Finnergylandia

[MLDesigns]

Hi all!

I believe this is my first entry here. I just got back from a wonderful week in Europe, and after some inspiration from @toofpikk 's awesome thread, I'd love to recap everything here! As the title suggests, this trip consisted of my first visit to Finland and Poland, and featured these parks:

-Linnanmaki
-Sarkanniemi
-PowerPark
-Energylandia
-Legendia

Let's get into it.


DAY 1

After an overnight flight from with a quick change of planes in Reykjavik, I arrived in Helsinki mid-afternoon. Unlike my recent adventures on any American airline, Icelandair was right on time and even ahead of schedule. Anyway, upon arrival in Helsinki, I took the escalators deep underground to the airport rail station to face a new challenge: an American's first time taking on public transportation!

Luckily, I had a local friend that helped me out with the logistics. I quickly learned Helsinki is incredibly easy to navigate via public transit. (I assume this is the case with much of European cities, just haven't had to do it yet!) Hopped on the train, and a quick ~40 minute ride later, I arrived at Helsinki's Grand Central station.



A quick walk around the corner and my hotel awaited, the Scandic Grand Central Helsinki. A really gorgeous place. On the expensive side IMO, but when considering an included breakfast buffet & the super convenient location, I was perfectly content with it. After getting settled, I hopped on a city tram and headed over to the first stop, and one of the main reasons for the trip: Linnanmaki (and more specifically, to no surprise, Taiga)! I tried to plan it out for Taiga to be my #500- but being at #490 before the trip, I would have needed to do at least 2 credits before the trip and do everything at Linnanmaki before doing Taiga. Couldn't make that work, so that idea was DOA.

Upon arrival at Linnanmaki, the first ride I hit was the new Intamin Gyro Swing, Swingi. In my mind, it's absolutely the best pendulum ride on the market. Love them so much. The OTSLB restraint is very free, and it ran a great cycle (I think it was 5 full-height swings!), it's just the best.



Next up was the first coaster of the day, and my first Maurer Skyloop, Ukko. Rode in the 'big boy' seats in the back of the train, it was a wild sight looking up at that lift! The ride itself really wasn't horrible, aside from those dam trains. Total yuck. Luckily half the ride is just a valley, cause anymore movement and that restraint may gave given me an uppercut to the ribcage.

At this point, I debated doing a lap around the park, but quickly decided to get on with the main event: Taiga. It was on one train for my whole visit, but it never got more than a 10 minute queue. A quick walk through an empty queue, into the station and to the front row queue I go.



In a word, the ride is simply perfect. It's an absolute masterclass of a layout. An incredible range of forces, great pacing, butter smooth, and an awesome hillside setting; all twisted & perfectly intertwined. The first launch is punchy and routinely gave me 'the butterfly' feeling- I forgot that was a thing! A bizarre outward-banked inversion follows, providing some great hangtime. A dive to the right takes you to the lowest point of the ride, then a sideways hill and 2 turns bring you back up.

Launch #2 then takes you up and over the tophat, providing a wonderful view over Helsinki. Dive down and you enter a fantastic stall overtop of the Mack 'thing'. The rest of the ride is just incredible. Great positive forces, great airtime, and a fantastic triple-S-bend-and-drop combo follow. Another side banked hill and a left-hand corkscrew wrap up the masterpiece of a layout. Really can't praise this ride enough... it's that good.



After a few rides on Taiga, I then took a lap around the park grabbing credits:
Linnurata eXtra - optional VR on this, I tried it and took it off halfway through. Cred's a cred. Pretty cool to fit a custom coaster inside an old water tower.
Tulireki - The only surviving Mack E-Motion coaster. What a bizarre piece of junk this is. So awkward and clunky, big jolt on the first drop. Can we get a big Gerstlauer Bobsled in its place?
Pikajuna - A 3-lap powered coaster. Good views of Taiga.
Salama - A neat Maurer spinner, though it didn't spin all that much. Seems like every time you get spinning, the layout is designed in a way that it immediately cancels it out. Still fun though.
Vuoristorata - Brakeman ride! A cool classic. One good airtime moment beside the station, sit in the front for this!

Closed the night out with more rides on Taiga. Then hopped on the same tram back to the city center hotel, and was asleep within a few minutes of hitting the pillow. The long journey was already worth it from how incredible Taiga was, and this was just the beginning. A lot more trip to go!

 

[MLDesigns]

DAY 2

After some much needed sleep, the next day began with a great hotel breakfast buffet and a walk around the city center. Immediately greeted by an unavoidable amount of rentable electric scooters, so I downloaded the app, scanned the QR code on a scooter, and took off around the city.



Scootering around Helsinki was genuinely some of the best fun on the trip. Some cool things and lovely areas to be seen around Helsinki, it was so nice to just take it all in; in perfect weather no less. Down at the harbor, there's a cool little year-round market with many vendors & food stands- I opted for a strawberry crepe. Deeeelicious.





Now about 2pm, I scootered back to the central station and took a tram back to Linnanmaki for the rest of the day. I had done almost everything the previous day, so this day was primarily rerides & hitting some other, non-coaster attractions. (My camera roll may not show it, but I did! so here's more Taiga)




Overall, I am incredibly pleased with Linnanmaki and thrilled that I could visit. It's a great little park, very nicely kept, with some great rides even excluding Taiga. But my goodness, Taiga is reason enough to fly across the Atlantic (or whatever your local body of water may be) and visit. A sure-fire Top 10 coaster by nearly anyone's list. If you're able, GO DO IT, you won't be disappointed!

 

[MLDesigns]

DAY 3

Another nice hotel breakfast, and it was unfortunately time to leave Helsinki proper. Hopped on a train for a ~40 minute ride back to the airport to pick up my rental car for the next phase of the trip. Reserved a VW Golf, received a very nice Mercedes C-class. Thank you Enterprise!

Anyway, I then drove north up to the next city, Tampere. Arrived at the hotel a smidge too early to check in, so a quick walk on a small beach and up onto a cool rock formation/lookout to kill a few minutes.



Checked in, got settled in the room, and then hopped on another scooter for a 15-ish minute ride over to park #2: Särkänniemi!



A very interesting little park, this was. The entrance and observation tower is very nicely wooded, and the headlining ride, Tornado, is built nicely into the hillside; while just further down the hill, you're met with the rest of the flat, boardwalk/fairground feel park. A unique contrast, IMO.



Tornado was obviously the draw of this park, being one of only 2 of its kind left. But I was fully prepared to not fit on it before even starting the trip. I had just missed Kirnu the day before, by about a half-inch of seatbelt. To my absolute shock, and with a bit of ride op assistance, I actually made it on Tornado, and made it my #500.




It was a surprisingly fun ride! A fun drop (especially in the back), forceful valleys, a snappy cobra roll; it shows its age a bit, but perfectly fine for a 23 year old Intamin invert. The heartline rolls are the highlight. Having grown up on Volcano: The Blast Coaster, this was super fun to experience that feeling once again.



The rest of the park was just fine. Hype is a standard lap-bar Sky Rocket II; good ride, you know what you're getting. MotoGee is the same, a Zamperla motocoaster clone. Fun launch, a little rattley, but a nice dynamic layout. The Volare was shut, and seems all but dead at this point. Its sat on a nice plot of land, would love to see a Raptor or Hot Racer placed there.

Ended the day with a quick elevator ride up to the 120m observation tower at the park. Views for miles and a bar at the top, it's a cool place to lounge for a few minutes if needed!



And that wrapped up Särkänniemi! Scootered back to the hotel, had a great dinner at Mad Finn Brewing Co., and hit the bed. Long drive ahead in the morning!

 

[MLDesigns]

DAY 4

Saturday began with a nearly 3 hour drive north. A pretty peaceful drive aside from the excessive amount of speed-monitoring cameras, I arrived at the next park: PowerPark!

Immediately upon exiting the car, I was met with the challenge of the day: wind, and a lot of it. Decently strong sustained wind with gusts of 20+mph would be the theme of the day, and combined with the ~60° F morning temperatures, was a bit cold & gloomy upon arrival. The wind also, unfortunately, was the cause of a few ride closures.



The largest spite here was the newest Gerstlauer Infinity at the park, Pitts Special. I had intel from a friend that it had been closed the whole weekend prior to my visit, so I was mostly expecting to miss it. I later learned that, on this day at least, it was merely the *direction* of the wind that kept Pitts closed all day. And it made sense, the ride has failed to crest the first element before, and the strength of this wind would have certainly valleyed the train.

The first stop of the day was Junker. I hit it right after opening. It was pretty fun, but you could tell it wasn't hitting as well as it could. But we'll come back to that.
Two laps there, then I moved to the park's GCI woodie, Thunderbird.



Once again, this was good fun, but it was still just trudging around the track due to the temperatures. A quick cred-run followed this, hitting Cobra, Joyride, and Mine Train. It was now about 1pm and I had cleared the entire park; the weather improved quite a bit, and it made the whole vibe of the day better!




In looking at PowerPark's offerings, you can't miss the outdoor karting track that half of Pitts Special is built over. I ended up doing 2 10-minute sessions of this karting. It was another one of those "I'm so glad I did that" moments of the trip, it was a total blast!



The rest of the day was rerides, mostly on Junker. By the end of the day, the weather had cleared up and gotten warmer, and Junker had warmed up quite a bit too. It was really damn good now. Not Taiga-level, but really fun, forceful, and punchy. I'm notoriously not a fan of most small-train/single-car, Eurofighter-style looping coasters- but this one's different.



A fantastically punchy launch sends you up the tophat with some great airtime. Then into the Finnish Loop, with floater on the start and great hangtime in the loop. A few more elements pass and you hit the dive loop + roll finale, both of which are awesome.



I ended up with probably 15 rides on Junker. Just a wonderful ride. Still not a fan of the Gerstlauer seats (they're too short length-wise on the back of my things, and causes some weird soreness after that many rides), but nothing that cant be overlooked by how good the ride is.

PowerPark then closed and I hit the road back to Tampere for the night. Pretty unfortunate that I missed out on Pitts Special, as I cannot imagine that I'll ever be back at PowerPark (purely due to logistics, that's quite the trek from Helsinki)... but I'm very glad I made the trip up there when I easily could. Junker was certainly worth it!