Geeky Pastimes
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This is my first trip report and being done on my phone in a hotel room so apologies for any weird formatting. Pictures are here:
Day One: Walibi Holland and Burgers Zoo
We got an early flight from Norwich to Amsterdam and rented a car to drive out to Walibi Holland. Only took just over an hour and was a very simple drive, no idea why we haven't done this before! Parked up at Walibi about ten minutes after their 10am opening we were happy to see a fairly empty car park, even though it was a Saturday.
Going in I was a little surprised by how small Walibi Holland seems. The entrance building feels like one from a smaller family run park rather than something that used to be Six Flags. As we were fairly sure the queues would be minimal we just head to the first ride we saw, their Vekoma Boomerang. We have one of these in Norfolk at Pleasurewood Hills and I've always thought it was kind of fun for being such a simple ride. This one was much better and the on board audio really helps to make it seem more exciting. Yes it's a bit rough and over very quickly, but for what it was it was a fun little ride.
Starting to realise the park was getting full of big groups of teenagers, we thought we'd better get on Lost Gravity before the queues built up too much. We ended up waiting around 20 minutes for it, queuing in front of and behind people smoking weed and constantly pushing about. That might have put a downer on the experience but the theming seemed a lot less impressive than I'd expected, it's just a few random bits and pieces stuck upside down around some shipping containers. Just before we got on the ride a kid was too short to go on, so while his mum rode the ops let him push the button to start the ride. Seemed sweet but also a little bit frightening! Lost Gravity was pretty good really, very smooth and with some great pops of airtime. Over too quickly but I'd love to see more of these and it was so nice having the Mack restraints on the trains.
After this we walked around a few areas and queues were really building up. The shot tower had about half an hour's queue and the horrible old Vekoma SLC even had a lengthy wait. We walked around Untamed a little bit to see how it's getting on and took a few photos. While it's a great addition to the park it didn't seem as spectacular as anything like Wildfire, but there's still loads of work to do on it.
We headed over to Goliath next and I was pretty blown away by this. I've done quite a few B & M hypers and a couple of the Intamins (Expedition G Force and the one in Tokyo) and this was right up there with some of the best. Stronger forces than the B&Ms and some great Helixes and kept up the pace all the way round.
By now we were a little fed up with the increasing crowds and the general run down state of the park. Goliath looks a state despite being painted recently, nearly all of the flat rides were down and the food options were bleak. We decided to leave but on the way out we came across a cool little raft you could use a rope with to get across a stream, after getting over that we saw the ride in the castle was open so hopped in there, assuming it was a haunted swing (that's our default guess for any dark ride we didn't know about).
Spoilers, it's totally a haunted swing. Quite a good one though, themed around Merlin. The preshow was crazy and entirely in Dutch, but the main ride had some great theming and a cool smoke effect that wafted a plume into the centre of the room. It's very surreal watching the smoke as the room spins, really adds a new element to something I'm sure most of us have done many times before.
After that we headed out and decided to go over to Burgers Zoo as it was near our first hotel in Arnhem. The Zoo was fantastic with some inventive exhibits like a big beach with purple crabs and horseshoe crabs and an aquarium with bioluminescent fish. We've been to a lot of zoos but saw quite a few things here we'd never seen before, and the food was pretty good too.
Overall it was hard not to be disappointed with Walibi Holland. Some of the rides are pretty good but the parks really lacks atmosphere and the sense that anyone cares about it. There's non themed dance music playing everywhere, it's run down and operations were a mess. It felt like what Thorpe Park is heading towards. I'm sure Untamed will be a good addition but I'm not convinced it'll be enough to encourage us to return.
Next post I'll be much more positive with the excellent Movie Park Germany!
We got an early flight from Norwich to Amsterdam and rented a car to drive out to Walibi Holland. Only took just over an hour and was a very simple drive, no idea why we haven't done this before! Parked up at Walibi about ten minutes after their 10am opening we were happy to see a fairly empty car park, even though it was a Saturday.
Going in I was a little surprised by how small Walibi Holland seems. The entrance building feels like one from a smaller family run park rather than something that used to be Six Flags. As we were fairly sure the queues would be minimal we just head to the first ride we saw, their Vekoma Boomerang. We have one of these in Norfolk at Pleasurewood Hills and I've always thought it was kind of fun for being such a simple ride. This one was much better and the on board audio really helps to make it seem more exciting. Yes it's a bit rough and over very quickly, but for what it was it was a fun little ride.
Starting to realise the park was getting full of big groups of teenagers, we thought we'd better get on Lost Gravity before the queues built up too much. We ended up waiting around 20 minutes for it, queuing in front of and behind people smoking weed and constantly pushing about. That might have put a downer on the experience but the theming seemed a lot less impressive than I'd expected, it's just a few random bits and pieces stuck upside down around some shipping containers. Just before we got on the ride a kid was too short to go on, so while his mum rode the ops let him push the button to start the ride. Seemed sweet but also a little bit frightening! Lost Gravity was pretty good really, very smooth and with some great pops of airtime. Over too quickly but I'd love to see more of these and it was so nice having the Mack restraints on the trains.
After this we walked around a few areas and queues were really building up. The shot tower had about half an hour's queue and the horrible old Vekoma SLC even had a lengthy wait. We walked around Untamed a little bit to see how it's getting on and took a few photos. While it's a great addition to the park it didn't seem as spectacular as anything like Wildfire, but there's still loads of work to do on it.
We headed over to Goliath next and I was pretty blown away by this. I've done quite a few B & M hypers and a couple of the Intamins (Expedition G Force and the one in Tokyo) and this was right up there with some of the best. Stronger forces than the B&Ms and some great Helixes and kept up the pace all the way round.
By now we were a little fed up with the increasing crowds and the general run down state of the park. Goliath looks a state despite being painted recently, nearly all of the flat rides were down and the food options were bleak. We decided to leave but on the way out we came across a cool little raft you could use a rope with to get across a stream, after getting over that we saw the ride in the castle was open so hopped in there, assuming it was a haunted swing (that's our default guess for any dark ride we didn't know about).
Spoilers, it's totally a haunted swing. Quite a good one though, themed around Merlin. The preshow was crazy and entirely in Dutch, but the main ride had some great theming and a cool smoke effect that wafted a plume into the centre of the room. It's very surreal watching the smoke as the room spins, really adds a new element to something I'm sure most of us have done many times before.
After that we headed out and decided to go over to Burgers Zoo as it was near our first hotel in Arnhem. The Zoo was fantastic with some inventive exhibits like a big beach with purple crabs and horseshoe crabs and an aquarium with bioluminescent fish. We've been to a lot of zoos but saw quite a few things here we'd never seen before, and the food was pretty good too.
Overall it was hard not to be disappointed with Walibi Holland. Some of the rides are pretty good but the parks really lacks atmosphere and the sense that anyone cares about it. There's non themed dance music playing everywhere, it's run down and operations were a mess. It felt like what Thorpe Park is heading towards. I'm sure Untamed will be a good addition but I'm not convinced it'll be enough to encourage us to return.
Next post I'll be much more positive with the excellent Movie Park Germany!
