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Eurodemption: Summary

Howie

Donkey in a hat
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Looks positively heaving compared to last month!
Seriously, that's hilarious. If it's not hot dog guy it's lawnmower guy. What next? Otto the janitor guy? Guber the garbage guy? Either way the message is clear, if you want to be a ride op - move to Poland.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
if you want to be a ride op - move to Poland.
Or ride Hexenbesen.


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The only other coaster of significance in Poland right now is at a new branch of the Plopsa franchise and was conveniently located along our escape route out of the country and back into Germany, so it felt like a good opportunity to have a look.

Day 9 – Majaland Kownaty

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Half the park is located inside this giant building, sharing that common indoor feeling found at several of their other properties.

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In here is the first of two creds - a family Zierer. The narrow tunnels lead to a larger enclosed space within which most of the ride (a couple of Vikings and a bear) happens.
The rest of the building contains a large number of family flat rides and the like. It all looks rather new, shiny and impressive, but that’s not why we’re here.

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We’re here for Poland’s only actual wooden coaster. Sadly a (mirrored) clone of Heidi at the big boy Plopsa park, although today I was slightly less bothered by that fact. Due to various misfortunes we only got a single lap in at de Panne so it was nice to get a clearer impression of the ride, in another form.

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I was impressed with the aesthetic of the station and ride entrance area. A bit of a mild spooky theme going on - Wilkołak means Werewolf as you can probably already see.

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Inside the station looks good too and, though it looks like I didn’t get a shot of it, the same goes for the train which had a few more slash marks on it. I assume we’re the hunters in this narrative.

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The same can’t be said for the rest of the ride as it unglamorously spends the whole layout outside the park perimeter in a wasteland with skips, a service road and

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an old caravan. Maybe the werewolf lives there. It looks better without the scream shields at least.

I’m neglecting the actual ride review here but – it’s decent. Exactly how I remembered Heidi, a bit un-GCI, though that could be considered a good thing at least half the time these days. I consider it a watered down version of the baby Gravitys and I could happily ride it all day.
Lots of fun little bouncy hills of all shapes, sizes and angles, with double ups and double downs in a simple out and back layout. Little in the way of the signature twists and turns as it doesn’t ever carry the speed to pull this off, but the airtime delivers enough.

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Construction – get excited.

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Ended up on a socially distanced Disk’O just for something else to do, and they suck.
Fun fact: even if you don’t acknowledge them as creds on coaster count, you still get the rare points for ticking it off, so obviously that was the real reasoning behind it.

The park has very little else to offer and even with many rerides we didn’t last long.

Up next – the credding gets intense.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
The plan for today was to visit 5 different parks for various +1s, which I’m fairly certain would have been a personal best. The inspiration came about when researching a certain food based chain and discovering they had several properties in the vicinity, each with their own cred. Wouldn’t it be cool to hit them all in a day? Well, I think so.

Day 10 – Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Elstal

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Not the smoothest of starts for time management as what we had billed as an 8am ride opening was actually 10am, but here we are. The Karls crawl begins.

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The first thing that should hit you when entering any of these places is the insanely sweet and addictive smell of strawberries that permeates absolutely everything in the building. I think it was worth coming for this alone.

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But equally importantly the outdoor area is home to the legendary Potato Coaster – K2.
After a potent smell of potato (not quite as nice I have to say), the indoor queue area is intensely themed. They’ve really gone at this attraction with a loving detail.
Once on board/inside the tub trains, there’s a dark ride section full of further impressive effects. The ride system itself is rather violent in the way it engages with anything – chain lifts, block brakes, it’s all quite amusing.

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It’s surprisingly big and forceful for such a simple design and the rather exposed seating position and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sacks of character.

Spurred on by our enjoyment of the first place, it was time to hit the road for the longest journey of the day. On a good run it should have been about 3 hours but it ended up well over 4 due to several car accidents and heavy congestion in this rather remote corner of Germany. Time was just being sucked out of the day and we'd barely begun our mission. It's like they wanted us to fail.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Koserow

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Through the adversity we arrived at park number 2. There’s nothing quite as exciting as the potato from here on in, but everyone loves a good Wacky Worm.

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And these are potentially the most impressive worms in the world. They have huge animatronics, grand entrances, themed queuelines, exit shops and merchandise to commemorate the fact that you rode the most common ride on the planet, in what may well be its best form.

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Most importantly they have strawberries instead of apples.

It felt weird to have another 3 parks to go with late afternoon fast approaching. A bit of quick maths meant we had to make a slight change to the order of events, driving slightly further still to allow for a difference in opening hours.

Rügen Park?

Even deeper into the middle of nowhere was the only park that isn’t a part of the official Karls crawl. Nor do they deserve to be. Rügen Park sucks.
We arrived on their doorstep with just over an hour left of their operating day to find the entrance gate padlocked shut. Guests were inside going about their business, but no staff members in sight.
Assuming some form of unannounced last entry policy we attempted to call them up and explain that time wouldn’t be an issue, we're literally outside and all we wanted was to pay and pop in for the cred. Sadly the staff on the other end of the phone rudely laughed at the request and hung up. Giving them the benefit of the doubt for this, we called back once more and in response they decided to stop answering the phone altogether, allowing it to ring indefinitely.
Poxy place anyway. No one wants your Zamperla 80STD.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Zirkow

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No time to stew on that, it was straight back on the road to a proper park.

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Home to strawberry worm number 2. Just 1 more to go.

The struggle at Rügen may have been a blessing in disguise as things were really down to the wire now. If there was any further faff involved it would have been game over.

Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Rövershagen

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We arrived at the final destination I’d say 18 minutes shy of closing time.

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While running around like nutters and getting lost looking for the TWO creds here (oh yes, it’s a big’un), they decided to start handing out Covid forms on approach to the entrance of the indoor coaster to impede our efforts further. Damn this track and trace business.

Kaffeekannen-Express is rare for an SBF build. Only two in the world apparently, the other in Mexico. I was far too distracted by the clock to take it in but it’s indoor, up high, looks cool, there’s a million coffee cups on the wall and it performed one lap too many.

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We arrived at the final worm shop just as the till lady was packing everything away. As soon as money had been exchanged, we had entered the queue and the doors were shut behind us. This was the last train of the day.
We’d made it. Visited 4 Karls parks in a day and rode every coaster they currently own. I see this as an absolute win.

In celebration of this momentous achievement we bought an armful of strawberry related goods from the shop on the way out and I'm now the proud owner of a soft toy mascot, for a Wacky Worm.

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As if the day wasn’t satisfying enough we managed to redeem Mack’s restaurant concept with a late night visit to the Hamburg branch. Several years ago we went to the one at Europa – it was stupidly cramped, had a dumb payment system, the food selection was abysmal and it was by far the worst thing about the whole visit.

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This particular location fixed everything. Eating Käsespätzle from a pot on wheels and playing a game of name that coaster up on the wall is my idea of a quality dining experience. The staff were super friendly too and asked us to write and send a free Rollercoaster Restaurant postcard (or two).

To my future self: wish you were here, look up GASM @ SFGAdv to see if you were right about the wall, and don't forget to slag off Rügen Park.

Up next – a travelling legend.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
I definitely clicked on every single blob in Germany on coast2coaster at least once while putting this trip together (the desperation is beginning to show) and in doing so made a very exciting discovery. The legendary Höllenblitz had set up shop in a safari park for the summer season. It was due to depart for Oktoberfest around August time but since that got cancelled, we contacted the park and they confirmed that it would be sticking around until the end of the year.

Day 11 – Serengeti Park

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To get to the rides area of course I had to participate in my first safari.
Not gonna lie, I wasn’t enthralled with the experience.

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Essentially a 2 hour traffic jam with a couple of animals in the road, the negatives far outweigh the positives. They claim they’re carbon neutral here but it seems a little hard to believe with the sheer number of cars just sitting around, engines chugging for hours on end.

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There were explicit instructions not to touch the animals because they simply don’t know whether covid can be transmitted. Everyone, literally everyone had their arms out the window poking things.

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Dead lion and a couple of cow heads.

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And the obvious highlight – this guy strutting through.
Now, where are the rides?

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This SBF visa only had ‘2 loops’ unlike the rest on this trip. What a disappointment.

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But here it is at last. No more waiting for it to never come to Winter Wonderland. We’ve come to you.

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I love the theming effort – geysers going off, mine trains crashing through the wall, the obligatory German man on a toilet. Inside there’s animatronics drinking beer before you get tyre launched round a corner in the dark to initiate a full spin – yes, omg…

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Into the main drop which, if you’re in the back row, is absolutely terrifying. You come hurtling down it at full speed, rotating wildly and limbs flailing in one of the most out of control moments in recent memory.
The remainder of the indoor section involves disco lights and even flamethrowers on the second lift. What’s not to love?

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I tried to get excited about construction but the fact that it was this close to being finished just means all I could think of was spite.

After an extended period of getting lost in their confusing one way systems around the park, we eventually made it out of the place and hit the road to our next stop. Things had taken rather longer than we anticipated and once again time was going to be tight. Maybe.
The next park loosely described their opening hours as always open until at least 5. Being a hot summer’s day on the last weekend of August we were hoping this meant they would be a little busy and they’d last a little longer. We were wrong.

Fort Fun Abenteurland

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On arrival we headed straight for the Devil’s Mine. The queue goes on forever through a combination of theming, total darkness, a million stairs, narrow passages and scary bouncing bridges (within a spinning tunnel that was thankfully broken – I think a death would have occurred). It’s quite the marathon.

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All that for a Vekoma Junior? Yes, well, it’s a decent one. Custom layout and plenty of character. Weirdly rough too.

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It has this unprecedented airtime hill in it, along with a dark ride section in which a man sprays you with water from his internal organs. At least I hope it was water.

This park is on a huge hill and (un)luckily everything we needed to rush to was now down that hill, rather than up it.

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SpeedSnake FREE was next. A Vekoma Whirlwind with the same retrofitted trains as the Boomerang at Wiener Prater.

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They required a little more defensive riding than I remembered, perhaps because more laterals are involved in this layout, as it’s essentially just a block of metal digging into your stomach. I shall call this one Loopen with a corkscrew instead of a loopen. Genius.

Then things went wrong. The park was really quiet and everything had been walk on so far. As we reached the Zierer Tivoli at the bottom of the hill it was performing its last lap of the day in front of us. Not because we were late, but because it had an unfortunate rule about needing a minimum of 12 riders.
Fair play to the operator, he attempted to rally the troops in order to open it back up for us again – both from the handful of guests still lurking around and even a couple of staff members at retail stalls.
It just wasn’t to be though, we couldn’t hit that golden number at this dead end of the park, right at the bottom of this stupid hill.

Which we now had to walk back up to find the last cred of the day. It was a struggle, but it was overcome with a grim determination to not be defeated again.

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Their alpine coaster was a surprise hit. You can’t see anything at all from the park but the lift went on for an eternity. The subsequent ride felt as long as Hasenhorn and twice as wild because the surroundings were completely overgrown and there was moss on the track. It felt downright dangerous actually, but that’s a good thing. It’s all coming full circle.

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The ferris wheel was still open once we arrived back at the top of the park and from here you can see why we had been spited, why it was so quiet here.

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It’s in the middle of nowhere, well over an hour from the nearest autobahn, two from a major city, through country roads, up and down mountains. Not what I had expected of the place for some reason.

But we enjoyed our visit anyway. What’s a Tivoli in the grand scheme of things?
*cries*

Up next – I have a confession to make.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
I have a confession to make.
I went to Phantasialand. For no reason at all. And it was alright.

The original plan for the day (well, the original original plan was Efteling :() was to grab an unremarkable +1, then do 2 German fairs back to back on the way home. One of those fairs went AWOL at the last minute so we were left with a tough morning decision.
Stick to the plan, albeit less of it, have a somewhat slow day and risk it being a bit of a downer, dragging our heels until the late night chunnel.
Or, Phanny’s (this is what fans call it, right?) only 20 minutes away. There’s nothing new, that thing with the walls isn’t open yet, we haven’t really enjoyed the place but umm… there’s plenty to keep us occupied and we can finish the trip on Taron instead of a bench. Maybe you need a global pandemic to have a good time there?
Ah… go on then.

Day 12 – Phantasialand

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Started better than last time. Into the good car park with no one shouting at us, into the good entrance – might have been greeted with a smile for the first time but, you know, masks.

Straight to Taron. Not 90 minutes and no one smoking! We did need a global pandemic after all.
Crossing the bridge to the sound of the trim kicking in directly above your head was new to me, also hilarious.
They’ve done some work to the cattlepen area since I last remember. It looks a little less multi-storey car park now, plus some extra rooves, lamps and gremlins in jars. Fair play.
It broke down. Again.
That's 3 for 3.

Finally got more than 2 rides per day on it and I think I’ve actually managed to suss out the layout. I’m not sure if doing this has helped the ride though. At least I found that one airtime moment you’re all on about.

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That one, yeah? It’s alright.
The rest of the layout felt as inconsequential as ever, if not more so. Where does all the energy from that amazing second launch go?
I have to really flop forward in the seat, loosen my limbs and sign a permission slip if I want the ride to throw me around a little. This should be a guarantee, not a choice.
I still love it, but it’s in danger of slipping.

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We rode page 3 of the Hafema catalogue. It kicked ass. Damnit Legendia!

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Here’s a shot you’ve never seen before.
It was nice to walk straight onto this for a change. The lap bars are still annoying, forcing your shoes into trenches of water, but the steepness of that drop cannot be denied.

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I now have to publicly apologise. I’m sorry Colorado Adventure. I misjudged you. I sat in your front row 4 years ago and you punched me in the head with your silly train car. We didn’t get along.

I sat in the back row this time and I have been enlightened. What a ridiculous ride. I was standing up for 90% of it, being thrown all over the place and laughing through sheer glee.
Look at this lot. They know where it’s at.

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Couldn’t really top the midnight fireworks rides on this but it’s still one of my fave inverts. I always forget the layout and it has more foot tingling helices than any other I can think of.

As you’re not allowed to shop in the evening at this park, made sure we got in early and finally became proud owners of a Maus au Chocolat after doing the ride. Still one of my fave shooting dark rides.

You can’t choose your Winjas, cos covid, so of course we got the worse one twice, but it’s still one of my fave spinners.
Quick, think of something negative to say.

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They’ve put VR on a coaster – the bastards!
Oh, the headsets are gone, cos covid.
I can’t bring myself to mock vanilla nighthawk. It’s cool.

Hollywood Tour was closed – the bastards!

I think we had some Asian lunch next, with nowhere to sit and dancing away from wasps every 30 seconds, but it was decent.

Taron was broke, again, so we waited for that to come back to life and rode it once more. It wasn’t closing time yet, we could ride it again, but ‘let’s go get a +2 instead.' That’s right, you heard me.

Öcher Bend Funfair

It didn’t quite have the lively spirit one would hope to get out of a German fair, not being dark yet and, you know, restrictions.
We completed our final track and trace paper and then went to find an operator.

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For this thing that rides like a bigger Zyklon Galaxi.

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And then finishing the trip in style of course – a wacky worm that’s a lion.


Turned out there were three countries to cross on the way home without stopping this time. We succeeded without incident and then came face to face with the UK border people. Our forms had been filled out online the night before and they didn’t seem to need to acknowledge this, instead just asking where we had been. We gave them a quick education on the Polish coaster scene, what they’re missing and why the back is better than the front – this was sufficient information to get us home.


Aww, it’s over. I’m gonna miss writing again now. Oh well, back to the ranking topics for some pointless updates.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
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I've only done Phantasialand once (haven't bothered going back since they announced FLY, figuring they'd finish it in some sort of sensible time-frame), so I am conscious I don't have much to compare it to - but - our trip was spread out, relaxed and with hotel ERT. I feel like rushing through the park isn't quite the way to do it. Too much pressure. :p

At least it sounds better than your previous visits, mind! Not that I suspect that would be that hard.

Assuming there's a stats post coming, I'll hold off on the "what was the total haul?" question... ;)
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
I feel like rushing through the park isn't quite the way to do it. Too much pressure.
Can't say I've ever rushed it either. Gave it the full 9 hours the first time (and got shouted at by staff for overstaying our welcome).
Went back for just river quest and midnight Taron the second time (another 8 hours at least).
This visit was as relaxed as it gets. "We'll leave when we're happy to."
My past issues with the park have no correlation with time management on our part.


Assuming there's a stats post coming, I'll hold off on the "what was the total haul?" question... ;)
Oh yes. I look forward to the map myself.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Turned out like a work of art this one.

Summary

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Mingled countries - 4
Total countries - 7
New creds - 56
Total coasters - 71
New parks - 19
Total parks –23
New wacky worms - 6
Total wacky worms - 7
Best coaster – Zadra
Best park – I can't really say no to Energylandia
Distance travelled ~ 3800 Miles-ish (new record)
Spites - 1/57 (0.02%), good old Europe.

Thanks for reading!
 
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