Peet
Giga Poster
Hi all, I haven't posted any trip reports on here before, but I went to Hopi Hari near São Paulo in Brazil at the weekend which is one of those parks that most enthusiasts will have heard of, but not many will have visited, so I hope some of you will find it an interesting trip report!
First off, no I did not travel all the way to São Paulo just to visit Hopi Hari! It was a calling point on a road trip from Rio to São Paulo as part of a 3 week South American holiday with my (now) Fiancée Sarah.
The park is only open 3-4 days a week (it is winter in Brazil after all). We arrived at the park at about 12 noon after an early start and a long drive, and it was immediately obvious that we were going to be doing some queuing - the crowd around the entrance was enormous!
The park is themed as it's own country. Things are written in two languages - Portuguese and a nonsense made-up "Hopi-Harian" language, which is not exactly super helpful. Here's the entrance, or "immigration department":
After a queue for bag check, a queue to buy tickets (or "passports" as they call them here), and a queue to get through the gates, we were finally in and headed straight to the back of the park for the first ride of the day.
Katapul
I was a massive Alton Towers fanboy for most of my teenage years, so I was very excited to ride *the* Thunderlooper, which I am (just) too young to remember running at Alton Towers. It was an iconic ride that only lasted for 7 seasons at Towers which has made it something of a legend amongst the Alton Towers fanbase.
It is also historically very significant as it was one of the very first launcher roller coasters ever built, and one of only 2 weight-drop launched coasters remaining in the world. It remains almost unaltered from when it opened at Kings Dominion in 1977, running the original Schwarzkopf train, albeit one car shorter than it used to be.
These days it is painted red and sports a Superman theme. The queue was spilling a long way out of the ride entrance, and there was no indication of how long the wait would be. In the end it took about 45 minutes of standing in the sun before we reached the ride entrance, and a further 70 minutes in the actual queue line (which does offer some protection from the sun).
So a near 2 hour queue for a 30 second ride - even I was questioning my sanity! Anyway, the ride is running well, it got a little shaky towards the end of the launch, and the launch seems to come in two bursts which I thought was odd for a weight-drop launch - I would love to know exactly how the mechanism works! As expected, it's short but really good fun, +1 for my count, and a childhood dream realised.
We then took a short break from the queuing and cooled off by the fountain, for those of you who don't know what I look like - which is all of you - here is a pic of Sarah and me.
After a bite to eat it was time for the park's other major coaster.
Montezum
This is the only wooden roller coaster on the entire continent of South America. It was built by the Roller Coaster Corporation of America (RCCA) and runs some lovely 6-seater PTC trains. Like Katapul, the trains have been shortened by one car at some point, so it has 4 car trains instead of the original 5, although the air-gates for the fifth car are still working in the station! There are only 4 extant RCCA coasters in the world, and I have already been spited by 2 of them (Magnus Colossus and Coaster Express), so I was hoping it would be 3rd time lucky.
The queue line offered a bit more shade than Katapul's and even a bit of cooling water spray. We waited 1 hour and 45 minutes and bagged a back-row seat. The layout of some of the other RCCA coasters looks pretty dull, but this coaster is anything but dull. It starts with a fabulous 139ft (rcdb stat) drop into a tunnel under the entrance road, and it doesn't let up until the end. In total there are 3 large, steep drops which are all brilliant; it's a really great layout, a little on the short side, but a lot of fun. *However* the roughness of this ride is like nothing I have ever experienced before, I honestly think it would have been shut down by now if it was in Europe. The ride is evidently in very poor condition, and I have no question that it is the roughest coaster I have ever ridden. I seem to have quite a high tolerance for roughness though as I still loved every second of the ride and wished I could go again. However there was one more cred I needed.
Vurang
This Intamin spinner is a bit of a rarity - it looks like they only made 3 of this model. It was going dark by the time we got there, and the queue moved extremely slowly meaning that it was more than 2 hours before we got on the ride, by which time it was of course fully dark. With hindsight it would have been better to get the night ride on one of the major coasters rather than this indoor cred. Here's how it looked when we joined the queue:
And by the time we rode:
This ride uses a very long 12-car train of spinning cars which actually makes it lots of fun. It's very smooth too; overall a nice family thrill coaster, although much less thrilling than your average Maurer spinner.
By the time we had got off Vurang it was around 7:30pm and it turns out that the advertised 9pm closing time is the time that the rides actually stop running, so the queues for the 3 coasters were already closed. We were pretty fed up of queues by then anyway, so we called it a day with a ride count of just 3, from about 6 hours of queuing!
On the way out we stopped by the music stage where there was a "MC Kevinho" playing and good party/festival atmosphere.
I count this as a successful day as we got on the 3 coasters that I really wanted to, although the lack of re-rides was a little disappointing. I wouldn't exactly recommend this park to visitors - the fact that it gets so crowded with so few rides and so little recent investment shows that there is very little competition in the area (or even in the whole continent!). There were a number of SBNO flat rides including a Huss topspin and an Intamin drop tower. I have no idea how the park has struggled financially so much recently as it looks to me like it should be an absolute goldmine, with typical attendance figures close to Thorpe Park's.
Anyway, it was certainly a memorable day out, thanks for reading!
First off, no I did not travel all the way to São Paulo just to visit Hopi Hari! It was a calling point on a road trip from Rio to São Paulo as part of a 3 week South American holiday with my (now) Fiancée Sarah.
The park is only open 3-4 days a week (it is winter in Brazil after all). We arrived at the park at about 12 noon after an early start and a long drive, and it was immediately obvious that we were going to be doing some queuing - the crowd around the entrance was enormous!
The park is themed as it's own country. Things are written in two languages - Portuguese and a nonsense made-up "Hopi-Harian" language, which is not exactly super helpful. Here's the entrance, or "immigration department":
After a queue for bag check, a queue to buy tickets (or "passports" as they call them here), and a queue to get through the gates, we were finally in and headed straight to the back of the park for the first ride of the day.
Katapul
I was a massive Alton Towers fanboy for most of my teenage years, so I was very excited to ride *the* Thunderlooper, which I am (just) too young to remember running at Alton Towers. It was an iconic ride that only lasted for 7 seasons at Towers which has made it something of a legend amongst the Alton Towers fanbase.
It is also historically very significant as it was one of the very first launcher roller coasters ever built, and one of only 2 weight-drop launched coasters remaining in the world. It remains almost unaltered from when it opened at Kings Dominion in 1977, running the original Schwarzkopf train, albeit one car shorter than it used to be.
These days it is painted red and sports a Superman theme. The queue was spilling a long way out of the ride entrance, and there was no indication of how long the wait would be. In the end it took about 45 minutes of standing in the sun before we reached the ride entrance, and a further 70 minutes in the actual queue line (which does offer some protection from the sun).
So a near 2 hour queue for a 30 second ride - even I was questioning my sanity! Anyway, the ride is running well, it got a little shaky towards the end of the launch, and the launch seems to come in two bursts which I thought was odd for a weight-drop launch - I would love to know exactly how the mechanism works! As expected, it's short but really good fun, +1 for my count, and a childhood dream realised.
We then took a short break from the queuing and cooled off by the fountain, for those of you who don't know what I look like - which is all of you - here is a pic of Sarah and me.
After a bite to eat it was time for the park's other major coaster.
Montezum
This is the only wooden roller coaster on the entire continent of South America. It was built by the Roller Coaster Corporation of America (RCCA) and runs some lovely 6-seater PTC trains. Like Katapul, the trains have been shortened by one car at some point, so it has 4 car trains instead of the original 5, although the air-gates for the fifth car are still working in the station! There are only 4 extant RCCA coasters in the world, and I have already been spited by 2 of them (Magnus Colossus and Coaster Express), so I was hoping it would be 3rd time lucky.
The queue line offered a bit more shade than Katapul's and even a bit of cooling water spray. We waited 1 hour and 45 minutes and bagged a back-row seat. The layout of some of the other RCCA coasters looks pretty dull, but this coaster is anything but dull. It starts with a fabulous 139ft (rcdb stat) drop into a tunnel under the entrance road, and it doesn't let up until the end. In total there are 3 large, steep drops which are all brilliant; it's a really great layout, a little on the short side, but a lot of fun. *However* the roughness of this ride is like nothing I have ever experienced before, I honestly think it would have been shut down by now if it was in Europe. The ride is evidently in very poor condition, and I have no question that it is the roughest coaster I have ever ridden. I seem to have quite a high tolerance for roughness though as I still loved every second of the ride and wished I could go again. However there was one more cred I needed.
Vurang
This Intamin spinner is a bit of a rarity - it looks like they only made 3 of this model. It was going dark by the time we got there, and the queue moved extremely slowly meaning that it was more than 2 hours before we got on the ride, by which time it was of course fully dark. With hindsight it would have been better to get the night ride on one of the major coasters rather than this indoor cred. Here's how it looked when we joined the queue:
And by the time we rode:
This ride uses a very long 12-car train of spinning cars which actually makes it lots of fun. It's very smooth too; overall a nice family thrill coaster, although much less thrilling than your average Maurer spinner.
By the time we had got off Vurang it was around 7:30pm and it turns out that the advertised 9pm closing time is the time that the rides actually stop running, so the queues for the 3 coasters were already closed. We were pretty fed up of queues by then anyway, so we called it a day with a ride count of just 3, from about 6 hours of queuing!
On the way out we stopped by the music stage where there was a "MC Kevinho" playing and good party/festival atmosphere.
I count this as a successful day as we got on the 3 coasters that I really wanted to, although the lack of re-rides was a little disappointing. I wouldn't exactly recommend this park to visitors - the fact that it gets so crowded with so few rides and so little recent investment shows that there is very little competition in the area (or even in the whole continent!). There were a number of SBNO flat rides including a Huss topspin and an Intamin drop tower. I have no idea how the park has struggled financially so much recently as it looks to me like it should be an absolute goldmine, with typical attendance figures close to Thorpe Park's.
Anyway, it was certainly a memorable day out, thanks for reading!
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