Germany + Denmark 04/16 – Hansa Park

The following morning found us at Germany’s only theme park by the sea. Coming from a nation with a ton of coastline, much of it not very good, I hadn’t really considered how much this country was short of beaches per capita. I’d trade it all for what they have instead though:

Day 3 – Hansa Park

First impressions – gorgeous. That ticket desk can take my money any day.

And what an entrance too. Clearly they think about image and upkeep here.

Due to some staggered opening times, the only rides running first thing in the morning were these two.

The pair make for a pleasant start to the day. The Schwarzkopf looper is reasonably forceful and fun, enhanced by old school lap bars in an inversion – the two seldom met in the past. To add to the charm, there’s a speedometer in the station to tell you how fast the last lap was – can you beat it?

You also get eaten by a fish at the end.

The highlight of the two attractions is the interaction though. If you’re lucky enough to get both trains passing through the loop at the same time (and they do actually try and make this happen), complete with excitable riders, you’re in for a real treat. I love moments like this. How to make a Vekoma junior special.

So I already liked the place and I hadn’t even begin to consider the absurdity that was waiting for me around the corner. How is this a thing again?

Kärnan is a very special rollercoaster and I had a very special experience on my first ever lap – an empty train to myself. You can get a full taste of what I went through in a review here, but to summarise – I love this ride.
It’s completely one of a kind in both theme and ride experience, it’s ridiculously intense and it hurts my legs.

The staff member at the entrance was impressed with my stamina as I limped round for countless laps during the day, except they weren’t countless – he was adding up for me each time with a cheery grin on his face. Proud of what he was representing, as he damn well should be.

Oh how I wish I could say any of the above for Kärnan’s predecessor. I really wanted to like this attraction but the hardware is just so shoddy. It does have another banging soundtrack – the highlight being 30 seconds of a Russian man singing the word Novgorod repeatedly, which is actually built into the awesome first dark ride section of the layout.

The Gerstlauer Eurofighter car, with it’s horrible restraints and clunky movements, drops awkwardly into the dark, pitching you forward in your seat before even more awkwardly snapping your head back again as you hit a rolling launch. It’s really powerful, but it’s just executed all wrong and ends up as something to endure, even more so when it ends with a sharp right hand snap of a corner.

A single moment of strong airtime follows over an impressive hill but, of course, the restraints just dig into your shoulders at this point and say “down boy, no fun for you.”
The remainder of the layout is, to be frank, embarassing.

The car rattles around this extended corner sequence with absolutely no purpose before taking a slow inversion that drops your body onto each individual shoulder and leg, in turn, further increasing the discomfort and putting you out of kilter for what remains.
What remains is a now uncomfortable indoor vertical lift hill with somewhat cool projections and effects, though I’ve usually lost the plot by this stage. How is the potential energy of this lift hill expended? By a single drop and corner into the final brakes. They ran out of things to do.
It bothers me so much that it would have turned out better to just not try as hard – do the final dark ride sequence on a piece of flat track at the end.

That’s enough negativity for this park, there’s a laser show around the corner that played intense rave music in true German style and put me right back in good spirits. There was also a 4D theater with a POV film of an animated cat in a haunted house – it was decent and the seats dropped, better than Novgorod.

Have I mentioned it’s a beautiful place.

Two more creds to get. The standard wild mouse almost lets the side down a bit by being so generic, but there’s a band of animatronic hillbillies playing music to keep it entertaining.

And the other is the second Hansa & Gerstlauer masterpiece. Two laps of a cracking little family coaster with a lift hill intensely decorated by projections, smoke and plot and some great outdoor theming to dodge.

There’s more to enjoy at Hansa – this little fairytale boat ride is cute as anything.

There’s a giant bell (Die Glocke) that swings and has fire effects. What more could you ask for?

Me personally – a good sit down and some panoramic views.

In case you couldn’t tell, I really liked this park. The visit presented me with a perfect blend of relaxed atmosphere and a strong lineup of attractions – a combination that is usually hard to come by due to inherent popularity. I get the impression that Hansa Park really care about what they’re doing and I can’t state enough how important I think that is for this industry.

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Day 4

Germany + Denmark 04/16 – Heide Park

Ever since I had been an owner of the Merlin Annual Pass, a certain park in Germany had been on my radar. Merlin acquired Heide Park in 2007 at the same time as the UK parks and often told passholders that if you ever managed to make it out there, you could get in for half price!

Of course several years after I stopped owning one, I went to check it out, amongst other things.

Day 1

We landed in Hamburg and spent the first day in the city. Not straight to a park? Not quite yet, decided to visit Miniatur Wunderland first.

Very glad we did too, it was great. Not sure if the pictures will do it justice but this first area was a proper wow moment to me upon entering. The sheer scale of the spectacle and then the intricate detail beneath. I thought model villages would be a bit dull and I was dead wrong.

It has something for everyone, this fully operational airport with live arrival and departures board was mind blowing. The model planes just take off and land through a hole in the wall, all on schedule – pure magic.

There was even a cred.

Make that two. Las Vegas’ famous Togo coaster is hiding back there as well. The other cool feature about the place was the rolling day and night modes, with each scene lighting up in wondrous fashion a few times each hour.

Not often I suggest visiting something that doesn’t contain rides, but here you have it – highly recommended.

Day 2 – Heide Park

Our car was collected the following morning and we hit a relatively brief stint of autobahn before arriving in a nice empty car park.

One of the reasons it was so empty was that it was a little on the chilly side – no more than 2°C. After a slight interlude and welcoming announcement from the park, the flood gates were opened for not many people to head on in.

The Intamin launch coaster and clone of Rita at Alton Towers was the first open ride we encountered. Due to the poor weather they were starting things up in a very gradual and nervous fashion.

Desert Race rode a lot smoother and more comfortably than the original but that only really served to highlight the fact that it just isn’t a very interesting layout. There was the slightest sensation of airtime in the humps that change your direction between endless banked corners, but the most interesting part for me was the very ending, after the first set of brakes, where the track deviates slightly with a nifty little manouevre to avoid a taller building than Rita has to.

My most anticipated ride in the park was the Intamin pre-fab woodie. Only 4 of these exist in the world and they are often heralded for having the best wooden airtime money can buy. I had ridden the other one in Europe (Balder) and came off very impressed. How would the first installation fare?

Not well. It’s an intimidating structure with the massive lift hill and turnaround, but the first drop doesn’t quite disappear from under itself in the severe fashion that I had expected. Cresting the first two big hills provided decent ejector, but in between these the ride was marred by a terrible crunching roughness in the dips. The turnaround didn’t help this, the speed hill did almost nothing and then the train hits a mid course brake run.
The worst part of the ride follows – a meandering helix that offers no thrill and only wastes energy. If the track was well looked after it would have been just boring, but at this moment it was quite jarringly uncomfortable the way it shuffled around all over the place, eventually becoming quite amusing as I observed everyone in the train rocking rythmically back and forth either looking fed up or saying ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!
The final hills were good, but not in the same league as the equivalent steel versions on Intamin and I hit the brakes a little disappointed, having been let down by a legend of the industry. They haven’t treated it kindly.

Desperately wanting to like the ride, I learnt over the course of a few laps that the two seats in the middle of each 6-seater car provided a better experience for not being positioned directly over the wheels. Unfortunately German guests are too efficient at batching themselves and getting everyone to fill empty spaces on trains, so even though I would aim specifically for these seats, more often than not I would get enthusiasically waved through the lines into the wrong row, then regret it as soon I sat down.

The weather was quite grim again so we nabbed the slightly indoors Mack powered coaster Grottenblitz for a brief respite, followed by the smallest in the park – Indy-Blitz for less sensible reasons.

The 2 B&Ms were next priority but they were struggling to open Krake in such poor conditions. As we passed it, a test train was sent and probably came the closest I’ve ever seen a ride to stalling, hitting the splashdown and barely making it through the next element without rolling back. Running it on the edge.

They had managed to open up the wing coaster though. Flug is an impressive looking specimen, very nicely integrated into its area. The entrance pathways are up high and look down over the pit of the station with the track swooping around itself. A sinister theme plays throughout the vicinity, one I had already become accustomed to before my visit. I find it’s very gratifying to hear good ride music in person when you already know it.

The ride shares the same wing-over drop that I was used to from the Swarm, but amps things up immediately after with a blur of a speed hill under a near-miss bridge into another floaty inversion. The ride gets intense again from this moment onwards and remains so for the rest of the ride, alternating between tightly banked corners that cause the other seats to bounce with force and three more disorientating inversions. A very solid package.

Continuing up the hill it was time for a ride on Scream. This Intamin gyro drop tower provides amazing views of the park and surroundings with its rotation at the top, before packing one of the strongest punches I’ve ever encounted in a drop tower. Just look how horizontal those legs are.
The other feature I have to praise Scream for is the way the queue winds around the ride in true spectator fashion. Around the outer perimeter of the structure there are barriers that quake with a thunderous boom every time the ride drops and forces large volumes of air into them. It makes for a fantastic scare to anyone nervous about riding, enhancing the whole atmosphere of the attraction.

After a spot of lunch, the weather warmed up a little and the B&M dive coaster was finally open for business. Like it’s neighbour, Krake has a strong and sinister soundtrack that I was famliar with and it had me buzzing with excitement as I stumbled through the queue. As with Colossos, the station immediately greets with many Germans waving frantically at me – fill those empty seats! Straight in the back row before I’m ready.

From this position, you get less of an opportunity to appreciate the beast beneath the drop but the force with which you are lifted out of your seat is enhanced and more sustained. The splashdown is an unusual feature for a ride of this scale, common instinct for every rider is to raise their legs as if they are going to get wet at this point. The scoops on the side of the train kick up two big plumes of water that make for a great off-ride visual and occasionally soak the outer most seats if you catch a bit of bad luck.
A swift immelman follows (unless it’s too cold) before a satisfying surge of airtime over the next hill. Sadly it all ends too quickly, but at least there’s something to appreciate other than just a drop and the train moves with a lot more purpose than I had come to expect from the ride type. Krake immediately became my favourite of its kind.

It actually started to cheer up a bit after that.

Oh wait, no. We were about to board this little boat ride when the skies suddenly opened and pelted the park with a torrential hailstorm. With only ourselves and the lone operator in the station, we had a bit of a laugh together and watched it all unfold. All the rides had shut down very quickly and almost immediately after, the top of Krake was legitimately struck by lightning in front of my eyes. I had never seen anything like this before.

It all disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Announcements were now playing throughout the park – they had taken the decision to close everything down and asked everyone to go home several hours earlier than planned. This was bad news for me – I hadn’t got all the creds! I had been taking it easy all day, not expecting to encounter any issues and suddenly the opportunity had been snatched away from me.

They were handing out rainy day guarantee passes at the entrance, but I wasn’t certain that I could return within the designated time frame. I explained this through a quick chat with guest services – they were interested to know where I had travelled from and they took my details and said they would be in touch.

Nervous times.

Day 3

Europe 09/16 – Phantasialand

The next morning found us bombing down the autobahn towards the only German park of the trip. The border from the Netherlands to Germany can easily be missed, unless your car is clever enough to tell you that the speed limits have suddenly changed.

We were one of the first cars to arrive in the seemingly tiny car park and nabbed a space next to a hut directly opposite the park’s second entrance, which lets you straight into the rather attractive looking Chinese area.

Day 2 – Phantasialand

Often described as the best theme park on the planet, first impressions were that although some areas did look amazing, it was all very tightly packed. On a good day this could be seen as immersive, on a bad day – more clasutrophobic. This was a weekday past the end of the local school holidays and we were surprised at the crowd levels that were beginning to build and obstruct our journey around.
There were also staggered openings of certain ride areas that meant turning up early didn’t particularly help our cause. If we wanted to be among the first into the new land, it would have meant queuing an hour anyway just for it to open up.

After reaching the central plaza and getting our bearings, we opted to start the day on Maus au Chocolat, which was billed to open half an hour after the park had. The queue was a little lighter and contained strange acts from guests including producing boxes of hard boiled eggs out of nowhere and proceeding to eat them/drop them on the floor.
This shooting dark ride was amazing. You can tell from the smell, the moment you walk in and wind your way down the stairs that you’re in for a treat. The vehicles stop at several screens on their journey at which you get to play fun shooting games with chocolate and mice of course. The sections in between the screens are what steps it up a gear as an attraction, just being plain mesmerising to look at.

A strong start, what next? We headed through the archway towards Wuze Town, which was to open within the next half an hour (not that long now, having been on our first ride). The pathways suddenly became a lot quieter and more pleasant, until we headed indoors.

This indoor section is home to a pair of Maurer spinning coasters and the queue for these rides was nothing short of grim. Again, tons of people had turned up before it was open and begun packing their way into the dark, dingy, loud and sweaty maze of a queueline, where we couldn’t even tell what was what.

These spinners are both special in that they have a few magic tricks up their sleeve and each one of the two has it’s own unique feature. They both start with an elevator lift, which houses a single car and brings it swiftly up to the highest point of the ride, also unusually tilting it at an angle ready to drop upon release. If you are facing backwards in the car, this is particularly thrilling.
The layout begins sprawling out through the building, with one of the sides having a particularly notable airtime hill past a waterfall.
They then enter a traditional wild mouse style section of sharp flat turns, up high, that kill the pace a bit before heading onto the long spiralling helices around the theming centrepiece of the indoor area.
The final magic comes at the end of the rides, where both have a ‘trick track’ section, on which the car comes to a stop, and the track itself moves with you to position you in a different way. They also have a wonderful ‘bounce’ effect where the track appears to temporarily give from underneath you while you’re on the final brake section – don’t ask me how this is done.

I was disappointed to only get a single lap on each of these very intriguing creations, but it simply wasn’t worth suffering the queue again for more and we would eventually just run out of time.

In the same vicinity is another indoor coaster, Temple of the Nighthawk. This strange Vekoma navigates a pitch black warehouse through three separate lift hills, with a very sedate experience between each one. It’s a bit of an outlier for the park and is regularly billed for removal at some point, but I didn’t dislike it.

The other supposed outlier also here is Hollywood Tour, an indoor boat ride around various film scenes. I liked it. It doesn’t really fit the park at all, but it’s generally impressive or otherwise tacky in an always entertaining manner.

I don’t think we could wait for the new attraction any longer, so we headed into the wonderful Klugheim.

The other claim I didn’t mention at the beginning of the report is that Taron has the most ‘crossing points’ of it’s own track over itself , on any coaster in the world.

The ride itself is ridiculous. Due to the lack of height differential it maintains it’s speed almost endlessly from the first launch, darting this way and that, seemingly without any plan or purpose at all.
The second launch doesn’t even feel necessary as you’re already moving with such a pace, but sure enough you lurch down into the deepest depths of the area and you’re suddenly going twice as fast again – the way the whole ride shakes while this is happening, combined with the sheer elation of knowing there’s another half to this experience as you accelerate ever quicker towards it, stirs a reaction in me like almost nothing else.

You can find a more in depth review of the ride here.

Somewhere amidst all this is the family coaster that opened at the same time, Raik. Another remarkable achievement in itself, this Vekoma junior boomerang intertwines itself with big brother Taron. It lacks a little in the force department, but it’s a satisfying ride if only for the views and the interaction.

A massive drop tower and dark ride all rolled into one sounded like my kind of attraction. Mystery Castle was a let down though. A confusing start lead to angry staff members. The ride sequence itself was weak, suffering from a strong controlled sensation that eliminates the point of a good drop tower. The visual spectacle when the roof lit up with lightning and highlighted all the other vehicles around the ride, giving an impressive sense of the scale of the whole thing was by far my favourite part.

Sadly my dominating memory of Chiapas, the intensely themed log flume, was that of the restraints being awkward. Unlike traditional flumes, this uses a lap bar, supposedly to combat the fact that this ride claims the steepest drop of its type in the world. The bar goes nowhere near my lap however, directly pinning down the middle of my thigh, so my feet are forced into the floor. When that floor is inches deep in water, this isn’t pleasant. Part of the fun of a water ride for me is trying to save yourself from a soaking, in whatever way possible, but being doomed from the moment you sit down to sink your foot into a small lake, cramped in with many other guests and have it remain that way throughout the entire experience put me off a bit.

Things went from bad to worse after we got lost trying to find Colorado Adventure. A highly themed mine train with incredible interaction should have been really good fun, but we ended up in the front row where the train has a roof. The tracking of the ride was awful in this position, jerking uncomfortably all over the place to the point where I hit my head hard on one of the pillars of the train. That put me off more than a bit.

Geister Rikscha was a haunted house style omnimover dark ride, with Chinese mythology. Not much of the experience jumped out at me, but like with Hollywood Tour it had a certain charm about it that I couldn’t help but enjoy.

We’re still missing a coaster in here somehow, the park really is hard to navigate.

I think we could be forgiven for missing it. Taron may have had impressive immersion, but I think the theming of this B&M invert is a bit underappreciated these days.

It blends into its environment so well that you can barely get a picture of it.
This level of landscape interaction makes for an amazing ride, with the train hurtling around entrenched corners and into surprise inversions without you ever knowing what’s coming next.

It doesnt quite have the moments of intensity found on some inverts, but it more than makes up for it through a sense of sheer disorientation. I couldn’t even describe to you how the layout works, and I like that.

Our day was fast coming to a close at this point, with no real time for rerides on anything. It’s partly the number of quality attractions that we had to get through, but the amount of queueing did feel like a sufferance on more than one occasion, for what should be the most efficient country in the world on a supposedly quiet day.

We wanted to find a shop to buy some merchandise before we left, but at the point of ride closure announcement, staff members were driving round on golf buggies and shouting at people to get out of their park. All the shops had promptly closed as well and we suddenly felt very unwelcome. You weren’t even allowed to relax and take a stroll out of the park at your own pace, instead they had to sour the day with a poor attitude. This coupled with a few other incidents throughout the visit left me with a final impression of Phantasialand that was less than favourable.
Which is a shame. They’ve got some cracking rides.

Day 3

Germany 06/17 – Hansa Park

Kleine Zar looks like a mighty +1 / I need more Kärnan in my life.
I’ll leave it to the imagination as to what was the real motivation here.

This spare day we now had seemed to be the perfect opportunity to head back over to Germany and tear up some Autobahn.

Day 3 – Hansa Park

I am yet to experience Hansa Park without it being a ghost town, so there’s always a quaint atmosphere to walking around the place, with gardeners outnumbering the guests while they eternally tend to their impressive foliage displays. The quietness also enhances the incredible theming experiences they have on offer here.

A typical morning here starts with a token lap on Nessie Superrollercoaster and Rasender Roland as they always open first. I do love how often the effort is made on despatch time to create the interaction between the two rides, with Roland passing directly through Nessie’s vertical loop.

I wasn’t a fan of this Gerstlauer Eurofighter previously, but was willing to give it a second chance today. If anything, it had only gotten worse.

Both the queue and dark ride sections of the experience are really good and I do enjoy singing along to “Novgoroooooooooooooooooooood”, but it’s just such a poor piece of hardware that doesn’t do itself justice. These trains don’t ride very well at the best of times and the layout is so uninspired after the initial launch and hill, and then again after the vertical lift, it simply judders around doing nothing.
I suppose I like to at least think it was a learning experience and necessary precursor to the ridiculous monster that came after it.

2016

2017
I didn’t particularly have an issue with the old look of the tower because it’s just so overwhelming and I can’t believe it exists. It now looks both ridiculous and amazing.

Schwur des Kärnan blew me away on my first visit. On my very first ride I had the queue, fancy loading sequence and train all to myself and I was shaking so badly from fear and anticipation throughout the entire indoor tower section. I’ve never had that sort of reaction from a ride before.
What have they done to this gamechanging Gerstlauer Infinity since? Made it even more intense of course.

The outdoor queue area has been beefed up with some intense castle theming, full of intricate details and it’s own custom series of documentaries.
There’s a whole new indoor preshow section to the queue with the King of Denmark shouting about many things while effects are going off before you get to the brilliant bag room.

The backwards drop on the lift hill feels much more legitimate after they did some tweaking. It was a very controlled feeling previously that, while insane and unprecedented as a feature on a coaster, didn’t provide much in the way of pure thrill.
It’s just plain scary now, with the power to back it up. This ride toys with you so much in that tower that it almost becomes unbearable, in the best way.

From the first traditional drop onwards, it’s a fantastically violent machine with some very intense moments and all kinds of forces going on.
It’s a tad rough, particularly in the outside seats and the lap bars unavoidably clamp your legs so hard from the moment you leave the tower, but that’s all forgiven for what you get in return.
They’ve also added a little bit of ‘you’ve made your peace with the ride’ music (like the final note on Hex) with some fancy lighting as you walk up the exit path into the ride shop. The full soundtrack is now available in the main shop. So happy.

#1 Kleine Zar is a cute little kids coaster. If you’re gonna get a cheap ride, you might as well put a little effort in around it, and they have.
It also has most ridiculous enforcement of a no glasses rule I’ve ever encountered. If I could tell tales of the things mine have ridden…

Time passed quickly through many encounters with Kärnan and a sit down with a cheap, tasty pizza (I don’t often do food shoutouts, but – Italian place in the middle of the park, highly recommended).
Soon it was time to blast back up to Billund for the flight home.

What a bonus. I loved being able to spontaneously enhance the trip with an extra park visit like that. Seems more often than not that I’m rearranging plans for rides that spite.

Germany 08/16 – Freizeitpark Plohn + Belantis

Broke the land speed record on the early morning weekend autobahn to get to the first park for opening as it was going to be a slightly more packed scehdule than the previous days, later wishing I hadn’t bothered.

Day 6 – Freizeitpark Plohn

Incoming rant:
This place was a joke and far below the standards I had come to expect from the rest of Germany. The queue for entrance tickets upon our arrival was already about 45 minutes with just 2 windows open. This seems to be the ‘new entrance’ as there are another set of fancy gates not in use. It was not possible to purchase anything online, so everyone was buying tickets in person. It was also the final planned cash dealing of the trip for me, cos they’re a backwards bunch of spiters and I had specifically taken the time to verify that I had enough the night before to decide whether I needed to find a cashpoint. I did have enough. Just.
Once we were one group of guests away from paying, I started to dig my money out and accidentally dropped a 2 euro coin which rolled to the family in front. A child picked it up and pocketed it in plain sight of the parents, who then just stared at/through me before entering the park as though nothing had happened. I still just had enough for tickets, but it would now involve some smaller change. The dire old woman at the admissions desk refused to accept a couple of 5 cent coins to make up the final total and I was flatly denied entry to the park with no negotiation or opportunity to speak to anyone else.
I hadn’t driven all this way for nothing, so had to physically force my way back through the massive crowd of people waiting for tickets, no one was willing to give an inch of room – the queue was looking to be at least an hour long by now. Kicking up some serious gravel on the way out, I raced off to the nearest town to find a cashpoint.
With some fresh crisp notes to slap in their face, we finally made it into the park about 2 hours after opening and now had little to no time to enjoy the visit, not that I think I would have.

Powered straight to the GCI woodie to try and remind myself why I had put up with all that nonsense. Mercifully the ride was suffering from Freischütz syndrome and was almost a walk on. One train operations and some questionable staff methods again turned that into a painful experience. A lone bloke in an umbro hoody and tracksuit was running everything by himself as follows:
Check the seatbelts.
Check his phone.
Check the bars.
Check his phone.
Brandish a tatty A4 piece of paper with some rules printed on it and start lecturing everyone in the station for a couple of minutes, also pointing at a pub chalkboard which had the height restrictions written on it, in chalk of course.
Bit late for height restrictions now we’re strapped in, I thought to myself.
Checked his phone.
Dispatch.
What sort of hell have I entered?

The ride itself was good, as I would have expected, but not nearly good enough to justify the current situation. The sad thing is, it was probably the best coaster of the trip as well, packed with a multitude of airtime hills that never came close to matching the height differential of the first drop.

Seems I didn’t even get a good picture of it. Have another goat instead:

On to the next cred. Eh.

The park ungracefully turned from themed Wild West area to a field with a carnival wacky worm on it at this point.

The powered coaster #4 Miniwah was pretty damn sweet and a welcome change for being completely indoors and very well themed. The speed of the ride and level of lighting changes between laps, adding a bit more excitement to proceedings. Don’t see many of these getting built any more, but this was a worthy one to try and a very pleasant surprise.

Zierer family coaster with too big a queue. Eh.

Having blitzed all of the creds, decided there was time for a couple more laps on El Toro before hopefully turning my back on this place forever (until Mack spited me by threatening to build something good here).

With more gravel displaced, it was off to the next park.

Belantis

No issues getting past the friendly staff here. Cards were accepted and there was a cashpoint right next to the counters just for good measure. Shouldn’t have to take any notice of this trivial stuff.

Got the biggest coaster out of the way first. Not a fan of Eurofighters generally and this one is particularly unpleasant in the way that it rides through too many inversions, but not enough to stop me taking a second go just to make sure.

Skipped the kiddy racer cred, too intense (big for it). It pains me to see that these exist, knowing I can never again ride one. Almost as if Gerstlauer designed them with spite in mind.

I’ll forgive them for making another satisfying family ride though. The station here was billowing a lot of nice smelling smoke effect.

Caught this one on a good day it seems. I’ve ridden some of these bobsleds when they’re being a bit underwhelming, but this one was picking up some decent speed before the couple of good hills.

There are far more mad houses in the world than I ever would have expected. Verlies des Grauens was themed to castles and wizards, like most of them. I found it to be one of the better ones for putting up with lack of understanding what’s happening – the preshows didn’t go on too long and the hardware interaction was satisfying.

Fluch des Pharao looked mental to begin with, but still managed to exceed my expectations on intensity. Getting into the boat is struggle as it’s just like a big inflatable dinghy. The floor is so thin you unnervingly feel everything going on beneath your feet – the conveyor, rollers and sloshing of the water, elevator lifts(!), then you start to feel rather vulnerable.

As the boat hits the water after the main drop, there’s a brutal natural braking effect that you have to really brace for in order to not chip a tooth, then it just starts crashing into concrete walls around this whirlpool monstrosity. Fantastic ride.

Love that pun too.

That was about it for the park, it has quite a lot of space and some good old-fashioned themed areas which would imply it has good potential to expand, if the world was like RCT, but it isn’t. I hope they give me a reason to return as I did like the place. It was refreshing in two ways – 1) having lots of misters out along the pathways to help with the heat 2) not being Plohn.

Upon leaving, I found out the parking barrier was supposed to issue me a token when we came in, but it hadn’t. The member of staff I went to for assistance was very understanding and helpful and gave me a free token to get out, saving us the parking cost for the day.
An odd day overall. I had expected Belantis to be a bit crap and Plohn to be nice. Ended up with the complete opposite.

Day 7 was a painful 5 hour crawl back to airport through several hundred miles of constant traffic, along with far too many petrol stops in the still overly thirsty car.
Overall it was successful trip with no particularly standout creds, which I knew would probably be the case, but some very nice places along the way. It’s a shame I’m running out of German parks way too fast.

Germany 08/16 – Zugspitze

Day 5

It would be good to say the entire day was dedicated to the below park of such fine calibre, but it was mostly filled with mountains. Decided to go for Zugspitze: Germany’s highest mountain experience.

Parked up at the station below and jumped on the biggest cablecar I’ve ever seen, both in length and car size. It felt unnaturally huge with only 4 people in it, but still had that characteristic and unnerving bounce when it cleared certain sections.

What made this experience a little more interesting for me was the observation platforms they have near the summit, sticking out over the edge of the abyss.

The metal grilled floor and relatively low glass edges provided an almost paralysing sense of fear in heights in me that I hadn’t really experienced to such a degree before.

I can replicate the sensation best when holding a phone over the edge of an observation deck to take pictures, rather than with my own head, so it’s good to know my internal priorities are straight.

We signed a book at the top of the mountain and then walked down this winding pathway towards another of the cable cars that could take us back down, for a slight change of scenery.

Fear not, there was still time for a cred by the time we reached the car.

Märchenwald im Isartal

Hidden in this forest next to a bottle bank (not quite as glamorous as the previous) is another Gerstlauer family coaster.

Had several fun laps of the nutty squirrel, narrowly avoiding the low clearance trees.

Followed by a wander around many more fairytale forest exhibits.
That’s enough of that.

Day 6

Germany 08/16 – Bayern Park + Rodel- und Freizeitparadies St. Englmar

The lack of crowds for the time of year surprised me on this trip. I had expected to struggle a little on the more medium sized family parks, but it was never really an issue at all.

Day 4 – Bayern Park

Terrifying.

This was particularly apparent here, with their Maurer X-Car being a walk on all morning. Perhaps everyone got lost in the queue, as it is an actual maze at some points. Or perhaps it is true that this ride doesn’t meet the target audience of the rest of the park. Gave it several goes throughout the visit and was left mostly confused.

The inverted top hat was a nice element, but the rest of the layout seemed a bit shakey at times and trivial rather than fun, there were no other stand out moments other than a crushing intensity throughout the loop and following corner.

I find X-cars can be quite hit or miss. At the time, I believed this one to be a miss, but looking back it’s probably more my type of thing than I realised – forceful and a bit of a mould breaker. I just didn’t know it yet.

Ticked off the Tivoli large.

And the Tivoli small. I believe their next investment will be a Tivoli medium.

Had a nice walk through the woods and found a quaint little boat ride with a mouthful of a name – Rundbootfahrt durch Schloss und Grotte (and a dark ride section!)

The questionable rapids ride had a good out of control, tubey drop section where it came close to clearing the side and exploding in a fireball.

Was a little disappointed to find the hardware inside Thaolon, what I had written down as another ‘dark ride drop tower’ was a tad on the small side, with elves and sparkly lights. Could have been worse.

There wasn’t much left to do at this park except get my fill on Freischütz, so headed out earlier than planned to fulfil a few other backup plans.

Voglsam

Which began with a local farm for some Bobkart action. Great fun as always. Why can’t the farms near me have one of these?

Grass is always greener.

Please, let me have a ride.

No.

Rodel- und Freizeitparadies St. Englmar

Final stop of the day was a bit of a mouthful to say.

I admire this neat little place, making sure all the gravity on this big hill doesn’t go to waste.

The new Zierer coaster with its unusual consecutive lifts hills was up first. The use of the terrain resulted in some solid family fun with an interesting layout.

Alpine coasters have their good and bad points. With the brake lever in your hands, you can go full speed with a lot more conviction, but there’s a little something lacking when you’re tied to the rails and aren’t thinking ‘I’m gonna crash this’ in the back of your mind.

The non-alpine coaster alongside it brought that feeling straight back. I particularly like these ones with the big upright backrests for maximum comfort, the backless seats are crippling on a long lift hill.

Day 5