TilenB
Strata Poster
Day 1 - Osttirodler and Freizeitpark Familienland
It's been a while since I've done one of these (I believe last November for Ai Pioppi), but, truth be told, I haven't travelled all that much this year so far. I had a couple of setbacks at the University and also a bit in my personal life, so I didn't manage to take off time or gather any willpower to make any bigger trips, only doing Skyline Park in early May and a couple of small Italian coasters in July with @ThomVD.
Fast forward to this past weekend (22nd and 23rd of September), when an opportunity arose to attend the World Cycling Championships with my dad. He has won some VIP tickets for the Sunday's Team Time Trial on a raffle organized by a local gas station chain. Since the drive to Innsbruck is rather long (4,5h each direction) for a day, we decided to make this a weekend trip, hitting a few of our own POIs on the way.
I figured out that one of the suggested routes on Google Maps gets us fairly close to Freizeitpark Familienland, so we decided to make that our first stop on the trip.
But after a couple of hours of driving, we drove past this;
Osttirodler is one of the world's longest Alpine Coasters, sitting at 5th place with its 2800m of total track length. We paid 12,5€ (these things are always so expensive) a head and boarded the cable car to the top of the hill.
On the top station of the ride I managed to sneak in a shiny Chikorita catch in Pokemon GO, so I wasn't as bothered by missing that Community Day anymore (the PoGO playing CFers will understand).
When we were just about to board, we were let known that there was also some sort of a race going on the Alpine Coaster. We got excited to take part, but were informed that we'd need to hang around until 1pm if we were to take part. The time back then was about 11:30am, so we elected to skip.
The lad in front of me was competing. I was let on the course about 20 seconds after he was and caught up about two thirds down the course. I could see the spark leaving his eyes when he saw me catching up with him. Poor soul. As for the ride, it was fun, winding, fast and I often struggled to keep the brake lever down in order to keep the ride at max speed. These Wiegand Alpine coasters really never disappoint.
After this short side-stop we were soon back on our way to Freizeitpark Familienland. It all went up quite smooth up until we bumped into this cow parade sort of thing...
It was all fun and games, cameras-out and all such type of affair when this first group was travelling in other direction, so we could greet them and take some good photos. But then...
We caught up with a group travelling in our direction, which turned the last 2 or 3 kilometres before reaching the park into a slow 45 minute long drive. Urgh...
But eventually we got to the place. Paid 16€ apiece to get in and made a beeline for the cred.
But it wasn't open quite yet. Since it was operating in shifts with some tracked farm animals ride, we had to wait about 10 minutes for the operator to show up.
So when she finally materialized, some kids beat us to the front, so we had to settle for the back row. So, this is quite a fun little coaster. The first ride we had on it felt a bit weak and forceless, but all of the subsequent rides with a full train showed some hints of airtime on the first drop and on a couple of other hills, but quite a distinct rattle in the ride's big helix. That one hiccup wasn't enough to detract from the overall ride experience, so we ended up riding it four more times in a row (once more in the back, once in front and twice in the middle), before reitiring to take some off ride shots too. Quite likely the best coaster I've done in 2018, which just makes me depressed...
After the coaster we wandered off to the back section of the park, which was even more deserted than the rest. There was just a small kid on the swings with her dad looking positively bored next to her, the ride operator raking leaves and the two rides sitting dormant...
So I guess this won't open anytime soon?
What's up?
We wanted to do the spinning raft thingy next, but that also operated on shifts (with chairswing, I think, the operator told us, but in some local German dialect, so no use), so we ended up the thing we didn't need an operator to run it for us.
It's one of those self operated Heege swings. It goes up quite high, so it's good fun. I liked it, my dad less so. So, chairswing next.
I believe the ride was new for 2018 and it was quite decently themed. Good on them to continue with some investments. We then walked around the place for a bit to see if anything else of worth was currently operating.
It wasn't, so we ended up on the slides. They had two sorts of these steel mat slides - a racing one with airtime humps and an impossibly steep one. Climbing up, we've also found a do-it-yourself bowling alley (no photos, I guess) and some sort of a devil's cave (?). I guess I didn't take too many photos, but it was just sort of a room with all sorts of little devils and a weird dark corridor running back from one side of the room to the other. Odd, but fun.
Anyways, back to the slides. The airtime slide was fun
My dad catching some air, sorta
And the Devil's slide (ooh) was quite scary. As I said, it was stupidly steep and there was also a sort of a roof above it, so you had no clue on where you're going and I was genuinely scared I was going to end up smashing my head into something. Brilliant. My dad chickened out and did the other slide again instead.
By then, the pirate ship has reopened (it shares the booth with the coaster, so it operates the same shifts), so we did that. It was genuinely one of the lamest I've done, hardly gaining any real height and stopping just as soon something looked it might start happening.
We then went for a couple more rides on the coaster, which was still delivering some good fun.
firey cars
Nice surroundings
The cred closed again, but one of the rides in the back of the park opened, so we went there. We ended up doing different cycles with my dad, so I took some photos of him riding.
Figured out that we did pretty much everything there was to, we went back to the Spinning Raft thing, which was now open and luckily not too wet.
I didn't take any photos, so here's one from the web
Went for one more go on the airtime slide and then exited the park.
So, this was quite a fun place. Tiny, quiet, but it seemed welcoming and friendly, so it was a bit of a shame to see it this empty on a nice Saturday afternoon. Maybe it was just the day we visited, who knows.
When driving on to Innsbruck, we passed some place, where they used to film a TV Show called Bergdoktor (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1177054/), which was pretty huge in the Alpine region (Austria, Southern Germany, Slovenia, possibly Switzerland?) and my dad was a big fan, so we had to make a stop at some of the filming locations.
First bit was down in the village and consisted of the small restaurant/inn and a church.
I believe the story started with them attending a funeral in this church and there was a funeral going on as we were there. Odd.
The main location is on a bit of a hill outside the village. I believe this is the house where the 'doctor' does his practice.
This place was hugely popular, with a lot of tour busses coming in and old Germans climbing the small hill en masse in order to get a picture in front of this house. Certainly a bit weird for someone like me, who has never really cared for the show.
Since we were having some decent pace at this point, my dad decided to drive up to Area 47, before parking up in Innsbruck. Perhaps some of you have heard of the place, but to sum up for those who haven't, Area 47 is a huge outdoor extreme sports venue, that boasts a small water park, wildwater rafting courses, mountain biking trails, huge climbing courses and whatnot. Here's a bit of a photo dump from the place, which was mostly closed by the time we got there.
Indoor motocross track
After this we went to Innsbruck, dumped our stuff at the hotel, which was just accross the river from the city center and went to grab a dinner in the old town.
Before we went to bed, we had a short stroll around the city, taking in a few nighttime shots of the place.
So, that's it for now. When I'm bothered, I'll try to throw in a few shots from the actual bike race and a few more daylight shots of Innsbruck, since that was pretty much all we did the 2nd day.
It's been a while since I've done one of these (I believe last November for Ai Pioppi), but, truth be told, I haven't travelled all that much this year so far. I had a couple of setbacks at the University and also a bit in my personal life, so I didn't manage to take off time or gather any willpower to make any bigger trips, only doing Skyline Park in early May and a couple of small Italian coasters in July with @ThomVD.
Fast forward to this past weekend (22nd and 23rd of September), when an opportunity arose to attend the World Cycling Championships with my dad. He has won some VIP tickets for the Sunday's Team Time Trial on a raffle organized by a local gas station chain. Since the drive to Innsbruck is rather long (4,5h each direction) for a day, we decided to make this a weekend trip, hitting a few of our own POIs on the way.
I figured out that one of the suggested routes on Google Maps gets us fairly close to Freizeitpark Familienland, so we decided to make that our first stop on the trip.
But after a couple of hours of driving, we drove past this;
Osttirodler is one of the world's longest Alpine Coasters, sitting at 5th place with its 2800m of total track length. We paid 12,5€ (these things are always so expensive) a head and boarded the cable car to the top of the hill.
On the top station of the ride I managed to sneak in a shiny Chikorita catch in Pokemon GO, so I wasn't as bothered by missing that Community Day anymore (the PoGO playing CFers will understand).
When we were just about to board, we were let known that there was also some sort of a race going on the Alpine Coaster. We got excited to take part, but were informed that we'd need to hang around until 1pm if we were to take part. The time back then was about 11:30am, so we elected to skip.
The lad in front of me was competing. I was let on the course about 20 seconds after he was and caught up about two thirds down the course. I could see the spark leaving his eyes when he saw me catching up with him. Poor soul. As for the ride, it was fun, winding, fast and I often struggled to keep the brake lever down in order to keep the ride at max speed. These Wiegand Alpine coasters really never disappoint.
After this short side-stop we were soon back on our way to Freizeitpark Familienland. It all went up quite smooth up until we bumped into this cow parade sort of thing...
It was all fun and games, cameras-out and all such type of affair when this first group was travelling in other direction, so we could greet them and take some good photos. But then...
We caught up with a group travelling in our direction, which turned the last 2 or 3 kilometres before reaching the park into a slow 45 minute long drive. Urgh...
But eventually we got to the place. Paid 16€ apiece to get in and made a beeline for the cred.
But it wasn't open quite yet. Since it was operating in shifts with some tracked farm animals ride, we had to wait about 10 minutes for the operator to show up.
So when she finally materialized, some kids beat us to the front, so we had to settle for the back row. So, this is quite a fun little coaster. The first ride we had on it felt a bit weak and forceless, but all of the subsequent rides with a full train showed some hints of airtime on the first drop and on a couple of other hills, but quite a distinct rattle in the ride's big helix. That one hiccup wasn't enough to detract from the overall ride experience, so we ended up riding it four more times in a row (once more in the back, once in front and twice in the middle), before reitiring to take some off ride shots too. Quite likely the best coaster I've done in 2018, which just makes me depressed...
After the coaster we wandered off to the back section of the park, which was even more deserted than the rest. There was just a small kid on the swings with her dad looking positively bored next to her, the ride operator raking leaves and the two rides sitting dormant...
So I guess this won't open anytime soon?
What's up?
We wanted to do the spinning raft thingy next, but that also operated on shifts (with chairswing, I think, the operator told us, but in some local German dialect, so no use), so we ended up the thing we didn't need an operator to run it for us.
It's one of those self operated Heege swings. It goes up quite high, so it's good fun. I liked it, my dad less so. So, chairswing next.
I believe the ride was new for 2018 and it was quite decently themed. Good on them to continue with some investments. We then walked around the place for a bit to see if anything else of worth was currently operating.
It wasn't, so we ended up on the slides. They had two sorts of these steel mat slides - a racing one with airtime humps and an impossibly steep one. Climbing up, we've also found a do-it-yourself bowling alley (no photos, I guess) and some sort of a devil's cave (?). I guess I didn't take too many photos, but it was just sort of a room with all sorts of little devils and a weird dark corridor running back from one side of the room to the other. Odd, but fun.
Anyways, back to the slides. The airtime slide was fun
My dad catching some air, sorta
And the Devil's slide (ooh) was quite scary. As I said, it was stupidly steep and there was also a sort of a roof above it, so you had no clue on where you're going and I was genuinely scared I was going to end up smashing my head into something. Brilliant. My dad chickened out and did the other slide again instead.
By then, the pirate ship has reopened (it shares the booth with the coaster, so it operates the same shifts), so we did that. It was genuinely one of the lamest I've done, hardly gaining any real height and stopping just as soon something looked it might start happening.
We then went for a couple more rides on the coaster, which was still delivering some good fun.
firey cars
Nice surroundings
The cred closed again, but one of the rides in the back of the park opened, so we went there. We ended up doing different cycles with my dad, so I took some photos of him riding.
Figured out that we did pretty much everything there was to, we went back to the Spinning Raft thing, which was now open and luckily not too wet.
I didn't take any photos, so here's one from the web
Went for one more go on the airtime slide and then exited the park.
So, this was quite a fun place. Tiny, quiet, but it seemed welcoming and friendly, so it was a bit of a shame to see it this empty on a nice Saturday afternoon. Maybe it was just the day we visited, who knows.
When driving on to Innsbruck, we passed some place, where they used to film a TV Show called Bergdoktor (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1177054/), which was pretty huge in the Alpine region (Austria, Southern Germany, Slovenia, possibly Switzerland?) and my dad was a big fan, so we had to make a stop at some of the filming locations.
First bit was down in the village and consisted of the small restaurant/inn and a church.
I believe the story started with them attending a funeral in this church and there was a funeral going on as we were there. Odd.
The main location is on a bit of a hill outside the village. I believe this is the house where the 'doctor' does his practice.
This place was hugely popular, with a lot of tour busses coming in and old Germans climbing the small hill en masse in order to get a picture in front of this house. Certainly a bit weird for someone like me, who has never really cared for the show.
Since we were having some decent pace at this point, my dad decided to drive up to Area 47, before parking up in Innsbruck. Perhaps some of you have heard of the place, but to sum up for those who haven't, Area 47 is a huge outdoor extreme sports venue, that boasts a small water park, wildwater rafting courses, mountain biking trails, huge climbing courses and whatnot. Here's a bit of a photo dump from the place, which was mostly closed by the time we got there.
Indoor motocross track
After this we went to Innsbruck, dumped our stuff at the hotel, which was just accross the river from the city center and went to grab a dinner in the old town.
Before we went to bed, we had a short stroll around the city, taking in a few nighttime shots of the place.
So, that's it for now. When I'm bothered, I'll try to throw in a few shots from the actual bike race and a few more daylight shots of Innsbruck, since that was pretty much all we did the 2nd day.
