Europe 07/19 – Heide Park

Day 2

Heide Park

I’ve always been the kind of person who likes making lists, so to no one’s surprise I have a list of parks I consider easy to get to but I haven’t visited yet, at the very top of this list was Germany’s Heide Park.

Heartline had told me it’s a lovely park, with a solid ride line up and beautiful German operations. Another enthusiast friend of mine, Stealthfan, had told me the park reminded him of 2000’s era Chessington and Alton Towers, otherwise known as when these park were at their best and helped to mould me into the ride nerd I am today.

The main reason for visiting though was Colossos, the park’s Intamin prefab. It had just been reborn after years of neglect led it to standing but not operating for nearly 2 seasons. Prefabs are my favourite kind of woodie, so the reopening of this monster coupled with the strong words from my friends had me dying to pay this park a visit.

Another early start today but I’d soon scare myself awake up by flying down the autobahn at 130mph. Obviously this led to us arriving at the park a little too early but that was fine. I’d been following the park’s queue times recently and it looked as if I’d need every minute possible in order to make the most of the park.

We walked into the park and through it’s pretty entrance area before arriving at a containment gate that stopped you getting to the main park before it was time. At first this was a little off putting, several hundred people crammed behind a gate, but then to my surprise, the park turned this into a really fun experience.

A really entertaining man arrived to hype up the crowd, tell some jokes and lead us all in an amazing countdown to the gates opening, as pyros were set off and a beautiful musical score blasted. Then we were in…

Unlike Lotte World, it seems running is fully accepted in Heide Park, as the man himself was encouraging us to run to Colossos. Past waving mascots we bolted, waving back of course, on route to the back of the park, to the beast, to Colossos. This run ended up being strangely awesome, it was so funny to see the determination leave people’s bodies as their stamina faded. Me and my brother were dropping and drawing deep breaths on all manner of park furniture, until we finally made it.

Colossos – Kampf der Giganten

Straight into the queue we ran and while catching my breath, it hit me, I was here and Christ does this coaster look insane in the flesh.

We only queued about 5 minutes before we were in the newly themed and rather awesome looking station.

When Colossos was reborn for 2019 and the Kampf der Giganten subtitle was added, a lot of work had been done. This included the new station, new trains, a new theming element near the end of the ride, a new soundtrack, oh and retracking the entire coaster.

Having ridden (and loved) all the prefabs except Colossos, while at the air gates I decided to start worrying my brother. “You are about to experience airtime like you’ve never even dreamt of before.” “Is it THAT scary?” “I’d say it’s probably scarier than you’re thinking yeah.” Him terrified and me buzzing, we took our seats in the back row of the brand new trains and off we went…

While ascending the lift, while smiling like an idiot, I decided to keep teasing him. “You see that drop (160 foot at 61 degrees), you are going to be ejected so hard man.” Then it came, and the only thing ejected was my dreams…

The drop was completely forceless and trimmed, unlike any other prefab. Don’t worry though, here comes the first airtime hill, if this is anything like El Toro or T Express I’m about to be launched into orbit. Nope! Mild floater at best… Oh and more trims on way down… I begin shouting in disgust and a woman in the row in front turns around to stare at me with a face like a sack of screwdrivers.

Next hill, trimmed on the way up AND down, also pointless, if that was El Toro, I’d now have a T bar shaped bruise on my thighs but it’s not, what’s even happening? I shout again, “where’s the freaking airtime????” The woman turns around, this time really angry.

Here comes the turnaround… On Toro, it’s a time to breath but also forceful enough to keep you amused. On Colossos, it’s a time to question why the coaster has no airtime at all but then goes on for long enough that you get bored.

Speed hill, does nothing, I’m still shouting, woman is now 180 degrees in her seat to stare at me.

Next they trim a barely moving coaster travelling in a straight line into a smooth but utterly forceless helix. “WHAT IS THIS????” The woman is livid now and so am I.

To end Colossos, you are treated(?) to 3 airtime hills, that don’t have airtime, with the final one of them going through the previously mentioned new theming element. Then it’s over.

To say I was disapointed would be the understatement of the century. I got off the coaster, walked through the shop, didn’t even look at the merch that I was sure I’d end up buying today and went off to explore the rest of the park.

We’d end up riding Colossos another 3 times throughout the day, in different parts of the train, at different times of the day and it rode like crap every time. Heartline and Stealthfan were both surprised to hear how badly it was riding and both implied it was probably ruined during it’s retracking.

It seems such a shame to bring it back to life to be a shell of it’s former self. Never mind though, I’ve still got the Bull, the Balder and the Korean Bae.

Desert Race

Next up, while everyone was still running to be disappointed by Colossos, we thought it would be a good time to ride Desert Race, the park’s Intamin hydraulic launch coaster.

This coaster is almost Rita at Alton Towers but somehow rides a lot smoother and more forceful. I enjoyed it and so did my brother who normally hates Intamin accelerator coasters.

For better or worse, with Colossos knocked off so easily, I now had time to admire the park on route to Flug. Heide Park is beautiful and has a very welcoming atmosphere, the kind of park that’s just nice to exist in. I can totally see where Heartline and Stealthfan were coming from when describing the park to me, they aren’t wrong, it really is that nice.

Flug der Dämonen

While I’m talking up the park’s commitment to atmosphere, there’s no better example than the area Flug lives in.

Beautiful theming, a wonderful sinister soundtrack, it’s awesome, and yeah, it is like something you’d have found at Alton Towers in it’s golden years.

The coaster’s queue and station continue this trend and are both perfect at setting the tone.

Flug der Dämonen didn’t let Wild Eagle remain my favourite B&M Wing Coaster for long. It’s intense, flows perfectly, looks beautiful and it’s interactions with the amazing theming are incredible. I really liked Flug and for me it’s the best ride in the park.

Krake

From one quality B&M coaster to another.

Krake is the park’s B&M Dive Coaster and despite being short manages to offer a really enjoyable ride exprience.

Keeping with the Heide Park tradition, the theming and soundtrack on this coaster are also amazing.

After Krake we went for some crepes and they were both well priced and delicious, are we sure Merlin own this park?

Big Loop

To let lunch settle we decided to join the 10 minute queue for Big Loop, the park’s Vekoma looper. The only thing we didn’t account for was German efficiency, because almost instantly we were spotted as a 2 and asked to power through the queue to fill the train. Stomach don’t fail me now.

Big Loop was fine, a lot smoother than I was expecting.

Bobbahn

The only Mack Bobsled in operation that I hadn’t ridden, and what a great example of the hardware this was. Maybe not quite as good as Blackpool’s Avalanche but a close second best.

Limit

Even the lovely Heide Park can’t escape the ugliness of the SLC, thankfully Limit didn’t ride too badly and it’s hidden away at the back of the park where you can just pretend it’s not there.

Next up was another ride on Colossos, still crap.

Then we visited the Donut Factory for a sugar rush to cheer ourselves up. I didn’t know the Donut Factory had made it outside of Thorpe Park, so it was a lovely surprise because I really enjoy the messed up creations they make here.

Ghostbusters 5D

The park’s screen based shooting dark ride was quite fun but nothing too special. Sadly it just amounted to shooting generic ghosts over and over, as opposed to having much to do with the actual franchise that I mildly enjoy.

Drachengrotte

I’m a huge fan of the How to Train Your Dragon franchise however, so I was really excited to try out the park’s boat ride themed to it. It was nothing mind blowing but I’ll enjoy anything that plays the amazing score from the movies.

Grottenblitz

The 2nd Mack powered coaster of the trip, this time featuring a highly detailed indoor section.

Indy-Blitz

We finished up the coasters of Heide Park with a ride on their Zierer family coaster Indy-Blitz.

Scream

After some pizza, also really nice, it was time to experience the ride I had been putting off, Scream. Scream is the park’s 200+ foot tall gyro drop tower and it’s awesome. It’s geared to absolutely terrify you, with the way the queue wraps around the base of the tower and also the haunting soundtrack. Scream also provides an amazing drop, one of the best pure freefall drops out there.

Another flight with the Flug next, God I love this ride.

We decided to have another lap of Colossos before finishing for the day, but as it was walk on, we opted for 2. Both were lacklustre…

Not wanting to end the amazing day with a disappointment, I forced my brother to follow me back to Flug, which had a 5 minute queue, for “2 more laps only I promise.”

Desperate to buy the Heide Park soundtrack, we visited the park’s main shop, where I chatted to a very friendly lady about how good my day was and walked away with several ride postcards. Sadly they didn’t have the soundtrack on park but I have since ordered it from IMAscore and it gets blasted on the regular.

I had a fantastic day at Heide Park, yeah it’s a shame Colossos is bad but it didn’t bother me too much because in the end I just found myself having so much fun that I forgot about it. Oh and Flug helped that too, bow down to the Dämonen.

Due to a crash on the autobahn, we were forced to go the rural way back to our next hotel, also in the Netherlands. This was great for sight-seeing but terrible for my already desperate looking fuel tank. In the end we made it to a petrol station 1 mile from the hotel with only 4 miles of range left in the tank.

We had an interesting arrival at the hotel. There was a massive wedding party going in the lobby area, with deafening live music being played. So I had to check into a hotel like you’d order a drink in the club, with shouting and strange hand movements. Thankfully once we reached the room it was completely silent though.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 3, the death of Walibi Holland, also featuring the best RMC I’d ever ridden.

Europe 08/20 – Phantasialand + Öcher Bend Funfair

I have a confession to make: I went to Phantasialand. For no reason at all. And it was alright.

The original plan for the day (well, the original original plan was Efteling) was to grab an unremarkable +1, then do 2 German fairs back to back on the way home. One of those fairs went AWOL at the last minute so we were left with a tough morning decision.
a) Stick to the plan, albeit less of it, have a somewhat slow day and risk it being a bit of a downer, dragging our heels until the late night chunnel.
b) Or, Phanny’s (this is what fans call it, right?) only 20 minutes away. There’s nothing new, that thing with the walls isn’t open yet, we haven’t really enjoyed the place but umm… there’s plenty to keep us occupied and we can finish the trip on Taron instead of a bench. Maybe you need a global pandemic to have a good time there?
Ah… go on then.

Day 12 – Phantasialand

Started better than last time. Into the good car park with no one shouting at us, into the good entrance – might have been greeted with a smile for the first time but, you know, masks.

Straight to Taron. Not 90 minutes and no one smoking! We did need a global pandemic after all.
Crossing the bridge to the sound of the trim kicking in directly above your head was new to me, also hilarious.
They’ve done some work to the cattlepen area since I last remember. It looks a little less multi-storey car park now, plus some extra rooves, lamps and gremlins in jars. Fair play.
It broke down. Again.
That’s 3 for 3.

Finally got more than 2 rides per day on it and I think I’ve actually managed to suss out the layout. I’m not sure if doing this has helped the ride though. At least I found that one airtime moment everyone’s always on about.

That one, yeah? It’s alright.
The rest of the layout felt as inconsequential as ever, if not more so. Where does all the energy from that amazing second launch go?
I have to really flop forward in the seat, loosen my limbs and sign a permission slip if I want the ride to throw me around a little. This should be a guarantee, not a choice.
I still love it, but it’s in danger of slipping.

We rode River Quest from page 3 of the Hafema catalogue. It kicked ass. Damnit Legendia!

Here’s a shot of Chiapas I bet you’ve never seen before.
It was nice to walk straight onto this for a change. The lap bars are still annoying, forcing your shoes into trenches of water, but the steepness of that drop cannot be denied.

I now have to publicly apologise. I’m sorry Colorado Adventure. I misjudged you. I sat in your front row 4 years ago and you punched me in the head with your silly train car. We didn’t get along.

I sat in the back row this time and I have been enlightened. What a ridiculous ride. I was standing up for 90% of it, being thrown all over the place and laughing through sheer glee.
Look at this lot. They know where it’s at.

Couldn’t really top the midnight fireworks rides on Black Mamba but it’s still one of my fave inverts. I always forget the layout and it has more foot tingling helices than any other I can think of.

As you’re not allowed to shop in the evening at this park, made sure we got in early and finally became proud owners of a Maus au Chocolat after doing the ride. Still one of my fave shooting dark rides.

You can’t choose your Winjas, cos covid, so of course we got the worse one twice, but it’s still one of my fave spinners.
Quick, think of something negative to say.

They’ve put VR on a coaster – the bastards!
Oh, the headsets are gone, cos covid.
I can’t bring myself to mock Crazy Bats when it’s just vanilla Temple of the Nighthawk. It’s cool.

Hollywood Tour was closed – the bastards!

We had some Asian late lunch next, with nowhere to sit and dancing away from wasps every 30 seconds, but it was decent.

Taron was broke, again, so we waited for that to come back to life and rode it once more. It wasn’t closing time yet, we could have stayed on it to the end, but “let’s go get a +2 instead.” That’s right, you heard me.

Öcher Bend Funfair

It didn’t quite have the lively spirit one would hope to get out of a German fair, not being dark yet and, you know, restrictions.
We completed our final track and trace paper and then went to find an operator.

For this thing that rides like a bigger Zyklon Galaxi.

And then finishing the trip in style of course – a wacky worm that’s a lion.

Turned out there were three countries to cross on the way home without stopping this time. We succeeded without incident and then came face to face with the UK border people. Our forms had been filled out online the night before and they didn’t seem to need to acknowledge this, instead just asking where we had been. We gave them a quick education on the Polish coaster scene, what they’re missing and why the back is better than the front – this was sufficient information to get us home.

Summary

Mingled countries – 4
Total countries – 7
New creds – 56
Total coasters – 71
New parks – 19
Total parks –23
New wacky worms – 6
Total wacky worms – 7
Best coaster – Zadra
Best park – I can’t really say no to Energylandia
Distance travelled ~ 3800 Miles-ish (new record)
Spites – 1/57 (1.75%), good old Europe.

Europe 08/20 – Serengeti Park + Fort Fun Abenteuerland

I definitely clicked on every single blob in Germany on coast2coaster at least once while putting this trip together (the desperation is beginning to show) and in doing so made a very exciting discovery. The legendary Höllenblitz had set up shop in a safari park for the summer season. It was due to depart for Oktoberfest around August time but since that got cancelled, we contacted the park and they confirmed that it would be sticking around until the end of the year.

Day 11 – Serengeti Park

To get to the rides area of course I had to participate in my first safari.
Not gonna lie, I wasn’t enthralled with the experience.

Essentially a 2 hour traffic jam with a couple of animals in the road, the negatives far outweigh the positives. They claim they’re carbon neutral here but it seems a little hard to believe with the sheer number of cars just sitting around, engines chugging for hours on end.

There were explicit instructions not to touch the animals because they simply don’t know whether covid can be transmitted. Everyone, literally everyone had their arms out the window poking things.

Dead lion and a couple of cow heads.

And the obvious highlight – this guy strutting through.
Now, where are the rides?

This SBF visa only had ‘2 loops’ unlike the rest on this trip. What a disappointment.

But here it is at last. No more waiting for it to never come to Winter Wonderland. We’ve come to you.

I love the theming effort – geysers going off, mine trains crashing through the wall, the obligatory German man on a toilet. Inside there’s animatronics drinking beer before you get tyre launched round a corner in the dark to initiate a full spin – yes, omg…

Into the main drop which, if you’re in the back row, is absolutely terrifying. You come hurtling down it at full speed, rotating wildly and limbs flailing in one of the most out of control moments in recent memory.
The remainder of the indoor section involves disco lights and even flamethrowers on the second lift. What’s not to love?

I tried to get excited about construction but the fact that it was this close to being finished just means all I could think of was spite.

After an extended period of getting lost in their confusing one way systems around the park, we eventually made it out of the place and hit the road to our next stop. Things had taken rather longer than we anticipated and once again time was going to be tight. Maybe.
The next park loosely described their opening hours as always open until at least 17:00. Being a hot summer’s day on the last weekend of August we were hoping this meant they would be a little busy and they’d last a little longer. We were wrong.

Fort Fun Abenteuerland

On arrival we headed straight for the Devil’s Mine. The queue goes on forever through a combination of theming, total darkness, a million stairs, narrow passages and scary bouncing bridges (within a spinning tunnel that was thankfully broken – I think a death would have occurred). It’s quite the marathon.

All that for a Vekoma Junior? Yes, well, it’s a decent one. Custom layout and plenty of character. Weirdly rough too.

It has this unprecedented airtime hill in it, along with a dark ride section in which a man sprays you with water from his internal organs. At least I hope it was water.

This park is on a huge hill and (un)luckily everything we needed to rush to was now down that hill, rather than up it.

This was next. A Vekoma Whirlwind with the same retrofitted trains as the Boomerang at Wiener Prater.

They required a little more defensive riding than I remembered, perhaps because more laterals are involved in this layout, as it’s essentially just a block of metal digging into your stomach. I shall call this one Loopen with a corkscrew instead of a loopen. Genius.

Then things went wrong. The park was really quiet and everything had been walk on so far. As we reached the Zierer Tivoli at the bottom of the hill it was performing its last lap of the day in front of us. Not because we were late, but because it had an unfortunate rule about needing a minimum of 12 riders.
Fair play to the operator, he attempted to rally the troops in order to open it back up for us again – both from the handful of guests still lurking around and even a couple of staff members at retail stalls.
It just wasn’t to be though, we couldn’t hit that golden number at this dead end of the park, right at the bottom of this stupid hill.

Which we now had to walk back up to find the last cred of the day. It was a struggle, but it was overcome with a grim determination to not be defeated again.

Their alpine coaster was a surprise hit. You can’t see anything at all from the park but the lift went on for an eternity. The subsequent ride felt as long as Hasenhorn and twice as wild because the surroundings were completely overgrown and there was moss on the track. It felt downright dangerous actually, but that’s a good thing. It’s all coming full circle.

The ferris wheel was still open once we arrived back at the top of the park and from here you can see why we had been spited, why it was so quiet here.

It’s in the middle of nowhere, well over an hour from the nearest autobahn, two from a major city, through country roads, up and down mountains. Not what I had expected of the place for some reason.

But we enjoyed our visit anyway. What’s a Tivoli in the grand scheme of things?
*cries*

Day 12

Europe 08/20 – Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Everywhere

The plan for today was to visit 5 different parks for various +1s, which I’m fairly certain would have been a personal best. The inspiration came about when researching a certain food based chain and discovering they had several properties in the vicinity, each with their own cred. Wouldn’t it be cool to hit them all in a day? Well, I think so.

Day 10 – Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Elstal

Not the smoothest of starts for time management as what we had billed as an 8am ride opening was actually 10am, but here we are. The Karls crawl begins.

The first thing that should hit you when entering any of these places is the insanely sweet and addictive smell of strawberries that permeates absolutely everything in the building. I think it was worth coming for this alone.

But equally importantly the outdoor area is home to the legendary Potato Coaster.
After a potent smell of potato (not quite as nice I have to say), the indoor queue area is intensely themed. They’ve really gone at this attraction with a loving detail.
Once on board/inside the tub trains, there’s a dark ride section full of further impressive effects. The ride system itself is rather violent in the way it engages with anything – chain lifts, block brakes, it’s all quite amusing.

It’s surprisingly big and forceful for such a simple design and the rather exposed seating position and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sacks of character.

Spurred on by our enjoyment of the first place, it was time to hit the road for the longest journey of the day. On a good run it should have been about 3 hours but it ended up well over 4 due to several car accidents and heavy congestion in this rather remote corner of Germany. Time was just being sucked out of the day and we’d barely begun our mission. It’s like they wanted us to fail.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Koserow

Through the adversity we arrived at park number 2. There’s nothing quite as exciting as the potato from here on in, but everyone loves a good Wacky Worm.

And these are potentially the most impressive worms in the world. They have huge animatronics, grand entrances, themed queuelines, exit shops and merchandise to commemorate the fact that you rode the most common ride on the planet, in what may well be its best form.

Most importantly they have strawberries instead of apples.

It felt weird to have another 3 parks to go with late afternoon fast approaching. A bit of quick maths meant we had to make a slight change to the order of events, driving slightly further still to allow for a difference in opening hours.

Rügen Park?

Even deeper into the middle of nowhere was the only park that isn’t a part of the official Karls crawl. Nor do they deserve to be. Rügen Park sucks.
We arrived on their doorstep with just over an hour left of their operating day to find the entrance gate padlocked shut. Guests were inside going about their business, but no staff members in sight.
Assuming some form of unannounced last entry policy we attempted to call them up and explain that time wouldn’t be an issue, we’re literally outside and all we wanted was to pay and pop in for the cred. Sadly the staff on the other end of the phone rudely laughed at the request and hung up. Giving them the benefit of the doubt for this, we called back once more and in response they decided to stop answering the phone altogether, allowing it to ring indefinitely.
Poxy place anyway. No one wants your Zamperla 80STD.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Zirkow

No time to stew on that, it was straight back on the road to a proper park.

Home to strawberry worm number 2. Just 1 more to go.

The struggle at Rügen may have been a blessing in disguise as things were really down to the wire now. If there was any further faff involved it would have been game over.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Rövershagen

We arrived at the final destination I’d say 18 minutes shy of closing time.

While running around like nutters and getting lost looking for the TWO creds here (oh yes, it’s a big’un), they decided to start handing out Covid forms on approach to the entrance of the indoor coaster to impede our efforts further. Damn this track and trace business.

This coaster is rare for an SBF build. Only two in the world apparently, the other in Mexico. I was far too distracted by the clock to take it in but it’s indoor, up high, looks cool, there’s a million coffee cups on the wall and it performed one lap too many.

We arrived at the final worm shop just as the till lady was packing everything away. As soon as money had been exchanged, we had entered the queue and the doors were shut behind us. This was the last train of the day.
We’d made it. Visited 4 Karls parks in a day and rode every coaster they currently own. I see this as an absolute win.

In celebration of this momentous achievement we bought an armful of strawberry related goods from the shop on the way out and I’m now the proud owner of a soft toy mascot, for a Wacky Worm.

As if the day wasn’t satisfying enough we managed to redeem Mack’s restaurant concept with a late night visit to the Hamburg branch. Several years ago we went to the one at Europa – it was stupidly cramped, had a dumb payment system, the food selection was abysmal and it was by far the worst thing about the whole visit.

This particular location fixed everything. Eating Käsespätzle from a pot on wheels and playing a game of name that coaster up on the wall is my idea of a quality dining experience. The staff were super friendly too and asked us to write and send a free Rollercoaster Restaurant postcard (or two).

To my future self,
Wish you were here
look up GASM @ SFGAdv to see if you were right about the wall
and don’t forget to slag off Rügen Park.

Day 11

Europe 08/20 – Freizeitpark Plohn

I hit the highest speed I’ve ever done in a car on the way to this park on my previous visit – a sweet 222kph (138mph) in some poxy sporty Renault hire car thing that I didn’t like very much. I set out on this trip with the intention of besting that and it finally happened on almost the same stretch of road – a scary 236kph (146mph), most satisfyingly, in my own vehicle. Autobahns are the best.
Amusingly the packaging for the GB magnet we slapped on the boot claimed it was only rated up to 130, but it held on like a true survivor.
I’m happy with the result, it’s a decent step up but it’s also nice to say that I’ve still been faster on a rollercoaster and I don’t really want to beat that again now unless it’s in a very significant manner (waiting on my company M5).

You know I said I wasn’t overly keen on returning to Tripsdrill? Well I least I haven’t been cursing their very name for many years now. I have for Plohn. The park put me in such a mood last time with their 19th century entrance facilities and shambolic operations but they had to go and get a Mack Big Dipper didn’t they.

Day 5 – Freizeitpark Plohn

And that’s where we shall begin. Their new coaster has been built on the site of former coaster Silver Mine, even sharing the same entrance as before and credit to them, there’s lots of little relics of the old ride kicking around to build a bit of history – pieces of track, signs and props. I appreciate that stuff, even though it used to be a totally unremarkable attraction.

Where the old meets new in the queue, there’s this guy animatedly waffling on about Dynamite and not far beyond that is the station, where a staff member was rocking a Mack rides t-shirt. Good man.
I leapt straight into my comfy winged bucket seat – I’ve been eager for the world to have more of these ever since Lost Gravity existed.

Being a dive drop, the start isn’t quite as vicious as it’s forebearer but it has a certain snap to it and you’re immediately thrust into a surprise, 2ft high, speed hill in a shed, which is brilliant. It whipped the face covering off my left ear every single lap without fail.

The train fires out of that into a weird top hat thing – again, I would have liked it a bit more violent. This is followed by an intense turn back through the shed before violence is restored with a tiny, shouty twisted airtime hill.

Loop de loop and Zero-G and aww, it’s over. I loved Dynamite far more than I had expected to, but it is just as short as I had anticipated and that is inevitably a bit of a downer. Just means you have to ride it more I guess. Fantastic investment for the park.

But that’s not all that’s new, oh no. SBF ‘3 loop’ spinner with a couple of dragon statues? Yes please.
Also the longest queue of the day. Ouch.

One of us needed the cred, so this became my second ever re-ride on a Wacky Worm (and proud) following the one in Great Yarmouth. This was greatly enhanced by a radio in the station that was playing German country music with a gravelly voiced man who was singing his heart out and had clearly experienced a lot of pain in his life. The parallel was comedy gold.

My guilty pleasure from the previous visit was the all indoor powered mine train which is amazingly themed and does the first lap in slow motion to let you soak it all in before cranking it up a few notches for two more. No one screamed this time either, so it was even better.
It’s one of the newest installations of these and it seems the world doesn’t really want to build them any more, which is a shame considering the potential this particular example demonstrates.

The other star attraction which now compliments Dynamite nicely is of course the woodie, the wrong El Toro.
It was just as good as I remembered it being. An aggressive, fast paced ride packed full of little airtime pops that bounce you out of your seat every few seconds – something GCI seems to only be able to deliver on 50% of their builds, for reasons that still evade me. This is why we can’t have nice things.

I’m going to build on the tradition of posting a picture of a goat every time I visit this park which, you know, hopefully never again.

Obviously I liked the place more this time. They’ve entered the 21st century with online ticketing and they’ve doubled their count of kick-ass coasters. The operations were less offensive, though still questionable. It’s a very… easy going/unprofessional atmosphere when they’re checking their Whatsapp in the middle of operating a major ride or simply wandering off to have a chat, leaving nobody paying attention or remotely near an E-stop. The sort of attitude you wish everywhere could have, until it goes wrong of course.

Luckily nothing had gone wrong for us so far. I was now teetering on 4-figure cred territory and it was time to drive to Poland.

I don’t want to be one of those guys who blames the sat nav for everything, but stories have to be told. We had read something on UK government advice about how terribly dangerous the roads in Poland are – they’re made of old bones and everyone who gets in a car dies, the usual propaganda. For the first couple of hours on motorway it was smooth as anything, there were regular billboards advertising Zadra to scream at and I was enjoying the second fastest country in Europe.
Upon leaving the motorway we apparently had another 30 minutes to go. This seemed a little off as, in my head, I had booked a hotel that was ‘just off’ the main road. Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough and there’s no exit nearby or maybe booking.com is being an arse with the map again. Oh well.
As we delved deeper into smaller and smaller villages that started to look like they’d belong next to Plohn, it started to seem less and less likely. It’ll be just round this corner, it’ll be just over that hill. We’ve stayed in weirder places.
You have arrived at your destination.
We were getting funny looks from villagers and there ain’t no hotel here, so I kept driving. The road suddenly became exactly as described by the government and as we opened our mouths to make a joke about this, it immediately got 10 times worse. It came out of nowhere and I hit it far too fast. I was winded with laughter as a result. This country road is made of cobblestones and if I do any more than 20Mph over this we’re going to explode. You know those Top Gear challenges where they’re driving hundreds of miles on rough tracks, shouting in pain and bits of the car falling off every other mile. That.
Google had stepped in to get us out of this emergency and we were a long way from home (well, exactly 30 minutes back to where I thought we should have been). The quality of the road managed to break Google for the remainder of the trip as the satellites were never quite in alignment again.
Fortunately we didn’t die. We saw no other cars apart from another Brit who also seemed lost – I think they took a wrong turn in front of us and might still be there now. We saw lots of old bicycles and got to witness the more colourful side of rural Polish life so, you know, culture.
The hotel was like a beautiful stately home on the outside, modern and professional on the inside, once we actually found it, so that was a relief. My car was now making a resonant rattling sound that it had never done before, but we checked under the bonnet for fire and the noise was gone by the following morning.

Day 6

Europe 08/20 – Geiselwind + many Wiegands

Day 4 – Geiselwind

I remember intentionally skipping this park a few years ago, describing it to myself as ‘£30 for a Boomerang’, and who wants that? Thankfully in a short space of time they’ve doubled their count and introduced a ride type that I’ve been saying I want to try for a good while now, so the time had come to check the place out.

For some reason I had imagined it to be a bit ‘concrete and riiides’ or a glorified funfair, so I was surprised to see how nice the surroundings of each area were.

The rate of expansion seems to be continuing with about 30 shiny new kiddie flat rides multiplying across the left end of the park. With another prompt arrival we had been left to wait for things to open and as the time approached, opted to start strong.

On a Wacky Worm of course. That dog façade doesn’t fool me.

Deep in the forest was the ride I was most eager to experience, if only for sadistic reasons. It’s one of those coasters you hear about being so bad that you simply have to form your own opinion. A ride that was ‘too forceful’ to ever actually open in the US, although they were likely mistaking poor build quality for intensity.
As if to match the reputation, a good number of these installations are located in countries that aren’t the most inviting, so the fact that this travelling one has settled in Germany is a bonus. Aside from that, as ride types go, I really am starting to run out of new things and the legendary Interpark Wild Wind was surprisingly firm in the foreground of significance.

All that went out the window as soon as we boarded though. What fresh hell is this? The awkward seating position that almost isn’t fit for adults, the over the shoulder restraints that are equal parts tough and flimsy and now we’re climbing the lift. Assume the brace position.

I’ve had worse, but it did give my ears a bashing just from how poorly it negotiated the track. This was mostly in the pointless double helix rather than the inversion, which provided a wild wrenching action that wasn’t actually as bad as it looks. As the train powered back into the station I was glad it was over and done with but wait, no, 2 laps? I know it’s short but that’s really not necessary.
This time I opted to lean forward so my skull could take over from the ears and now we can relax. As if that wasn’t headache inducing enough we’ve got a Boomerang to go yet…

For a brief respite, the bog standard layout of the powered mine train was next. We are looking a bit funfair now.

I suppose one advantage of not being able to go anywhere this year is that it’s been 8 months since I’ve ridden one of these.
You know what? Whether it was the Wild Wind talking or the way they’ve looked after their ‘star attraction’ here, it wasn’t actually that offensive. It’s old, so none of that gross instant backwards braking.

Moving onto better things, a second new ride type for me. The world’s one and only Zierer spinner.
It has an identity crisis at the moment, with new signage trying to blend it in with nearby attractions, calling it Piraten Spinner. All the old signs are still up inside the footprint as well though and I think Drehgondelbahn sounds better anyway. More German at least.

I did like this one. The perpetual spinning throughout the whole layout is amusing and as it dives into the indoor tunnel there’s one particularly violent piece of tracking that delivered comedy at different angles for every single one of the 10+ laps.

The final cred is yet another world exclusive Zierer as far as I can tell. Drachen Höhle is one of those coasters in the (half) dark that is more fun than it should be. A few lights and a bit of smoke can go a long way when all you’re doing is corners. The face on the car design helps too of course.

And with that we were 6 for 6. It may not be the strongest of line-ups but at least there’s a good dose of obscurity in there. Great place to spend a morning of credding.

AltmühlBOB

A couple of years ago I remember seeing something about this alpine coaster with massive airtime hills but to be honest I had completely forgotten its existence immediately afterwards.
During my heavy trawling through Germany on coast2coaster, trying to pad the trip out again after losing several countries, I rediscovered this gem in the middle of nowhere.

Turns out the place was super popular and we struggled to park, ending up improvising with a couple of other cars in an overflow field that may or may not have been trespassing. There was a huge, mostly unfathomable queue of guests adjacent to the road for both the rides and ticket window simultaneously and in a very un-German fashion it was poorly organised and signposted, with queue-jumping actually becoming a necessity for people to make it work.

I didn’t actually realise that, though it makes sense, you don’t get to control this bad boy. Just flip the lid, get comfy and let it do its thing to you.

It’s obvious looking at it now that giving someone the power to slow down would lead to disaster.
I loved this thing. All these new experiences in one day – it’s getting a bit overwhelming.
The starting double down wasn’t quite all there but the power of the 3 hills combined with a very vulnerable, almost lying down position and nothing but a car seatbelt made for a cracking ride.
As you come screaming over the final crest you find yourself instinctively scrambling for a brake lever regardless. It hits the fins hard enough to make Stealth blush.

There’s also a traditional Alpine here. It began to rain heavily as we ascended the lift so I don’t remember much beyond hurrying to the bottom to get it over with and then sprinting back to the car before we got bogged down in someone else’s field.

Erlebnisfelsen Pottenstein

There was just enough time for one more park, though we were beginning to get a little worried about last entry rules. Luckily this place was as busy as the one before, the sun was back in the sky and they were even holding people outside of the entrance to keep the numbers down. With the money they’ll be raking in right now, looks like the hours are going to be extended.

Situated atop the hill this time, there’s another Wiegand monopoly going on.

Straight onto another alpine coaster, this one brought the fear back. When I say hill, it’s more of a cliff down there and there’s these unnervingly large drops directly into corners that, once again, surely you can’t go full speed or you’ll just fly off and become a fireball. Do they rely on Darwinism?

The other ride was an older lift hill version of the Hummel Brummel hardware the previous day. I found ‘the witches’ broom’ to be far superior, not least for the fact that you get to push the green dispatch button yourself. That’s a childhood dream come true right there.

As soon as the lift is cleared it started swinging much more than I had come to expect and as the seats enthusiastically wind their way down the hill there’s a trim brake every 5 seconds to stop it getting out of control. I imagine this is what you’d get if you tried to build Ninja at Magic Mountain, in your garden. And I see a point to that.

Day 5

Europe 08/20 – Tripsdrill + Schwaben Park

I wasn’t overly thrilled at the prospect of returning to this place, but the attractive looking Vekoma STC had definitely caught my attention, as much for the ride interaction as well as the relative uniqueness of the ride type so far. We had struggled to make even a morning out of Tripsdrill 5 years ago with mediocre rides and poor weather, so hopefully another couple of attractions and some sunshine could tip the scales in their favour.

Day 3 – Tripsdrill

They weren’t staggering openings as much as previously so the morning began straight away on the newness. It looks like they’ve got great plans for the station next year but at the moment it’s quite amusing to see no roof, bare concrete and a temporary shed for ops as though they literally got to 5pm on the 25th June, told contractors to down tools and leave on the spot. That’ll do lads.

It has a cool name and a cool ride. The trains with their backpack theming are great to both look at and sit in. It rides super smooth and can be forceful in some of the turns.

It didn’t quite deliver what I was expecting though. Foolishly I think I was after something a little more than the ‘family thrill’ that seems to do so well for the park. The ride lacked a certain spark that I can’t quite put my finger on and nothing more seemed to be brought to the table over the bigger SFC layout other than some inversions which are fine at best, if a little repetitive. I appreciate the fact that they chucked in some attempts at airtime hills to break the flow, even if they weren’t particularly prominent.
I’d probably just put it as the best coaster in the park, but that’s faint praise.

The other Vekoma is pretty much finished, other than the end spike which will eventually burst through the other station nicely.

Again I like the train & station details and overall look of this one. The Junior Boomerang layout being much more linear and packed with hills is a welcome change to the usual compact turns and I’d say that makes it a little stronger than others of its type.

Once we had soaked up enough of the new area, it was time to revisit the rest of the park.

The Gerstlauer Bobsled seemed to ride a little better than previous experiences, making the airtime hill section a bit more potent. Love how overgrown this has gotten now and that you can’t even see the track from most angles, it’s becoming a part of nature.

I think I like this woodie a little more than most. Sure it’s underwhelming, but not to the point of being uninteresting. It bounces around with a certain charm and has some decent twisty moments.

Their Gerstlauer Infinity was exactly the same as I remembered it, 900 creds ago – not very good.
It doesn’t ride with the relative grace of newer infinities and the whole layout seems a bit haphazard – a block section killing the speed directly before the only real airtime moment wasn’t the best of ideas.

All the water rides were closed last time so it was nice to try Waschzuber Rafting. The queue is massive and contains a museum about the history of washing clothes, so that’s something. As a ride it was on the timid end of the spectrum.

Also new to me was Badewannen-Fahrt, the infamous log flume themed to baths. This was great fun.
Dark ride sections, a surprise backwards drop and novelty boats – it had it all.

We went back for a couple more laps on the new boy, where I ran into my familiar old bugbear of inconsistent staff rules about glasses. Suddenly someone had decided that it was strictly not allowed and though I politely mentioned that I had been riding fine with them all morning, they got unnecessarily aggressive about it. For someone with a cred tattooed on their arm you’d think they’d be a little more forgiving.

To lighten the mood we tried to recreate our favourite memory from the previous visit – sitting in a quaint little café having a nice toasted sandwich. Unfortunately it was swarming with wasps, there was nowhere to sit, further staff continued to be unfriendly and the takeaway equivalent of the food was terrible.

Well, that’s enough of that then. What else have we got around here?

Schwaben Park

Another revisit with another 2 new creds. With all the other land clearing and construction we had seen a lifetime ago at the far end of the park I didn’t expect both of them to have been stuck out in front of the car park with Force One. It’s eye-catching, I’ll give it that.

Tried the obscure RES Roller Ball first. Although no flipping is involved, watching it from off-ride it looked rather vicious in the way that it was rocking back and forth, throwing people around so I was actually quite nervous going up the lift hill, getting flashbacks to rides like Arashi and Insane which have both tried to kill me in a good and bad way respectively. This was deceptive and unjustified as the ride just doesn’t really do anything. Trims heavily control each stage of the descent, meaning nothing more than a slight jolt downwards every few seconds and it’s all rather awkward as an experience. I left the ride wondering to myself ‘what was the point?’
The chicken song is the most entertaining part – I think it might make the trip playlist.

Another obscure contraption had barely opened before the visit and didn’t even have speakers up yet for the amusing bee soundtrack. They did have time to put some free lockers up front though, to help with the seating and station situation. There doesn’t seem to be enough of them yet, as people were queueing to wait for one to become available, though there was no queue for the actual ride. Spotted a Wiegand guy still on site overseeing the operation and soon we were boarding.
With controls like a bobkart it was arm pedal to the metal, but all this led to was a slight breeze in the hair and some corners. There isn’t much going on here and I think even the marketing speaks for itself – there’s a promo picture up everywhere of two kids riding it and they look thoroughly bored.
I left the ride wondering to myself ‘what was the point?’

Oh well, at least I like their old coaster.
This hasn’t aged well. It was vibrating rather unceremoniously throughout the layout and subsequently all the life seems to have been sucked out of it.
Maybe not then.

A surprise find saved the park. I had spotted what looked like an indoor boat/dark ride on the map and we went to check it out. In this unassuming building lives Azura. The queue was nothing but darkness and a strong smell of gas. Upon boarding, the ride logo is projected onto a waterfall in front of the station. What is this?
It’s essentially a warehouse that you slowly drift around in an oval shape. Sounds fun right? Well in the centre of the oval are fountains, lasers and fire effects and they create some pretty mesmerising sequences. A fireball sitting directly on top of a 10ft water jet is not something I expected to see and they have those bouncing water cannons like you put around pathways on Rollercoaster Tycoon, only the jets are lit up, in a curve, from the inside. Sorcery.
See I do like some simple things, I guess they just have to be shiny.
Never noticed that cat on the far left of the picture in person, so that’s just spooked me out a little. I think we’ll end it there.

Day 4

Europe 08/20 – Hasenhorn Rodelbahn

You don’t need me to tell you that 2020 sucks, but here’s a brief summary of my first world problems when it comes to enthusing this year.

April 2020 – Booked to go to Poland for the RMC and Hyperion, long overdue, no brainer. Cancelled.
June 2020 – Booked to go to the USA for 2 weeks with the intention of riding not just my 1000th coaster but also my 1100th. It was gonna be huge – Cedar Point huge. Before Poland went, the honour would have gone to that weird looking thing, Steel Curtain. After Poland went, it could have been epic – a trimless Voyage @ Holiwood Nights epic. Cancelled.

With over 6 months of no progress at all I started hitting the local +1s to tide the count over but although a good laugh it’s just not the same as doing something… good.
At least one of those trips I mentioned above is accessible by road right?
It was time to act and I booked a slot on the Channel tunnel. As the trip grew nearer the itinerary remained completely fluid and with good reason. Countries started closing left, right and centre.

Eurodemption was born. An adventure of both obscurity and basicness-ity. Plus the usual insanity.

Day 1 – Hasenhorn Rodelbahn

We had originally wanted to tick off Fraispertuis City on the way down but as of one week before, France was no longer an option – cancel the hotel in a vineyard. A brief 7 hour drive and no mingling later we crossed the Rhône/Rhine/Rhein into the bottom left corner of Germany. Even with getting up at 2am there wasn’t much of a day left so there was only really one thing on the cards and that was this.

In a small village nestled between two mountains lies an Alpine coaster that’s longer than Steel Dragon. It’s an unfortunate fact to learn but hey, +1.

To get to the top there’s a ticket window and a ski lift. One of the unnerving kinds that crashes into you from behind and you don’t even have to pull the bar down to stop you from falling out.

Apparently there was a 90 minute queue – what, for this? – but there was nothing else to do and it had been oh so long to get to this point.

It ended up around half that time once up the top, getting sunburnt on a mountain, just like old times. My body has forgotten what real Vitamin D feels like.

It was long. Really long. So long that it started to give me a bad back, turning me into an old man all of a sudden. I’ve never ridden one quite as wild before either. Many sections of straight bumps and hills that you surely can’t take at full speed.

I know there’s upstops on these (you can see underneath them on this clever system that also ski lifts the cars to the top, I believe this is called a nerd shot) but the mortal peril is ever present. The way the track seems arbritrarily chucked together and stacked up on loose pebbles. It’s thrilling pushing it past the edge of what feels comfortable. Almost exhausting.

Good view too.

That was the day really. Stayed in a hotel in a corn field and started drawing up plans for the next day. All on the fly, never done it this way before.

Up next – somewhere we’re not allowed to go as I write this.

Day 2