What's new

Italy:Garda-/Movie-/Fiabi-/Mirabi-land(ia)/Cavallino Matto/Rainbow Magic-/Cinecittà World/Zoomarine

davidm

Strata Poster
I'm a bad euro-goon.

A lazy one perhaps?

I jet off to far flung places to ride their roller coasters and have totally avoided a load of (relatively) easy euro-creds.

Anyway, Italy ; had been on the should-visit list for a long time, but I always managed to find something else more enticing at the
time to do instead. So there I was, with no Italia-coasters at all. The shame of it.

This was not desperately well planned, I only booked the flights on the Saturday and traveled the Wednesday, but figured I could happily
spend a week or so wandering around Italy, riding their coasters and catching a bit of culture on the way.

So here we go...

Wednesday 7th

Cheapo flight from Manchester to Verona late afternoon - on Monarch ; flight was great, better than other cheapo carriers I thought,
first time I've flown with them and despite one of my drinking pals being a pilot for them out of Manchester would happily use them
again.

Some nice scenery on the way c/o an Alp or two;



Hire car pickup at Verona was pretty easy too and once I'd worked out which way to leave the airport was soon at the hotel for the night.

Had plumped for the park hotel, not really because it was super-convenient for the park (its a mile from the park) just that it was
an easy option that then didn't involve me having to do any more thinking (I mentioned that this wasn't a very deeply planned trip!)



Hotel was OK. Probably a tad nicer than the Alton ones but not quite as good as Heide's but its all slim margins. The room was good (lot
better than Alton's). They had some noisy kids entertainment going on, which didn't seem (what little notice I paid to it) quite up to
the standard of Alton's though.



Anyway, there was a bar serving awful Italian lager (that Peroni Nastro Azzurro stuff which people seem to like, but is in fact bland
tasteless nothing-water) so could sit in the very warm evening weather for a while.

Very nice (despite the awful beer).

Thursday 8th - Gardaland

Big hotel breakfast (buffet style, choices were OK not great) to start the day and then find the shuttle bus from the hotel to the park.
In typical not quite getting-it style, the bus doesn't pick up at the hotel itself you have to wander out to the road to pick it up -
thats a quality service then (not).

But the packed bus trip is brief and fine, dumps you in the car park and can wander under the fab tunnel to the park.



There was a reasonable build up of punters waiting to get in, but I spotted that there was a dedicated "hotel guest" entry so made for
that and was in with little faff and a little bit ahead of the masses.

Bloody stupid park layout this place though - the entry/exit area kinda isn't connected to the rest of the park apart from at one
point, so I was wandering a bit randomly in the general direction of the big rides for a while before I found the first coaster of the
trip ; Oblivion - The Black Hole.

Queue line for this was a bit OTT - seemingly taking over an old performance tent for an elaborate SFX filled experience that I just
walked straight through. Liked the fact that the themeing echoed the original Oblivion with that funny little circular tower effect
thing, and they had significantly up-scaled the effects with big HD wall displayed and the like too. Boded well.



Ride itself was pretty good - probably the best of the smaller dive-machines (i.e. Krake, Baron) but not really a patch on the big
ones (SheiKra, Griffon) in my opinion. (Miles better that the original Oblivion tho' obviously - because that is pants)



Couple of rides on that before any Qs built up and headed to the other ride for the day that I was keen to have a play on; the first
B&Wing Raptor



Unfortunately this appeared to be where the Qs had headed so there was a bit of a wait here in some horrible cattle-pens in the growing
summer heat.

Really liked this though ; for something that doesn't gain a huge height it uses its momentum really well with loads of near misses
of itself, its station and some faked up themeing. Really good then - better than some of the bigger wings that seem to be going for
size not subtlety (Swarm,XFlight,Eagle perhaps)?



Couple of rides on that (despite burdenous Qs) and I was now ready to wander the park picking up the rest of the coasters.

They seem to open the park in stages too, so had to wait a few minutes for the next area to open (was only a few mins, had it been more
I'd have double backed then to a different area).

I was keen to ride this though, mainly because it is much maligned and I was intrigued to see if it really was as awful as everyone made out.

Sequoia Adventure then...



No Q, so straight on and stapled in. Straight up the lift hill and the straight ahead and down and upside down and it was done.

So wasn't at all awful. Was just awfully dull.

Next to that (and in the same pic above) is the old Vekoma looper formally known as Magic Mountain but rebranded with lots of VR
and mysterious mystic stuff all over the place ; Shaman.

Anyway the VR was not running, so I was saved that and instead had a pretty standard ride on an old shaky Vekoma looper. Wasn't a very
comfortable experience, would be hellish with VR strapped to your face I would think! (The VR was there and all installed on the trains
just left in its pouch)

Annoyingly the next zone in the park was even later to open so had to double back at that point and put myself through a half hour wait
for an SLC - the shame, but its got to be done.

Blue Tornado (odd name that isn't it) is kinda slap bang in the middle of the park, contributing hugely to that odd-layout that
was still confusing me at that stage a bit. It is at least a slightly different SLC in that it has the extra-helix which only a few
have (my first SLC ever had it as well).



Wasn't great, but used to riding these things so hold on tight and try not to get your ears bashed in and you can survive happily.



;)



Next door to the useless SLC is a pretty heavily themed mine train Mammut, and despite it being a bit bouncy in places (and
having a bit of a wait) I really quite liked this.



Doubling back again to the now-open final zone of the park, hit the longest Q of the day (probably of the trip actually) and a bit of
a slow traipse through a well themed but slow moving path to get to Kung Fu Panda Master. Which is just a Fabbri spinning mouse
for heaven's sake.





Last coaster (well last one RCDB lists anyway, but we'll come to that...) is what I thought was just going to be a caterpillar, but
was joyfully an extended caterpillar Ortobruco Tour so much more worthy of squeezing into the kiddy-train for that :)



Coaster-cred-anxiety all gone now, I could grab some lunch and explore the park a little (rather than just back tracking to find open
areas FFS).

There were a couple of big interesting looking dark-ride things, first up was this not-very-thrilling-looking-façade thing "Time Voyagers";



Having looked it up since, it was previously a Time Voyagers with a Mount-Rushmore type façade then then seemingly got spited for
an Ice-Age 4D job (presumably the same as Alton's) which has in turn been spited again for the old film, but not the old façade added.
Hence the rather awful not-quite-Ice-Age-not-quite-anything façade that we see today.

Anyway it was rubbish.

Much better was the dark-ride shooter thing "Rameses"



Not sure of the history of this one, but gave the impression of one of those elaborate old dark-rides that they shoved shooting gear
on 15 years ago - or maybe it was always thus? No Q anyway so a nice air-conditioned respite for a few minutes in a bit-like-Tomb-Blaster
kinda way.



Park has a flying island though - I do like flying islands so had a few rides on that.









One thing this park has in copious amounts is fantastic views as you go up a lift hill. My first ride of the morning was fab on
Oblivion's lift hill, Lake Garda coming into view for the first time - lovely.



and from the flying island you could spot the conspicuous local-competition-creds too





Got a few rerides in on Raptor and Oblivion at that point (much less Qs mid afternoon than in the morning) and chillaxed a bit
wandering the park for a while









Realised I hadn't wandered up to the wet-rides (its usually 50-50 whether I bother with wet-rides when I'm on my own, they are good
fun in a group as you can laugh at the wet people (and take turns being the wet-person of course) but on my own I only bother if
the Q is non-existent and/or theres something special about the ride), so to my surprise what I though was just a chute-type thing
turned out to be a proper water coaster thing Fuga da Atlantide - why isn't this on RCDB (it is on coaster-count though) its as
much as a coaster as Europa's big wet-ride?



Anyway, rode that (no Q), got a bit wet. Was good - loads of big themeing too - a good wet ride this one. :)



So a pretty good day in all - couple of good rides (only Raptor was very-good though) - nice big park (even with a terrible park layout,
presumably just because its grown in chunks over the years). Was reasonably busy even on a weekday, but not packed at all, could
easily do whatever I wanted but still would probably liked to have hung around for a couple more hours rather than be ejected at 6
when the place closed (low-season presumably).

They seemed to be plugging the VR-enabled Shamen a lot in their advertising - lots of it all over the hotel, on flyers and such like.
However since it wasn't working they then also had to have lots of big signs outside the park (on the road) and at the entrance to that
effect;



Ha ha.

Couple of (rubbish) beers and a pizza in the bar at the hotel - job done! :)
 
Last edited:

Benenen

Hyper Poster
Fantastic read! I'm here next Thursday, from your hindsight do you have any suggestions as to what order I hit the rides? Also this is the first mildly positive review I've read of Sequoia, I'm really looking forward to riding such a weird coaster so cheers for hyping it up a bit!
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Sequoia is not good or bad IMHO. Its just dull.
Was a Thursday I was there (2 weeks ago now). In hindsight only understanding the opening hours of the various zones would have helped me (so get all the stuff in the middle area* done before the other areas opened) ; but still I had all the coasters done by lunchtime so no great stress - whether its busier a little later in the season; dunno?
(* so thats Oblivion/Raptor/Mammut/Tornado before Sequoia/Shamen and then before KungFu)
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
I'd say if it's very busy, Kung Fu Panda's better done early, since it held a massive queue (75 minutes at 4-5pm) when I went (though that was on Easter Sunday).

Nice report! Glad there's somebody else who thinks Sequoia Adventure isn't as bad as expected. And lol, Shaman had broken VR when I went too.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Friday 9th - Movieland Park

This place is just a mile or two up the road from Gardaland and presumably competing for the same local tourist audience as the Merlin
park next door. However, this place was in a different class altogether - and not a particularly good one.

To be fair, I had very low expectations of the place (not believing a word of various TRs of it I had read) and it was actually better
than I expected it to be (but my expectations were VERY low)!

Think they changed me €5 to park (no shuttle bus today unsurprisingly) [ actually side note ; all the Italian parks that charged for
parking all charged €5 which I don't find at all excessive, take a note SixFlags with your evil $20 goon tax ] and there was barely any
other cars in the car park - indeed not sure I saw another human being until I had wandered under the roadway and down to the park
entrance itself.

The theme-park is part of a larger complex that also has a water park, a nightclub park and some dodgy Hard Rock cafe styled eatery. But
it all looked borderline sketchy to me as I wandered in.





Just inside the gate (almost not in the park at all as you have to wander back towards the water park over a big cool bridge to get
to it) was their biggest coaster Diabolik a big blue Vekoma Invertigo.



Quite cool looking these things I always think? Anyway unfortunately for me this wasn't a new cred for me as in a previous life this
was known as "Two Face: The Flip Side" at SIx Flags America and I had ridden it there a dozen or so years earlier (before it had bit of
a technical incident and was quietly removed from the place).

Park was empty obviously so had to wait for a couple of other punters to turn up before the ride op would despatch it, and it was fine.
Whether subconsciously adopting a bracing condition on this and the day before's SLC saved me I dunno, but ears were intact and head
was un-bashed despite the unforgiving restraints.

Had to hang around a while for the next cycle to get that snap of it in action as well.



Headed into the park-proper, in search of its other sketchy creds and first impressions of the place weren't great - pretty ropey
main street affair leading to a back stage area that kinda felt like the back of some industrial units.



Right at the back of the park is a kiddie area that at least looked quite well done in a normal-theme-park way (not that this place
was anything like normal) and set up like a Flintstones Dino-land sort of thing.

Anyway, dubious kiddie cred Bront'O'Ring lived there (dubious as its one of those larger go-gater things). Yeah I rode it all on
my own, what are you going to do about it? Bastard ride op let it lap several hundred times (I think).



Just behind the dubious-not-quite-a-go-gater-but-pretty-damned-close is an actual worthy coaster, an old and well travelled Schwarzkopf
no less, known here (and also somewhat in keeping with the dino-theme) as Brontojet.



(no pics of it running as it broke down later on when I wandered back to get some pics and a reride and was being worked on by a bored
looking maintenance chap)



Ride was OK - smaller version of the Jet Star things. Would have ridden it a few time I think had it not broken.

OK, coasters done (that didn't take long) wander back to have a look at the place proper.

A few (not many) other punters had turned up by then, enough to fill one of the speed boats anyway so watched that for a while



Then I seemed to spend an age in their (almost empty) indoor queue waiting for their big SFX thing to open ; "Android" it was called
and had an elaborate filmed intro (filmed in queue building so that wasn't stolon from anywhere else) followed by an awful Transformers
rip off 3d-movie with a very small amount of live action and a couple of robot animatronics. Whole thing looked like they had spent a
lot of money on it (custom film can't be cheap to make), but it was just tragic.



Terminator in the exit tat-shop (assume this ride used to be the terminator ride then)



Must have been next that I rode the Magma2.0 thing. Wasn't really sure what this was going to involve, apart from I knew there was
going to be wetness involved and sitting in the back-left seat was a noob-error. Anyway the only seat free was the back-left seat so
I just sucked it up.



So a very bizarre truck ride round some (rather large) back stage area, not really sure what was meant to be going on but there
were airtime truck jumps, trick roadways, some sketchy SFX sets and lots of unnecessary water dumps ; most of which seemed to be directed
at where I was sitting.

So coming off that I was rather soaked so needed to go stand in the sun for a while - conveniently a stunt show was soon starting
so watched that while trying to reduce my moisture content.

The show was a bit lame, wasn't totally awful but just pretty predictable and at times very slow and uneventful.





The one "modern" ride that they have here is a Top-Spin type thing, themed to Tomb Raider



Now it gave all the impression of being properly licensed by Tomb Raider, but everything in this park reeked of blatant copyright
infringement so who knows?



See, decent plastic Lara Croft, but next to the ride was a shoddy Angelina Jolie cutout so who knows.



Stuck in the middle of the park is an old Intamin first generation drop tower. These things are evil, but in a good way I think.
Was most amused to hear all the twilight zone music going on before the drop - yeah sure that is all properly licensed and Disney
have no problems with a sketchy park in Italy ripping off one of their big properties.

They have a little mono-rail thing, loosely ripped off from themed to Back to the Future. Even rip-off in-character TV spots
with "Doc Brown" explaining the goings on.



Universal have definitely signed-off on all this too.







Could see the Lake a bit from the monorail thing, not so impressive as the Gardaland lifthill views though



Totally authorised by Lucas, this is in fact Star Wars land v1.0.





Succumbed to another ride then;



A submarine-simulator, so thats going to involve more water isn't it.

A really well-done pre-show area involves a submarine under some attach (and an actor unsubtly throwing buckets of water at the
audience) followed by a rush into the submarine itself which is one of the oddest ride experiences ever; you are sat on a pipe that
runs the length of the submarine, some acting happens and then they spent about 10 minutes shooting you with a hose pipe (ok a leak in
submarine letting in water) while the submarine bounces up and down. Chaos.

This is the ride from outside. The inside is basically full of water and punters at this stage.



So I am even wetter after that than I was from Magma. Utterly soaked. Would not have been much wetter had I just stood in a shower for
5 minutes. Great.

Wander around for a while, letting the copious Italian sunshine slowly dry me out. Rode a crap Police Academy motion ride and braved
their "Horror House", which was a pretty long horror walk through, but again just a bit crap.

I'd made it to early afternoon, so had probably spent longer in the place than I thought I was going to (possibly due to 2 periods
of just trying to dry out a bit?)

Thinking back now (writing this TR) possibly the worst park I've ever been to? Hard to think of anywhere more crap, certainly anywhere
with so little regard to IP or how to do things "properly". Maybe thats its charm, it doesn't play by the rules? Nah, its just crap.

--

So full of enthusiasm after that, I drove down to some random spot on the shores of Lake Garda and had a nice walk through a park and
along the shoreline. That was nice.





I'd driven through a little town (Peschiera del Garda) on the way to the random park so parked up in the town on the way back and
had a wander.

The town was lovely, a little fortified island at the mouth of a river joining up with the lake. All little streets full of shoppes
selling tat and little restaurants - proper Garda tourist territory.





and you could even see the decent Garda park from the town



So I had some food in the town, the wander around the Lake and town rather rescuing the day from the pretty awful (and wet) Movieland
experience of earlier.

:)
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Movieland is one of those parks that is so bad, it comes right around to being good again. Laughing at the idea of you wandering around on your own, completely drenched and scowling at the park.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Saturday 10th - Fiabilandia

So I had half a mind to have a culture-mooch around Verona today before heading South, but alas the lure of some crappy sounding coasters
in Rimini got the better of me so after a couple of hours in the car (burdensome traffic jams seemingly caused by a Guns N Roses concert
at Imola that I drove past (in hindsight, had I know that was on I might have made plans to visit it)) I turn up at this awe-inspiring
place.



Yay Fiabilandia - Rimini's finest amusement park!



Now the place is a bit low budget and ropey, but unlike the day before's crap park, didn't really have any pretention that it was
otherwise (think it was reasonably expensive to get it too, compared to Garda et al).



Wandered up to their Fabbri spinny mouse thing first SpaceMouse, one of the smaller varieties of this ride (so much smaller than
the Kung Fu one at Gardaland). Was OK for what it was, good to ride a spinny mouse that isn't like all the normal cloned spinny mouse
things anyway.





Spotted then that their rides were all on a staggered lunch break so couldn't ride the caterpillar coaster next door to the mouse, so
wandered across the park to the other cred, which was about to go on its lunchbreak but got the ride in just before that.

Miniera d'Oro Del West, a Pinfari mini mine train thing.



Quite liked this, kinda had the elements of a large mine train, just mini-sized. Definitely a family, borderline kiddie coaster but
nice enough.



While all the creds were having their lunch break I walked around the rest of the park - the place is a city-park type affair but all
set around a little lake (or large pond depending on your point of view).

They had some excellent train action going on;





Wasn't really getting too inspired by the place though, so had some lunch myself and waiting for the caterpillar cred to open.

Valle degli Gnomi is not your normal caterpillea cred though, a terrain-caterpillar if such a thing makes any sense?





+1s all done then, decide the mine train was worth another go before I run off, some sneaky on-ride action follows;





Did ride the SpaceMouse again as well, just to get my money's worth and headed out, pausing only to take a few snaps.



Back by the entrance/exit there were a few more rides and their Merlin themed dark ride looked like it was worth a quick go



It wasn't really, but if you like cheesy dark rides maybe then it fits that bill.





See ya Fiabilandia, you've been brief...



--

Figured I had enough time left in the day for a spot of sight seeing then, Rimini itself (the little I'd seen of it) felt horrible
so I headed inland a bit to add a quick +1 country-cred to my country-count.com list.

[ Italy itself wasn't a country cred for me as I'd been skiing in the Italian Alps many years ago so had actually flowing into Turin
and spent a week up (and down) the mountains ]

But San Marino was new to me, not quite sure whereItaly ended and San Marino started to be honest but after a while driving up a
large hill I found somewhere to park near the cable-car that takes you to the top of the main geographical feature of the microstate
Monte Titano.





I like cable-cars, and this one was fab.



And the mountaintop is pretty high; here have a selfie;



And it was all pretty nice up there too



Little quaint town, lots of tourist tat but all very clean and nice, really liked it.







Was so enthused by the place I even paid some extra € to get into one of the castles at the top and had a nice time wandering around
that taking some snaps







Castle #2 from Castle #1;





Cracking view from up there :)





So really liked that couple of hours detour to the smallest country I've ever visited (for a few days at least)



--

Headed back to the coast and found the hotel for the evening, had just randomly booked somewhere that seemed to have a lot of hotels
in the same area (figured it was beach-tourist-central so there be places to eat/drink within walking distance of the hotel).

Turned out it _was_ beach central and the hotel I'd randomly booked was right on said beach and since I was a daily-rate punter (unlike
all their other guests who appeared to Russian and German tourists on all-inclusive deals) they appear to give me one of their posh
rooms (I certainly hadn't paid for a posh-room!).

View over the first of my room's balconies (there was a second balcony at the back of the room, honestly when one balcony just isn't
enough)



Wandered down to the (curiously deserted) beach - the place was loaded with beach-bars all with their regimented allocation of
beach-chairs - the hotel had its allocated slot of chairs too.



Thats the hotel in the background of that shot ; my room is on the top-left.

I say the beach was curiously deserted as it wasn't particularly late and I would have expected people to be loitering to enjoy the
last of the day, perhaps not many people but still many more than I saw - OK fair enough, sped the day on the beach chill at the hotel
for a bit in the evening then go out for the night I guess is the done thing, but I just expected some life in the evening time
(not that it mattered I was just going for a walk)

Resort had a excellent abandoned/derelict resort just up from where I was;



Walking back through the resort I spotted a crappy fair - no creds though :(



Awesome sunset was happening



After finding a minimart to supply me with some beer to sit on (one of) my balconies enjoying the sunset with, I spotted that I could
see a ferris wheel in the distance;



^ that pic on full zoom, this pic was more like it (right in the middle of the shot is the wheel)



and after working out that Mirabilandia does in fact have a big ferris wheel, figured I was set up for tomorrow's activities...
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
Another Pinfari rerider! It was **** but I kinda liked Fiabilandia in the same way. Glad to hear I didn't miss much with the dark ride car thing, which spend the day breaking down.

they appear to give me one of their posh
rooms (I certainly hadn't paid for a posh-room!).
Is this just a thing that happens in Rimini? I got a posh Best Western hotel with a balcony for less than €40. Strange but very very welcome.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
I was up the coast a bit from Rimini (as I said I thought it looked a bit scabby ;) ) was at Milano Marittima which just seemed to be the nearest "holiday tourist" bit to Mirabilandia when I was booking random hotels. Makes a bit of sense though, if you've not managed to sell the posh room for a week's all-inclusive to some Russian mobster or German car dealer then its just going spare so stick anyone in it. Hotel rooms have an expiry date on them, they aren't worth anything in the morning! :)
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Sunday 11th - Mirabilandia

Yay, swapping yesterday's "Fi" for today's "Mir" after a quick hotel breakfast (which was useless, god help the poor Russians on the
full-inclusive deal if that was any sign of the usual quality) headed the few miles to where that there ferris wheel was seen from
balcony #1. (To be be honest balcony #2 was a bit useless so its barely worth mentioning)



€5 parking of course and first impressions were good ; they let you into the park before opening and kettle you in the entrance area for
a while before they dropped the ropes and let you rush cred-wards.





Not really sure of the layout yet, I just head for a big red thing and since the line is negligible first thing get in the (separate)
front row Q for iSpeed.



Now I didn't know much about this thing, apart from the obvious launch/tophat business that you can't avoid seeing, but I had deliberately
not watched any videos nor watched it cycle before I rode it.

Loved it. Great stuff this ; launch is good and snappy but not too fast, top hat fun and then the section back behind the station was
all twisty loveliness, the roll towards the end was good too. Only one bad point on the ride I thought (sharp left turn after the MCBR).



Q hadn't really built up by the time I'd ridden, so grabbed another two rides on it straight away. Lovely :)





Decided I needed the other BIG CRED then, so headed across the park to find that, pausing briefly only to ride the kiddie coaster
Leprotto Express as I passed. Eminently forgettable that one.



Negligible Q for the big cred then, so was soon on the front row of Katun (didn't Q for the front, Q'd for line 2 and snuck
into the front with a group of 3 - resultio!).

And if I thought I liked iSpeed a bit, I was mistaken, as I just LOVED Katun more.









Proper old-skool B&M this ; big, fast, all the elements, tons of forces - just fantastic. Best (new to me) beemer invert I've ridden in a long time.



Much like iSpeed, the Q allowed myself a couple more quick rerides before I felt that the intensity of the thing might be a bit much
to gorge on that early in the morning - well at least before I'd visited the other coasters, so I set off to do that.

Pretty standard wild mouse was nearby, so had a lap of that (biggest Q of the day on that as well, a good 20 minutes, pah)
Gold Digger - was fine but standing in the shadow of the mighty Katun's lift hill its a poor cousin.

Next up was the powered cred Rexplorer, some plastic dinosaurs and the like didn't really make this any better than the dull
experience that it is (perhaps my iSpeed/Katun awesome one-two had spoiled me for the day?)



Doubling back on myself there was next the odd Möbius family coaster thing Master Thai. Being a dual loading thing, this was
prime for a VR makeover so thats obviously what they had done and the VR side had a mighty Q for it. Obviously I headed for the non-VR
side instead with its tiny Q.





Pausing long enough to take pics (of Katun starting its fantastic journey) from the Q line.





This was an odd ride then. They board 6 trains at a time, 3 on each platform - one platform for VR and one for non VR. Then they
despatch all 6 trains at the same time, the first two off and running as the next two get ready. Once all 6 trains are back in the
station (having swapped sides) they go off again. So despite it being Möbius, you still only need to ride it once to do it all.



The ride itself isn't up to much; seemed very over engineered and complex for what is quite a short ride (but then you do do it twice
per go so ends up being not such a short experience)

Anyway, wasn't sufficiently impressed to worry about needing to do the VR side.

Right across the park is the last coaster, the big glorified splash ride Divertical. Somewhat concerned by the fact that most
other punters waiting for this were just in their swimming gear I made my way on. The lift/drop looks pretty impressive to be honest,
its a pretty tall ride and the lift mechanism is quite cool. The drop isn't up to much, not really steep and then the splash you get
off if it is quite week (the train/boat really just skims the water, not risking a big splash in case it loses too much momentum
and can't make it up the next hill I guess?)



The rest of the ride is a pretty unexciting wander around in preparation for another splash, a bigger one this time as the boat can
afford to lose all its speed now as we only need to get back to the station afterwards.





Did get a bit wet from that second splash, but nothing too much to worry about. "M'eh" really overall though.

Stuck down in the corner past Divertical and well away from the rest of the park, was their impressive looking dark ride though ;
"Reset". The outside of which really did look great



All post-apocalypse wasteland stuff - cool.





The ride itself though was a bit forgettable I thought, just another dark-ride shooter. Shame.

Cred-anxiety all gone now, had some lunch and a nice ride on that big wheel. I like the big wheels.

Some wheel-based snaps;













Wandered around some bits of the park I hadn't managed to pass whilst on my cred-hunt earlier, was pretty nice in the most part I think.







Suitably relaxed and having done everything I thought I needed to, had a few rerides on iSpeed and then a few more on Katun and then
went off to see the "Hot Wheels" stunt show.



Wasn't too bad actually - one of the better ones (just a LOT better than the effort at Movieland anyway ;) )



Fab stunt at the end where the driver gets his coaster-loop on;



Managed to miss some steampunk show though,



Right, day is ending - few more rides on iSpeed are due and then a few more on Katun - BUT DISASTER, I had one ride on Katun (was
planning a few more in the last 15 mins the park was open), but the evil ride ops have had enough and decide that the non-existent Q
for Katun justifies them shutting it for the day early. Bastards.

So I had one more go on non-VR Master Thai since it was there and wander off, a happy goon.

Bye bye Mirabilandia, you really have been fab!



--

Was still in the same hotel that night, so went out in search of some food/beer later - actually found reasonable beer in an Irish bar
so stopped there for food. Turned out the reasonable beer was very expensive (imported Brewdog of all things) as was the food, which was
a bit rubbish. Think that was the most expensive meal of the trip - and the Brewdog Punk IPA didn't travel particularly well either.
Oh well, should stick to the pizzas and crappy Italian lager I guess then.
 

Coaster Hipster

Giga Poster
I like that you've shown the park as a whole, even if the two big creds are the obvious draws there. Good read with a lot of cool pictures :)
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Monday 12th - CULTURE!!

OK, so nothing to see here, but I'll inflict a few pics on you for the sake of it.

Coasterless day today - well OK I had to drive past Mirabilandia on my way to the big roads in the morning, so I did at least see a
big B&M today.

Unfortunately I spent a lot of the morning on the big road much like this;



Experiencing the deep joy of Italian traffic jams - stationary traffic for a long time in fact. Was all caused by a rather nasty looking
thing on the other carriageway which was rather sobering sight as the traffic crawled past, burnt out vehicles and not in a nice themey
way like at Reset the day before.



Clear of the traffic I was heading cross-country and then got to drive through a whole series of rather splendid tunnels through the
Apennine mountains of central Italy - much more interesting than the stationary traffic that bit!



So got to my destination Firenze (Florence) a couple of hours later than I planned to, but that meant I could check into the B&B hotel
on the outskirts of the city, dump the car and grab a bus into the city proper for some tourist sight-seeing behaviour for the rest
of the day...

Posh cathedral thingy;





Posh bridge thingy;



Tourist view being enhanced by the construction cranes I thought?



I used to play PGR2 a lot on the original Xbox, and there were a number of circuits based in Florence in that game, so I took great
amusement in walking down streets and thru sights that I had (virtually) driven Mini Coopers at great speed though.







Didn't feel like I had enough time to spend in any of the tourist sights (there were big Qs involved and I'd obviously missed the
early-bird options for the day), posh museum (would have liked to have seen some of this to be honest)



Yay, Hannibal was here (movie rather than TV series)



Late afternoon I decided to give some local beers a try, non-air conditioned Irish boozer overlooking the cathedral had a reasonable
pint of IPA



But then resorted to the local HRC, where despite being sat at the bar the service was awful but managed a couple of pints of non-lager
Peroni, which were a great improvement on their Nastro Azzurro rubbish.



Found the bus back to the hotel though, took some amusement in this pic to sum up my holiday;



and the condom vending machine in the wall outside the local chemist also made me laugh (but I had been drinking a bit by then)



OK, enough culture, some more creds tomorrow I promise (but maybe a little bit of culture too)
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Tuesday 13th - Cavallino Matto

But first, some more CULTURE I'm afraid!

Wasn't really intending to go and look at Pisa, didn't really appeal that much to me as it just seemed to be another typical tourist
sight - tick, move on. However when I looked at the route plan to get me to the roller coasters for the day, it turned out that going
via Pisa was only something like a 20 minute detour, so I figured that was OK for a quick culture-credit stop.

Parked up in some back street car park, avoided the thousands of street vendors trying to fleece the thousands of tourists and wandered
round the corner to this (rather splendid actually) sight;



Yay, "tick".



Thousands of people all taking the same photograph;



Perhaps I could have done a "pose" where it looked like I was holding the tower up? No one has ever done that?



Anyway it was all very pretty really, tons of tourists of course so I didn't go in/up any of the buildings/towers but I was secretly
quite pleased that I had bothered with the minor diversion in the morning, even if I didn't really spend long there at all.

Back in the car and after a little while got to the real goon-tourist sight for the day; Cavallino Matto (free car park this time,
they obviously didn't hear about the €5 rule).



Place was empty obviously, but first impressions weren't bad - set amongst a wood/forest type thing not far from the sea was all
quite pleasant a location even if the coasters on offer weren't going to be up to too much...

First up was Project 1 a little family coaster type thing, was OK for what it was;



Packed as you can tell;



Didn't think it was that good though;



Nearby was a standard wild mouse, themed like at Mirabilandia as a Wild Mine (I say themed, there wasn't really much of that
in evidence apart from the cars themselves) - seem to recall a violent last brake on this, but I did ride it a couple of times so
was OK enough.



Moving onto the proper kiddie coasters now, Speedy Gonzales which was a fairly inoffensive +1 job.



And a little wander around the park to find the other kiddie-cred, which I was pleased to discover wasn't a standard caterpillar as I
had thought but a little different, Topo Zorro



For some reason I was amused by its name too - Top Zorro :)



The "big cred" at the back of the park wasn't opening for a while (so very glad I hadn't diverted myself for a while with the culture
earlier on) so had some lunch and wandered around the park a bit, s'not very big and theres not a lot there to be honest but it
was pleasant enough.

Did get a bit wet on this



Some random flats







Eventually the big cred opened and the masses rushed to the back of the park, well about a half dozen people anyway...

Freestyle is a big yellow, quite imposing amongst the trees, Togo standup, not many of these left. And not a +1 for me as I'd
encountered this in Canada about 10 years earlier :(

I don't recall much of my experience with SkyRider in Canada though (since that park is full of coasters it didn't stand out), but
here in its new home its clearly the big thing.



Was OK for an old Togo, rode it a couple of times before deciding that any more might lead to headaches.







So that was the park for the day, worth a couple of hours and nice enough place but nothing too exciting.



--

Couple of hours drive south and I hit the expected traffic jams on Rome's equivalent of the M25. Italians are interesting drivers,
perhaps I'll comment on their driving styles I observed on the trip a bit later in the TR ;)



I had decided that driving into Rome wasn't something I needed to do at all, so had booked a random place (kinda a serviced apartment
really) just off the M25-thing but near a metro stop - thought I was being very smart here - next to the road for the trips out
to the parks and next to public transport for a trip into Rome. The place was actually itself very nice, but located in something of
a grotty industrial area next to the motorway junctions, so despite being able to joke about this hotel just having a sun terrace
and a balcony, these weren't quite up to the experience at the seaside a couple of days ago ;)





Local scenic culture;



But it was nice if you don't want to walk anywhere :)



I do like to walk out to find some food for the evening as that allows an adult beverage or two as well and there was a big shopping
mall about half a mile away that I thought I could walk to, but after driving some of the local roads (the mall was just the other
side of the M25-thing) I had realised that I'd be taking my life in my hands trying to walk there (in fact there didn't even appear
to be a way to walk there) so had to drive - bit did mean I could pop into the supermarket there and pick up some local interesting
beers to drink back on my sun terrace, so that was all good. :)

No culture tomorrow I promise...
 

Coaster Hipster

Giga Poster
You know, I actually don't mind the culture stuff that much! I mean, it's beautiful Italy so why not? :) I'm sure someone's done it already, but why not do the opposite and pretend you're pushing Pisa's tower down? Maybe my troll logic is surfacing here...

Anyway, good to read a report about the Stand-Up. The restraints are horrible and the layout really dated, yet it makes me curious because of Togo's catastrophic reputation added with the ever-growing rarity of their remaining rides. Cavallino Matto seems full of unusual rides in general actually :p
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Wednesday 14th - Rainbow MagicLand

A little drive away from Rome gets you to today's €5 parking zone, quite impressed that the parking was mostly all under shaded
things, so didn't begrudge them their €5 today at all.



Wasn't quite sure what I was going to make of Rainbow Magicland to be honest, had read a few not-entirely complimentary reports on the
place, but those were from repeat visitors rather than noobs like me and I do like going to places for the first time and a bit of an
explore...



First impressions were quite good though ; all quite nicely done I thought.



Kinda a Islands-of-Adventure vibe going on in the entrance street



The big cred, Shock, is just inside the entrance way and does rather dominate the park. Headed straight into that and with a very
short Q could get a few rides in to start the day off.



Really liked this then ; launch was good (not quite iSpeed good, but not bad) and there was enough going on in the rest of the course
to keep the thing interesting. Certainly a significantly better ride than the other 2 launched Xcars that I rode last season (at Bayern
Park and Drievliet - and I had quite liked them).

Have some pics of it from various points in the day then;







Next up was a little Vekoma junior coaster Bombo, which wasn't awesome, but lacking any Harry Potter themeing meant it was
walk on at least.



There was a fairy-themed dark ride next door to that, so given the lack of Qs had a trip on that - quite well done too in a Disney
dark ride kinda way.

Carried on around the almost deserted park, I had failed to pick up a map so was in search of the creds still at that stage, saw a
rather bland looking kiddy-area and figured that the caterpillar ride Amerigo would be in there somewhere, but you can't
prove I rode that



A lot more worthy of a ride is the indoor spinner Cagliostro which shockingly had a Q - well a 5 minute Q anyway as a gang
of schoolkids had just found it a few minutes before I did. Pretty cool building it is housed in, the ride pops outside only very
briefly.





Odd ride though, the building looks pretty big from the outside - quite high. But the ride itself seemed to be mostly 'underground', in
that you boarded, went up a little lifthill and into that outside section, then the rest of it dropped down below ground level until
a lift at the end - felt a bit short too. So most of the building was just empty space - which was strange, rather expected it to be
more like Disney's Crush coaster in filling the building? Oh well, just odd.



One last cred then, a mine train Olandese Volante (Flying Dutchman) - not as intricately themed as Gardalands was the week before
but I didn't find it horrible at all (and had a redride later, which was fine too)





There was some attempt at VR-ing this too, a couple of the carriages were roped off for VR-use but they didn't appear to be running the
VR - I did see one group of staff ride it with headsets on at one stage, but they didn't appear to open it to punters. M'eh anyway, not
sure riding a rickety mine train with a headset on would have been a good idea anyway!

Seeing it was a very hot day and the place was empty, did the walk-on water rides too. Rapids were OK, got mildly moist - but bit hard
to take any pics of as they were tucked away backstage a bit



Chute ride next door to the rapids was much more accessible for photos though, even had a little island thing you could walk out to
over a bridge to watch the ride from.





Their flying island thing was cool, but stuck up in one corner of the park so the view was a bit limited to one direction only.









Apart from the bland kiddie area, the whole park was very well done I though - lots of interesting buildings a neat touches all over
the place.



The drop ride itself wasn't up to much, but was really well themed with all these thorny things taking over the area






There was a huge, highly themed theatre thing that turned out to be a planetarium inside rather than a theatre, I watched both shows
in that - they were both rather poor though, the space one not even taking great advantage of the planetarium structure. Shame.



There was a mad house too, which again (like the spinny coaster and to some extent the planetarium building) seemed to be happening
mostly below ground - in that the way into the madhouse was via a large elevator (Disney's stretchy room effect being done for real!)
and then via another elevator to exit it. Madhouse itself didn't do too much - best ones of these are Asterix's and Alton's I think.

Another intricately designed building housed a dark ride shooter thing, think I was more impressed by the building that the ride though
as I don't recall much about the ride now apart from the 'lots of shooting of the monsters' type thing that it was.







Since the park was not at all busy I was done with doing everything I felt I needed to quite early, so after a fair few rerides on
Shock to close out the day I left mid afternoon, quite happy with the day though.

Interesting park then, I can see why a repeat visit might be a bit much though as most of my enjoyment of the place was down to its
novelty to me rather than the quality of the rides which did tend to be at a lower par than the quality of the landscaping/themeing.



Arrivederci then Magic Rainbowplace - pretty nice day I had thank you! :)

--

Couple more interesting Italian beers from the supermarket kept me entertained in the evening though - had a big day ahead of me
tomorrow that involved an earlyish start ; no creds though, CULTURE again I'm afraid (and lots of it).

--

Haven't really been processing any of the pics I took while away yet ; heres one though (fake, two shots merged to get the two splashes)

 
Last edited:

davidm

Strata Poster
Thursday 15th - CULTURE (nothing to see here, move along)

OK so get up earlyish to get the metro conveniently located near to my hotel (like I'd planned it that way or something) and get into
Rome for a full of day of touristing. No creds today, nothing even close, but a heck of a lot of "themeing" dotted around the city to
keep me amused.

Will rattle through some pics - promise to get back to a few creds tomorrow, feel free to fast forward then...

First tourist stop opened at 8:30 and there were already a fair few tourist-hoards swamping the place



but I got through the standby Q pretty quickly (that was the idea of turning up here first thing as I did expect some crowds) and
spent a while wandering around inside. Was pretty cool, I liked it - even if that hotel at Europa park was a bit cleaner.







Walked up the hill next door to that - s'called the Palatine Hill and had a few ruins of olde-Roman palaces and the like





Was OK, not as interesting as the Colosseum. Did have a great view back over that and over the Roman Forum though;







Moving onto the Roman Forum itself, more ruins. Somewhat less built up than earlier, buts tons of buildings (or rubble anyway)



View back to that view place;



Round the corner from that was some (relatively) modern tourist sights, firstly the Altare della Patria, the not at all grandiose
and ostentatious monument to the 19th Century king of Italy.



Wandered up that a bit and discovered (for a small fee) you could get on its roof, so did that



Views





Wandered down the street towards my next checkpoint, rather cool column thing on the way ; Fontana di Piazza Colonna



Stop was just some 2000+ year old Roman Temple cum Christian church (a bit mixed use over the years it seems), the Pantheon



Was very cool inside



Hole in the roof though, should get someone to have a look at that you'd think.



Moving on, Trevi Fountain next - been restored recently so was all sparklingly clean



Tourist hoards well represented here;



Up the street a bit, the Spanish Steps - no chance of avoiding a tourist in any pics of this



Headed over the river then, past some old castle thing Castel Sant'Angelo, also just the 2000 years old or so, blimey.



Was heading to the Vatican though, just for the country cred obviously



Pope's gaff



Bit of burdenous Q in the blazing sun through St Peter's square, but got into the Basilica (was worth the Q to be honest, was very
impressive)



Always nice to see how much the institutions of religion (whatever flavour thereof) have sacrificed their own personal well being through
the years and devoted their wealth to the poor and unfortunates of the ages.





Man in his pyjamas seemed to be in charge



Was getting on a bit by now, I knew that the place with the Sistine Chapel (the Vatican Museum) shut it doors at 4pm so rushed over
there (amused me to note that to get from St Peters square to the museum next door I had to leave the country, walk around the
corner and re-enter the county)

Got there about 5 minutes to closing time and (much it seems to the annoyance of the ticket staff it seemed who really didn't want
to serve me) got in.

The museum didn't shut at 4, it had 90 minutes left, they just shut entry so they could clear the place out. Anyway I REALLY DISLIKED
the place - all I wanted to do was see the Sistine Chapel thing but they insist on you following a tedious route thru the museum to get
there, all pretty full of tourists of course. Burden.









Eventually, after much back and forth and slow Qs through dull rooms, you get to the Sistine Chapel.

Was a bit crap to be honest, they don't let you take pictures in there and its still a chapel so its meant to be silent (so there are
a bunch of LOUD security guards going around inside SHOUTING (not kidding) at anyone who was talking or thinking about taking a photo ;
"SILENCIO" they were fond of shouting)

Anyway heres a pic a snuck when the scary shouty religious guards were not looking



Walked back into Italy from there then



Was a bit knackered by now though, been walking all day, so stopped for some recovery beer (Moretti, better than Peroni) and local
haute-cuisine



and called it a day, limped back to the Metro and then my hotel...

Really liked Rome though ; tons of "stuff" to look at - would be well disposed to going back just to Rome I think and do some proper
touristing rather than my try-and-do-it-all-in-one-day effort.
 

Coaster Hipster

Giga Poster
Wonderful pictures! Said it before, but I'm glad you're sharing the cultural stuff as well. Also great views from the Palace's roof :)
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Friday 16th - Cinecittà World, Zoomarine, Ghetto Spite Land

OK so last day now, :(

Being a muppet, I turn up at Cinecittà World an hour too early ; I knew it opened at 11am but I was kinda on theme-park auto-pilot and
turned up at 10am instead. Luckily its next door to one of those outdoor shopping centres which did open at 10 so I could have a McDonalds
breakfast and wander around the shops for a while to kill the hour. Muppet anyway.



Entrance gate ^ wasn't that flash



But once inside that it starts to get a bit posh

The entrance street was decent too, what Movieland were aiming at but done a bit (a lot!) better this time.





However, it got a bit faff-full at that point ; they only had the street open for a while - the next zone didn't open for another 1/2
hour of so.

So loitered there ; there was a rather rubbish movie-museum thing;





Did have the odd nice bit of park concept art on the wall though



Complex-selfie here;



Eventually (well 1/2 hour later) they opened the next zone and I could rush to the big-cred Altair CCW-0204 (might just be
called Altair these days?)







A Colossus-clone obviously, but with much nicer restraints - did enjoy that.





Park is empty, so barely any other punters on the thing either. Have a couple of rides then - done.



Bit annoying that the next zone (where the other coaster was) was still yet to open, but I guess thats just the way they operate on
empty days. Hmmm.



Was in the wild west area at the back of the park (next door to the big spaceship ride, not at all incongruous that then?) and there
was a VR-attraction there (there was another one back in the main street, but that had looked a bit crap and there was a little Q for
it (because nothing else was open at the time) so had skipped it) so had a go on that. It was really good actually, in that you wore
the tech running the VR on a backpack type thing so you could walk around untethered to anything. What you could walk around was this
little mini-set;



and the VR-game it was running reflected the set really well - like so you could touch "real" walls in it and so on. The game was all
shooting demons and suchlike in a big hell-setting or something like that - was good anyway.



The "kit" ^ is still all a bit bulky but its getting there I think - VR that doesn't feel restricted and that you can still move
around with (unlike on a coaster or anything you can run at home at the moment) seems like a good direction that this is going in. Not
sure it needs to be in a theme-park, though, would stand as one of those midway type attractions in tourist centres / shopping malls
and so on - think there is an Alien one with the wearable VR stuff in the works, I'd give that a go I think! :)

Yay, next zone had opened by then and could get the other cred, the indoor Inferno. Walk-on obviously but this was really good
too.





Similar to Alton's 13, so no great surprise with the drop-element, but there were loads of Dante's inferno type screens going on and
it was a really fun little ride - very good this.

Indoors, so no pics, have one of the layout from the safety-sign then;





Seemed to still be having a bit of an identity crisis tho'



Drop tower is nearby (the one from the concept-art earlier)



Another park-annoyance then, I think to give the impression the place is bigger than it really is, they make moving around the park a
bit burdenous by blocking off obvious pathways and so on. Inferno is literally yards away from the entrance to the drop-ride, but they
make you walk around the back of the drop ride, via what seems to be its extended Q-path to get there (i.e. rather than a park pathway
they are funnelling you through a Q line to even walk around the park)

Anyway eventually find its entrance



and have a couple of rides ; theres a sit down and a standup side and they are both fun - its not the tallest drop ride but the
standup/tilt side is particularly effective as you fall back into the building enclosure. Cool then.



Nearby is another U-571 thing (Italian parks seemingly fascinated by U571 things?) - I work out that its not a ride, but a "tour" and
then the ride-op works out that I'm not going to be able to understand anything of the tour am I so sends the group ahead and then
comes back to me to do the tour in English just for me - how nice was that? The guy isn't too confident in his English though (which
was fine, we were chatting park-geeky stuff for a while as the previous tour went ahead) and he so bails out in favour of another
cast member whose English was stronger so she gave me the tour instead. (Honestly he would have been fine and I made sure he knew that
I thought his English was fine too).



Tour was bit rubbish though - was apparently the set that the U571 film was filmed in but looked more like a mockup than the set to me
(since a proper set wouldn't really need to be so "complete" would it, suppose it could have been used for some bits though)



This is definitely a cred too Aktium; tracked water coaster, two drops and track that you coast around between drops.



Does have a bit of float-y section too though



Had a wander around the rest of the park just to see if there was anything I'd missed - there was a quite large kiddy-ride area
set away from the main park bit. Was empty though and nothing of note there (splash battle), felt that they could at least have snuck
in a kiddie-coaster though :(

Saw some sci-fi ride, so went in to investigate - pre-show was all quite well done, sort of serious tone space ship type affair but
the ride itself was rather crap - was an immersive tunnel and I hadn't actually done one of these (although I suppose Kong in Florida
is a on-steroids version of this sort of thing).

Perhaps what was really crap about this one was that you walked onto the ride vehicles already in the "tunnel" so any mystery about
what was going to go on was dispelled before it even started.



Then the movie was a bit crap and the joins where the different projectors were meant to line up were very obvious. Just rubbish overall
really.

This was the other VR-attraction and since the first one was so good I gave this a go. This wasn't good - was just an Oculus game
running - frankly could do that round my mates house.

So I did quite like the park, but its only really half-a-park at best at the moment. They did seem to be building some other stuff and
there were a couple of shows that I didn't feel any need to watch. When I was chatting to the U571 ride-op I had asked whether it ever
got busy and he assured me that at the weekends its really busy so I guess it could flourish over the years. I hope so, whilst some bits
were rubbish, other bits were really good and I'd seen a fair amount of adverts for the place on the metro and in the city the day
earlier (hadn't seen any ads for Rainbowland which you've gotta think is its local competitor)

Being half-a-park, I'd only spent a few hours there. Had spotted that there were some other +1s in the local area so set off in search
of them...

--

Not far away from Cinecittà towards the coast is a water-marine-type-park Zoomarine - took a bit of time to get into the place
as all the ticket booths had shut for the day some had to wake up someone in guest-services to sell me a ticket.



Caterpillar cred Squalotto (Shark) was as awesome as you'd expect;





However much more worthy (would not have bothered just for the caterpillar cred alone!) was a well travelled Schwarzkopf looping star
(had even spent a couple of seasons at Southport this one), currently called Vertigo.





This was obviously great then and had a few rides :)





The park was a bit odd then, advertising itself as a "marine park", most of the punters were just messing about in various water-play
areas, so it seemed to be more water-park with extras than marine-park. Think all of other riders on the Schwarzkopf were riding in
their swimming suits.





They did have Seaworld-type shows I guess, but I didn't see any of them - saw a few marine animals in too small tanks though, so that
wasn't great.



Just as I was walking out I spotted a heavily themed (!!) Dinosaur thing, thinking it might have been a dark ride I gave it a go



Was just a walk-thru (led by a guide) though, but in fairness had quite a lot of animatronic dinos going on.



--

Moving on, just down the rad was another place Fantasiland - had not been able to find out much (if anything!) about this place
on the internets so it sounded a little sketchy, but had a Galaxi which was at least worth a look at...

Got to the gates a bit before 5pm and there was nothing happening, place was all locked up.



Ah, but...



So hung about for a few minutes to see if anyone was going to open up, and they did!

The place is really just a bunch of kiddy rides and seemingly travelling rides set up on a bit of borderline wasteland (its a bit more
permanent than I'm making it sound, but very sketchy)

Wandered in, past the kiddie-coaster than actually looked in reasonable shape;



and at the back of the wasteland park sat the Galaxi;



but there was a small problem;





Ha ha - spited by a lack of trains, chunk of missing track and no control system either. :)

That would have been the last coaster on the trip anyway, and I didn't like the idea of explaining to some shady Italian carny that I
wanted to ride the caterpillar coaster (which was still shut) so headed off to the airport to get my flight home. :)

[ Public Service Announcement : Ciampino Airport is pretty rubbish, avoid it if you can! Also landing at midnight at Manchester
Airport is also pretty rubbish when there are 6 "last flight of the night" all landing at the same time but the immigration gates don't
work and/or are understaffed so you have to Q for almost an hour to get into the country and your baggage still hasn't appeared on the
carousel (baggage handlers also understaffed/have gone home?) ]
 
Top