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Homemade Italian park - Osteria ai Pioppi

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Last week I decided to abandon the country during the referendum madness, shoved in a postal vote and headed off to sunny Italy for my birthday. We had two days in Venice, followed by a week at Lake Garda before flying out again from a Venice airport. The trip included visits to Gardaland and Movieland Park, the consumption of my body weight in mozzarella, getting pissed on prosecco in the pool after the election results and a return journey to the airport via Osteria ai Pioppi (a home made theme park in the woods!). Seriously guys, Ai Pioppi is CF heaven - we have to get our arses over there like now. Like yesterday.

I won't bore you with a lot of culture or say too much about the other two parks. I've been to both several times before and have written about them on CF. I'll just add that Gardaland was a very special day for me as I finally got to ride that final European B&M (until the next one is put in anyway). And what a great way to achieve it! Arguably, dive machines are getting a little tired these days but Oblivion: The Black Hole is a great little package of a coaster. It has a great drop in terms of 'falling out of your seatness', a nice second tunnel/near miss and then a beautiful kick of airtime over the hump before the forceful helix. Fab. Its definitely one of the best dive machines out there. If only the actual tunnel was a bit darker and longer and if only the great theming was better placed for a photo instead of being oddly hidden to the side.

Movieland has also acquired a new cred since my last visit - Diabolik. Despite it being a relocated 1990s Vekoma, this is still by far the most substantial coaster investment the park has made. Despite me thinking I'd rather pull out my toenails than ride an Invertigo in above 30 degrees, it was actually quite a shrewd choice by the park and was proving popular with the GP. For some reason though, the ride entrance is placed betwen the ticket barrier and the main park gate, off to the side of the entrance plaza. At the end of the day, when characters cringingly clap you out of the park, you have officially left but are still free to go ride the cred?! Bizarre. It also has a disgusting temporary metal walkway as the entrance to the ride. Gross. One and done.

On to the thing I was really excited about then. I'm sure most of you are aware of Osteria ai Pioppi but if not, basically there is this old guy who has a 'restaurant' in the woods nearish to Venice and years ago he started to build playground equipment in his shed. Then he kinda...just kept on building. The rides got bigger and bigger and now he has this giant full-sized theme park in his back garden. I was not expecting the sheer size of it AT ALL. I think there were as many if not more people there than at Movieland park and all the rides had big queues of 20 minutes to 1-2hours for the big creds. If you are planning a trip in summer, I advise spending all day there (also, it only opens weekends according to the website). We had allowed ourselves about three hours and didn't even get the creds finished. But it is FAB. FAB. FAB.

First off, we got out of the car in the hugely packed car park and I spotted something and ran off shrieking, only for my friends to find me flinging myself into this contraption that appears to be a concrete slab counterbalancing a spinning chair:

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Then I spotted one of the coasters from RCDB - Catapulta. This was the small shuttle that was still listed as under construction.

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So then we headed into the actual park and thought about lunch. The 'restaurant' was a huge open area grill/barbecue with loads of trestle tables set out under a canopy. It was lovely and cool under there and I was starving from our long drive so we got straight into the queue. I was a little bit phased at the choices. The only menu was a hand written poster above the till and eveything seemed to have polenta written next to it. Well in for penny, in for a pound, so I ordered cheese and polenta for me and something meaty with chips for the boys. Turns out, as always, that the guy serving us had impeccable English. He asked us if we were strangers now after the EU vote and, when I replied that I'd rather stay, he said we could live here if we wanted and sleep out under the trees. Between politics and creds, I don't think he realised how appealing that was! So we got given a separate wooden token for every different food and drink item in our meals and carried the armfuls of tokens around to the second counter. There we were served our food - cheese and polenta for me and, for the boys, two lots of BBQ ribs, chips and...polenta!! Haha WTF? The polenta was pretty damn good though, as was the cheese. As I was starting to get cred anxiety though, I soon had everyone up and off to explore the park.

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As you walk in, you are met with a wonderland of play equipment, children screaming, people leaping on and off of spinning metal machinery willy nilly and chaotic, unbridled FUN! Giant slides emerge from the top of trees and you catch glimpses of things whizzing past you just out of sight and hidden by branches. Huge metal cages spin through the air and there seem to be no ride operators anywhere!! It's so refreshing. I gave a whoop of delight and dived right in, running like a child at Christmas towards some spinny plate thing, before changing direction as my attention was drawn to a home-made gyroscope, and then up into the trees to try and find the source of all the screaming. As an enthusiast I was like a kid in a sweetshop. But where were the creds?

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After tearing my gaze from a 20 foot inverted walking cage ferris wheel thing, I saw a path towards something that looked like a cred, only to find it was another giant slide. What even is this?! Then finally, I saw something that looked like the spike of a shuttle coaster track. There before us stood Pendolo. And ohh my days was it tall! The small contraption out in the car park had lured me into a false sense of security and now, here in front of me was a terrifying beast of a ride. How the hell do you make that in your shed?! It had an electronic restraint mechanism, a catch car and tyre brake ffs! More importantly, I couldn't even see the top of the bloody lift hill. And then, there was this amazing handwritten sign:

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I'm pretty sure that Pendolo was the only ride in the park with a ride op!! Nervously I got into the queue. The lift hill took more than a minute to reach the top, it was so slow and antagonising. Then, when it finally released, the car fell at an astonishingly terrifying speed, flying past the waiting line inches away from their shoulders, separated only by a 6 foot garden fence. There are worse ways to die right? There's a video at the bottom of this report that shows the ridiculous speeds this thing gets up to (and how close you stand to the track - if you put your hand over the fence, it would be a gonna). When I posted the video on Facebook, I was asked if the footage had been speeded up - nah! It's all real!

I was also concerned about the homemade, flimsy looking buffer at the top of the spike. Waiting in line with my two burly rugby friends, we decided it would be best to make sure that we rode with some small children to lower our overall weight. This wasn't an exaggeration, we were genuinely scared we were too heavy and needed to take evasive action.

Once on the ride, you then have to negotiate chains and metal foot holder things and some rather cosy but nonetheless comforting OTSRs. I should probably mention that the trees and shrubs grow very close to the cred and whip you in the face as you pass. I should probably also mention that there are trees growing through the damn track!!

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Having survived all that, and having acknowledged that I'd been more scared on that coaster than on any for years...it was time to find another to ride! Right next door was something that can only be described as a tea tray on a conveyor belt. You know those rumbly roller slide things? Imagine one with no covering, just the roller base up in the air, and a tea tray to sit on. Madness! On the other side were two swings attached to a big pole by giant chains and what appeared to be some kind of hydralic mechanism. They were spinning very fast. I declared creds before imminent deaths and marched off into the forest.

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A short walk away was another cred - Carrello della Gobba. I breathed a secret sigh of relief when I realised it was a self operated kiddy ride. The ride consisted of a downhill track and hump and another small spike to slow the car. The seat appeared to be some kind of prop from 50 Shades - all unforgiving metal and chains and a metal restraint that clunked heavily to bind you in place. Once inside the fenced off track area, you had to pull the seat up to the top before getting in to ride down. Although the seat looked fairly large, everyone else in the queue was under the age of five, so the boys agreed to film and help push the seat up for me instead of riding themselves. Shame was out the window at that point, I was going to ride this ridiculous contraption whatever. I was a little concerned again though about being too heavy, as the end spike was quite short. So Tommy agreed to hold the seat half way down the slope while I leapt on mid-ride and travelled at a slightly more moderate speed. It worked...just. I only just crested the hill and didn't make it backwards over the hump. Still, one more down :D

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The final cred(s) of the day was the oldest in the park. Bob was hidden at the back of the park with the entrance to the ride at the bottom of the drop next to a zipwire and a pond. First, riders had to negotiate an ingenious gate mechanism to enter the ride. To open the gate, someone had to be standing on it at all times - so as one lot of rider's exited, only then could the next riders enter. The clever gate was on springs and had a plate that sunk down to trigger the release. Amaze! Once in, you had to drag the hugely heavy car up the slop, round a corner and up onto the flat. This was no easy task even for us. There were two sides, yellow and red, that could race if released at the same time. The cars were open on one side but enclosed on the other to avoid contact with the second train. Neat. Self loading up the big hill was slow though and we waited over an hour to get on to one side, meaning that we had to leave for our flight without getting the second cred :( Ohh well, I'm definitely coming back again. Next time with CFers in tow :D

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As the maximum number of riders was two adults per car, Ben sat out while Tommy and I got the workout. Once at the top we had some trouble getting it started and Tommy ended up push starting us and leaping in Cool Runnings style! All was going well round the corner and then the thing picked up a ridiculous amount of speed. It was then that we realised there were actual brakes in the car. ****. We tried to slow a little bit too late and couldn't really get them to work anyway. We hit a branch and then the top of the spike got nearer and nearer and nearer. ****. ****. I kid you not, we stopped it 30cm from the top of the unbuffered spike. An absolutely terrifying, brown trouser moment. Then we rolled backwards and forwards a good few times until the car finally lost enough momentum for Tommy to leap out and stop the thing. This park hasn't even heard of the words health and saftey!

And yet, the day had been exhilarating and it was fun to be so free. This park gives enthusiasts the chance to do everything yourself. Lock yourself in, let yourself go! See for yourself how it's made. Ok, maybe you shouldn't be like the guy taking a photo through the emergency exit hatch and narrowly missing the cred by inches...but its a beautiful feeling of control I've not found anywhere else. So, when's the next Ryanair sale because I'm coming back...and not just for the polenta!

Ohh, and do you know what's possibly the best thing about this park? All the bins are a bucket on a stick :D

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[youtubevid]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt2bVuhFm6s[/youtubevid]
 

davidm

Strata Poster
HEALTH AND SAFETY NIGHTMARE... you just wouldn't get that under those stupid bureaucratic EU-regulations that those unelected euro-overlords force on us all. #takebackcontrol

Oh wait...
 

Sandman

Giga Poster
Lovely report, Sue!

Great to read about something off the beaten track with an unusual charm. I'd definitely love to give that catapult credit a go, although I'm sure I, like you, would be **** myself.
 
S

SimonSays99

Guest
Seen a documentary about this park and the guy who built all this rides. I guess he's about in his 70s but still giggling like a kid when riding his own rides =D>

In the documentary the showed a new under construction coaster with a "catapult" start using a catapillar's shovel coming down fast on the accelerator :goon: - Seen any of this?
 
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