The next morning found us bombing down the autobahn towards the only German park of the trip. The border from the Netherlands to Germany can easily be missed, unless your car is clever enough to tell you that the speed limits have suddenly changed.
We were one of the first cars to arrive in the seemingly tiny car park and nabbed a space next to a hut directly opposite the park’s second entrance, which lets you straight into the rather attractive looking Chinese area.
Day 2 – Phantasialand
Often described as the best theme park on the planet, first impressions were that although some areas did look amazing, it was all very tightly packed. On a good day this could be seen as immersive, on a bad day – more clasutrophobic. This was a weekday past the end of the local school holidays and we were surprised at the crowd levels that were beginning to build and obstruct our journey around. There were also staggered openings of certain ride areas that meant turning up early didn’t particularly help our cause. If we wanted to be among the first into the new land, it would have meant queuing an hour anyway just for it to open up.
After reaching the central plaza and getting our bearings, we opted to start the day on Maus au Chocolat, which was billed to open half an hour after the park had. The queue was a little lighter and contained strange acts from guests including producing boxes of hard boiled eggs out of nowhere and proceeding to eat them/drop them on the floor. This shooting dark ride was amazing. You can tell from the smell, the moment you walk in and wind your way down the stairs that you’re in for a treat. The vehicles stop at several screens on their journey at which you get to play fun shooting games with chocolate and mice of course. The sections in between the screens are what steps it up a gear as an attraction, just being plain mesmerising to look at.
A strong start, what next? We headed through the archway towards Wuze Town, which was to open within the next half an hour (not that long now, having been on our first ride). The pathways suddenly became a lot quieter and more pleasant, until we headed indoors.
This indoor section is home to a pair of Maurer spinning coasters and the queue for these rides was nothing short of grim. Again, tons of people had turned up before it was open and begun packing their way into the dark, dingy, loud and sweaty maze of a queueline, where we couldn’t even tell what was what.
These spinners are both special in that they have a few magic tricks up their sleeve and each one of the two has it’s own unique feature. They both start with an elevator lift, which houses a single car and brings it swiftly up to the highest point of the ride, also unusually tilting it at an angle ready to drop upon release. If you are facing backwards in the car, this is particularly thrilling. The layout begins sprawling out through the building, with one of the sides having a particularly notable airtime hill past a waterfall. They then enter a traditional wild mouse style section of sharp flat turns, up high, that kill the pace a bit before heading onto the long spiralling helices around the theming centrepiece of the indoor area. The final magic comes at the end of the rides, where both have a ‘trick track’ section, on which the car comes to a stop, and the track itself moves with you to position you in a different way. They also have a wonderful ‘bounce’ effect where the track appears to temporarily give from underneath you while you’re on the final brake section – don’t ask me how this is done.
I was disappointed to only get a single lap on each of these very intriguing creations, but it simply wasn’t worth suffering the queue again for more and we would eventually just run out of time.
In the same vicinity is another indoor coaster, Temple of the Nighthawk. This strange Vekoma navigates a pitch black warehouse through three separate lift hills, with a very sedate experience between each one. It’s a bit of an outlier for the park and is regularly billed for removal at some point, but I didn’t dislike it.
The other supposed outlier also here is Hollywood Tour, an indoor boat ride around various film scenes. I liked it. It doesn’t really fit the park at all, but it’s generally impressive or otherwise tacky in an always entertaining manner.
I don’t think we could wait for the new attraction any longer, so we headed into the wonderful Klugheim.
The other claim I didn’t mention at the beginning of the report is that Taron has the most ‘crossing points’ of it’s own track over itself , on any coaster in the world.
The ride itself is ridiculous. Due to the lack of height differential it maintains it’s speed almost endlessly from the first launch, darting this way and that, seemingly without any plan or purpose at all. The second launch doesn’t even feel necessary as you’re already moving with such a pace, but sure enough you lurch down into the deepest depths of the area and you’re suddenly going twice as fast again – the way the whole ride shakes while this is happening, combined with the sheer elation of knowing there’s another half to this experience as you accelerate ever quicker towards it, stirs a reaction in me like almost nothing else.
Somewhere amidst all this is the family coaster that opened at the same time, Raik. Another remarkable achievement in itself, this Vekoma junior boomerang intertwines itself with big brother Taron. It lacks a little in the force department, but it’s a satisfying ride if only for the views and the interaction.
A massive drop tower and dark ride all rolled into one sounded like my kind of attraction. Mystery Castle was a let down though. A confusing start lead to angry staff members. The ride sequence itself was weak, suffering from a strong controlled sensation that eliminates the point of a good drop tower. The visual spectacle when the roof lit up with lightning and highlighted all the other vehicles around the ride, giving an impressive sense of the scale of the whole thing was by far my favourite part.
Sadly my dominating memory of Chiapas, the intensely themed log flume, was that of the restraints being awkward. Unlike traditional flumes, this uses a lap bar, supposedly to combat the fact that this ride claims the steepest drop of its type in the world. The bar goes nowhere near my lap however, directly pinning down the middle of my thigh, so my feet are forced into the floor. When that floor is inches deep in water, this isn’t pleasant. Part of the fun of a water ride for me is trying to save yourself from a soaking, in whatever way possible, but being doomed from the moment you sit down to sink your foot into a small lake, cramped in with many other guests and have it remain that way throughout the entire experience put me off a bit.
Things went from bad to worse after we got lost trying to find Colorado Adventure. A highly themed mine train with incredible interaction should have been really good fun, but we ended up in the front row where the train has a roof. The tracking of the ride was awful in this position, jerking uncomfortably all over the place to the point where I hit my head hard on one of the pillars of the train. That put me off more than a bit.
Geister Rikscha was a haunted house style omnimover dark ride, with Chinese mythology. Not much of the experience jumped out at me, but like with Hollywood Tour it had a certain charm about it that I couldn’t help but enjoy.
We’re still missing a coaster in here somehow, the park really is hard to navigate.
I think we could be forgiven for missing it. Taron may have had impressive immersion, but I think the theming of this B&M invert is a bit underappreciated these days.
It blends into its environment so well that you can barely get a picture of it. This level of landscape interaction makes for an amazing ride, with the train hurtling around entrenched corners and into surprise inversions without you ever knowing what’s coming next.
It doesnt quite have the moments of intensity found on some inverts, but it more than makes up for it through a sense of sheer disorientation. I couldn’t even describe to you how the layout works, and I like that.
Our day was fast coming to a close at this point, with no real time for rerides on anything. It’s partly the number of quality attractions that we had to get through, but the amount of queueing did feel like a sufferance on more than one occasion, for what should be the most efficient country in the world on a supposedly quiet day.
We wanted to find a shop to buy some merchandise before we left, but at the point of ride closure announcement, staff members were driving round on golf buggies and shouting at people to get out of their park. All the shops had promptly closed as well and we suddenly felt very unwelcome. You weren’t even allowed to relax and take a stroll out of the park at your own pace, instead they had to sour the day with a poor attitude. This coupled with a few other incidents throughout the visit left me with a final impression of Phantasialand that was less than favourable. Which is a shame. They’ve got some cracking rides.
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.
Fluch von Novgorod
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.
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.
#1 El Toro
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:
#2 Silver Mine
On to the next cred. Eh.
#3 Raupe
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.
#5 Plohseidon
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.
#6 Huracan
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.
#7 Cobra des Amun Ra
I’ll forgive them for making another satisfying family ride though. The station here was billowing a lot of nice smelling smoke effect.
#8 Drachenritt
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.
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.
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.
#1 Freischütz
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.
#2 Achterbahn
Ticked off the Tivoli large.
#3 Froschbahn
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.
#4 Voglwuide Sepp
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.
#5 Bayerwald Coaster
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.
The park website for Fantasiana having bold claims of being home to the best dark rides in Europe caught my attention during the planning of this trip, although it was a little out of the way.
The journey down into Austria was somewhat stressful due to the fact I forgot to research any implications of the country border crossing here and many signs along the autobahn were giving indication of a permit or sticker being required for driving on their neighbour’s roads. I became sure that at some point I was just going to race up to a toll booth type situation and have to have an awkward conversation complete with language barrier about how much I had messed up. Luckily after much German sign scrutinising there was a break off point in the centre of the road, before we reached the border, that sold the stickers on the spot for no more than a few Euros.
Day 3 – Fantasiana
The entrance to the park takes you past an indoor walkthrough section with fairy tales in display cabinets. A very common theme in this part of the world.
Sindbad’s Abenteuerreise was somewhat more scare orientated compared to the adventures that I had imagined and the result was a rather loveable and quirky ghost train type experience.
The queue had this bloke waffling on about something while water gushed from his mouth and that was only the first of many delights.
#1 Wild Train
My first experience with a Pax coaster and visually there’s something off about it. The hideous shaping makes for a great ride though, supplying vicious airtime way beyond what anyone would expect for something this size.
He’s definitely not ducking there is he? The clearance in parts seems way off for standard regulations and that’s part of the charm – I like a bit of real peril with my rides.
Knightsride Tower was running on a time slot basis. This was a really good attraction as well.
The queue had smoky animatronic dragon and spiders. The ride that followed was a very interesting drop tower sequence compared to other rides of this ilk, utilising various positions to present you with actual dark ride scenes, along with good music and bonus effects. Although the drop itself was short, it was well timed and packed a punch.
Mami Wata was yet another hit, squeezing a good amount of fun into a tiny space with the use of turntables and elevators with the signature craziness of a Hafema build. The ride also comes with its own ImaScore CD, which was instantly purchased and remains one of my favourite theme park tracks.
They had a train with some dinosaurs, all the rage these days.
They even booked a band for the day.
Killed some time with re-rides until after lunch, when Castle Dracula opened. This was a scare attraction that started out with a solo trip through a mirror maze and then became many animatronic and effect based scenes. It acted as though it was quite an intense experience for a very family orientated park, with a couple of groups leaving the queue prematurely during the warning announcements. This seemed a little unnecessary from my assessment of the inside, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
While the bold claims on the website may not be fully true, Fantasiana is definitely a little gem of a park with some very good attractions as well as probably having the nicest atmosphere of the whole trip.
Satisfied with the success of that find, we raced back over the border for this jolly fellow.
Freizeitpark Ruhpolding
This park is hidden away deep in the woods somewhere, filled with lots of play equipment, plus more dinosaurs and fairy tales of course.
#2 Gipfelstürmer
It is also home to a small Gerstlauer shuttle coaster, which is somewhat of a rare breed. Gipfelstürmer is very good fun for its size, the flat section of track at the top of the reverse spike lift hill means that the back seat gets whipped forwards into the first drop with quite a jolt. Another snappy twisted hill moment also means there’s a few more forces going on compared to the Vekoma equivalents. It has a great name to say as well.
No, that’s a crane in the background, not another cred unfortunately. The park were building a water slide or something.
Arrived bright and early the next morning for the park with the lowest capacity rides ever. Nothing here seats a decent amount of people in one go, so what appears on the surface to be a quiet park can easily get some significant queues.
Day 2 – Skyline Park
This park has become somewhat of a testing ground for Maurer Rides, being home to more than one first-of-their-kind installations. They also have a bit of a repetetive naming system for their attractions.
Nothing opened for the first half hour or so, but a queue began to form outside #1 Sky Rider and we joined in. This unique Caripro Gryoflyer seemed like a fun idea, but wasn’t particularly interesting. The cars have four seats facing in towards a thick metal pole that suspends you from the track. You can spin the car by this pole yourselves, but it looked like too much effort and never really got going in the hands of anyone else, particularly with the limitations of the layout.
#2 Sky Wheel
I was dreading my first (and the world’s first) Sky Loop as the lift hill inverts before the ride even begins and I particularly hate long periods of being held upside-down (which might seem strange for this hobby, but it’s not actually that common to be held like it). Grabbing the first train of the day meant it was over with quickly. I was quite surprised by how much this ride didn’t offend me, it was actually reasonably fun once the start was over, which happened to be just on the limit of how much I could bear.
#3 Sky Spin
Quite surprised by how much this did offend me. Stock model Maurer spinners seem to lack a certain spark that their custom models often have.
#4 Achterbahn
Usually Schwarzkopf have something rather special to offer, seemingly ahead of their time as a manufacturer in the previous century. Sadly this Wildcat model is a rather uninspired layout that rides like a more structurally sound Zyklon Galaxi at best.
Having planned the entire trip around the most offensive ride construction project of all time, I was suitably disappointed to see it wasn’t finished.
Probably should have queued for the Bobkart earlier. It took about an hour for every child in Europe to board. I do love them though, the self controlled burst of acceleration is always surprisingly powerful in what feels like a very exposed environment and this one didn’t disappoint.
Did my first and last Butterfly and Bayern curve in this park too. They don’t count.
Although the rides at Skyline Park were interesting, none of them were particularly good and certainly nothing was worth queuing for again, so we headed out for something that wasn’t a theme park.
The village below Neuschwanstein Castle seems to be about 50% car park, but finding a space was still a painful experience with many signs out front saying full and attendants that were difficult to negotiate with. From the village, a bus takes you up to the top if you’re on a tight schedule/not an avid mountaineer.
Although not usually my thing, I have to admit it does look great when you get there.
I got addicted to Germany at some point in 2016. There’s something very satisfying about doing road trips over there (autobahn efficiency?) For this particular jaunt we hired a car in Frankfurt and had 1 night near there, 1 night near Leipzig and did everything else out of Munich, totalling about 2500 miles. For a lengthy hire in which I had gone out of my way to ensure an unlimited mileage option, they decided to provide me with a very thirsty ‘hot hatch’. This left me torn, as it was fun while on the road, but I spent as much time in petrol stations as I did making progress. Bastards.
Day 0 – Holiday Park
Decided to hit the ground running by taking advantage of a late opening day and trying some night rides on the multi award winning Intamin hyper. I imagine most parks would think there was something wrong with you for showing up and paying full price at 9pm, but from previous experience this place seems to have somewhat of a cult following even with the locals, so no eyelids were batted.
Expedition GeForce
I still found it to be a great ride when measured in moments – some of the airtime is rather ridiculous, but I find it a little too much of a one trick pony these days compared to the more recent world beaters. The trims, uneventful corners and everything in between the signature hills just take me out of it a bit.
Day 1 – Legoland Deutschland
54 Legolands in and I’ve almost decided they’re not worthwhile parks to me now. It’s a shame the creative and unique side of their respective Minilands can’t be reflected in the ride line-ups.
#1 Drachenjagd
Started off with the smallest coaster. Gerstlauer are really good at this size of ride and luckily for me there’s plenty more of that around this region.
#2 Feuerdrache
Their Dragon coaster was unusually rough compared to clones 10 years its junior, which isn’t a good sign. At least it was running thirty trains at once in true German style.
Unforunately I can’t make the same excuse for #3 Project X – Test Strecke, which behaved considerably worse than other Mack wild mouse models of the exact same age. You don’t need to know what they look like. My camera didn’t.
Also spent too long in the sun waiting for a 4D cinema show. Can’t remember which film I saw at which Legoland anymore, which shows how much of an impact they make.
Surprise hit of the park was Jungle X-pedition. It featured a dark ride section and a backwards drop. The signs of a quality attraction.
Having the same boats as Valhalla only added to it.
The train around the park offered some rare shade and little else.
The highlight of Miniland.
One of those spiteful fairs with the face of a wacky worm cred on the poster, but nothing when you get there.
They’ve outdone Space World by freezing people in a pool.
Juvelen.
Foreshadowing.
A little disappointed with this Legoland, but I don’t expect much from these parks any more due to having already done most of what they have to offer in other places. Minilands are always fun for about half an hour and the boat ride was nice to see but without any other standout innovations, I can’t see any of the Legolands suprassing Billund’s lineup. Maybe they want to keep it that way, as it is the original.
I’ve subconsciously left this park as the last place of significance in Germany, mainly due to low expectations. Since they went and got Helix trains (and a new ride to go with them), I couldn’t hold off any longer.
The day started strong with nearly getting waved into an empty field which had nothing to do with the park, then getting waved into more overflow car parks and finally a strong smell of excrement emanating from the view of an SLC and the ‘worst wooden rollercoaster in the world’.
Day 2 – Movie Park Germany
A 10 minute walk around the perimeter, stuck behind smokers, was made slightly better by the skyline being punctuated by some glamorous Mack track. Some rare perfect timing allowed us to be amongst the first in the park and some forward planning meant we knew exactly where to head to be amongst the first on the new attraction.
#1 Star Trek: Operation Enterprise
Even the first time round, I found the preshow sections to be a little tedious. The first set of screens were just being blocked by other uninterested guests as some bloke I hadn’t heard of was talking. The beam me up section didn’t really have as good of an impact as it should have. The bridge however was very impressive to someone who knew what it was supposed to look like and the use of the screen there seemed most relevant, if you weren’t all restricted to queuing in a small portion of the room and, again, couldn’t see it past other guests.
The free for all seating choice was a welcome feature in the station. The one train operation was not. Started off in the front and felt right at home in those amazing seats. I liked the ride itself a lot. Combined with the triple launch trickery at the start, you get a decent length out of it, particularly in comparison to Gold Rush the previous day and there’s a good mix of sensations going on throughout the layout. The sequence of elements is very unique but flows completely naturally and the inversions in particular just feel so… right.
#2 Van Helsing’s Factory
Swiftly and successfully moved onto the indoor Gerstlauer Bobsled to beat the rush. 15 minutes and we were on, just enough time to appreciate what was in the queue but not long enough for it to become painful. I really enjoyed this one as well. Great interactive theming throughout the layout, which itself is finally different from every other one of these installations in existence. I nearly lost it upon seeing the second lift had tyres, my mind filling with dirty thoughts about a launch happening and then completely missed everything that was going on in that section. Managed to catch up on all the details with another ride later on.
2 for 2 so far Movie Park. Why does no one like you? On to the smaller creds. This area was far from ideal, the Vekoma Junior queue looked grim, tried and failed to suck up the queue for the Wild Mouse which looked OK, then got queue jumped by about 10 people and saw all the cars starting to stack in the station.
We caved and bought a speedy pass from the nearby Nickolodeon shop instead. Yes this pass is good value as it puts you straight onto all 3 creds in the sort of manner that makes you feel a little too superior and you get dirty looks from everyone else. The power of money.
#3 Ghost Chasers, the aforementioned mouse, was made much more interesting than it should be by 2 excitable Asian girls having the time of their lives behind us.
#4 Backyardigans: Mission to Mars, the aforementioned junior was 2 laps of meh, with 500 smoking Germans staring at us from a now doubly grim queueline.
We were even asked which seat we wanted on the Vekoma Suspended Family Coaster, #5 Jimmy Neutron’s Atomic Flyer. The response? “Don’t care, got the cred.”
Went for Mystery River while in the area and got dumped about halfway through the queue in a corridor of about 35°C. It was a fun rapids ride. Didn’t understand what was going on, but a decent amount of theming and water related peril through both indoor and outdoor sections.
Narrowly avoided a samba while leaving the area through a parade and stopped for a bite to eat, already reflecting on how this park is much better than its reputation.
Decided on the Lost Tunnel next, skipping over a gruesome looking 75 minute queue for a very lengthy ride experience. Another attraction that exceeded my expectations here. The ride portion itself wasn’t particularly good for an immersive tunnel as there was little interaction between the dinosaurs on screen and our vehicle as a presence in their world, or even between the 2 sides left and right, but the pre-shows and build up to the ride were very impressive. It’s a shame the dinosaur in the exit path is for optional viewing only. After the comment from the temple bloke about “some of them may have escaped”, I wanted an animatronic to jump out of the waterfall and the bridge to collapse from under us as we left the ride room. Too far?
With a bit of luck Star Trek was down to 15 minutes, assumingly because they had just added the second train at long last. Suffered the preshows again and grabbed our second go in the back. I enjoyed spotting a couple of extra details this time, such as the screen in the room with the transfer track reading ‘uploading evasive manoeuvres’, but one thing that really doesn’t help the whole experience is that it creates far too much build up when the ride itself is almost completely unthemed and there is seemingly no conclusion to the story. I felt they could have at least housed the brake run and had a quick video saying ‘well done lads, you saved the crew/you’re now Locutus of Borg.’ The spectacle all feels a little unnecessary to the hardware itself as it currently stands.
Time to see what’s the worst they can throw at us. #6 MP-Express the SLC is great before you even get on it. The industrial estate themed fastrack queue of unpaved stones and dirt through rusty fence towards a service road followed by old metal stairs into the side of an ageing warehouse is hilarious. The ride itself was again just comedy, no nasty roughness at all, just a weird forward and back sort of pumping action through some of the inversions which caused many surrounding screams of agony, while I can’t stop laughing at it all.
It feels like there’s nothing steel can do to me these days, but I have developed a slight fear of bad woodies after Grand National tried to take my hobby away from me. So it was with significant trepidation that we boarded #7 Bandit. The lift was over surprisingly quickly and then “Oh no, oh no……. Nope it’s fine.” We recalled the statement “worst wooden rollercoaster in the world” to each other as it took the first uneventful corner and then spent the rest of the ride in a laughing fit. Nothing wrong with it at all, actually quite enjoyed it.
Over to Time Bandits, where we got spited by a show time. (Yes, wrong name, but the dark ride names all seemed so generic to me they’d just blend into one, or something else, whenever I said them at the time).
Took our re-ride on Van Helsing to fix that. Amazed myself with how much I missed on the second lift, like the car bonnets jumping about, the big scary wolf/bear thing coming out at you from amongst the cars and then the screen of the flying demon thing carrying you up high and dropping you as you take the drop. Brutal laterals are a signature of this ride type and when it’s that dark in the back seat, you can’t even see it coming. Great stuff.
Over to Time Riders, straight in. Another impressive set of theming and preshows. The actor was really into it for the first section, and then the second section looked so good we were joking to ourselves about whether there is a ride at all? Or is this the final act. It could have been. Very glad there was a ride, as the simulator is viciously fun. Multiple moments of it just feeling like a car crash as you hit something on screen and get properly chucked about in your seat. I found myself willing it to hit more things as it went on.
Grabbed an ice cream before the last ride on our list, Bermuda Triangle. More expectations exceeded, having only seen the outside drop with an angle of about 10 degrees into nothing but station. There’s a huge surprise drop in the dark at the start that felt like it went on forever, followed by some weird old theming in the underground section and a cool projection effect. Soon after, you’re running away backwards from collapsing scenery, a little disappointed it wasn’t a drop. Finally the anticlimactic finish we all knew was coming. The boat also tried to kill us by nearly tipping over as we left.
Overal Movie Park Germany provided a good day out. It probably needed Star Trek to finally make it particularly significant, but the combination of multiple decent dark rides and at least a couple of above average coasters gave me a lasting positive impression.
Satisfied with what we had achieved in the park, it was time to assess our cred options for the journey back to the airport. A bit of research while tearing up some German roads brought us to the conclusion that it was “BillyBird or bust.” Sat nav would have us there for 5 minutes before last admission and we needed a fuel stop somewhere. This may be the time to mention it was by far the slowest hire car I’ve had in Germany, being a hybrid Yaris, but that wasn’t going to stop me. Eco mode off, stick it in ‘B’, draining all the juice from the unsatisfyingly linear engine and embarrassing endless better cars on the autobahn, the run was put back into cred run.
BillyBird
Easily made it in time and what a nice place to stick a coaster. Just somewhere for the Dutch to chill out with very friendly staff, a lake, some chairs, an artificial beach, lots of stuff for kids to play on and most importantly, a cred.
#8 Familieachtbaan
Scaled the stairs to the top and jumped on. The ride is good fun for its size, with a fairly exposed feeling in the bathtub shaped cars and at least a noticeable amount of force involved. Job done.
Took advantage of some of the chilling out ourselves while we were there as there would no doubt be a couple of hours delay on an evening Easyjet flight out of mainland Europe.
Landed in Amsterdam early on a Saturday with Mega-Lite and happened across a big stand in the supermarket with 10 euro off vouchers for Walibi Holland. Not this time lads, we’re going slightly further afield with this hire car.
Day 1 – Slagharen
We had managed to grab a great deal for this park online, with some limited half price promo tickets. This ensured that it didn’t sting at all for a whole 2 creds and 1 hour spent there. Went straight to the new Gestlauer Infinity coaster and had a couple of rides on it, only about 15 minutes queue each time. For the time of year and ‘Netherlands 2nd most visited theme park’ it wasn’t crowded at all. I guess the figures are down to the resort as a whole and not just the amusement area.
#1 Gold Rush
Gold Rush is a great little ride for its size, using a triple launch system to get more out of a small footprint. The back row seemed best for a particularly crazy moment of hanging upside-down after the reverse launch and then being forcefully dragged into the surprisingly steep drop of the top hat.
It’s also rather attractive to look at.
Grabbed a panini from the plentiful shops along the walk to the Vekoma Junior #2 Mine Train, expecting a bit of a queue and planning to eat it there. Again the queue was really short, but had time to wolf the food down while watching some pitiful argument about the height of some child that went on far too long. +1.
And that’s the park really. Nicer atmosphere than I expected and Gold Rush makes the park completely worth a visit. It’s a shame with so few creds they had to remove something else to bring in the new addition, would be great if they could expand somehow.
Soon found myself back on the autobahn for the 6th time in 2 years, heading down to Phantasialand for their final 50th Anniversary event day with midnight close. We had hyped this up rather a lot in our heads, dreams of ‘midnight Taron’ being at the forefront of the motivation to get this trip rolling in the first place. Unfortunately the park fell a little short of expectations again, although it has many of the ingredients required to be amazing, I’ve always found it a struggle to have the best of times here.
Phantasialand
Got directed to an overflow car park opposite the Ling Bao entrance where a man was aggressively shouting instructions to cars in an attempt to maximise efficiency in space. This seemed to be an afterthought as the first half of the car park was already filled in completely the opposite manner to his mission. This didn’t seem to bode well for how busy it was going to be, but efficient German operations right?
Wasn’t allowed in entrance 2 for some reason, so took the long hike round to the main entrance. Had a quick scout of queue times which went as follows: Maus au Chocolat = 75 minutes – “nah mate.” Black Mamba = 75 minutes – “nah mate.”
Feng Ju Palace was down on our last visit so walked onto that first. The projection preshow was an interesting change to the many other Vekoma Madhouses around. It was amusing to start with as the robot thing kept bring out bigger and bigger weapons to fight with, but got a little repetitive when the bloke started shooting fireballs at us causing an animatronic to jiggle slightly 4 times in a row. Then the ride sequence came and not much happened except a projection on the floor near the end. Bit confused by the story on this one. Did he save the Asian girl or not?
River Quest was also down last visit so went for that next. Phantasialand complete. I donned my trusty Valhalla poncho and eagerly anticipated what my favourite Hafema boys would throw at me this time. The queue had a good build up, with a couple of spots in which boats were kicking up some nasty waves right into our path.
Loved the dual elevator lift that has to merge into a single funnel, causing you to crash viciously into a wall mid drop. There’s a bit of calm before the storm while drifting round to the whirlpool, where the boat suddenly isn’t even on water anymore and just starts spinning wildly, picking up speed, culminating in a catastrophic splash. One bloke in the boat stands up at this stage and starts grumbling about his phone being wet and trying to adjust his pocket to which both ourselves and some locals have to shout “sit down man, vertical drop any second!” Final drop wasn’t quite as mental as I had imagined, but still way beyond your average rapids ride. Great stuff.
After a bit of water maintenance, the moment of revisiting Taron had finally arrived. We entered Klugheim and paused for a second, waiting for the amazing characteristic 2nd launch sound. Moments later it hit and stupid grins were instantly brought to our faces. Queue time = 100 minutes. “Well that sucks.” Ride close time = 21:30. “Wait, what?” Dreams of ‘midnight Taron’ shattered. 105 minutes of second hand smoke and disappointment later, nabbed the front row.
Taron
The ride is exactly as good as I remembered it to be. A fun little sit down for the most part, weaving your way through rocks, track, buildings, everything, for what feels like a wonderful length of time. The second launch is probably still my favourite single moment of any ride. I love getting that feeling of ‘there’s more to come’ out of a ride, it’s a rare treat on coasters due to their inherent nature of losing momentum over time and Taron’s version of this is particularly vicious and spectacular. More marvellous mincing around follows the launch, TRIM BRAKE and you’re done. I simply don’t get the fact people consider it an intense ride. I could ride it all day like a rag doll, non-stop, with zero physical consequences. That’s not a negative at all, just, they’re wrong.
Grabbed some tasty Taron bread from the Balder shop outside and headed round again. Queue time = 115 minutes. “This isn’t going at all well.” We wouldn’t even get inside the entrance within the first 20 minutes and the 21:30 cut off time was dangerously approaching.
From a glance as we approached the station previously, there were only about 8 people in the single rider queue outside the station building. People were now powering into single rider, climbing over ropes on their way. Should we play it tactically and join them before it’s too late? I guess we’ll have to. 120 minutes of standing on a vibrating bridge followed, gradually getting Raynaud Syndrome. Sadly Mega-Lite didn’t stand the test of time and had to bail for the bathroom at this stage. There was zero chance of them letting him back in the queue and the staff even pursued him into the toilets to shout at him and try and kick him out of Klugheim. Meanwhile I was next to someone who was having an actual panic attack because of how awful the queue was and then the ride had a panic attack of its own. 1000 smoking Germans all start shouting and jeering at this announcement, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Another half hour later they got the ride up and running again. I assume a significant portion of the main queue must have bailed in disgust through the door in the cattle pen section at the announcement because it dried up 2 trains before the SRQ did. We were all brought into the station at last. I get batched into the 2nd row for the last train of the day. Looking to my left, the front row will be empty for this last train. I take the chance and attempt to head round, but one of the staff members runs over to me and screams “NO!” in my face. 2nd row it is. So I got my ‘almost midnight Taron’, in the rain too. It was fanastic. This is also now the longest I have queued for any ride ever. Wouldn’t really expect that to have happened in Germany, but there you go.
After a confused phone call through the narrow and packed walkways of the park, caught up with Mega-Lite who had been wandering aimlessly around closed rides and getting shouted at by more staff. We lucked upon walking straight on to the last train of Black Mamba, back row. Well this was certainly memorable. The staff were cheering and thrusting as we left the station. The riders were chanting and singing, getting super rowdy and excited. Dreams restored.
The ride was running like a beast at this time of night and the firework display had just begun. Every inversion was filled with ‘OH MY GOD UPSIDE DOWN FIREWORKS’ and then disappearing back into the pitch black with an intense B&M invert swoop. The train pulled back to the station. Everyone stayed seated exactly where they were. “Again?” Well, alright then. More cheering, more thrusting, more chanting, more singing. MORE UPSIDE DOWN FIREWORKS, AHHHHHHHHHH! Why did Taron have such a terrible atmosphere?
We got caught up in the masses of the Berlin area as the fireworks were coming to a close, to the (disco edition) tune of Chiapas, the park’s log flume. Unfortunately we were the only people in the park to chant “CHIAPAS!” along with it. I thought it was more popular than that.
Then we got stuck in the car park for an hour queueing to leave, music on full volume, cutting up a million people and getting cut up by a million more. Got to the hotel, parked in a hedge. Died.
