Czech Republic | Heartline Coaster

Europe 09/21 – Merlin’s Kinderwelt

Day 14

Finally free from the grip of the stupid hotel, it was time to celebrate and add some new countries to our count on our way to Energylandia.

The plan was to visit Merlin’s Kinderwelt, the largest amusement park in the Czech Republic, then slide into Slovakia to ride an alpine coaster before we finally drove north into Poland. That was the plan at least…

Merlin’s Kinderwelt

Just over the Austria Czech border, in part of a large entertainment complex named Excalibur City, lives Merlin’s Kinderwelt. Despite the park being tiny, almost certainly designed for children and what feels like a bit of an afterthought next to a massive mall and casino, the park is currently the largest park in the whole country.

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We had read a few rather unnerving trip reports on the run up to our visit, mostly concerning rides not being open and sometimes the entire park being closed.

With that in mind we were slightly nervous when we arrived to an almost completely empty car park, not knowing if the few cars that were there were for the park, the mall, the hotel or the casino.

The gate into the park was open though, so we entered cautiously, not knowing if we were breaking any laws or customs 10 minutes after we entered the country.

Inside, if I remember rightly, we were 1 of only 3 groups of people strolling around, with what appeared to be nothing open and no staff in sight.

After a while we spotted a member of staff who was also strolling around looking lost and after a series of hand signals and gyrations, he knew we wanted to ride the coaster and we knew where to purchase the tokens.

I have to say, I really like the token system at Merlin’s Kinderwelt. You purchase them from little vending machines, you get deals for purchasing certain amounts and the tokens themselves look pretty cool too.

Sliding Caterpillar

As soon as we came back with our tokens, our member of staff was waiting at the coaster for us and it was time to experience the Sliding Caterpillar.

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This coaster, from manufacturer unknown, was kind of amazing.

Firstly, just look at it! It really is the perfect combination of both trying too much and not enough, with it’s over the top theming crumbling around it.

Then there’s the ride experience. We’d read trip reports that this powered coaster really struggled to not roll back with a fully laddened train, oh how it’s gotten much worse now though. With just us 3 on it we came so close to stalling on the first lap I was certain we weren’t getting the credit.

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Feeling like we could take on the World after adding Sliding Caterpillar to our count, it was time to try our luck with the park’s other coaster.

Once again from reading trip reports, we knew the coaster was located “over the road” from the “main park”, so that’s where we headed.

This time we were literally the only people in this area, other than a friendly lady sweeping paths, asking worked before, let’s try again.

It worked again and even better there was a token machine just outside the coaster, this is all going too easy for us.

Space Roller Coaster

Immediately the park go 2-0 in having coasters you’ll never forget.

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Despite being tiny, this Chinese coaster rode so brutally that it instantly became memorable.

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Just like that we were finished with Merlin’s Kinderwelt, in record time too, this becomes important later.

In the short time we were there the park and it’s staff were nothing but nice and I’m glad to have made the visit and ridden it’s unique coasters.

Now it was onto Slovakia and we needed to reach Fun Park Žiarce before it closed at 4pm, which is a stupid time to close but we will get to that.

Having got to Merlin’s Kinderwelt at opening, finished in 15 minutes, decided not to stop once on route, it should have been easy right? No…

The roads still hate us apparently, no matter where we went on this trip we had issues on the roads and today was no exception. The best the sat nav could tell us was we’d be arriving just after 4pm, so we decided to phone the “park” and tell them we were coming please could you wait for us?

That didn’t work, the bloke told us to come back another day, which wasn’t happening.

So we decided we’d rock up just after 4 and try our luck.

That didn’t work either…

Despite the fact it had only just past 4, the coaster had been fully shut down and covered for the night and the ticket office looked long closed…

So not only was the park stated to close at the stupid time of 4pm, they had gone out of their way to close even earlier, disgusting, I guess they just didn’t want our money…

It wasn’t only us that was affected either, no less than 5 cars full of people showed up and wanted to ride the coaster in the short time we were there. Nice job Fun Park Žiarce, literally throwing hundreds of Euros away just to go home early…

Don’t worry though, we can calm down on the drive to Poland, oh wait, that drive was terrible too…

Thankfully we were able to calm down when we reached our hotel for the night, which was the same hotel we stayed at the last time we visited Energylandia. The friendly lady at reception recognised us from the previous year and it was great to be back in such a nice hotel after 2 nights at the stupid hotel.

We spent the evening watching Fort Boyard and preparing our bodies for a return to Zadra and Hyperion in the morning.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 15 of my trip report where we visit Energylandia to ride Abyssus and reunite with some old friends.

Mega-Lite 9 January 2022

Europe 09/21 – Merlin’s Kinderwelt

The next morning found us crossing yet another border in search of creds and this time it was time to check out the Czech Republic.

Day 14 – Merlin’s Kinderwelt

One of the more last minute changes of our itinerary was the inclusion of this park. Czech were the last of the countries we visited on this trip to alter their rules from an absolute ban to ‘everyone’s welcome now, yay’ and the news had come in during one of our daily rundowns back in France.

It’s about the closest thing the country has to an ‘amusement park’ at the moment and sits right on the border with Austria.

Context shot, though this is one of many entrances that we didn’t use, I believe it leads to the indoor section. The park is all part of a larger complex called Excalibur City which includes a casino, mall and Asian supermarket. You can seemingly park pretty much anywhere you want and just wander in from any direction, but the outdoor section is where the good stuff lives.

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There are a couple of token machines dotted around each area, taking cash only (Koruna or Euro) and not giving change. Most of the rides are unattended and operated as and when required, so before buying anything we made our intentions known to a wandering staff member, who gave the slightest of positive indications that he could run what we wanted.

And what we wanted was this poor beast, #1 Sliding Caterpillar. He’s tired and obviously had a hard life, but evidently couldn’t be happier. The train barely makes it up the first helix and then gets rather rowdy in the second half.

The other coaster lives over in a second outdoor section, across a road, the entirety of which was patrolled by an especially friendly staff member who pointed us in the direction of a second token machine and subsequently fired up the ride for us.

#2 Space Roller Coaster, a classic Golden Horse Space Car. Well, not so classic for Europe I guess. This one also ran like a beast.

And with that, the park was complete, along with the country, from a twisted point of view. Plopsa have sunk their teeth in and are opening a Majaland at some point in the near future and they have about 20 alpine coasters in various forms, but who needs a Czech alpine coaster when you can have a Slovak alpine coaster?

The original plan for this transit day to Poland, before the good news, had been just to pick up anything, anything at all in Slovakia to add to the list and see the day out. By Google’s calculations there was still time to do just that, particularly as we had just killed the first park in under 15 minutes of their operations.

What ensued was an endless sequence of yet more European roads letting us down, being overly congested, full of roadworks and generally irksome and so yet again, after a mere 6 and a half hours, we arrived at our destination with just moments to spare.

No-Fun Park Žiarce

Except those spare moments had been used by the operators of this single rail alpine coaster to pack up and go. It was bizarre and a little frustrating that we weren’t the only car full of expectant riders showing up at the last minute only to find we had missed out by mere moments. The staff were already completely blanking a larger group of disgruntled guests who had also arrived in front of us, as they began their winding down procedure.

Having physically suffered somewhat on route, we made a beeline for their toilets instead, which they next tried to lock us out of, all the while acting as though we simply didn’t exist. They lost that particular battle and instead of finishing the job just jumped on a moped and rode off into the sunset.

Almost in mock fashion, several more cars were still pulling into the car park, with many locals getting out and subsequently being disappointed as we sadly strolled back to our own car. I’d estimate they could have had at least another 20 paying riders that evening but obviously closing time is very strict for this particular establishment and not at all influenced by footfall.

Here’s one photo of Slovakia at least, facing away from the wretched place. Oh look, there’s another car rocking up too.

Day 15

Heartline Coaster 28 September 2021