It's like a fairytale or something... In Bruges

[Nemesis Inferno]

Day 1 – Bruges

An early Friday morning greeted us as my car was packed and we set off for the Channel Tunnel, before long however we had reached Calais and the drive to Bruges through 20 million sets of road-works began. About 2 hours after our arrival in Calais, we had arrived at our hotel, on the outskirts of the ‘Old Town’ of Bruges.

A quick note about the hotel, it is pretty fab… Not in the way of being amazing, it’s just extremely nice, with great people running it who are very helpful and have great knowledge of the local area. Plus the lift had no doors and sounded like Tower of Terror <3

We began our adventure in Bruges with food, Croque Monsieurs to be precise, and after that we hit up our first stop, the Chocolate Musuem. For €7 (or 6 if you have a hotel thingy we got given) you get a very small museum that teaches you the history of chocolate through the ages via the usual array of text walls and Playmobil models. It also has a live demonstration where you get to try an extremely fresh piece of gorgeous chocolate. It’s small and can probably be done in 30 minutes, but certainly worth the €6 we paid each.

Classic England!

Next up we headed to the main square and had our interest piqued by the Historium. This is a weird one, as it gives off a vibe of being like the Dungeons, and indeed, the whole theming is of a Dungeons standard. However it’s an audio guide following the tale of some young lad trying to help his famous painting master paint something. He falls in love; there are parakeets, yada, yada, yada. It’s a decent attraction though for the tourist crowd, and does vary the way in which you watch the videos. There’s also nudity for those interested.

It pops you out on the second floor of the building, allowing for some great views of the market.

After a quick drink in the bar (and it’s chandelier of beer), we walked around for a bit. Bruges is a very beautiful place to be quite honest. The building work especially, could easily spend a day walking around taking photos.

Eventually we decided to go on a Canal Tour, and although we feared for our safety when a fat American boarded, it was very good. Get a 35 minute tour for the trouble of €12 odd so you definitely get your money’s worth.

Go home statue, you are drunk!

After a bit more faffing we decided it was time to grab a bite to eat and we enjoyed some Mussels and Salmon (Friday is fish day in Bruges) which were extremely nice. This was followed up by some Waffles, because Belgium. After that we wondered back to the hotel and chilled out.

The BEERWALL!

As I said, Bruges is a wonderful place, full of history and is beautiful. I would happily go back there and spend more time wondering around, but we managed to do most of the big touristy stuff in an afternoon. Heartily recommend it to everyone who’s in the area to visit for a day.

 

[peep]

That last picture is... interesting. lol.

Why did you not climb the tower and pretend to be shot by a very angry Ralph Feinnes???????? I need to go to Bruges because 1- it looks beautiful and 2 - I need to walk around quoting the film.

Looks like you had nice weather too. The chocolate fountain amused me.

 

[KristofWB]

Great to hear you had a great time in Bruges. Last time I was in Bruges was about 20 years ago.

It seems to me you specially liked the food in Belgium :--D I always think it is funny to hear how tourists enjoy our Belgian food and say how lovely it is. Chocolat, waffles and croque monsieur (when you are back in Belgium again, try the great variaties on croque monsier, I really love 'croque vidée' or 'croque bolognaise) became so common for us.

Thanks for your Belgian TR! And if you ever come back to Belgium, I recommend you to visit Ghent or Antwerp, also very lovely places in Belgium.

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

The report isn't over yet And maybe next time John, it was a rather whirlwind tour of the place and we didn't find time to do it (And I didn't take my copy of the DVD to pose with at various points)...


Day 2 – Bellewaerde Park

Time for coasters! And with a brand new one it was time to head along to Belle, via several country roads and an awful diversion, we eventually arrived at the destination (N.B. There is an easier route to take to get to the park we discovered on our way back, blergh)…

Formerly a safari park, this place certainly shares similarities with both Chessington and Flamingoland, but let’s not set our hopes too low, and go and ride the first coaster of the day (in order to avoid long queues later), Ladybird a Large Zierer Tivoli…

Bugger. Well, these coasters are actually quite fun at times; although how it fitted into the Western theme area I have no idea. Though this thing was basically bread and butter to the usual types of this ride, so it’s unremarkable.

Next up, Boomerang. It’s like the park WANTS us to hate it, but either way, this is a well themed one so at least it looked nice to ride. After Nicky’s apprehension of her first Boomerang, we were on and were surprised to find it smooth, barring the odd jerk during the backwards section of course, it wasn’t perfect. But comparatively, it was like riding a B&M. Amazing scenes!

The final coaster was the brand new Huracan, an indoor Zierer coaster with random outside bit and epic dark ride section. Most reports heard before were of high praise regarding the level of theme this ride has, and this is most certainly true of the queue, station and pre-lift section. It’s pretty damn awesome, if the queue is quite bland and rather boring. Onto the ride itself and with no explanation you’re set off through various rooms with random theming in each, with music booming out of the speaker, pretty cool so far. After the wind room we’re off into the daylight (and random pointless red strobe) up the lift into the pre-darkness section. I do like the way the music fades out at this point and returns upon entry into the building, and speaking of such, the ride section is decent, but completely lacking in anything. I do like the daylight peeking it allowing you glimpses of the track, but there’s just nothing else. Even cheap cut-outs a la Revenge of the Mummy would improve things. Although with a minimum height of 1m, they put their hat on that market and went with it. The brake run laser show is quite cool, but I can only imagine what if they had decided to put in a freefall section on this to finish it instead? Then the turn back into the station to finish instead of stopping and waiting for the train in front to depart?

Good family coaster mind, with some decent dark ride element to it, but it had a lot more potential that could have been realised.

7/10

Coasters done, it was time for other things, so we polished up the Aztec area with El Volador, a Topple Tower which ran a lot faster than Djurs’, and El Toro a Huss Breakdance of JOY. After which we broke for lunch.

As the weather was awesome (where has Summer gone now?) we elected for the Log Flume, which had a massive ONE drop, and two lift hills… Lol wut? It was rather refreshing though to be fair, but that to me made no sense whatsoever.

It was then time to meander around the zoo part, or at least part of it, as it was still reasonably spread out. But regardless we saw Giraffes, Elephants, Zebras and Lemurs for the exotic stuff, whilst goats were the more typical animal nearby.

A wild Madhouse, Houdini appeared, which was promptly ruined by loud teenagers. But had an amusing clip which was as good as SMUGHEX. Further into the park we delved and found the potentially unique Bengal Express, which makes the idea of Zufari look turd, why? Because you’re in a train going right through the Lion and Tiger enclosure that’s why! Ok it’s well protected and everything, but still… Was awesome.

Next up were the Bengal Rapids, my very first Wedge rapids style ride, where rather than one complete boat they’ve cut it up and had essentially 3/4 (depending on where you go) sections that can and do act separately from each other. This also means that you can be attacked from any direction which balances out the general lack of being able to have too many large drops (which was disproven by Bagatelle). Was quite good fun though really in the end.

We dried off with an ice cream before doing the Squirrel Monkey island and then continuing around to the Huss Drop Tower Screaming Eagle, which was a good bit of fun as well. Next up was the Jungle Mission boat ride, after our experiences of such in Denmark, we dreaded to think what would be next, but we found an excessively random ride mixed into some animal enclosures (including Capybara, YAY), worth a go.

At that point we felt like we had done as much of the park that we wanted, so we rode Boomerang and Huracan again, before heading to the shop and home. Overall I would say Bellewaerde is a good park with a lot of potential ahead. The theming it has is very well done but is rather sparse overall. They also (in my opinion) need a real stand-out ride to really reach out to a larger audience of people, with a hint of uniqueness. Probably why I think Huracan would have benefitted from the freefall drop but on the other hand it would have meant missing out on that 1m limit.

I really liked the park, and whilst the zoo portion of it is tiny these days, they have some excellent viewing areas which make it rather similar to Flamingoland, only without the awfulness of being it. I hope they expand continually in the future because there is a great potential in there.

 

[Hutch]

Ohey, it's the RCT ladybug trains! But anyway nice report

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Day 3 – Parc Bagatelle

A very early morning led to the 2 hour drive across half of two separate countries towards the seaside of France towards Bagatelle. This is rather a small park, but recently nabbed a Vekoma Invertigo last year, and was once infamous for having a scary as hell Lion show which is now gone.

We arrived at the park to be greeted by a long queue, as out of the 4 cashier desks they had 1 open. And the queue barely moved due to large groups and numerous vouchers. This annoyed me greatly, and resulted in a 30 minute wait to even enter the park, with 20 of those on 1 cashier. Not the greatest start to the day.

This was then compounded by Bag Express, known for its dive into a water channel, which was empty. With the gimmick gone, this Soquet coaster was utter crap, with a helix of WHY being a small highlight in an otherwise death coaster.

Could things get better? Le Triops stood proudly in its orange paint, waiting for the moment to become my 300th coaster (yay). Having ridden at least 1 of these before and many other Boomerangs, I was of course thinking how crap it was going to be, regardless of Bellewaerde’s decent one the day before. Fortunately, it was similar to Bellewaerde’s in regards to smoothness, with small jolts that didn’t affect the ride too badly. We later did it again backwards first (cos Vekoma) and found that just as good. Worthy of being a landmark coaster? Best I could do at the time

Onwards we went into the park before passing Aqua Bag, which was basically Bumper Boats with water pistols attached. It was amaze <3 They’re expanding it to hold more than 5/6 boats as well, which will mean in the future it will be especially mental. Les Rapids were next, another wedge boat style one with one of the most mental things I’ve ever experienced on a rapids. It has a whirlpool section akin to River Quest at Phantasialand, only faster, spinnier and the drop itself results in 5 seconds of pure confusion, fear and amazingness in one fell swoop. Aside from that the layout was pretty non-descript, but having anything more would really take the overall impact of the whirlpool section away.

Further meandering led us back to the front of the park and the Zamperla Spinning Mouse, which had barely any queue, so it was ridden and was exactly the same as the one at Farup. To finish off the coaster list was Spirals des Dunes a baby Soquet coaster which was weird as hell to be quite honest. Lunch followed before we had a quick go on the Porn Ponies.

The Sea-Lion/Penguin show that replaced the Lions was about to start so we watched it. Was ok, if very basic, but yay Penguins! And gigantic Sea-Lions which struggle to move! A quick go on the Vintage Cars as they were opposite the show revealed nothing special beyond lots of trees and a bridge or two. The 4D show of random Mad Racers came next, with similarities to the Simpsons ride abound due to the giant screen in front of two pods. It made absolutely no sense at all.

Nicky had a go on the Eccentric Bikes before we had another go on Triops. At this point we wondered what to do next, and concluded that we’d get a snack before heading back to Calais for the journey home. So we had a waffle, got the park train back to the entrance, before having a quick go on the Pedal Karts which went past the lions before we left.

That’s it really. Not much else to say for the park, it wasn’t very good overall, with two good rides out of the generic crap of it all. It even has TWO log flumes! I would say the start of the day didn’t help my mood about the park, but even so, it’s not a very good park, and they have a lot of work to do even with the recent rebrand of everything. More quality, less Soquet crap please!

We made it back to CitiEurope in one piece to find it completely shut bar the restaurants. This is silly of you France, as that place attracts so many Brits on their way back from a weekend away. At least open Carrefour up! Then we discovered a train delay which made the Calais terminal HIDEOUS. Although only delayed an hour, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.

With that, this report closes. I would recommend Bellewaerde but Bagatelle is bad, bad, so very bad.

I’ll be back to bore you all after New York!