Fruitless France & Bastard Belgium - Part 2: Belle de Panne

[HeartlineCoaster]

If there's anything you all need right now, it's another Astérland trip report. Don't worry, i'll try and keep it brief.

Parc Saint Paul

was first on the cards. Thanks to the Sat Nav, ended up unnecessarily in the overflow car par. A few other cars had done the same and were beginning to figure things out, but we'd made our bed and sucked up the longer walk. The quirkiness of this park begins at the gate, where 8ft tall security guards are checking bags. That night I was haunted by dreams of being too tall for creds.

Started off with one for Merlin. World's first Wacky Worm with fog machine. Spectacular theming on this thing, wish a few other parks would put a little effort into disguising their inferior hardware like this. Plohn.

Are Pax consistently crazy? Yes they are.

Being a shared lap bar on Wild Train, I made the statement 'I've got some clearance here' as we crested the lift in the back seat. Some entertainingly substantial ejection followed moments later.
They underestimate themselves by having seatbelts in the back row but not the front. It is equally wild at both ends and a lot of fun.

Got a +1 on one of those spinning rodents

I couldnt quite work out what I was looking at from the car park in terms of the track for Formule 1. The only thing I knew going into this was that it had crashed or something.

Impatiently pacing tigers in a small cage next to the ride seemed quite fitting for the daredevil attitude of this thing. It was an experience, but being a bit wild mouse like in pacing, perhaps not as good as their other stuff.

Got a +1 on not Tuff Tuff To-get while discussing the many ways in which swinging from a pole, breaking a leg and being carried off is not a cred. (Yes, saw that happen).

I assume Vekoma were trying to counteract the Paxness of this place when they did the design for Aérotrain. Juniors are far from the best of rides anyway, but something was seriously off with the layout of this one.

Mission complete, off to

Parc Astérix

In a change to the original billing, decided to utilise both some extra long opening hours and the one shot fastrack to make sure this place didn't screw us over. Turns out we didn't need those hours at all...

As promised, guns at the entrance and much confusion as to where to pick up the fastrack from.

Somehow ended up at Vol Don't care first.

Highlight: Didn't break down on us. Did later.
Lowlight: Almost broke down on us. Blocked to about 1mph.

Keen to test my French, the info man nearby obliged with the French words "Zeus, Left and Photo" which I worked out to be Zeus, Left and Photo.

Picked up fastrack where Zeus left his photos and immediately went to see what Zeus had to offer. Think my bag had a better time of it than I did. It was all a bit underwhelming in the moment, but it's slowly improving in my mind the more I think about it since. It's got length, I'll give it that.
Highlight: A couple of corners I like to call the thigh wobblers.
Lowlight: A couple of corners I like to call why....

Gouderix is back on 2 trains thankfully. Really don't see the issue with this thing, seems I laugh in the face of these rides people call awful. Just strap yourself in and feel the Gs.
Highlight: Shouting about how alright the ride was as it hit 'that' corner and my bag goes flying across the floor of the car.
Lowlight: So much unjustified hate.

Pégase Express is a good little ride with a fair amount of stuff going on.You get quite a substantial journey out of it over the course of its many sections and it was a pleasant surprise not knowing much about it.
Highlight: Bit of train duelling going on with forwards and backwards cycles running at the same time.
Lowlight: The bag policy started to bother me here. They've had those Helix dispensers installed in the station but don't bother to use them. I'm now expecting to ride Ozlris with a bag wrapped round my foot...

Which may have made Ozlris more interesting.

This thing didn't deliver for me at all. To start with, it didn't really impress me visually. Rode the outside seat at the back, on which the first drop gave me one swift

(so that's more than Gouderix) and then it had a severely uncharacteristic rattle to it and did **** all interesting. It had weird tracking moments like after the loop and after one of the many corners over mud (so that's more than Gouderix). Left the ride and stood outside for a while thinking did this thing just kill B&M?
Gave it another chance later on an inside seat and it didn't ride as crap or as boring. Half decent at best. Not what I wanted to be saying.
Highlight: Queue was quite good?
Lowlight: I won't say any more.

SOS El Nombre
Highlight: +1
Lowlight: I dunno, some jab at Ozlris being in the vicinity.

Rounded off the coasters with a Trail of Hurray. Good name for a cred run. One of the weaker bobsleds. Didn't get the theme.
Highlight: Banging operations, haven't praised them enough yet.
Lowlight: Bag saga continues with the restraint trying to snap my phone in half.

Used the fastrack on Menhir Express for a laugh. It was my kind of messed up, with the weird rapid-like sections halfway down a tube sending waves over the side of the boat and then the surprise drop feature. A little too much French sweat in my mouth though.

Did the Madhouse at some point in all that and it was brilliant. Bit of a slow burner at the start, but the fountain room was really great and I loved finally seeing a different take on the technology for the actual ride. Very refreshing to see the screens on the wall and the swinging used to emulate the movement of a boat as opposed to a million other 'it's a room with some spooky stuff going on' versions.

Narrowly avoided becoming part of a Samba (not the last time i'll be saying that on this trip) in the form of some parade thing and took shelter in a pizza restaurant to eat pizza and contemplate the park...

It's alright I guess.

There's a much better atmosphere than I was expecting and the operations are impressively quick. I suppose I just didn't expect it be a one and done park.
Since I knew of its existence, I've pictured it as quite a significant park on the theming and ride front, but there's nothing at all that makes me want to go back. I had more fun on the mad house and the log flume than any of the coasters.

Best ride might have been Zeus as we wanted to give it another go, but the queue was an hour and trailing well out of the entrance before and after pizza, then it broke down. Couldn't be bothered in the end and left early.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Yay for more Zeus love

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Day 2 – Bellewaerde

Didn’t get on very well with a trail of hurray through Belgian parks last year, but remained optimistic that this was the ‘better half’ we were tackling today.

Arrived for opening and immediately had to change tactics after being sent round to a different car park entrance than expected. Stood half-sheltered by the gates amongst 500 smokers while it pissed down with rain and the lion mascot teased us all. Headed straight for Huracan as it was closest and had a billed opening time of 10:00.

Queue opened at 10:15 and ended up on the second train of the day. This thing was surprisingly good with its impressive and foreboding dark ride section and immediately brought about joking statements such as ‘better than Parc Asterix’. The coaster section was more substantial than expected. I do appreciate an indoor layout that gives you a little something to think about.

Checked out the Boomerang and found that didn’t open til 10:30. Tivoli?
Checked out the Tivoli and found that there was a huge queue and they were only filling 4 out of the 500 rows on the train. Boomerang it is.
Queue opened on time and ended up on the first train of the day. Endured that successfully and went back over to the Tivoli to see they were now using 5 rows. Skip.

Headed over to the alpines instead, now rather worried that the queue would be fked. The blue side seemed to be broken as we started the substantial climb to the station but by the time we reached the top it was running. Throughput was expectedly poor, but it hadn’t drawn the crowds yet so queued about 20 minutes a side.

Didn’t find it particularly well executed. Though the name may imply, there is no real duelling as 1) they weren’t attempting to dispatch both sides at the same time and 2) you have no control over how fast you go. As an alpine it was a weak layout, being short and just corners. Oh well.

Tivoli was at last having all of the train filled, but the queue was still massive and being hindered by constant groups of unknown origin getting batched up the exit and taking any part of the train they felt like. Sucked up the 40 minute wait for completeness, grabbed some lunch for the car and hit the road.

Plopsaland De Pain

It seemed we were doing well on time, but it didn’t take long for the combination of Belgium and Plopsa to strike hard.
Took the long way round to Anubis to find an empty train stuck on the block outside the station. “Well that’s f*cked”.

Began the ticking off task instead and rode the Tivoli. 2 of these back to back, such joy.
Then the Vekoma. More joy.
Anubis was fixed by now, so entered the nice looking building. Didn’t like the fact they ran out of pictures to put on the wall halfway through the queue and started recycling the same ones. Better than the Anubis drop tower queue at least.
The ride wasn’t bad. Better than a Eurofighter any day, but a shame it wasn’t as smooth as Lynet. Bit rough going into the top hat thing after the launch, but otherwise fine for a Gerst.

Supersplash seemed to draw a weird crowd and operations were painful to watch as the wrong number of people were constantly piling into each row and the staff were at a loss as to what to do. Apart from the novelty lift, ride was terrible. No payoff, then drifting around in Norovirus water for far too long and sitting outside the station for 5 minutes while people continued to fk things up.

Time to improve the day with some GCI goodness…
Speiti the Ride was down, a small crowd gathered outside the entrance. Within a few minutes a security man appeared to give the all clear to the staff member at the entrance and led us through as far as the stairs. Upon reaching the stairs, something changed their minds and we were asked to all leave again.
We camped out the ride entrance for the next 2 hours in the hope we could get some good laps in once it reopened and it was quite amusing and confusing to watch. The security presence followed by staff with a first aid kit implied something had happened to a guest and the ride was fine. However these particular staff walked off into the sunset shortly afterwards and the ride remained closed. Some time later an engineer turned up, went into the ride area below the lift, went in the shed, came out shortly after and walked off into the sunset. The ride was slowly bleeding staff with no-one coming to replace them and eventually a cocky management type came to the entrance and started telling people “technical problems” and gesturing at his watch as if to imply “look at the time, it ain’t worth reopening now”.

Well ****, let’s ride the powered thing then. They’ve somehow managed to break one of the cars on this to the extent that the occupants have to get out of the vehicle and piss about with the restraints under the instructions of the staff before it can run properly. Of course with the current clientele and staff, this is a complete nightmare to behold. Got there in the end.

That was pretty much day over now, with a bit of safety net and a chunnel to head back to. Depressingly wandered over to the exit to buy a parking ticket. One machine was broken, the other had just eaten someone’s card while they stood there thinking 'Plopsa, man...' Followed them into guest services where they were told to wait by the machine thinking 'Plopsa, man...'
The remainder of the parking ticket queue was the left to stand at the desk waiting while the single member decided creating and printing annual passes was a priority. 10 minutes of leaning further and further over the desk, money in hand, then the staff member starts chatting on the phone before we finally get anywhere.

Walked into the car park and saw that Speiti was f*cking running... Should we? RUN!
Blagged our way back into the park with a combination of brandishing the parking ticket like madmen and making gestures about 'the wooden one'.
Narrowly avoided a Samba (told you it would come back) in the form of some parade that decided to get in our way.
Did an Indiana Jones through a restaurant that was closing its shutters.
Got a stitch.
Got into the queue. 20 minutes of chunnel anxiety queue passed quickly and we got our single lap on Speiti.

Decent little woodie. About on par with my expectations, which for GCI are quite high. Best coaster in Belgium (that wasn't hard was it?).

Should have stayed for more. Got to the chunnel check in 2 minutes late and was reassigned to another train 3 hours later. Ended the trip with a glamorous Burger King surrounded by 'those English-French holiday makers'.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Oh dear that sounds absulutely awful. At least you got Heidi in the end, lol.

That Burger King at the French side of the tunnel is the absolute worst. It's always hugely busy and full of people who are tired, pissed off and shouting at the staff. Gross.

 

[Coaster Hipster]

That day in Belgium sounds like a nightmare :s But that makes for a funny story (at least for some of us)!


Talked to some Astérix regulars, they told me that train #2 on OzIris is the rattliest and others are fine. Do you remember which train you got by any chance? I did get some vibrations on some of my rides this month

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

All in good fun, I love a good story to tell.

It was probably that train first time then, I have no idea. Stupid thing.