for the day, with a few locals hanging around just for somewhere to be, but no staff in sight. Figured this may be a similar case for the other places and called it a day for creds, opting to go to a mall instead. No regrets.’
So after landing in Nagoya again, we picked up where we left off on that day to clean up the rest of the area.
Day 2 – Akashi Park
Oh look, a Ferris Wheel. Hello Japan.
This place was cute, it took a few minutes to work out where the tickets were sold as it didn’t really have an entrance, just a bridge over a road.
#1 Kid’s Coaster Kujira Ku-Chan
You knew that the real whale I wanted to ride on this trip was to this, right? That’s why you’re here, not Hakugei.
A quality piece of engineering.
Kariya-shi Kotsu Jido Yuen
This was the place that was closed by the time we got to it before. It seems to have undergone some expansion since, including some new fairground rides and a new toilet block. Watch out, Six Flags America.
#2 Kids Coaster
Another quality piece of engineering.
And potentially Japan’s cheapest cred at ~£0.36
Sea Train Land
This place was a little more significant than I expected. It had another of those Senyo shooting dark rides as well as a few other attractions, but I’m all burnt out on them.
#3 Family Coaster
Shame the cred is only a Zamperla 80STD. My 7th in as many months.
The park is a bit closer to the city and the day was now over, so felt like jumping on the ferris wheel for a look.
Couldn’t quite see Steel Dragon from here. It’s somewhere after that second bridge on the right but there’s a lot of other weirdly tall stuff in the area.
That was fun. It really was actually, something so chill about just driving around these little parks with no real cred anxiety.
I had some days spare to use in Asia while out in Singapore again and wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Not enough time to do anything too major, though sadly there aren’t many places left out this way I could do for too long anyway. With RMC consistently hammering into my rankings over the last 6 months, Hakugei was obviously the most major draw in the region. But it didn’t feel like enough – all that way for one ride… I don’t think I’m quite ready for that stage of the hobby just yet.
Hit some more of China was the other idea, with new stuff up and coming all the time and the odd bits to mop up in between. But they’re so slow in getting things built – rides that spited me over a year ago still not being ready and I couldn’t be arsed with the disappointment again for now.
If I can add one more major coaster to this trip, I’ll be happy.
So I took a gamble on some wood and booked three dirt cheap one way flights.
And in no way did it look like it was going to pay off.
I’ve been spited by Wood Coaster twice before. It’s about my most spiteful ride going. I got as far as the entrance of the park the first time, after 90 minutes on a bus from hell and then being chased down by people trying to sell me plastic buckets and spades for a trip up the mountain. The ticket desk said the coaster was closed. I walked away. The second time I was in Shenzhen I didn’t bother with all that, just phoned up the park 2 days in a row from somewhere nicer and got the usual stories about “it’s been raining the last few days so… you know… maintenance.” Yeah, I know.
The park website has become more fancy these days and now has details in writing about their extensive maintenance schedules for rides. For the star attraction it says every Monday, every third Thursday of the month, every April (and from personal experience every January or every time there’s sight of rain either before or after that day). In summary, the world’s most closed coaster. To avoid all that then, we’ll hit it on a Saturday in June.
As the day drew nearer, the weather forecast for the city was just… terrible. 2 weeks of thunderstorms either side of the day I was going. It doesn’t make meteorological sense, but it’s China, so that’s that then.
Day 0 – Arrival in Shenzhen
So I landed with the full expectation of just spending a rainy day in a hotel.
I’m obviously getting too complacent with the whole immigration/entry/getting around system in China because I expected to just walk in the door and get a transit visa on arrival this time. There weren’t any staff available for this when I got there, so I spent a good hour standing around in ghost town airport waiting for someone to show up at the visa desk while the immigration helpers did their best to avoid eye contact with me following our initial encounter and a couple of other officers at their desks eyed me suspiciously. I thought the people I was waiting for were gonna be one of the official uniformed looking immigration officers that rocked up with their 7-Eleven instant noodle dinners and disappeared into an office to eat said dinners rather than acknowledging my existence, but it wasn’t them. Instead what seemed to be some random/normal looking airport staff member appeared while chatting into her phone and asked to look at my passport. She looked at it and walked off again without saying another word to me, still on the phone. Clearly no one knew what they were doing and they don’t get many people doing it this way. I would say I’ve missed this fun, but it already felt like a wasted journey to begin with. She eventually reappeared with a friend and they bumbled their way through the process over the period of another hour or so, constantly phoning people up, running off to somewhere else in the airport to get information on something, looking up something on the internet or chatting to other officers at the desks. Eventually I got a stamp and got in. They were gone again before I could thank them for their swift service. And now the metro is shut for the day. I do love a good taxi.
The faff didn’t end there as the hotel ended up being the first I’ve ever come across in China that doesn’t accept ‘foreign cards’. It’s 2am, give me a break, I want to sleep. This was only a daytrip, so I wasn’t packing enough cash to settle that and do everything I wanted to do the next day but fortunately, as they bluntly told me, there was a cashpoint round the corner. Ugh.
It’s not actually raining though.
Day 1 – Knight Valley
Less than 3 hours later and I’m getting déjà vu from the previous time I was in this city, waking up stupidly early in the morning to check the ‘weather situation’ outside before deciding whether to bother with a 2 hour journey to the park for absolutely nothing. It’s still not actually raining, but I’m too tired to care. Back to sleep.
Still wasn’t willing to commit to the extra journey purely on a whim at this stage, so waited ’til office hours and phoned the number we had had some success with before. No luck, couldn’t get through to a human. Well, I’ve come this far, lets see if I can at least lay eyes on the damned thing this time, open or otherwise. But I ain’t taking that bus again, someone can drive me. The hotel staff were like “whoa man, don’t do it, that’s gonna cost you £20.” Their opinion was ignored.
It rained the tiniest of bits on the journey over to the park, but otherwise was just lots of low hanging cloud in a regular fashion for a mountainous climate. Game over I thought, they’ll be doing their track walk now and instantly think ‘time to go home’. Driver bloke was friendly enough to offer his phone number and a return journey once we arrived, as it was a ‘remote area.’ That’s a sound option, I thought. Could be returning in about 5 minutes.
Got to the ticket desk. There was a sign of closed rides up on display, which I don’t even remember existing before, more positive steps? Wood Coaster wasn’t on it. The woman with the tickets re-confirmed this. In we go then.
I think the following walk was my new peak in cred anxiety. I’ve been lied to by staff enough times now to still think it’s not open. I failed to pick up a map so didn’t know where I was going either.
You keep climbing these escalators up the mountain, half of them broken, and still can’t see the ride for about 15 minutes of walking – I expected it to be dominating the hillside, but it’s insignificant in comparison to the size of the resort. Passed a sign with ride specific opening times. ‘The Wood Coaster is open from 10:00-18:00.’ Is this actually happening?
I joined the queue at 10:00 and there was a bunch of engineers on platform, with the ride making familiar GCI brake noises. It took them another half an hour, but it tested and it opened.
#1 Wood Coaster
Ahhhhhhhhh. It was so good to get on it. That and the ride itself is… so good. I was a little worried as GCI have been a source of minor let downs for my last 2.5 years as well as seeing reports of it having not aged well. But if there’s one GCI out there to rival the mighty Bamboo, it’s this thing.
I got everything I want from one of these – it’s fast, relentless, has buckets of airtime, goes on forever and is aggressive – really, really, aggressive. Perfectly on the limit.
The layout is just majestic. Never mind the station flythrough that due to questionable park operations no queueing guest ever sees, there’s a bloody quad down passing in between the station and the brakerun. It did a Lightning Rod before Lightning Rod and it made me giddy with happiness. I loved everything about this ride so much.
And whose wonderful idea was it to stick a big wooden coaster up here anyway? It did the Wildfire turnaround atop a mountain before Wildfire did. That makes me love it even more.
There was a bit of jeopardy added to the whole experience (which probably heightened it even more) in that the lift hill contained an assault of weird looking moths and other weird and not wonderful flying creatures that would crash into your face or land on you as the train climbs 200ft into a rainforest. Eww. I hate bugs. I don’t even want to know what those things are doing to you when you hit 60Mph, but I ended up with one inside my shirt that looked like a leech at one point. So much no. But so much yes. Have some more pics.
Just to tease me a bit further it also rained a little more during a queue for another lap. They made announcements about stopping if it got worse, but it didn’t, so they didn’t. Good for them.
Kinda wish the park ended there, but there was some other stuff to see. Stumbled into what I only knew as discount Waterworld. Sums it up nicely. Wasn’t the most professional of performances, but it was a laugh. The show ended to announcements of “stick around to have a photo with the white man.” Think I’ll pass on that one.
Foolishly followed the crowd out of there into the queue for an underwater ride simulator. Some aggressive announcements were being made about an 80 seat capacity and 30 minute show intervals. It then turned into an old timey bumpkin scrum as the, less refined, guests started pushing and shoving to make sure they made it in to the next show. It’s only the second time I’ve seen this sort of behaviour (the first being that awful tour group at Fantawild Ningbo) so it’s far from the norm, but it is rather disgusting to behold. We didn’t make it to that show and left the queue rather than wait again. I’m sure it was nothing mindblowing.
From there it was a hot and sweaty queue for the cablecar up to the top of the mountain. Things only got sweatier when the greenhouse-rooved portion of the queue became home to two huge hairy moth things that were bigger than my hands. If they end up at Wood Coaster, I’m dead.
Some lovely views up top. Didn’t bother with any of the rides as the queues were too grim.
Did the funicular train back down, it was completely empty in contrast to the cablecar for some reason.
The Bobkart spited me disappointingly, but got what I came for.
Got a friendly staff girl to lend us her phone so we could contact the driver from earlier, as our Chinese SIM had conked out up the mountain. He said 40 minutes. This made an easy excuse for me to have one more lap of Wood Coaster, as the queue was invariably 30 minutes for 30 people.
When he turned up we made an outlandish request to be driven to a mall in the city to get some food rather than straight back to the hotel, at which point he got all mopey saying he wouldn’t have bothered coming back for us if he’d known it wasn’t the full fare. Well thanks.
And that’s it for one long day in China. Seems like a lot of text for one ride. Good times.
Another scorcher of a day found us caught up with hilarious car park antics in which 50% of the locals would outright ignore the staff directing them into parking spaces and do their own thing, mess it up because it was a tight squeeze, then speed off in disgust only to instantly get stuck behind pedestrians heading towards the entrance.
With that fun out of the way we headed in to the great 40th birthday present that this park decided to give themselves.
#1 Mystic
Mystic is a very pretty ride to be around.
I like the detail of the little cemetery entrance to the area (complete with mist) and the station looks amazing.
Inside is cool as well. The return of the themed bookcase baggage holders. Front of the trains with their voodoo dolls are also a joy to behold.
First impressions in the front of the train were really good. The twisted, almost-vertical drop kicks ass and you’re thrown into a weirdly shaped top hat reminiscent of Lost Gravity.
Only some zero-Gs in the world are beautifully executed. This is one of them.
Then you dive loop past the turntable and station into a weird airtimey banked corner (which is even better backwards).
And up into this ridiculous thing. Perfectly on my limit of upside down-ness to be in hysterics and clapping rather than holding my head and shouting. Love it.
Backwards from there is really cool but a little too short and ends on my only real gripe with the ride in that it brakes a little too harshly on the backwards pass of the turntable. Seems like it would have been easy for it to shuttle back into the dive loop a bit more for that last little kick, but it falls short of that and then you’re done.
Proper good stuff though. Gerstlauer are definitely on the up with these things.
The park was beginning to fill a bit and we only (if we were being sensible) had half a day to avoid another chunnel mishap so it was time to mop up the creds.
#2 Coccinelle
Coccinelle lives on here after Walibi Belgium spited their own. Such a good name for the English to say.
Bypassed the Boomerang queue as it looked deeply unpleasant.
#3 Timber
Straight to the other main event then. First thing I notice upon entering the queue is that the audio shouts TIIIIIIIMBERRRRR! as the train takes the drop. Nice.
Baby Gravity Groups always pack a punch and this one is no exception. Every one of its hills was properly chucking me out of the seat in a joyous fashion and it was nice to see the variety of some little twisty banked ones as well in such a tiny layout.
Problem is that it feels short. Really short. It enters the return run section of the layout and you start to really get into it thinking ‘oh yes, here we go.’ Then it trims in a double down and ends abruptly. Hilariously abruptly. We just burst out laughing at the unexpectedness.
For me, both Twister and Wood Express had that feeling of the ride going on really long for how tiny the drop is, and you admire them for it. Somehow they didn’t manage that here. But the sensations it does give are amazing and potentially the strongest of the three.
Woodstock Express was a sufferance being the longest queue of the day. Turns out I’ve never done one of these Zamperla versions of the standard wild mouse before so that was the slightest of upsides.
#4 Woodstock Express
It’s just a poorly built copy of the standard layout really. The shaping is off in a lot of places and what happened to the usual big airtime at the end here?
The Boomerang queue was now slightly less unpleasant but still very slow and filled with sunburn. They’ve got the weird metal lap bars on this one, but apparently it isn’t done by the same people as the one at Wiener Prater (the one I kinda like). Instead these are virtually impossible to climb into. I spent the first 15 seconds trying to manouevre my foot in between/over/round the bars while my friend was about to be trapped in the airgate. Makes getting into Colossus look easy.
#5 Eqwalizer
After somehow contorting into the contraption, away we went. It takes more tactical bracing this way – tightly gripping the handles in front to stop yourself falling stomach first into metal and to stop the handles themselves destroying your legs. If you can put up with all that it’s a slightly better Boomerang experience, but it still isn’t really enjoyable. Apparently it was meant to have raving soundtrack like Speed of Sound as well, but it didn’t at this time.
With not long left in our day we thought we had to be a bit tactical with rerides, starting with another go on Timber in the back which was even better. Luckily the queue boards were wildly overestimating and both major attractions had actually quietened since earlier. Either people finish with this place very quickly or it had just got too hot and they had given up/gone to the water park.
So we ended on with several almost walk-on goes with Mystic, which also felt even better in the back. Then on the last lap I got stung in the lip by something while travelling at around50Mph. Worth it.
Sadly it was then time to leave this great little park, which seems really up and coming with their lineup now containing a very solid one-two punch. Could have stayed on them all day, but unfortunately it’s just too remote a location to allow for that with the time we had. Walibi as a chain do seem to know what they’re doing these days.
A grim 7 hour drive followed and then for the first time we actually got put onto an earlier chunnel instead of getting stuck in Burger King for 4 hours. Amazing. I might just slither again before the year is out.
