Nemesis Inferno
Strata Poster
YAY JOHN'S REPORT HAS BEGUN!
This makes me happy
This makes me happy
Forza Italia - Roma to Verona
- Thread starter Nemesis Inferno
- Start date
I really, really hate to do one of those "You should have done this..." sort of posts (they really do annoy me; it too often comes across as "my trip was better than yours"), so maybe see this as advice for next time?
At the Vatican, you don't have to pay to get into St Peter's Basilica, the massive church which you were basically right in front of, and it's absolutely stunning inside.
At the Vatican, you don't have to pay to get into St Peter's Basilica, the massive church which you were basically right in front of, and it's absolutely stunning inside.
LiveForTheLaunch
CF Legend
The padlocks mean eternal love. If you noticed, they mostly all have names written on them, and they're seen on like bridges and stuff. I saw it a lot when I was going through Europe in the summer.
@Gavin - That's a shame. I'm not sure the others would have been up for it anyway, they were being a bit burdenous in the whole actually doing cultural things abroad department.
@Taylor - Yeah, I just happened to see a programme at work the other day where people were doing it in China, I still don't get why people do it though.
Let us continue with day two. We awoke at our lovely hotel at some silly time in the morning. We all got ready for the day ahead and headed downstairs to breakfast. Turns out everyone else at the hotel had the same idea, we got a table and began grabbing some food. There was a nice variety on offer, cereals, breads, egg and cake. The food and drink kept running out really quickly but the two members of staff were replacing everything all the time, extremely efficient. One of them I think we wanted to take home after a while, she was absolutely amazing. She was generally really welcoming and just fab, no idea how she was so awake and energetic but she really added to the start of our day.
So after some food and drink we headed to the car and drove to Rainbow Magicland! It took us about an hour and a bit and we managed to arrive slightly before park opening. Well the main gate was open but the end of their main street type area was closed. I have to quickly mention how awesome the car park was despite it looking fairly busy; it was all under shade and was on a pretty huge scale. Anyway back to the park. The entrance area is really awesome, the theming everywhere is just amazing and at the end of the street we noticed like a parade with the cat so we ran towards it. What is this? A welcome show!! Yep, the cat arrives on this parade float to the end of the street and then him and his 5 dancers dance along to the Rainbow Magicland theme...EPIC WIN!!! It was so random but really cool, the kids absolutely loved it (and so did we). A few minutes after it finished the ropes were dropped and everyone ran to the rides they wanted to go on first. I wonder what everyone ran towards? Find out after a few pics...
The epic shopping area built next to the park looks more like a Movie Studio
Big empty car park, didn’t look so empty in the other direction
Awesome entrance area
Go rainbow cat go!
<3
WANT
Luckily we were in the mass of peeps that went straight to Shock, with it completely dominating the skyline I’m not surprised everyone ran straight for it. We ended up waiting for about 15 minutes which I didn’t think was too bad. The ride itself is absolutely amazing, I do hope that the random meander at the beginning was due to an indoor section that didn’t happen due to budget and time because it just doesn’t make any sense. The launch is fun and the layout was just enjoyable, the ridiculous turn after the loop-but-not was epic, the speed it takes it at is just wrong but so amazing. So yeah, really, really like Shock, just a fun coaster with some intense moments. I filmed it during the day and I’ve put a little video together of my clips...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34xgA6Br20U[/youtube]
We then made our way over to the indoor spinning coaster. On the way we past some epic theming, some pics...
Back to this one soon
Theming for the spinning coaster
So we queued quite a while for the spinning coaster in the soaring heat, well I say that, at least this queue was kinda in the shade of the building. The queue was, for some unknown reason, guarded by security which we thought was odd. Anyway we got to the front of the queue to notice that the station was literally behind the wall, very odd. The coaster itself it a bit boring and doesn’t really do a lot but they have added a few spinning lights and some music which you can only really hear towards the end of the ride, we didn’t really spin at all either which sucks so therefore for the rest of the trip we referred to it as the non-spinning-spinning-coaster.
Once off we decided to ride Huntik next just as the park was getting really busy already and we didn’t want to queue too long for it. However the queueline was really nice and cool (gotta love air-con on a really hot day) and the theming was absolutely stunning. We really loved the fact they played the first episode of Huntik on the screens in the queue too, great way to introduce people to the IP. Anyway after about 15-20 minutes we were on. So what do I think of it? I think it’s the best dark ride ever made, I absolutely love it, it just had EVERYTHING I would ever want from a dark ride. It had traditional themed sets and animatronics, 3D screens, shooting and a simulator on wheels for the vehicle. I don’t really want to say much more than that for fear of spoiling the epic surprise for peeps who haven’t ridden it but it just all worked seamlessly and so effectively too, some of the 3D was so well timed with the movement of the vehicle that it was just a massive illusion and stupidly effective. Argh, I want to go back so I can just ride it again and again, I just loved it so much.
Some pics...
My score is on the right
Benin’s score is on the right, yeah, I loved the ride so much even Benin beating me on it couldn’t ruin it for me
Next up was Olandese Volante, the Vekoma mine train coaster. I love the entrance theming and the volcano theming mid-ride but apart from that it’s a bit sparse on the theming-front, another sign of budget cuts and time issues? Apart from that the ride was oddly rough, it’s been open for like 4 months, how is it rough? Apart from that it’s ok but would be greatly improved with some theming and dealing with those odd rough patches (they only seem to appear on the first half of the ride). Hmm, I took a HD POV, take a gander below...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPKUS5N5RXo&feature=related[/youtube]
It was really hot so we decided to sit under some umbrellas for a bit. We then moved on to Mystica, the drop tower. The queue was like most of them, just some fabric with some gaps inbetween, it meant the queue was really hot and horrible but luckily the capacity isn’t too bad (especially for something that sits at the top for like, forever) and so the queue moved at a nice pace. I thought the ride would be terrible after watching it drop and stop about half-way down the tower. However I thought it was really good, it does stop you for way too long at the top (so much so you kinda forget you’re going to drop) but the actual drop packs a serious punch and is generally thrilling, the fact it brakes so far up the tower means you don’t lose the genuine fear from the freefall that sometimes happens on the larger towers. I also decided to film on it, purely for the fact that someone on the ride before had the same gopro camera as me but filmed it by wearing it on his head, if he could film on it, why not me. Listen carefully and you can randomly hear the dude sitting next to me shouting out Justin Beiber, no idea why.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mLjg1mEn4&feature=related[/youtube]
Afterwards we noticed a little kiosk had opened so we grabbed some ice lollies. There was an ‘ice street’ which was this random (but cooly themed) street with penguins (character from one of the ice creams, so I take it these streets were sponsored) which had little sprays of water pouring out of random areas, I highly approved of this as I was boiling in the heat. We also spotted the daytime parade, it was a bit random.
We wandered over to the cool and massive building at the back of the park, turns out it was the Planetarium. Some staff member kept telling peeps something in Italian (we think it was in regards to the size of the queue, or wait till the next screening) because everyone just walked away after talking to the staff. I did look at the queue and from what I could see it didn’t look too bad. Meh, oh wells, we moved on to the little kids area for the cred. The queue wasn’t too bad and luckily enough we didn’t look weird as there was another group of teenagers in the queue Nothing to really say about the actual ride apart from it was an average cred you’d find at your local fair or pier. The rest of the kids area looks fantastic though, kids were absolutely loving the water fountain area thing and the queue for the spinning spider ride was quite long too. The mini rapids ride wasn’t open though which was a shame. So we moved onwards.
We came across this epicly themed building which turned out to be Maison Houdini!! It was open but had a really long queue. We decided to queue it anyway just in case it randomly closed or something. The queue took forever and every time the queue allowance went up it would then lower by like 15 or 20 people straight away, sarcastically there was a large group that cheered every time the number stopped decreasing. To get us through the queueline without dying of heat exhaustion and boredom we played old school Marvel top trumps, it was amusing. Anyway we then found ourselves at the front of the queue and going inside. You first enter this nicely themed room, which looks like the library/lab of a professor or something. It’s really nicely done; apparently this is meant to be a pre-show room which is currently not used as a pre-show room. What follows I’ll put in a spoiler box...
This is a RESTAURANT!?
We were getting hungry now so we went to one of the heavily themed restaurants. I got myself a chicken burger and some soft ice cream, nom nom nom. What I liked about this place was how massive and airy it was inside, they really have planned ahead for large crowds (which is why some of their ride choices are a bit wtf), even their pathways everywhere were really wide to allow large crowds to pass through. Have some pics...
After filling up on some much needed food we decided to do the last dark ride the park had to offer, Believetrix, it’s based on their Winx club characters and basically just takes you on a little journey to see each of their Worlds, it must be amazing for little girls who love the show but for us it was just a bit pants I did like parts of the theming though and the queue had some quite impressive fake trees on one side. Oh yeah the queue was really long but it did seem to move at a nice steady pace.
Sign to tell you that there is a max of 2 adults per vehicle
Mark loved Believetrix
We then (as it was opposite) went to get the last cred of the park, Bomborun. The queue was a bit long but it moved steadily. The coaster train has the most epic theme ever, Bombo. He loves life...
The coaster’s seats were awesome, nice lap bars and it gives you enough room to let you enjoy the fun little circuit, one of the better kids coasters I’ve been on.
Urgh, just look at that queue
We decided to have a quick browse of the shops at the entrance so we had a rough idea of what we wanted to quickly grab at the end of the day. They seem to be very open, almost empty but once again I think this could be a design for the expected large crowds. We decided that we’d do the two water rides next. We started off with Drakker, the rapids ride.
The queue looked long but we thought, why not. OMG, it just went on and on and on and on, it ended up being about 90 minutes (felt a LOT longer though). During the queue there were some kids behind us who kept trying to get past us at like turns in the cattlepen of doom, it was getting on our nerves as we don’t like queue-jumpers and well, it was hot and horrible and we just wanted rapids. At one point Mark turned to one of them and smacked his plastic bottle at the fence where the kid was going to go and just said something like “no”, they soon backed off lol, it looked like they actually made some little brown fish
Anyways we were finally down the stairs and on to the platform which is where we discovered why the through-put was so dismal. It’s not like normal rapids where it’s a giant turntable with a constant wave of boats going through. Nope, instead they built a fake turntable and stop one boat to let peeps off while loading two boats, who the hell came up with this deluded system? Oh and not only that but the boats keep coming down the ramp and then banging into the boat which is unloading which nearly causes accidents, urgh, silly Magicland.
Well, after all that what did we think of the ride? Actually awesome fun, I think the most brilliant bit was the whole ‘That’s an odd way to do a waterfall’ which then led to “OMFG I’m getting SOAKED!” which got as nearly as wet as the actual waterfall, I got mega spited the whole way through. Shame it dies as soon as it enters the tunnel, I was expecting something mega spiteful in there but nope, nothing. Oh well, it was great fun.
By the time we were off it was getting dark and we decided we didn’t really have time to do Yucatan which was really annoying as I was looking forward to that but with a similar queue to Drakker we opted for other things. First up was more food. We ended up at yet another HUGE eatery, this one was next to the non-spinning-spinning coaster. I think I had some penne pasta and some grapes which weren’t seedless, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, how dare they have seeds in.
We decided that if anything we wanted to make sure we did Huntik one last time so we headed to that for our last ride of the day. The queue was a lot longer than it was in the morning but we just dealt with it, we knew the wait was going to be worth it. We queued in a part of the room we didn’t before and it was really sad to see that people had picked away at some of the theming and it was all over the floor, some people just make me feel so ill. Anyway 30 minutes later and we were out of the queue and into the waiting room before the station and then all of a sudden, music stops and house lights come on. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. How DARE you break down on us, others in the waiting room left after a few minutes, we stayed back and asked the amazing gentleman what was going on, would it take long for it to start up again. He was epic and explained to us in English that one of the cars didn’t get back into the station the right way round so they basically have to restart the system and the car that didn’t work properly. He told us it would take about 20 minutes and we could leave and return via the exit shop to walk straight on. We were happy how honest he was and we were also shocked that we would be allowed to just walk on through the exit.
So we walked off, purchased stuff from the gift shop at the front of the park, took some photos and did a bit of night filming of Shock (below) before returning to Huntik. We did as the man said and walked straight through the exit, a lady was expecting us and gave us our glasses before letting us straight onto the next available car (EPIC WIN). This time we got front row, strange how much better it is in the front row compared to the second row, the 3D is even more immersive and epic. The ride was made even better by me getting the highest score
Yucatan has some epic lighting going on at night, it has this massive light show just before a boat comes down the drop, annoyed I couldn’t get the camera to focus to film it
My score is on the right
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LXbDRF_uOw&feature=related[/youtube]
We then exited the park, got a group pic taken in front of the park sign and drove back to the hotel. Oddly enough more people were still arriving due to the fireworks that were on at 11pm (we left about 10:20 to avoid traffic jams, we still got caught up in one). When we got back to the hotel we just went straight to sleep as it was such a long hot day we were completely knackered.
For a brand new park they have sure thought about crowd control (apart from maybe in regards to their actual rides). They seem to have lots of shows and parades (which we basically missed the majority of) and the rides they do have are really good (apart from the non-spinning-spinning coaster). It’s a shame it was so busy but I think because it was it did have a better atmosphere, also helped by the music being played around the park. Since being back in the UK the park did blog about the silly amount of peeps in their park on the day we were there, they’re really proud about it as it clearly puts them on the map and shows that with time this park is going to make an absolute fortune. So how many people were in the park I hear you ask, a massive 17,000 peeps, that’s how many. Even on an epically busy day they still gained some brand new British fanbois in us.
Full photo album is HERE
@Taylor - Yeah, I just happened to see a programme at work the other day where people were doing it in China, I still don't get why people do it though.
Let us continue with day two. We awoke at our lovely hotel at some silly time in the morning. We all got ready for the day ahead and headed downstairs to breakfast. Turns out everyone else at the hotel had the same idea, we got a table and began grabbing some food. There was a nice variety on offer, cereals, breads, egg and cake. The food and drink kept running out really quickly but the two members of staff were replacing everything all the time, extremely efficient. One of them I think we wanted to take home after a while, she was absolutely amazing. She was generally really welcoming and just fab, no idea how she was so awake and energetic but she really added to the start of our day.
So after some food and drink we headed to the car and drove to Rainbow Magicland! It took us about an hour and a bit and we managed to arrive slightly before park opening. Well the main gate was open but the end of their main street type area was closed. I have to quickly mention how awesome the car park was despite it looking fairly busy; it was all under shade and was on a pretty huge scale. Anyway back to the park. The entrance area is really awesome, the theming everywhere is just amazing and at the end of the street we noticed like a parade with the cat so we ran towards it. What is this? A welcome show!! Yep, the cat arrives on this parade float to the end of the street and then him and his 5 dancers dance along to the Rainbow Magicland theme...EPIC WIN!!! It was so random but really cool, the kids absolutely loved it (and so did we
). A few minutes after it finished the ropes were dropped and everyone ran to the rides they wanted to go on first. I wonder what everyone ran towards? Find out after a few pics...
The epic shopping area built next to the park looks more like a Movie Studio
Big empty car park, didn’t look so empty in the other direction
Awesome entrance area
Go rainbow cat go!
<3
WANT
Luckily we were in the mass of peeps that went straight to Shock, with it completely dominating the skyline I’m not surprised everyone ran straight for it. We ended up waiting for about 15 minutes which I didn’t think was too bad. The ride itself is absolutely amazing, I do hope that the random meander at the beginning was due to an indoor section that didn’t happen due to budget and time because it just doesn’t make any sense. The launch is fun and the layout was just enjoyable, the ridiculous turn after the loop-but-not was epic, the speed it takes it at is just wrong but so amazing. So yeah, really, really like Shock, just a fun coaster with some intense moments. I filmed it during the day and I’ve put a little video together of my clips...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34xgA6Br20U[/youtube]
We then made our way over to the indoor spinning coaster. On the way we past some epic theming, some pics...
Back to this one soon
Theming for the spinning coaster
So we queued quite a while for the spinning coaster in the soaring heat, well I say that, at least this queue was kinda in the shade of the building. The queue was, for some unknown reason, guarded by security which we thought was odd. Anyway we got to the front of the queue to notice that the station was literally behind the wall, very odd. The coaster itself it a bit boring and doesn’t really do a lot but they have added a few spinning lights and some music which you can only really hear towards the end of the ride, we didn’t really spin at all either which sucks so therefore for the rest of the trip we referred to it as the non-spinning-spinning-coaster.
Once off we decided to ride Huntik next just as the park was getting really busy already and we didn’t want to queue too long for it. However the queueline was really nice and cool (gotta love air-con on a really hot day) and the theming was absolutely stunning. We really loved the fact they played the first episode of Huntik on the screens in the queue too, great way to introduce people to the IP. Anyway after about 15-20 minutes we were on. So what do I think of it? I think it’s the best dark ride ever made, I absolutely love it, it just had EVERYTHING I would ever want from a dark ride. It had traditional themed sets and animatronics, 3D screens, shooting and a simulator on wheels for the vehicle. I don’t really want to say much more than that for fear of spoiling the epic surprise for peeps who haven’t ridden it but it just all worked seamlessly and so effectively too, some of the 3D was so well timed with the movement of the vehicle that it was just a massive illusion and stupidly effective. Argh, I want to go back so I can just ride it again and again, I just loved it so much.
Some pics...
My score is on the right
Benin’s score is on the right, yeah, I loved the ride so much even Benin beating me on it couldn’t ruin it for me
Next up was Olandese Volante, the Vekoma mine train coaster. I love the entrance theming and the volcano theming mid-ride but apart from that it’s a bit sparse on the theming-front, another sign of budget cuts and time issues? Apart from that the ride was oddly rough, it’s been open for like 4 months, how is it rough? Apart from that it’s ok but would be greatly improved with some theming and dealing with those odd rough patches (they only seem to appear on the first half of the ride). Hmm, I took a HD POV, take a gander below...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPKUS5N5RXo&feature=related[/youtube]
It was really hot so we decided to sit under some umbrellas for a bit. We then moved on to Mystica, the drop tower. The queue was like most of them, just some fabric with some gaps inbetween, it meant the queue was really hot and horrible but luckily the capacity isn’t too bad (especially for something that sits at the top for like, forever) and so the queue moved at a nice pace. I thought the ride would be terrible after watching it drop and stop about half-way down the tower. However I thought it was really good, it does stop you for way too long at the top (so much so you kinda forget you’re going to drop) but the actual drop packs a serious punch and is generally thrilling, the fact it brakes so far up the tower means you don’t lose the genuine fear from the freefall that sometimes happens on the larger towers. I also decided to film on it, purely for the fact that someone on the ride before had the same gopro camera as me but filmed it by wearing it on his head, if he could film on it, why not me. Listen carefully and you can randomly hear the dude sitting next to me shouting out Justin Beiber, no idea why.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mLjg1mEn4&feature=related[/youtube]
Afterwards we noticed a little kiosk had opened so we grabbed some ice lollies. There was an ‘ice street’ which was this random (but cooly themed) street with penguins (character from one of the ice creams, so I take it these streets were sponsored) which had little sprays of water pouring out of random areas, I highly approved of this as I was boiling in the heat. We also spotted the daytime parade, it was a bit random.
We wandered over to the cool and massive building at the back of the park, turns out it was the Planetarium. Some staff member kept telling peeps something in Italian (we think it was in regards to the size of the queue, or wait till the next screening) because everyone just walked away after talking to the staff. I did look at the queue and from what I could see it didn’t look too bad. Meh, oh wells, we moved on to the little kids area for the cred. The queue wasn’t too bad and luckily enough we didn’t look weird as there was another group of teenagers in the queue
Nothing to really say about the actual ride apart from it was an average cred you’d find at your local fair or pier. The rest of the kids area looks fantastic though, kids were absolutely loving the water fountain area thing and the queue for the spinning spider ride was quite long too. The mini rapids ride wasn’t open though which was a shame. So we moved onwards.We came across this epicly themed building which turned out to be Maison Houdini!! It was open but had a really long queue. We decided to queue it anyway just in case it randomly closed or something. The queue took forever and every time the queue allowance went up it would then lower by like 15 or 20 people straight away, sarcastically there was a large group that cheered every time the number stopped decreasing. To get us through the queueline without dying of heat exhaustion and boredom we played old school Marvel top trumps, it was amusing. Anyway we then found ourselves at the front of the queue and going inside. You first enter this nicely themed room, which looks like the library/lab of a professor or something. It’s really nicely done; apparently this is meant to be a pre-show room which is currently not used as a pre-show room. What follows I’ll put in a spoiler box...
You’re then taken by a staff member through some corridors and then into a lift which takes you down. As you’re going down there is a voiceover explaining something in Italian. You then follow round some more corridors before arriving at the mad house room. The room is really nicely done up, it continues the experimenting lab type theme with some giant clocks on one side and lots of pipes etc in the middle. The ride itself is ok, the music is absolutely amazing but is kinda ruined by a voiceover that doesn’t seem to know when to shut up but the lighting effects inside were awesome. There didn’t seem to be any form of finale or anything which made me sad. Oh well. You then go round some more corridors to another lift which takes you back up to ground level.
This is a RESTAURANT!?
We were getting hungry now so we went to one of the heavily themed restaurants. I got myself a chicken burger and some soft ice cream, nom nom nom. What I liked about this place was how massive and airy it was inside, they really have planned ahead for large crowds (which is why some of their ride choices are a bit wtf), even their pathways everywhere were really wide to allow large crowds to pass through. Have some pics...
After filling up on some much needed food we decided to do the last dark ride the park had to offer, Believetrix, it’s based on their Winx club characters and basically just takes you on a little journey to see each of their Worlds, it must be amazing for little girls who love the show but for us it was just a bit pants
I did like parts of the theming though and the queue had some quite impressive fake trees on one side. Oh yeah the queue was really long but it did seem to move at a nice steady pace.
Sign to tell you that there is a max of 2 adults per vehicle
Mark loved Believetrix
We then (as it was opposite) went to get the last cred of the park, Bomborun. The queue was a bit long but it moved steadily. The coaster train has the most epic theme ever, Bombo. He loves life...
The coaster’s seats were awesome, nice lap bars and it gives you enough room to let you enjoy the fun little circuit, one of the better kids coasters I’ve been on.
Urgh, just look at that queue
We decided to have a quick browse of the shops at the entrance so we had a rough idea of what we wanted to quickly grab at the end of the day. They seem to be very open, almost empty but once again I think this could be a design for the expected large crowds. We decided that we’d do the two water rides next. We started off with Drakker, the rapids ride.
The queue looked long but we thought, why not. OMG, it just went on and on and on and on, it ended up being about 90 minutes (felt a LOT longer though). During the queue there were some kids behind us who kept trying to get past us at like turns in the cattlepen of doom, it was getting on our nerves as we don’t like queue-jumpers and well, it was hot and horrible and we just wanted rapids. At one point Mark turned to one of them and smacked his plastic bottle at the fence where the kid was going to go and just said something like “no”, they soon backed off lol, it looked like they actually made some little brown fish
Anyways we were finally down the stairs and on to the platform which is where we discovered why the through-put was so dismal. It’s not like normal rapids where it’s a giant turntable with a constant wave of boats going through. Nope, instead they built a fake turntable and stop one boat to let peeps off while loading two boats, who the hell came up with this deluded system? Oh and not only that but the boats keep coming down the ramp and then banging into the boat which is unloading which nearly causes accidents, urgh, silly Magicland.
Well, after all that what did we think of the ride? Actually awesome fun, I think the most brilliant bit was the whole ‘That’s an odd way to do a waterfall’ which then led to “OMFG I’m getting SOAKED!” which got as nearly as wet as the actual waterfall, I got mega spited the whole way through. Shame it dies as soon as it enters the tunnel, I was expecting something mega spiteful in there but nope, nothing. Oh well, it was great fun.
By the time we were off it was getting dark and we decided we didn’t really have time to do Yucatan which was really annoying as I was looking forward to that but with a similar queue to Drakker we opted for other things. First up was more food. We ended up at yet another HUGE eatery, this one was next to the non-spinning-spinning coaster. I think I had some penne pasta and some grapes which weren’t seedless, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, how dare they have seeds in.
We decided that if anything we wanted to make sure we did Huntik one last time so we headed to that for our last ride of the day. The queue was a lot longer than it was in the morning but we just dealt with it, we knew the wait was going to be worth it. We queued in a part of the room we didn’t before and it was really sad to see that people had picked away at some of the theming and it was all over the floor, some people just make me feel so ill. Anyway 30 minutes later and we were out of the queue and into the waiting room before the station and then all of a sudden, music stops and house lights come on. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. How DARE you break down on us, others in the waiting room left after a few minutes, we stayed back and asked the amazing gentleman what was going on, would it take long for it to start up again. He was epic and explained to us in English that one of the cars didn’t get back into the station the right way round so they basically have to restart the system and the car that didn’t work properly. He told us it would take about 20 minutes and we could leave and return via the exit shop to walk straight on. We were happy how honest he was and we were also shocked that we would be allowed to just walk on through the exit.
So we walked off, purchased stuff from the gift shop at the front of the park, took some photos and did a bit of night filming of Shock (below) before returning to Huntik. We did as the man said and walked straight through the exit, a lady was expecting us and gave us our glasses before letting us straight onto the next available car (EPIC WIN). This time we got front row, strange how much better it is in the front row compared to the second row, the 3D is even more immersive and epic. The ride was made even better by me getting the highest score
Yucatan has some epic lighting going on at night, it has this massive light show just before a boat comes down the drop, annoyed I couldn’t get the camera to focus to film it
My score is on the right
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LXbDRF_uOw&feature=related[/youtube]
We then exited the park, got a group pic taken in front of the park sign and drove back to the hotel. Oddly enough more people were still arriving due to the fireworks that were on at 11pm (we left about 10:20 to avoid traffic jams, we still got caught up in one). When we got back to the hotel we just went straight to sleep as it was such a long hot day we were completely knackered.
For a brand new park they have sure thought about crowd control (apart from maybe in regards to their actual rides). They seem to have lots of shows and parades (which we basically missed the majority of) and the rides they do have are really good (apart from the non-spinning-spinning coaster). It’s a shame it was so busy but I think because it was it did have a better atmosphere, also helped by the music being played around the park. Since being back in the UK the park did blog about the silly amount of peeps in their park on the day we were there, they’re really proud about it as it clearly puts them on the map and shows that with time this park is going to make an absolute fortune. So how many people were in the park I hear you ask, a massive 17,000 peeps, that’s how many. Even on an epically busy day they still gained some brand new British fanbois in us.
Full photo album is HERE
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Hyper Poster
Brilliant TR and the photos are great.
Funnily enough, I've just spotted myself in one of your Gardaland shots. Small world or what?
Funnily enough, I've just spotted myself in one of your Gardaland shots. Small world or what?
^Thanks for your comment. That's totally weird that you were there at the same time as us, very small World indeed.
So on to the next day of the trip. We all woke up fairly late and then started watching the 80s Punisher film (which is pretty awful) on TV which resulted in us missing breakfast (damn). So we got all our stuff and checked out of the hotel and began our epic drive to the next hotel. We had planned to stop off in Perugia for a bit to break up the journey. It took us 2 and half hours to get there. We drove past some lovely mountainous areas and through some mountains too. It was all pretty epic, here are some pics of this part of the drive.
So yeah, we had finally arrived in Perugia and it was a really nice looking place, very typical picturesque Italian town. We saw a sign for McDonalds (we only wanted something cheap and quick) so parked up on this hill. We got out of the car into the searing heat (this was becoming a burdenous trend for the week) and began what we thought would be a short journey to McDonalds. Oh how wrong were we, it ended up being a 5 minute drive (according to the sign) away or what felt like FOREVER on foot. I actually have no idea how long it took us but it must have been at least a good 20 minute walk, when we finally saw the train station and then McDonalds it was like we had found civilisation as everything on the route there was closed, the place was like a ghost town.
I’ve never been so happy in my entire life to see a McDonalds, felt like (due to the heat) I’d just run the marathon (probably looked like it too). It would have been amusing to say that it was closed but thankfully for us it was totally open. Don’t forget that we had missed breakfast as well so we were all starving. I’d gone for some sort of burger that contained what was meant to be bacon and a pistachio McFlurry. I thought it’d be different and it was such an Italian flavour I just randomly went for it. The others throughout the entire meal discussed how much it looked like sick etc, which tbh it did and about half way through I did feel a bit ill so I had to stop eating it. It’s not actually the first time I’ve had pistachio ice cream and last time it was nice but this was so strong and just over-powering. Oh well, you have to try these things sometimes.
So we then made the epic walk up the hill back to the car to then find out the car was sitting in the sun too so it was stupidly hot inside, mega spite. So we continued our journey, soon after leaving Perugia we drove past a dead cat, was quite unpleasant. We were making our way along the motorway when we hit some major roadworks through the mountains so we were diverted via this epic mountain road which was totally nuts yet beautiful at the same time. Here is a pic and a little video I put together of our travels...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVIk2wVGe4A[/youtube]
Nearing Ravenna (you can see this in the last shot of the video) we could see Mirabilandia from a distance which got us uber excited for the next day. We then continued into Ravenna and to our hotel, we nearly went straight past it at first too, hehe, didn’t want to make that mistake again. Our hotel was so near the centre of Ravenna it was insane. It sits next to the railway lines and is like a 2 min walk from the train station which is like a 5 min walk from all the wonderfulness of Ravenna.
The hotel room wasn’t big and had this death trap of a bed contraption. It’s like a bunk bed converted from a sofa and done in the most terrifying way so I decided to share the double bed with Mark as I was not going near that thing. In the end though we pulled the bottom mattress out and put it in the middle of the room, I think the pictures show you why it looks evil....
Told you we were next to the railway line
We put on the tv and chilled out for a bit. OMG It’s Total Wipeout USA! Many lolz were had, no ads were a massive bonus too.
We then ventured out into the centre and found some really nice architecture. It was getting dark and after a while of roaming around we found a place to eat, more on that after a few pics...
So we just went to a pizza place on one of the many squares. I saw something on the menu which I thought was really odd so decided to have it. A sausage and chip (yes CHIP) pizza. It was a bit odd but a very nice pizza overall. It for some reason came with a little sachet of ketchup too which we thought was amusing.
We all enjoyed the food and we decided to walk back to the hotel, we walked past this nice church...
We then stopped off in what I now call the best gelato place in the World. It had a great range of flavours and was like a euro per scoop and they weren’t small scoops, I love Italy.
I had coconut and something else. The coconut flavour was AMAZING, literally the best gelato I’ve ever had, so yeah was totally coming back to this place the next day to have moar
Once back at the hotel we put the tv on in background, the weather came on and I decided to take a picture of it, purely for the lulz...
It was safe to assume we’d be having even more hot sunny weather at Mirabilandia which will be written about soon.
So on to the next day of the trip. We all woke up fairly late and then started watching the 80s Punisher film (which is pretty awful) on TV which resulted in us missing breakfast (damn). So we got all our stuff and checked out of the hotel and began our epic drive to the next hotel. We had planned to stop off in Perugia for a bit to break up the journey. It took us 2 and half hours to get there. We drove past some lovely mountainous areas and through some mountains too. It was all pretty epic, here are some pics of this part of the drive.
So yeah, we had finally arrived in Perugia and it was a really nice looking place, very typical picturesque Italian town. We saw a sign for McDonalds (we only wanted something cheap and quick) so parked up on this hill. We got out of the car into the searing heat (this was becoming a burdenous trend for the week) and began what we thought would be a short journey to McDonalds. Oh how wrong were we, it ended up being a 5 minute drive (according to the sign) away or what felt like FOREVER on foot. I actually have no idea how long it took us but it must have been at least a good 20 minute walk, when we finally saw the train station and then McDonalds it was like we had found civilisation as everything on the route there was closed, the place was like a ghost town.
I’ve never been so happy in my entire life to see a McDonalds, felt like (due to the heat) I’d just run the marathon (probably looked like it too
). It would have been amusing to say that it was closed but thankfully for us it was totally open. Don’t forget that we had missed breakfast as well so we were all starving. I’d gone for some sort of burger that contained what was meant to be bacon and a pistachio McFlurry. I thought it’d be different and it was such an Italian flavour I just randomly went for it. The others throughout the entire meal discussed how much it looked like sick etc, which tbh it did and about half way through I did feel a bit ill so I had to stop eating it. It’s not actually the first time I’ve had pistachio ice cream and last time it was nice but this was so strong and just over-powering. Oh well, you have to try these things sometimes.
So we then made the epic walk up the hill back to the car to then find out the car was sitting in the sun too so it was stupidly hot inside, mega spite. So we continued our journey, soon after leaving Perugia we drove past a dead cat, was quite unpleasant. We were making our way along the motorway when we hit some major roadworks through the mountains so we were diverted via this epic mountain road which was totally nuts yet beautiful at the same time. Here is a pic and a little video I put together of our travels...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVIk2wVGe4A[/youtube]
Nearing Ravenna (you can see this in the last shot of the video) we could see Mirabilandia from a distance which got us uber excited for the next day. We then continued into Ravenna and to our hotel, we nearly went straight past it at first too, hehe, didn’t want to make that mistake again. Our hotel was so near the centre of Ravenna it was insane. It sits next to the railway lines and is like a 2 min walk from the train station which is like a 5 min walk from all the wonderfulness of Ravenna.
The hotel room wasn’t big and had this death trap of a bed contraption. It’s like a bunk bed converted from a sofa and done in the most terrifying way so I decided to share the double bed with Mark as I was not going near that thing. In the end though we pulled the bottom mattress out and put it in the middle of the room, I think the pictures show you why it looks evil....
Told you we were next to the railway line
We put on the tv and chilled out for a bit. OMG It’s Total Wipeout USA! Many lolz were had, no ads were a massive bonus too.
We then ventured out into the centre and found some really nice architecture. It was getting dark and after a while of roaming around we found a place to eat, more on that after a few pics...
So we just went to a pizza place on one of the many squares. I saw something on the menu which I thought was really odd so decided to have it. A sausage and chip (yes CHIP) pizza. It was a bit odd but a very nice pizza overall. It for some reason came with a little sachet of ketchup too which we thought was amusing.
We all enjoyed the food and we decided to walk back to the hotel, we walked past this nice church...
We then stopped off in what I now call the best gelato place in the World. It had a great range of flavours and was like a euro per scoop and they weren’t small scoops, I love Italy.
I had coconut and something else. The coconut flavour was AMAZING, literally the best gelato I’ve ever had, so yeah was totally coming back to this place the next day to have moar
Once back at the hotel we put the tv on in background, the weather came on and I decided to take a picture of it, purely for the lulz...
It was safe to assume we’d be having even more hot sunny weather at Mirabilandia which will be written about soon.
Peep writing more trip report news shocker! Yep, I've finally got round to writing up the next part. urgh, sorry peeps for the wait. I'm going to attempt to get the next one up Sat night too.
Oh I forgots to mention that we ended up staying up late and watching Planet Terror in Italian in the previous report, the film is still awesome Anywho, let’s get started on the next day where we venture to Mirabilandia. So we got up and ready and went down to breakfast at the hotel. The range of food wasn’t amazing but it was enough to set us up for the rest of the day. We then got in the car and drove the 15 min journey to the park. Once again the weather was blue skies and stupidly hot.
On route to the park we got stopped by the local police as part of their random checks. After about 5 minutes we were back on our way to the park.
We arrived at the park about 15 minutes before park opening so we were very near the front of the gate for when it opened at 10am. Just before 10am the usual crush to get in first began which meant we were nearly split up when getting in which was annoying as we had to enter at the same time (print at home ticket had all four tickets on one page).
We noticed a lot of wasps in the area and after a while we spotted some wasp nests actually being built on the entrance signage, eww.
Anyway we entered the park and obviously headed straight for Katun because Katun is AMAZING. There wasn’t a queue but because it had only just opened they waited until they had a full train before they dispatched the train, not sure why. We went straight for back row and it was just as amazing as I remember it being from when I last rode it (2009). As there still wasn’t a queue when we got off we went round again for more Katun epicness. Have a few photos...
It’s so close yet so far away
We want THAT way
Gotta love the station & queue building
<3
We went to check out Master Thai but there was a sign saying that it wasn’t opening for another hour yet so we went to ride Explorer, the Mack powered coaster. There isn’t really anything special about this and we managed to walk straight on.
I didn’t film a POV so here is my POV from 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFJata63F1g[/youtube]
We then rode Pakal, the Rattlesnake style coaster. There was a little bit of a wait but it didn’t feel too long as they have a great capacity on this, they are constantly loading a new car which is awesome. What isn’t awesome is the actual ride, it’s quite smooth and then near the end there are a few hills which were designed with a ruler or something, they were awful.
Max Adventures Master Thai was now open so we headed back over to that. A small crowd had gathered for when it opened but we still walked straight on. Woop. The station is nicely done but it’s a shame there really isn’t any theming around the actual coaster, would have been epic with some decent theming. Instead you get an odd ride, it’s fun but oddly near the end on one of the sides there is this awful kink in one of the banked turns and it’s just painful. The ride is a bit short too but at least they send you round both sides instead of doing one side, getting off and then queuing again to do the other side. I managed to film a POV on it, when I got home I noticed I’d filmed all my POVs in ruddy 4:3 and not 16:9 so it looks a bit turd imo but that’s me. So have a few pics and a POV...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_cGZz3FDg[/youtube]
As we were really hot we decided the best option would be to do the rapids next. Once we finally found the entrance we were on in no time. We were put in a boat with a random couple. I like rapids; it brings randomers together in such a strange way. The woman got quite spited by the rapids and so did I, but that’s expected (damn that evil water ride curse!). They are really good rapids though, just fun throughout, you never know when ya going to get a soaking, brilliant.
I think this pic shows off quite well just how wet I got
So we moved on to the next cred the park had to offer, Family Adventure. It’s a fun coaster and very smooth, I like it when family coasters are like that.
Here is a POV I filmed on it back in 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvrU2DN9qbI[/youtube]
It was then on to Leprotto express. It’s a fun little kids coaster themed to a garden, really nice little coaster. Once again, a POV from 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvm2VfhCDxc[/youtube]
It was then time for the stunt show so we headed over to that. It’s really good apart from all the talking which meant we were a bit lost for most of the first half of the show. They have a silly amount of vehicles and explosions, just really good and it’s clearly very popular.
We were going to ride the log flume next but due to the entrance being next to the exit of the show it was gaining a massive queue so we headed round to iSpeed. We didn’t have to queue for long which was awesome and there were a few peeps trying to cut the queue but this epic staff member actually went over to them and made them get to the back of the queue, win. He was fab about it all, never seen a staff member in Italy give a hoot about queue jumping before, he was so fab his actual name was FABIO. Many lols were had.
I love iSpeed, it’s fast throughout the entire ride and the inversions on it are nuts, love it. The restraints are a bit of a killer (as you’d expect from intamin) but it still doesn’t detract from it’s awesomeness too much (for me anyway). Have some pics and an off ride video...
They had a few of these boards up due to the park turning 20
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcLZ580fP8[/youtube]
Opposite iSpeed is this crazy looking flat ride and it didn’t have a queue so it just HAD to be ridden for the lolz. In summery you spend the ride just going “WTF IS GOING ON!?” It’s quite simply mental and I love it for that reason. It had loads of random effects as well which I totally wasn’t expecting. Witness the crazyness below...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pporLaODVaA&feature=related[/youtube]
It was then time to head to Reset, the indoor shooty ride. It’s themed to an apocalyptic New York and I think the theming is excellent and the music in the area really adds a creepy atmosphere to the area. The ride itself is good but obviously after just riding Huntik it seemed a bit of a let down in comparison. It’s still a great ride though and just makes you think that the park need to have more dark rides if this is the quality they produce. I also got the top score out of us
12 monkeys?
Upon exiting the ride we spotted one of those cool little lizards that seem to be everywhere in Italy, they are so cool.
We then did Blu River, just an ordinary water slide attraction. Benin for some reason left his hat on and it ended up flying off and into the water, the ride attendant had to go fetch it for him
We then opted to ride iSpeed again because it’s awesome. We then rode Auto Splash, the log flume themed to cars! Very original theme and I love that the drops are themed to car washes. On the first drop I got absolutely soaked, I filmed a POV. Skip to 01:04 (I’ve added it in the comments on the youtube page to get to it quicker) for hilarity as the wave of water comes over the front of the boat....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLxmsSaxI4Y[/youtube]
We were starting to run out of new attractions so we opted to chill out, go on the monorail (which was a bit pants, if you’re looking the wrong way you miss everything) and then go for a spot of lunch at a random place near the lake. The food was pretty tasty if ridiculously salty, I’m not kidding, it’s like they just cooked it in a packet of salt, it’s just way too much. Oh and we were being attacked by like hundreds of wasps which didn’t help. But the little birds were really cute and so we kept throwing them some of our chips. (they were quite generous with portions). Some pics...
If ecoasters can advertise in a theme park, why not CF?
We had spotted our next ride earlier in the day and wondered what it was and as we were near by we had to ride it, said ride is called Monosaurus. It is basically a sort of monorail with the cars themed to dino eggs with a dino attached to it, you go round looking at some odd dinosaur models with the occasional weird bit of audio. We stopped for a while near the start but we think it was due to some disabled guests getting on in the station. Have some hilarious photos...
It was then time for some launch tower fun. The queue moved quite quickly and it was quite fun. We decided to skip the drop tower. We then decided to end the day with another three rides on Katun! It was pure awesome. I took some footage of Katun while we were there, I’ve put together the clips into a little vid...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXHhx7JHzc[/youtube]
It was then park closing time so we headed to the store, had a mosey around and acquired our wristbands for our free return ticket for the next day So we left the park, all very happy with our visit to the park and we drove back to our hotel room.
I believe we ended up watching more Total Wipeout USA with smarmy man. So after some faff at the hotel we then went in search of food. We weren’t too hungry and we didn’t want to eat at the same place again so, shamefully, we ended up at McDonalds. It was just something small, cheap and quick. Then we went back to the epic gelato place for MOAR gelato epicness. I had me some coconut (has to be the best ever), caramel (awesome) and Kinder (not as good as the next kinder gelato I was to encounter). NOM. We then headed back to the hotel where this happened...
And then we had some sleep. Goodnight and thanks for reading!
Oh I forgots to mention that we ended up staying up late and watching Planet Terror in Italian in the previous report, the film is still awesome
Anywho, let’s get started on the next day where we venture to Mirabilandia. So we got up and ready and went down to breakfast at the hotel. The range of food wasn’t amazing but it was enough to set us up for the rest of the day. We then got in the car and drove the 15 min journey to the park. Once again the weather was blue skies and stupidly hot.On route to the park we got stopped by the local police as part of their random checks. After about 5 minutes we were back on our way to the park.
We arrived at the park about 15 minutes before park opening so we were very near the front of the gate for when it opened at 10am. Just before 10am the usual crush to get in first began which meant we were nearly split up when getting in which was annoying as we had to enter at the same time (print at home ticket had all four tickets on one page).
We noticed a lot of wasps in the area and after a while we spotted some wasp nests actually being built on the entrance signage, eww.
Anyway we entered the park and obviously headed straight for Katun because Katun is AMAZING. There wasn’t a queue but because it had only just opened they waited until they had a full train before they dispatched the train, not sure why. We went straight for back row and it was just as amazing as I remember it being from when I last rode it (2009). As there still wasn’t a queue when we got off we went round again for more Katun epicness. Have a few photos...
It’s so close yet so far away
We want THAT way
Gotta love the station & queue building
<3
We went to check out Master Thai but there was a sign saying that it wasn’t opening for another hour yet so we went to ride Explorer, the Mack powered coaster. There isn’t really anything special about this and we managed to walk straight on.
I didn’t film a POV so here is my POV from 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFJata63F1g[/youtube]
We then rode Pakal, the Rattlesnake style coaster. There was a little bit of a wait but it didn’t feel too long as they have a great capacity on this, they are constantly loading a new car which is awesome. What isn’t awesome is the actual ride, it’s quite smooth and then near the end there are a few hills which were designed with a ruler or something, they were awful.
Max Adventures Master Thai was now open so we headed back over to that. A small crowd had gathered for when it opened but we still walked straight on. Woop. The station is nicely done but it’s a shame there really isn’t any theming around the actual coaster, would have been epic with some decent theming. Instead you get an odd ride, it’s fun but oddly near the end on one of the sides there is this awful kink in one of the banked turns and it’s just painful. The ride is a bit short too but at least they send you round both sides instead of doing one side, getting off and then queuing again to do the other side. I managed to film a POV on it, when I got home I noticed I’d filmed all my POVs in ruddy 4:3 and not 16:9 so it looks a bit turd imo but that’s me. So have a few pics and a POV...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_cGZz3FDg[/youtube]
As we were really hot we decided the best option would be to do the rapids next. Once we finally found the entrance we were on in no time. We were put in a boat with a random couple. I like rapids; it brings randomers together in such a strange way. The woman got quite spited by the rapids and so did I, but that’s expected (damn that evil water ride curse!). They are really good rapids though, just fun throughout, you never know when ya going to get a soaking, brilliant.
I think this pic shows off quite well just how wet I got
So we moved on to the next cred the park had to offer, Family Adventure. It’s a fun coaster and very smooth, I like it when family coasters are like that.
Here is a POV I filmed on it back in 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvrU2DN9qbI[/youtube]
It was then on to Leprotto express. It’s a fun little kids coaster themed to a garden, really nice little coaster. Once again, a POV from 2009...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvm2VfhCDxc[/youtube]
It was then time for the stunt show so we headed over to that. It’s really good apart from all the talking which meant we were a bit lost for most of the first half of the show. They have a silly amount of vehicles and explosions, just really good and it’s clearly very popular.
We were going to ride the log flume next but due to the entrance being next to the exit of the show it was gaining a massive queue so we headed round to iSpeed. We didn’t have to queue for long which was awesome and there were a few peeps trying to cut the queue but this epic staff member actually went over to them and made them get to the back of the queue, win. He was fab about it all, never seen a staff member in Italy give a hoot about queue jumping before, he was so fab his actual name was FABIO. Many lols were had.
I love iSpeed, it’s fast throughout the entire ride and the inversions on it are nuts, love it. The restraints are a bit of a killer (as you’d expect from intamin) but it still doesn’t detract from it’s awesomeness too much (for me anyway). Have some pics and an off ride video...
They had a few of these boards up due to the park turning 20
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcLZ580fP8[/youtube]
Opposite iSpeed is this crazy looking flat ride and it didn’t have a queue so it just HAD to be ridden for the lolz. In summery you spend the ride just going “WTF IS GOING ON!?” It’s quite simply mental and I love it for that reason. It had loads of random effects as well which I totally wasn’t expecting. Witness the crazyness below...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pporLaODVaA&feature=related[/youtube]
It was then time to head to Reset, the indoor shooty ride. It’s themed to an apocalyptic New York and I think the theming is excellent and the music in the area really adds a creepy atmosphere to the area. The ride itself is good but obviously after just riding Huntik it seemed a bit of a let down in comparison. It’s still a great ride though and just makes you think that the park need to have more dark rides if this is the quality they produce. I also got the top score out of us
12 monkeys?
Upon exiting the ride we spotted one of those cool little lizards that seem to be everywhere in Italy, they are so cool.
We then did Blu River, just an ordinary water slide attraction. Benin for some reason left his hat on and it ended up flying off and into the water, the ride attendant had to go fetch it for him
We then opted to ride iSpeed again because it’s awesome. We then rode Auto Splash, the log flume themed to cars! Very original theme and I love that the drops are themed to car washes. On the first drop I got absolutely soaked, I filmed a POV. Skip to 01:04 (I’ve added it in the comments on the youtube page to get to it quicker) for hilarity as the wave of water comes over the front of the boat....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLxmsSaxI4Y[/youtube]
We were starting to run out of new attractions so we opted to chill out, go on the monorail (which was a bit pants, if you’re looking the wrong way you miss everything) and then go for a spot of lunch at a random place near the lake. The food was pretty tasty if ridiculously salty, I’m not kidding, it’s like they just cooked it in a packet of salt, it’s just way too much. Oh and we were being attacked by like hundreds of wasps which didn’t help. But the little birds were really cute and so we kept throwing them some of our chips. (they were quite generous with portions). Some pics...
If ecoasters can advertise in a theme park, why not CF?
We had spotted our next ride earlier in the day and wondered what it was and as we were near by we had to ride it, said ride is called Monosaurus. It is basically a sort of monorail with the cars themed to dino eggs with a dino attached to it, you go round looking at some odd dinosaur models with the occasional weird bit of audio. We stopped for a while near the start but we think it was due to some disabled guests getting on in the station. Have some hilarious photos...
It was then time for some launch tower fun. The queue moved quite quickly and it was quite fun. We decided to skip the drop tower. We then decided to end the day with another three rides on Katun! It was pure awesome. I took some footage of Katun while we were there, I’ve put together the clips into a little vid...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXHhx7JHzc[/youtube]
It was then park closing time so we headed to the store, had a mosey around and acquired our wristbands for our free return ticket for the next day
So we left the park, all very happy with our visit to the park and we drove back to our hotel room.
I believe we ended up watching more Total Wipeout USA with smarmy man. So after some faff at the hotel we then went in search of food. We weren’t too hungry and we didn’t want to eat at the same place again so, shamefully, we ended up at McDonalds. It was just something small, cheap and quick. Then we went back to the epic gelato place for MOAR gelato epicness. I had me some coconut (has to be the best ever), caramel (awesome) and Kinder (not as good as the next kinder gelato I was to encounter). NOM. We then headed back to the hotel where this happened...
And then we had some sleep. Goodnight and thanks for reading!
Cool, a good read.
Where is the crazy house in Mirabilandia? If I had seen it when CF was there, I would have insisted on riding it! The one at Parc Saint Paul was so bizarre, it would have been perfect for a CF-Live.
And if I thought Rainbow Magicland couldn't get any gayer., I was wrong...
FYI, this page took ages to load, I think too many photos from FB may be slowing it down.
Where is the crazy house in Mirabilandia? If I had seen it when CF was there, I would have insisted on riding it! The one at Parc Saint Paul was so bizarre, it would have been perfect for a CF-Live.
And if I thought Rainbow Magicland couldn't get any gayer., I was wrong...
FYI, this page took ages to load, I think too many photos from FB may be slowing it down.
^Cheers Ian. Yeah, sorry, I wasn't expecting it to accept so many long posts on the same page, kept waiting for page 3 and here it is! Sorry, I'll try and restrict the amount of pics in my posts now because I was experiencing some uber issues loading page 2 at work lol. I'll be posting all the main links to the Facebook photo albums anyway in the last report.
..........
After an awesome day at Mirabilandia we had to keep our wristbands on so we could return for free. The guy told us they were waterproof, we didn’t believe him so we had to test it out, OMG, they were actually waterproof. Moving on we grabbed some food at the hotel before leaving the hotel and driving back to the park on yet another uber hot day with blue skies.
We managed to be one of the first peeps in the park and I tried to get my pic with the rabbit character but he wouldn’t stop, I got spited by an over-sized bunny, how sad. Here is the failed photo...
We walked very quickly over to Katun to try and get front row (it gets a horrific queue) we managed to be like 4th on the front which wasn’t too bad but as it was the morning they took forever loading again so it took us a lot longer than it should have done. Anyway we were on and it was uber amazing. We decided to run around and go straight back on as there wasn’t a queue for the other rows.
We then headed over for some iSpeed. We ended up waiting ages as it broke down while we were in the queue, bloomin’ Intamins, when do they ever work? Doesn’t matter we were on in about 20 minutes and it was still epic, I still can’t get over how awesome those inversions are.
We were going to go ride reset but it wasn’t open yet so we had to waste some time, we ended up chilling in an arcade for a little bit. Benin played on some pinball machines...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYwrEpUoS0k[/youtube]
To continue our faff we went to find a flat ride we hadn’t ridden yet. We discovered Delirium. It’s an odd flat ride, it’s like a cross between flying jumbos and a frog hopper. So yeah it was odd but rather cool, I’m surprised this is the only one I’ve seen before.
Faff finally came to an end and we ended up being one of the first groups on Reset, I think it’s even more eerie when the area is as quiet as it was when we went through. We then decided to have one last ride on Katun, lovely stuff.
We had some more food with more epic tales of being under attack from a swarm of wasps. They seemed to love Mark, much to his disapproval. Not the greatest way to end the day at one of the better European theme parks we’ve been to. Oh well, we then had to leave the park and get in the car to continue our journey North-West to Verona.
When we opened the doors to the car you could feel the ridiculous heat inside, it was like we had left the oven on or something. The car claimed it was a sizzling 39 degrees, we made a unanimous decision to leave all the doors open for a bit, grab a drink from a near-by vending machine before getting in for several hours. The drive to Verona was fine, just a bit long. I was concerned we would struggle to find our next accommodation, turns out it wasn’t too bad in the end.
So where were we staying? We were staying in student accommodation for the main Uni in Verona which meant we were literally walking distance from the centre of Verona and we had a kitchenette, a balcony, two bathrooms, a balcony, large TV, a washing machine and several large rooms...WIN. After getting over the shock of how big our apartment was and sorting out who was sleeping where we decided to go find food to fill the fridge with. Oh and some alcohol. Here are a few pics of the rooms...
Our view
We found the local ‘supermarket’ quickly thanks to the awesome directions by awesome lady on the reception. The shop didn’t seem big on variation but we ended up getting a fair bit (including some beer). We decided we needed more that this place just couldn’t provide us with so from seeing a sign for a Lidl Benin and I began our travels to track down said Lidl. To this day I don’t believe this Lidl exists, we walked for what seemed forever (must have been about 40 minutes or so). Nothing, just couldn’t see anything resembling said supermarket. We did however, pass signs for other supermarkets, we should have followed instinct and just gone for one of them. Instead we hunted down for a little pizzeria so we could take back something warm as we needed some warm food and we didn’t want to go back empty handed.
We all sat out on the balcony, drinking beer, eating pizza (which was gorgeous, shame we didn’t get more) and chatting till god knows what time. Mark and I were slightly hyper from the alcohol that we had consumed and instead of just going to bed we decided to attack Benin with one of the toys, much to our amusement. There was some sort of incident with cheese, yes, CHEESE. I’m not sure why or how but there was cheese on the floor in the corridor and it ended up all over my foot, I was not pleased (I doubt the cleaner was too) but it was funny. So after all that we went to sleep.
Once again thanks for reading. No idea when the next parts will be up as I’m pretty busy over the next week or so. Comments are highly appreciated.
Sorry, I'll try and restrict the amount of pics in my posts now because I was experiencing some uber issues loading page 2 at work lol. I'll be posting all the main links to the Facebook photo albums anyway in the last report...........
After an awesome day at Mirabilandia we had to keep our wristbands on so we could return for free. The guy told us they were waterproof, we didn’t believe him so we had to test it out, OMG, they were actually waterproof. Moving on we grabbed some food at the hotel before leaving the hotel and driving back to the park on yet another uber hot day with blue skies.
We managed to be one of the first peeps in the park and I tried to get my pic with the rabbit character but he wouldn’t stop, I got spited by an over-sized bunny, how sad. Here is the failed photo...
We walked very quickly over to Katun to try and get front row (it gets a horrific queue) we managed to be like 4th on the front which wasn’t too bad but as it was the morning they took forever loading again so it took us a lot longer than it should have done. Anyway we were on and it was uber amazing. We decided to run around and go straight back on as there wasn’t a queue for the other rows.
We then headed over for some iSpeed. We ended up waiting ages as it broke down while we were in the queue, bloomin’ Intamins, when do they ever work?
Doesn’t matter we were on in about 20 minutes and it was still epic, I still can’t get over how awesome those inversions are.We were going to go ride reset but it wasn’t open yet so we had to waste some time, we ended up chilling in an arcade for a little bit. Benin played on some pinball machines...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYwrEpUoS0k[/youtube]
To continue our faff we went to find a flat ride we hadn’t ridden yet. We discovered Delirium. It’s an odd flat ride, it’s like a cross between flying jumbos and a frog hopper. So yeah it was odd but rather cool, I’m surprised this is the only one I’ve seen before.
Faff finally came to an end and we ended up being one of the first groups on Reset, I think it’s even more eerie when the area is as quiet as it was when we went through. We then decided to have one last ride on Katun, lovely stuff.
We had some more food with more epic tales of being under attack from a swarm of wasps. They seemed to love Mark, much to his disapproval. Not the greatest way to end the day at one of the better European theme parks we’ve been to. Oh well, we then had to leave the park and get in the car to continue our journey North-West to Verona.
When we opened the doors to the car you could feel the ridiculous heat inside, it was like we had left the oven on or something. The car claimed it was a sizzling 39 degrees, we made a unanimous decision to leave all the doors open for a bit, grab a drink from a near-by vending machine before getting in for several hours. The drive to Verona was fine, just a bit long. I was concerned we would struggle to find our next accommodation, turns out it wasn’t too bad in the end.
So where were we staying? We were staying in student accommodation for the main Uni in Verona which meant we were literally walking distance from the centre of Verona and we had a kitchenette, a balcony, two bathrooms, a balcony, large TV, a washing machine and several large rooms...WIN. After getting over the shock of how big our apartment was and sorting out who was sleeping where we decided to go find food to fill the fridge with. Oh and some alcohol. Here are a few pics of the rooms...
Our view
We found the local ‘supermarket’ quickly thanks to the awesome directions by awesome lady on the reception. The shop didn’t seem big on variation but we ended up getting a fair bit (including some beer). We decided we needed more that this place just couldn’t provide us with so from seeing a sign for a Lidl Benin and I began our travels to track down said Lidl. To this day I don’t believe this Lidl exists, we walked for what seemed forever (must have been about 40 minutes or so). Nothing, just couldn’t see anything resembling said supermarket. We did however, pass signs for other supermarkets, we should have followed instinct and just gone for one of them. Instead we hunted down for a little pizzeria so we could take back something warm as we needed some warm food and we didn’t want to go back empty handed.
We all sat out on the balcony, drinking beer, eating pizza (which was gorgeous, shame we didn’t get more) and chatting till god knows what time. Mark and I were slightly hyper from the alcohol that we had consumed and instead of just going to bed we decided to attack Benin with one of the toys, much to our amusement. There was some sort of incident with cheese, yes, CHEESE. I’m not sure why or how but there was cheese on the floor in the corridor and it ended up all over my foot, I was not pleased (I doubt the cleaner was too) but it was funny. So after all that we went to sleep.
Once again thanks for reading. No idea when the next parts will be up as I’m pretty busy over the next week or so. Comments are highly appreciated.
Thekingin64
Strata Poster
CHEESE FIGHT!!!!!
That sounded so funny when I read it I just had to put something like that. Otherwise, nice trip report and I think the closest i'm going to ever get to this is if I ever got to Verona/Lake Garda.
That sounded so funny when I read it I just had to put something like that. Otherwise, nice trip report and I think the closest i'm going to ever get to this is if I ever got to Verona/Lake Garda.
Things are calming down a bit now for me so I has time to finish off this report.
The next day we set aside for the Movie park next to Gardaland but as it decided to spite us we made it a day to 'chillax' and enjoy our time in the apartment and spend some time in Verona. We realised after having some breakfast that we didn't really have much food left for some lunch. After some chilling out and watching some old school kids TV we headed out to the local supermarket again to top up on supplies.
We got to the closest one, it was closed, urgh. I dislike these silly opening times for everything. It was also uber hot outside and we now had to trek to the next one, it was called PAM (we found this hilarious). We found it and it was great, bigger, better range of food and it was actually open! Hurrah, success at last. So we grabbed some food and drink and headed back to the apartment.
Couple of hours later, we decided to head into Verona for the evening. It wasn't too far away and it was cooling down so we walked in. After going down a few long roads and past the 'wall' we were closer to the famous attractions in Verona. First we came across this bridge which had some lovely views...
On the river were some canoeists, I think it was a lesson as one or two were heavily struggling against the current which was surprisingly fast. It was amusing to watch for a while anyway. Oh and all those love lock things were hanging on some strings above the river. They still don't make sense to me.
We continued our little journey. We came across these epic ruins which they'd kind of built around so there was this main street with some gaping hole to show off the bottom of these ruins. It was all rather random but absolutely fascinating.
The next photo shows where we ended up...
Yep, Juliet's house. It was very popular but the inside bit was closed for the day by the time we got there. It was a bit eurgh, the way you have to go via this awful, dingy tunnel to get to this tiny courtyard, very impractical considering how many people visit it every day. So yeah, we went, we saw, we ran away.
Our next destination to visit was the amazing Arena. I really want to see someone perform in here but when we were there it was George Michael, we decided against seeing him
Opposite the arena is a row of busy restaurants. We went for one themed to a hippo (as you do). The food was really nice, the drinks were HUGE and the desert was epic. Ice cream with kinder chocolate bars mixed in? Sickly but amazing. I was annoyed I couldn't finish it as it was sooooo good.
The aftermath
It was then getting late so we headed back to the apartment. We then got some rest for the next day, the last theme park of the trip, Gardaland.
The next day we set aside for the Movie park next to Gardaland but as it decided to spite us we made it a day to 'chillax' and enjoy our time in the apartment and spend some time in Verona. We realised after having some breakfast that we didn't really have much food left for some lunch. After some chilling out and watching some old school kids TV we headed out to the local supermarket again to top up on supplies.
We got to the closest one, it was closed, urgh. I dislike these silly opening times for everything. It was also uber hot outside and we now had to trek to the next one, it was called PAM (we found this hilarious). We found it and it was great, bigger, better range of food and it was actually open! Hurrah, success at last. So we grabbed some food and drink and headed back to the apartment.
Couple of hours later, we decided to head into Verona for the evening. It wasn't too far away and it was cooling down so we walked in. After going down a few long roads and past the 'wall' we were closer to the famous attractions in Verona. First we came across this bridge which had some lovely views...
On the river were some canoeists, I think it was a lesson as one or two were heavily struggling against the current which was surprisingly fast. It was amusing to watch for a while anyway. Oh and all those love lock things were hanging on some strings above the river. They still don't make sense to me.
We continued our little journey. We came across these epic ruins which they'd kind of built around so there was this main street with some gaping hole to show off the bottom of these ruins. It was all rather random but absolutely fascinating.
The next photo shows where we ended up...
Yep, Juliet's house. It was very popular but the inside bit was closed for the day by the time we got there. It was a bit eurgh, the way you have to go via this awful, dingy tunnel to get to this tiny courtyard, very impractical considering how many people visit it every day. So yeah, we went, we saw, we ran away.
Our next destination to visit was the amazing Arena. I really want to see someone perform in here but when we were there it was George Michael, we decided against seeing him
Opposite the arena is a row of busy restaurants. We went for one themed to a hippo (as you do). The food was really nice, the drinks were HUGE and the desert was epic. Ice cream with kinder chocolate bars mixed in? Sickly but amazing. I was annoyed I couldn't finish it as it was sooooo good.
The aftermath
It was then getting late so we headed back to the apartment. We then got some rest for the next day, the last theme park of the trip, Gardaland.
So it was finally time for our last theme park visit of the trip. We got up, had some foods and then drove to Gardaland. We drove past the hotel which looks really nice, never even realised they had a hotel. In the entrance plaza with all the ticket booths is this cool spinning globe with the logo on it.
We then joined the mass of peeps that had assembled in front of the park gates, waiting for them to open. All of a sudden the park mascot and some dancers appeared on top of the gate building and did some dancing to one of the most catchy park songs I’ve ever heard, it was fab, I wants it. Half way through they then stopped to play the national anthem which was very boring. Anyway it was all rather awesome and got us really excited for the day ahead. If Merlin has the ability to do this in Italy, why not in the UK?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leS1zSAdGiM[/youtube]
Once the gate was open obviously everyone shoved forwards but when we got to the gate we found out we had to go to a different gate as we were using magic passes. I really loved this second gate, it’s used for Merlin employees and hotel guests (I got the impression hotel guests got ERT).
We then speed walked over to Raptor. It looked amazing and I loved the fencing and foliage, reminded me of Jurassic Park <3
One minute waiting time, yes please! So off we went round the long cattlepen queueline to then just waltz straight on. I think my first ride was in the back row. Anyway we all instantly fell in love with Raptor, it was just superb. The way it interacts with the surroundings is just exciting and a much better thrill and just a plain coaster that goes fast over nothing. I wasn’t overally keen on the first bit over the Western area but that’s also when the first drop happens which is epic. It’s not exactly a fast ride but it’s got a great pace to it and the inversions are just one odd experience (which makes me even more curious as to how the new ones will ride). Due to the non-existant queue we went round and rode it another 3 times.
We then decided to move on to other areas of the park. We kicked off with Blue Tornado. It’s a Vekoma SLC of death. I loathed it back in 2009 so I decided to stay off and do some filming. There was a bit of a queue but the others got on fairly quickly. Have a video…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqwnFConNG0&feature=related[/youtube]
Urgh, vile.
Moving on we went straight into the horrible queue for Mammut. I didn’t like it back in 2009 but I was willing to give it another go. We managed to get in the back and it was far superior to what I remember. Still not amazing but it was fun and at times was quite fast. Have my POV from 2009…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrxPu2fTbv8[/youtube]
We then made our way into the queue for the rapids. It looked like quite a wait but it moved quickly. We had a good laugh but it wasn’t amazing and was no where near the level of awesomeness as the other two rapids we rode on the trip. Khalid and I got quite a soaking.
After some cooling down from the rapids we skipped round to Fuga. The theming for this ride is actually on some mental epic scale that you just don’t expect from a non-Disney park, especially one owned by Merlin. Yet, there it is, all massive and epic. They were operating some odd rule where by you couldn’t take on your bag, fair enough, but making sure you didn’t even take your bag into the queueline was maybe a step too far. All bags had to be left by this sign or in a locker that you had to pay for. We couldn’t find a locker (because they have like 20 lockers for about 60 people, go figure) so we had to leave it by the sign. Benin was not pleased about this in the slightest but he just had to get over it. The queue wasn’t long and we were only on the ride for like, what, 5 mins?
I really enjoyed the ride, the two drops provided decent air time but you didn’t get very wet from the ….
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzEB672Ck4[/youtube]
It also faffs about a bit but while it’s faffing you get to listen to the amazing soundtrack.
So we collected our bags and continued round to the drop tower. I really love the theming for this drop tower, it’s simple and effective, if a little dated. But I liked the fact it felt like you were in a late 70s sci-fi film, especially the room with the coloured lighting, was like a rave.
The actual drop itself is great, I think I prefer the smaller drops due to the impact they provide. This is one of those that provides that great short burst of thrill.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS_lgTudiGE&feature=related[/youtube]
It was around midday now so it was decided that food was our next agenda. I loved the pirate place I went to back in 2009 so I managed to convince everyone that we should go there. Outside we got distracted by a random show including pirates and their wenches doing a little dance. It was rather cool and I loved the randomness of it all. It was in a great spot though, on a tiny stage in front of the awesome pirate ship (more on that in a sec). I filmed half of the show.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPdG9q5ivk&feature=related[/youtube]
How fun. Then, FOOD. We all got served pretty quickly which I approved of. We sat upstairs in the epically themed pirate fast-food restaurant. To me this is what Transylvania at Chessington’s fast food place should be. Well themed, great food and quick service. So yeah, it was uber nom.
Remember that big ship I mentioned? It was time to go inside. I obviously knew what it led to but the others had no idea and I think they were all pleasantly surprised. Going down the ship, then down the caves into the massive station area for a really long, heavily themed boat ride similar to Pirates of the Caribbean at the Disney parks. Yet it doesn’t feel like a rip off of the popular Disney attraction, it manages to feel original and unique. Once again, how comes Merlin used to be able to pull of amazing feats of design like this but yet in the UK they fail at even coming close?
The area above it is awesome too, a really cool English village feel to it.
More dark ride epicenes was next, Ramses Il Risveglio. It’s like a mega mash up of Terminator and The Mummy with a rather Iron Maiden-sounding soundtrack.
We did break down for a while when we were on the ride but it just gave us more time to get more points (it’s a laser shooty ride). Benin got the most points out of us.
It was then that dreaded moment when we braved the queue for Sequoia Adventure, i.e. the evil S&S contraption of which nightmares are made of. We had to wait a good 15-20 minutes due to the awfully slow operations. For some reason they had a silly amount of cars on to the track, 3 in the station, one on the break run and one going round the circuit. So the 3 cars in the station were just sitting around for what felt like forever for a ride that lasts about 30 seconds, so pointless. In the searing heat it was really unpleasant too. So yeah, before long we had got the awfulness out of the way.
We then opted for Magic Mountain. I really like this Vekoma looper, I find it quite smooth and enjoyable, really helped by the new style restraint system.
As it was next to where we were our next ride of the day was Ortobruco tour, an extended caterpillar coaster of randomness. It’s quite a fun little coaster though and put a smile on all our faces.
Due to the heat we opted for something to cool us down, Colorado boat will do. This log flume had quite a long queue but it moved at a nice pace so it didn’t feel too bad, it was also in the shade, I approved of this. The ride itself was really good, it kinda meanders for a bit in the forest which is cool and we got suitable moist which was also approved of.
Random cow hanging from the roof of the station
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcM9jhkWzs[/youtube]
We were edging nearer to the end of the day but we were also running out of rides to go on. I wanted to check out the random show in the tent opposite Raptor and the others wanted to check out the madhouse so we split for a bit. The show turned out to be a show where this guy kept making these awesome pictures in sand which was projected onto a screen. It sounds lame but it was really relaxing and was quite cool. I liked that he ended the show with a pic of the Gardaland mascot.
After leaving the tent to go meet the others I realised I’d left my sunglasses inside by accident. So I went back in to retrieve them and had to have a random conversation with some security lady, she was quite amusing and I got my glasses back so all was good.
As I went back outside the others had just turned up too so we then spent a while whoring Raptor and taking lots of pics and filming it. We rode it five times. We could have stayed and ridden it even more but we didn’t want to over-do it. Between sitting in the front and in the back are completely different ride experiences, both fantastic and the random dip after the second to last break run is fun. Have a pic and a video…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC7avi-xIGI&feature=BFa&list=ULatcM9jhkWzs&lf=mfu_in_order[/youtube]
It was then time to leave the park. We drove back to the apartment in Verona, stopping off at PAM again for more supplies and then chilled out, probably watched some more of smarmy man on Total Wipeout USA too.
The next morning we checked out of the apartment place and drove the hire car to the Marco Polo airport in Venice. The original idea was to actually spend a couple of hours in Venice but due to time constraints we decided it was a bad idea. We said goodbye to the Lancia of Love which was really nice to travel about Italy in and we didn’t destroy it which was a major plus.
We spent a fair bit of time in the airport restaurant, we had some nice food, relaxed and played a game of Merlin Top Trumps. We got some confusing looks. We also played with some of our kinder egg toys, I got a spirograph thing, I made this…
After a while we were soon going through security etc, grabbing our last Italian Gelato of the trip (not as amazing as the gelato in Ravenna) and getting on our Easyjet flight back to Gatwick. We flew over mountains, it was perty.
And that was that. Thank you for reading my trip reports. I hope you enjoyed reading them and looking through all the photos etc. Comments make me feel like it was worth writing these up so they would be greatly appreciated. I’ll leave you with the links to all the photo albums….
Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4
Album 5
Album 6
OMFG I actually completed one of my longer trip reports!
We then joined the mass of peeps that had assembled in front of the park gates, waiting for them to open. All of a sudden the park mascot and some dancers appeared on top of the gate building and did some dancing to one of the most catchy park songs I’ve ever heard, it was fab, I wants it. Half way through they then stopped to play the national anthem which was very boring. Anyway it was all rather awesome and got us really excited for the day ahead. If Merlin has the ability to do this in Italy, why not in the UK?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leS1zSAdGiM[/youtube]
Once the gate was open obviously everyone shoved forwards but when we got to the gate we found out we had to go to a different gate as we were using magic passes. I really loved this second gate, it’s used for Merlin employees and hotel guests (I got the impression hotel guests got ERT).
We then speed walked over to Raptor. It looked amazing and I loved the fencing and foliage, reminded me of Jurassic Park <3
One minute waiting time, yes please! So off we went round the long cattlepen queueline to then just waltz straight on. I think my first ride was in the back row. Anyway we all instantly fell in love with Raptor, it was just superb. The way it interacts with the surroundings is just exciting and a much better thrill and just a plain coaster that goes fast over nothing. I wasn’t overally keen on the first bit over the Western area but that’s also when the first drop happens which is epic. It’s not exactly a fast ride but it’s got a great pace to it and the inversions are just one odd experience (which makes me even more curious as to how the new ones will ride). Due to the non-existant queue we went round and rode it another 3 times.
We then decided to move on to other areas of the park. We kicked off with Blue Tornado. It’s a Vekoma SLC of death. I loathed it back in 2009 so I decided to stay off and do some filming. There was a bit of a queue but the others got on fairly quickly. Have a video…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqwnFConNG0&feature=related[/youtube]
Urgh, vile.
Moving on we went straight into the horrible queue for Mammut. I didn’t like it back in 2009 but I was willing to give it another go. We managed to get in the back and it was far superior to what I remember. Still not amazing but it was fun and at times was quite fast. Have my POV from 2009…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrxPu2fTbv8[/youtube]
We then made our way into the queue for the rapids. It looked like quite a wait but it moved quickly. We had a good laugh but it wasn’t amazing and was no where near the level of awesomeness as the other two rapids we rode on the trip. Khalid and I got quite a soaking.
After some cooling down from the rapids we skipped round to Fuga. The theming for this ride is actually on some mental epic scale that you just don’t expect from a non-Disney park, especially one owned by Merlin. Yet, there it is, all massive and epic. They were operating some odd rule where by you couldn’t take on your bag, fair enough, but making sure you didn’t even take your bag into the queueline was maybe a step too far. All bags had to be left by this sign or in a locker that you had to pay for. We couldn’t find a locker (because they have like 20 lockers for about 60 people, go figure) so we had to leave it by the sign. Benin was not pleased about this in the slightest but he just had to get over it. The queue wasn’t long and we were only on the ride for like, what, 5 mins?
I really enjoyed the ride, the two drops provided decent air time but you didn’t get very wet from the ….
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzEB672Ck4[/youtube]
It also faffs about a bit but while it’s faffing you get to listen to the amazing soundtrack.
So we collected our bags and continued round to the drop tower. I really love the theming for this drop tower, it’s simple and effective, if a little dated. But I liked the fact it felt like you were in a late 70s sci-fi film, especially the room with the coloured lighting, was like a rave.
The actual drop itself is great, I think I prefer the smaller drops due to the impact they provide. This is one of those that provides that great short burst of thrill.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS_lgTudiGE&feature=related[/youtube]
It was around midday now so it was decided that food was our next agenda. I loved the pirate place I went to back in 2009 so I managed to convince everyone that we should go there. Outside we got distracted by a random show including pirates and their wenches doing a little dance. It was rather cool and I loved the randomness of it all. It was in a great spot though, on a tiny stage in front of the awesome pirate ship (more on that in a sec). I filmed half of the show.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPdG9q5ivk&feature=related[/youtube]
How fun. Then, FOOD. We all got served pretty quickly which I approved of. We sat upstairs in the epically themed pirate fast-food restaurant. To me this is what Transylvania at Chessington’s fast food place should be. Well themed, great food and quick service. So yeah, it was uber nom.
Remember that big ship I mentioned? It was time to go inside. I obviously knew what it led to but the others had no idea and I think they were all pleasantly surprised. Going down the ship, then down the caves into the massive station area for a really long, heavily themed boat ride similar to Pirates of the Caribbean at the Disney parks. Yet it doesn’t feel like a rip off of the popular Disney attraction, it manages to feel original and unique. Once again, how comes Merlin used to be able to pull of amazing feats of design like this but yet in the UK they fail at even coming close?
The area above it is awesome too, a really cool English village feel to it.
More dark ride epicenes was next, Ramses Il Risveglio. It’s like a mega mash up of Terminator and The Mummy with a rather Iron Maiden-sounding soundtrack.
We did break down for a while when we were on the ride but it just gave us more time to get more points (it’s a laser shooty ride). Benin got the most points out of us.
It was then that dreaded moment when we braved the queue for Sequoia Adventure, i.e. the evil S&S contraption of which nightmares are made of. We had to wait a good 15-20 minutes due to the awfully slow operations. For some reason they had a silly amount of cars on to the track, 3 in the station, one on the break run and one going round the circuit. So the 3 cars in the station were just sitting around for what felt like forever for a ride that lasts about 30 seconds, so pointless. In the searing heat it was really unpleasant too. So yeah, before long we had got the awfulness out of the way.
We then opted for Magic Mountain. I really like this Vekoma looper, I find it quite smooth and enjoyable, really helped by the new style restraint system.
As it was next to where we were our next ride of the day was Ortobruco tour, an extended caterpillar coaster of randomness. It’s quite a fun little coaster though and put a smile on all our faces.
Due to the heat we opted for something to cool us down, Colorado boat will do. This log flume had quite a long queue but it moved at a nice pace so it didn’t feel too bad, it was also in the shade, I approved of this. The ride itself was really good, it kinda meanders for a bit in the forest which is cool and we got suitable moist which was also approved of.
Random cow hanging from the roof of the station
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcM9jhkWzs[/youtube]
We were edging nearer to the end of the day but we were also running out of rides to go on. I wanted to check out the random show in the tent opposite Raptor and the others wanted to check out the madhouse so we split for a bit. The show turned out to be a show where this guy kept making these awesome pictures in sand which was projected onto a screen. It sounds lame but it was really relaxing and was quite cool. I liked that he ended the show with a pic of the Gardaland mascot.
After leaving the tent to go meet the others I realised I’d left my sunglasses inside by accident. So I went back in to retrieve them and had to have a random conversation with some security lady, she was quite amusing and I got my glasses back so all was good.
As I went back outside the others had just turned up too so we then spent a while whoring Raptor and taking lots of pics and filming it. We rode it five times. We could have stayed and ridden it even more but we didn’t want to over-do it. Between sitting in the front and in the back are completely different ride experiences, both fantastic and the random dip after the second to last break run is fun. Have a pic and a video…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC7avi-xIGI&feature=BFa&list=ULatcM9jhkWzs&lf=mfu_in_order[/youtube]
It was then time to leave the park. We drove back to the apartment in Verona, stopping off at PAM again for more supplies and then chilled out, probably watched some more of smarmy man on Total Wipeout USA too.
The next morning we checked out of the apartment place and drove the hire car to the Marco Polo airport in Venice. The original idea was to actually spend a couple of hours in Venice but due to time constraints we decided it was a bad idea. We said goodbye to the Lancia of Love which was really nice to travel about Italy in and we didn’t destroy it which was a major plus.
We spent a fair bit of time in the airport restaurant, we had some nice food, relaxed and played a game of Merlin Top Trumps. We got some confusing looks. We also played with some of our kinder egg toys, I got a spirograph thing, I made this…
After a while we were soon going through security etc, grabbing our last Italian Gelato of the trip (not as amazing as the gelato in Ravenna) and getting on our Easyjet flight back to Gatwick. We flew over mountains, it was perty.
And that was that. Thank you for reading my trip reports. I hope you enjoyed reading them and looking through all the photos etc. Comments make me feel like it was worth writing these up so they would be greatly appreciated. I’ll leave you with the links to all the photo albums….
Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4
Album 5
Album 6
OMFG I actually completed one of my longer trip reports!
Nemesis Inferno
Strata Poster
Ahhh the memories... Such a good trip... And YAY for John finishing a trip report
Make me want to ride Raptor again though...
Make me want to ride Raptor again though...