"Finnish Me Off" - Finland 2013 Trip Reports.

[Gavin]

^Is the hot dolphin trainer still there? I think Jake had a picture somewhere, or it might have been Ben.

I actually really liked Sarki, but I think it's a lot to do with the fact that I really liked Tampere in general, the location was gorgeous and we just had a great, chilled couple of days in the city.

The half pipe was much better than the POS at Chimelong in terms of smoothness, but still a bit of a dull ride. I really liked Tornado though. It's definitely quite a big step up from an SLC, though clearly nowhere near B&M standards.

The best ride there was obviously* the Schwarzkopf that you didn't get to ride. It was amazing!**

*not really
**can't even remember it if I'm honest

 

[Ian]

^ None of the trainers were head-turning hot. They were all good looking, as are most Scandinavians imo. I probably would have joined in an orgy with them if they asked. I'd even let the dolphins watch.

And yes, Tampere was quite nice. Even the young chavs we met in a park the evening we stayed there were friendly. We didn't get mugged, stabbed or raped.

 

[caffeine_demon]

Sarki was ok - angry birds land was well themed, but there was a lot of concrete, and little shade - I was really flagging in the afternoon. I thought madrids intravert was better, although the half pipe was great (can't count it as a cred though - or if I do then I have to count discos and the spinny thing at fun park). I have to say I rather enjoyed motogee - nothing esxceptional, but nothing terrible either!

On the boat ride and pull ferry thing, I thought we were gonna get thrown out of the place..

the volare wasn't quite as bad as feared, but just not particularly great, and the flume and rapids were disappointingly dry! Was disappointed that they'd spited the dark ride

Did anyone get footage of the linanmaki mince?

 

[Darren B]

The highlight of Sarki was hands down the blonde ride op for Tornado ERT, who then moved onto being our ride op for Half Pipe ERT too, she was unbelievable! <3

 

[davidm]

Apologies in advance for the rather rubbish report, I didn't take many many pics around
Finland as I didn't bother with my camera at any of the places (apart from the one afternoon
at Särkänniemi) so this PTR will be a little brief I think.

Anyway, from what I have...

Day -1 : Friday 2nd August

Flight from Manchester's ugly T1 and the Finnair bus from the airport to right outside
my hotel gets me to Helsinki by the middle of Friday afternoon.

Have a wander around the city for a while, nice enough but not very exciting (I was
saying on in Helsinki for a day or so after the Live to have a look around too)

Wander out in the evening to find some food&drink and completely by random happen
to wander past some familiar peeps sat in the window of a bar just off one of the
main squares.

So, several hours later we left the bar, having been joined by a random rather overly
tactile drunken Finnish bloke (who Richard was subsequently arm-wresting with...)

think the evening came to a natural conclusion when Sue spilled her pint (over the table
and mostly me) - should have expected that I guess? ;-)

Day 1 : Saturday 2nd August

So come Saturday morning and somewhat struggling with my hangover we all met up at the
airport.

For some reason Darren needed to rummage in the rubbish bins (looking for a quick snack
perhaps?)

And after some faff we are sorted with vehicles (apart from Richard who had a Nissan)...

...and all head off North to what I rather expected to be just a little FEC type place
attached to a shopping mall in Tampere.

http://funpark.fi/en

Only its actually a bit more than that ; whilst still not spectacular it was much larger
than I expected and had quite a lot of (small) stuff in it.

The coaster-sim (think Cyber-Space mountain at Disney, but better and running No-Limits)

Horrible spinny think that even without hangover I would avoid (not Peter & Ciall tho')

Oh dear...

We spent a fair few hours here, just pratting about on the silly rides ; was all rather
surprisingly entertaining.

--

Burdenous drive North after that (Finland non-motorway roads annoyed me somewhat) got
us to hotel #1 in Seinäjoki.

Day 2 : Sunday 3rd August

(Failed to take ANY pictures of the next day)

A short drive in the morning got us to Powerpark (or is it Powerland, or Powerpark at
Powerland? Never mind, not important.)

http://www.powerpark.fi/etusivu_en

We had a rather excellent ERT session on Thunderbird to start the day - kudos to Ian
for arranging it and to the park chaps for running it - they were most accommodating and
friendly!

Thunderbird was easily the best coaster on the trip. just a really good, modern woody
that did exactly what it was meant to do. Easily re-rideable and I think we all enjoyed
it for the whole hour that we had to play on it.

We re-rode it in the evening just before we left, and it was even better then - worth
the whole trip up to Finland alone to ride this thing I think. Great stuff.

After the park opened we sorted out entrance fees and most of the group went off go-karting
(Ian,Darren & myself sat it out) - some crash-drama and refunding-faffing later (other
peoples stories to tell) we reconvened and worked our way through the rest of the park's
coasters'n'stuff.

Cobra : a Vekoma boomerang ; not too much to say about this, wasn't the worst I've been
on (out of the 16), somewhat unusual trains I guess.

Mine Train : kiddie-cred - nothing to see here, move along.

Joyride : I had never been on a L&T Systems ride before so that was a fist; this was an
OK ride, it didn't do much, didn't cause any pain - next.

Neo's Twister : a different-layout to the normal spinning-mouse styles, fairly painful
ride but interesting enough because of that non-normal layout.

The park overall surprised me a bit ; it was much nicer than I thought it was going to
be ; I had looked at rides on RCDB before the trip and it all looked a bit like a barren
wasteland* with a few rides plonked in it ; which it was not at all.

(* - If you look at RCDB's pics of Joyride - eg http://rcdb.com/2609.htm?p=10213 - it looks
rather awful ; however I guess thats an old pic and they have built the place up a lot
since then)

Another tedious drive across Finland later (have to say that whilst I disliked the roads
a lot, the scenery was rather splendid - just one lake after another set amongst vast
forests - all very cool) we ended up at hotel #2 rather late in the evening.

Day 3 : Monday 3rd August

Särkänniemi is just the other side of the town that we are in, so a non-burdenous drive
gets us there 1 hour before opening. http://www.sarkanniemi.fi/en

Ian has done the business again and we have 1 hour's ERT on their Intamin invert Tornado
and half-pipe. We spend most time on the invert which was fun enough I thought ; been
quite a few years since I rode the version in Madrid but I think I preferred this one.

Half-pipe was OK too ; better than Disney's version by far and not as nauseating as I
expected it to be.

We had a little talk about the park from the nice park-manager lady and then we spent
the rest of the day playing around.

The park's other coasters then;

MotoGee : a Zamperla moto-coaster ; was pretty fun - maybe not as good as the Vekoma
bikes (but I've just surprised myself by realising that I'd ridden one of these types
before in KBF's Pony Express - well MotoGee was a LOT better than Pony Express).

Vauhtimato : kiddie-cred - nothing to see here, move along.

Trombi : a Volare ; fairly horrible ride, which is a shame as they do appear unusual
and look quite good. Just painful to ride, ugh.

The park itself was set in a really rather spectacular location on the edge of a huge
lake. In places the park was really nice, other places a bit of a concrete-slab.
Overall pretty good though and I enjoyed the place.

The big observation tower in the middle of the park gave some impressive views too

Goon-spotting at lunchtime;

After lunch (and when I picked up my camera) the log flume was done by most;

Girl's boat (sorry Peter)

Fat boat;

Other boat;

Got some shots of each boat on the last drop;

(Sue with patented TShirt-over-head technique in the front)

Fat boat making a splash;

and as always, Andy acts as a water-magnet;

Another nasty drive ending up with negotiating the inner-city traffic in Helsinki to drop
people off at the hotel before returning cars to Airports and getting back into Helsinki
meant it was quite late before we all convened in Helsinki leading to some faff-issues.
Impressed some people had the enthusiasm to go out drinking then, my faff-tolerance levels
had failed a while earlier so I abstained.

Day 4 : Tuesday 4th August

Having a nice hangover-free clear head was good the next day, so we made our way up to
the last park Linnanmäki - which is only a mile or so from the centre of Helsinki.

http://www.linnanmaki.fi/en/

Ukko : a skyloop. Never been on one of these before - cool. Seemed to be universally
disliked by everyone, but I thought it was OK ; certainly interesting!

Linnunrata : indoor zierer ; space-mountain-lite? Was quite fun to be honest but the
building it is housed in is a right eyesore, this huge brick building sat in the middle
of the park - ugly.

Kirnu : a Intamin ball coaster. Never been on one of these either - double-cool. Liked
this too, but rather short. I went on the larger version in Stockholm a few days later
and that was probably the "right" length for this sort of thing.

Vuoristorata (Roller coaster) : the old woody ; rather nice in fact - few pops of airtime
and rather fun. I liked!

Vonkaputous : water coaster ; certainly had a huge splash, plenty of peeps coming off
soaked - think I got off lightly sat at the front hiding behind the windscreen.

Tulireki : odd-ride, didn't do much, instantly forgettable?

Pikajuna : Powered. Was OK for a powered coaster, apart from the very end when it stops
and if you are the back you are left hanging at a stupid angle as it crawls back into
the station.

and finally Salama : a Maurer spinner, which I had some high hopes for but was a bit meh
in the end. The start and end of the circuit were good, but the middle section seemed
to me to be just brake-run -> loop around -> brake-run - repeat 3 times?

So the park overall I quite liked, couple of interesting rides but nothing outstanding,
nice enough atmosphere.

So that was it for the live - I had a nice time thank you very much!

Props to Ian for organising etc and everyone else for coming along for the ride!

--

After we all went off in separate directions at the end of the day I stayed at the
park for a few re-rides and some food before heading back into Helsinki for a couple
of nights after which I headed to Sweden for a couple of days (will try to write a
better report of that soon, I certainly take more pictures when wandering around
on my own!)

Oh, and my Helsinki hotel had a sauna in my bathroom, which was nice.

 

[Jason Voorhees]

^Nice report!

 

[MouseAT]

Särkänniemi

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... cc78849734

After checking into a hotel under the name "Fleece Thornton" (thanks Ian) and a fairly brief evening of drinking in Tampare, we were up bright and early the following morning, evaded the aftermath of Ian's farts in the lift, and set off across town to Särkänniemi.

The park is in a beautiful location, built on a hillside overlooking a huge lake and the city of Tampare. It's actually owned by the city, and is apparently in the process of being redeveloped section by section.

As has already been mentioned in previous trip reports, some parts of the park are quite pleasant and well themed, whilst others have a bit of a classic "Flamingo Land of old" fairground rides on concrete feel to them. Plans are apparently in place to redevelop the older, less attractive parts of the park, but whether or not these new areas will be based on licensed IPs (as in the case of Doghill or Angry Birds land) or developed in house has yet to be decided.

The park has a wide selection of rides and attractions. None of them are world class, but most of them are interesting and well worth a ride. As with most of the Finnish parks there's enough to keep an enthusiast entertained for most of the day without feeling like you're having to rush in order to get everything done. All in all, I'd say Särkänniemi made for a nice, fairly laid back day out.

Unlike most other parks, Särkänniemi's bottled drinks are all in-house brands. The bottled water is Tornado branded (a.k.a. "goon water"), whilst I was quite impressed with the disapproving lemon on the in-house Sprite alternative.

So, on to the rides. This was definitely more of a "let's ride stuff" day as opposed to an antic heavy one.

The park's flagship ride is Tornado, their Intamin inverted coaster. It looks impressive, and I don't think any of our photos quite do justice to the colour of the trains. It's got a pretty good layout, and underground station with an underground barrel roll directly above the loading platform (which is quite entertaining when there's a Stone Cold going through overhead on the other train). There are great views of the park and the lake from the lift hill too.

So what's the problem? Two things really.

Firstly, it's quite sluggish through many of the elements, the most notable being the turn around through the loop. Secondly (and more annoyingly) it gets annoyingly jerky through the last few turns. It spoils what in my opinion is actually a pretty good ride. I can't say I'm a big fan of the final barrel roll either, but that might be more to do with the fact that it's sandwiched between two rather uncomfortable turns than anything else.

All in all, it's certainly interesting and rideable, but like so many other Intamins it falls at the last hurdle.

The Half Pipe on the other hand was awesome. It's smooth, floaty, didn't spin excessively and was actually quite re-rideable. It's a shame there aren't more of these in operation.

Once we'd been given some more information about the park, it was time to mop up the remaining coasters, with the odd flat ride thrown in here and there. We began with the kiddy cred in the Angry Birds area of the park. I can't say I was particularly impressed by this area of the park to be honest - it felt pretty bland, corporate and half-assed, as if all the thought that went in to the area was "stick in a bunch of kids rides, stick something, anything on it to tie it in to Angry Birds, then call it a day".

On to the Volare then. The last one I rode at Rye Playland back in 2008 got filed under "meh". This one gets filed under "ouch". I was riding with Jerry, Sue and Jordan, and we spent most of the ride laughing, I think Sue and Jordan were amused by how vile the ride was. Jerry and I just found their reactions hilarious.

The nearby Disko with hill gave some fantastic views of the lake.

The park has a nice gentle, relaxing, meandering boat ride, providing a reason to organise yet another fat boat. This boat ended up rather close to the waterline, right up to the point where people started rocking the boat at which point the side of the boat dipped below the waterline, the ride became less relaxing and considerably more wet. I've just realised that this was probably one of the few occasions on this trip where water was involved and didn't end up on me!

There was one coaster left to ride - the Zamperla Motocoaster. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The launch was reasonable, and whilst there's a slightly unpleasant bump at the end of the launch track, the rest of the ride was extremely smooth and quite relaxing.

After lunch it was on to the water rides, starting with a great log flume. It's the only flume I know of that has rapids in the water channel, and true to form the final drop managed to throw a significant amount of water up in the air over JayJay so that it could land on me.

The rapids on the other hand were poor. Even I didn't get wet. Boooooring!

Then came the dolphin show. It starts slowly with a video in Finnish, so I pretty much ignored what was going on to start with and spent some time taking advantage of the park's free Wi-Fi. However, as soon as the dolphins started performing, the phone went away, and I was genuinely impressed by the performance. I'd not seen Dolphins perform since Flamingo Land back in the 90s, so I'd forgotten how amazing they can be. The park has put a lot of effort into the show, with great music and some quite impressive stunts.

Keeping with the animal theme, the group moved on to the Doghill area of the park. This area is home to the park's new and improved petting zoo, and is based on another IP - in this case, a series of Finnish children's books that are pretty much unknown outside of the country. The area certainly looks good, it’s much more immersive than the Angry Birds land and is clearly popular with the locals.

After spending time going around looking at animals and saying "awww" a lot, people moved on to the rafts on ropes. Yes, many CFers piled on to a single raft. Yes the raft started to sink. Yes people fell in, and yes it was all caught on camera.

With people desperate for additional goon points, the planetarium followed. The English language version was narrated by Patrick Stewart, and featured many cringe worthy Star Trek references. The show had some interesting moments for those who were into this sort of thing, and provided a welcome snooze for everyone else.

The observation tower provides fantastic views of the park, the city of Tampare and the lake. It's definitely worth checking out. The building beneath the tower also houses a small aquarium.

The drive back to Helsinki involved an interesting selection of music. With a car full of rock, indie and metal fans in rock and metal friendly Finland, our musical choices were pretty clear - start with the eclectic, and descend rapidly into cheese! Flight of the Conchords, The Easy Star All Stars, Huey Lewis, Rupert Holmes, Let Loose, Vengaboys, Paul Simon, Dire Straits… great times.

After checking in to the hotel and grabbing food (or at least a close approximation - we are talking McDonalds here) it was time to hit the bars of Helsinki. A late night and much drinking followed.

 

[MouseAT]

Linnanmäki

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... d1e51a4312

Linnanmäki is a fairly substantial park located on the hillside just outside Helsinki. There’s quite a lot of unique and interesting rides and attractions crammed into quite a small space, so there’s plenty of fun to be had, especially where CF is involved.

Add to the fact that around half the group was at best tired from the previous night’s drinking and at worst badly hung over, it made for an interesting morning, with the order of rides being determined largely by the tolerance of people’s stomachs.

Ian also managed to get people doing ridiculous things such as mincing and hopping across the park, walking down steps backwards and (in the case of Stone Cold) rolling down a paved hill in order to earn massively inflated numbers of goon stars. The photos people got are amazing, and I just wish I’d thought to shoot a couple of video clips as well.

As for the rides, there are plenty of them. We started out with the rather vile and unnerving looking Maurer sky loop, which was as unpleasant to ride as it looked. This was followed by the indoor space-themed kiddie cred, which was actually surprisingly good.

With the after effects of the previous night beginning to subside, the group was ready to tackle Kirnu, the Intamin Zacspin. Opinions on this ride seemed to be mixed. The ride is ridiculously short, and the capacity is absolutely terrible, so the ride will always have a time consuming queue.

Personally I quite enjoyed the ride. There’s something to be said for the unpredictability of being slammed in different directions, and flipping over going into the brake run was certainly entertaining. Part of me would have liked to re-ride it whilst I was there, but I just couldn’t be bothered waiting in the queue of burden a second time. On the other hand, other people were stapled in to the ride and subsequently winded by the restraint during the quick changes in direction. As is often the case with Intamin rides the restraints seem to work extremely well for some people, and not so well for others.

The side friction woodie was next, complete with brake man. It was a reasonable ride, especially in the front, which offered some amazing pops of airtime.

Linnanmäki has a powered, suspended ride called Pilotto that prompted some discussion as to whether or not it counts as a cred. It has height changes, but maintains a constant speed at around walking pace throughout the ride. RCDB does not list the ride, but apparently Coaster Counter does. Again, views were mixed. Even some users of Coaster Counter weren’t prepared to count it as a cred. I generally make decisions on whether or not to count something as a roller coaster on a case-by-case basis, and in the cases where I’m undecided my rule is “it counts if it’s listed on RCDB”. Pilotto isn’t on there, so I don’t count it.

The water coaster followed. It was a water ride. I rode it and got very wet. I don’t remember much else about it to be perfectly honest.

After lunch, it was time to mop up the remaining coasters, starting with the Mack E-Motion and powered coasters. Clearly Mack were having an off day when designing and installing these rides, as both were rather uncomfortable.

The final coaster was the Maurer spinner, which was smooth and comfortable, but was lacking in both thrills and spinning. File under “+1” and “forgettable”.

The rapids at Linnanmäki were considerably better (and wetter) than the ones we rode at Särkänniemi the previous day. Lots of rapidy elements (leading to several waves crashing into the boat). Waterfalls. Sprinklers. At this point it’s probably no surprise that if any water element could throw water in my general direction, it did precisely that.

There’s a rather unusual, insane, intense and disorienting-looking flat ride at the park, so naturally several people wanted to ride. Me, I’m not quite that mad. Look at the damn thing! My stomach disapproves of the video, let alone the ride.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4n2r5m7F_E[/youtube]

With all the major rides out of the way, it was time to mop up the remaining silly rides, such as ghost trains, walk throughs, “porn ponies”, the observation tower, “Egg: The Ride” and probably a few others that I’ve forgotten. The day ended with CF bingo before we all gathered up our bags, said our goodbyes and the group split. The majority headed directly for the hotels near the airport, whilst the few of us that remained took a tram back into Helsinki, as our hotels were near the city centre.

Aftermath

After getting back to the hotel, collapsing into bed and having one of the best night’s sleep I’d had since the start of the trip, Tom and I woke late, missed out on a hotel breakfast, grabbed something to eat and met up with JayJay and Radaxian.

Our flights weren’t until around 4-5PM, so with a few hours to kill we had a pleasant wander down to the docks, found a nice quiet park nearby with some shade and spent an hour or so just relaxing and chatting. After eating down by the docks, we made our way back towards the city centre, taking in the (admittedly limited) sights on the way.

After a short bus ride to the airport, it was time to jump through the usual hoops and then chill out together until it was time to part ways and take our separate flights back home… or in my case, back to Manchester to party like a maniac before going home.

Wrap-up

So, what else is there to say? I’ve already said I consider this to be the best Euro Live we’ve had, and the group we had played an enormous part in that. People just seemed to throw themselves into the CF spirit of having a great laugh and not taking things too seriously.

If you asked people what the best ride was, I think the answer would be unanimous: Thunderbird at PowerLand was a clear winner. If you ask which was the best day or park, I think you’d get a real mixture of answers, and they’d all be perfectly valid ones. There was no “stand out” day on the trip because all of the days were equally epic in different ways. Personally, I think I probably got the most out of the Power Park day, but that doesn’t diminish any of the other days at all.

It was also great to finally meet Tommi (THX), who joined the group at Särkänniemi and Linnanmäki. It’s always great to meet CF members in person and put a face to the username, and I hope to see you again at another CF Live in the not too distant future.

Bring on the next Euro Live! I’m getting withdrawal symptoms!

 

[MouseAT]

I'm bumping this again with photos. As Facebook's photo sharing is still horribly broken, here's a link to a MyCF album of all the photos I took over the four days. If you're on Facebook, you've probably already seen these. If not, enjoy.

http://www.coasterforce.com/my-cf/photo ... lbumid=310

 

[BBH]

CFers are the kind of people that I imagine going up the lift of a Volare with and saying, "You know, I'm Italian and proud of it, but this is just ridiculous." and then people start beating me along with the ride saying "Damn you horrible Italians!"

 

[furie]

CFers are the kind of people that I imagine going up the lift of a Volare with and saying, "You know, I'm Italian and proud of it, but this is just ridiculous." and then people start beating me along with the ride saying "Damn you horrible Italians!"

No we're not at all.

We're the kind of people who take it one step further. I've just booked flights to visit your house to beat you personally for the Volare I was forced to suffer ten days ago

Just finished reading this all, great report Andy, thanks for summing it all up

 

[BBH]

Sue appears to have the stare of Medusa, which would be enough to stop my entire race (ethnicity? nationality?) to cease the production of such vile rides.

 

[Jason Voorhees]

^Haha. Is it just me or do Sue and Joey look alike?

 

[Mike]

I think it's just you?

Sue is one the of the most kind-hearted and generous people on this site; where the hell is this "stare of Medusa" bollocks coming from? :?

 

[furie]

Yeah, I always thought she was more of a harpy...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

[nealbie]

I think it's just you?

Sue is one the of the most kind-hearted and generous people on this site; where the hell is this "stare of Medusa" bollocks coming from? :?

Totally agree with the second part. Sue! <3

Although her and Joey do look almost identical, except Joey just has primate proportions of facial hair!

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Awww thanks sweetie. Must say I'm rather traumatised by all this attention - I seem to have shot to stardom recently, what with this and cameos in furie's recent videos. Careful or it'll go to my head - I'll be demanding a basket of puppies and the coats of all the other CFers to walk over if it rains at the next live...

Joey is actually my twin, separated at birth, we only found each other again through our combined love of coasters. Fun fact - I have just as much hair as Joey, I just plait mine so it's hidden!

Sorry for not posting a report. As some of you know I've got some family stuff going on at the mo and I haven't quite found the time. It was a truely fabulous trip though, with obvious and deserved thanks to Ian and everyone who came and made it hilarious. Yay for Finnish ride ops and GCIs of wonder. Boo to Intamin inverts and camaflauged speed cameras. Think that about sums it up!

 

[nealbie]

Sue have you posted about Yorkshire in the Finland topic? :roll: xx

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Yes, that's exactly what I've done...

...ahh, the joys of the edit button

 

[BBH]

By "stare of Medusa" I meant she's petrifying in her own, stardazzling way.