My bandmates and I exit Helsinki airport where a member of festival staff picks us up. "What do you plan to do whilst in Helsinki?" he asks. "Have a few beers, watch some bands, play the show, hang out, eat" they reply.
"And you?" he turns towards me.
"I WANT TO GO TO LINNANMAKI!" He laughs. I look back at him with the excited puppy dog eyes of a hopeful goon about to ride an Intamin.
"Oh! You were serious! No one has ever said that before" he grins.
Usually fitting an amusement park visit in between load ins, soundchecks and playing a show is very tricky. But it's far less difficult when the stage manager offers to drop you off at the park after load in. What a nice man.
Linnanmäki is owned by the non-profit Children's Day Foundation, the park has donated over €120 million to child welfare work. With this in mind, I happily paid €45 for a ride wristband, and went straight to Taiga. It's for a good cause, after all!
There was not much of a queue in terms of people waiting, and the ride was running 2 trains. But holy cow, the ops were slooooow - almost as slow as the ride itself.
Now, I know Intamin multi-launchers take a while to warm up. The park had already been open for 2 hours but still I lowered my expectations according to the Official Intamin Multilaunch Graph:
What I wasn't expecting was a roll back on the first inversion! Yep. The train didn't even make it through the Zero G Winder!
We slowly reversed back down towards the start of the launch and after a bit of a wait the orange bird was taking off with a bit more kick.
Immediately wasn't a fan of the first half of Taiga. Some intense sustained hangtime followed by a fast low turn = instant greyout material. If you like Lech Coaster you will love this bit. I hate Lech Coaster so was just willing this bit to be over. It then meanders around before the 2nd launch.
Second launch is okay but the top hat has very little airtime. The second inversion offers fun floaty hangtime, a highlight of the ride. The rest of the layout features short, sharp split seconds of ejector, a few Taron-esque turns and hangtime-filled inversions. All lumped together with some strange pacing.
The ride does photograph nicely though:
After my first ride I gave Taiga 5/10 but I was prepared for that score to change. We all remember how VelociCoaster climbed slowly through the ranks and ended up becoming my second favourite coaster.
Sadly with all the roll back faff, I had to then rush back to the venue to soundcheck. Desperate to get on more rides, the band exclaimed they had never seen me soundcheck so fast! It was quite funny bouncing between headlining a festival and being in rollercoaster goon mode.
One hour later I was back at Linnanmaki. This time opting for a ride on the 75 metre tall Moser Drop Tower 'Kingi.' It was great! Amazing views across Helsinki and a forceful yet floaty drop. I got way more of a buzz riding Kingi than Taiga.
Bandmates all chickened out, so here I am, riding it on my own:
It's pretty big:
Lovely stuff!
Tell you what else is great. One particular hill on the old brake-man woody. The rest of the ride falls into the "smooth but forceless" category. Yet there was one unassuming hill in the middle of the coaster that full on ejected me out of my seat! Bear in mind, this ride only has tiny buzz bars so I was practically standing up when that airtime hit! A lovely surprise.
Time for another ride on Taiga, back row this time. It hadn't warmed up quite as drastically as I'd hoped, I gave this ride a 6/10 as the airtime was stronger. Strong, but still just frustratingly short pops.
Ghost train was next and this was fab. It was all themed to witches and had effects built into the seats. It's not often you find a ghost train that isn't just a seemingly random menagerie of ghouls, zombies, spiders, skeletons. In my opinion, it works so much better when it's just one type of spooky character. By the end I felt like I had really got to know those witches!
It also had a cool façade:
There was also a scary walkthrough so I did that too, the inside looked like 3D paint but yet no 3D glasses were to be worn. I loved the toxic neon green 80s horror aesthetic, and the attraction finished with a mirror maze with some good jump scares. Another pleasant surprise!
Thanks to a previous visit, I already had most of the creds at Linnanmäki so I didn't need to endure painfully long queues for the spinner or the Mack E-Motion coaster etc.
Did a few more indoor rides and the rapids then went back for a final ride on Taiga. Sat in the front row, it was gone 8pm - so surely this was going to be good by now?
It was cool but still nowhere near world class. The change between my slow ride earlier and this warmed up ride wasn't as drastic as I'd hoped. I'd give my final ride a 7/10. I enjoyed the ride more in the front row as the airtime was a tad more sustained, but the layout and pacing is still just...a bit strange?
Tell you what Taiga reminds me of. Blue Fire. Not a bad ride by any means, pretty fun but just lacking something special.
In all honesty, I think I really wanted to like Taiga more than I actually did.
Grabbed a quick slush on the way out and walked back to the venue. 1 hour later I was on stage thinking..."what's this annoying thing collecting all the sweat on my arm while I'm playing guitar?" Oh. It was my Linnanmäki ride wristband!
"And you?" he turns towards me.
"I WANT TO GO TO LINNANMAKI!" He laughs. I look back at him with the excited puppy dog eyes of a hopeful goon about to ride an Intamin.
"Oh! You were serious! No one has ever said that before" he grins.
Usually fitting an amusement park visit in between load ins, soundchecks and playing a show is very tricky. But it's far less difficult when the stage manager offers to drop you off at the park after load in. What a nice man.
Linnanmäki is owned by the non-profit Children's Day Foundation, the park has donated over €120 million to child welfare work. With this in mind, I happily paid €45 for a ride wristband, and went straight to Taiga. It's for a good cause, after all!
There was not much of a queue in terms of people waiting, and the ride was running 2 trains. But holy cow, the ops were slooooow - almost as slow as the ride itself.
Now, I know Intamin multi-launchers take a while to warm up. The park had already been open for 2 hours but still I lowered my expectations according to the Official Intamin Multilaunch Graph:
What I wasn't expecting was a roll back on the first inversion! Yep. The train didn't even make it through the Zero G Winder!
We slowly reversed back down towards the start of the launch and after a bit of a wait the orange bird was taking off with a bit more kick.
Immediately wasn't a fan of the first half of Taiga. Some intense sustained hangtime followed by a fast low turn = instant greyout material. If you like Lech Coaster you will love this bit. I hate Lech Coaster so was just willing this bit to be over. It then meanders around before the 2nd launch.
Second launch is okay but the top hat has very little airtime. The second inversion offers fun floaty hangtime, a highlight of the ride. The rest of the layout features short, sharp split seconds of ejector, a few Taron-esque turns and hangtime-filled inversions. All lumped together with some strange pacing.
The ride does photograph nicely though:
After my first ride I gave Taiga 5/10 but I was prepared for that score to change. We all remember how VelociCoaster climbed slowly through the ranks and ended up becoming my second favourite coaster.
Sadly with all the roll back faff, I had to then rush back to the venue to soundcheck. Desperate to get on more rides, the band exclaimed they had never seen me soundcheck so fast! It was quite funny bouncing between headlining a festival and being in rollercoaster goon mode.
One hour later I was back at Linnanmaki. This time opting for a ride on the 75 metre tall Moser Drop Tower 'Kingi.' It was great! Amazing views across Helsinki and a forceful yet floaty drop. I got way more of a buzz riding Kingi than Taiga.
Bandmates all chickened out, so here I am, riding it on my own:
It's pretty big:
Lovely stuff!
Tell you what else is great. One particular hill on the old brake-man woody. The rest of the ride falls into the "smooth but forceless" category. Yet there was one unassuming hill in the middle of the coaster that full on ejected me out of my seat! Bear in mind, this ride only has tiny buzz bars so I was practically standing up when that airtime hit! A lovely surprise.
Time for another ride on Taiga, back row this time. It hadn't warmed up quite as drastically as I'd hoped, I gave this ride a 6/10 as the airtime was stronger. Strong, but still just frustratingly short pops.
Ghost train was next and this was fab. It was all themed to witches and had effects built into the seats. It's not often you find a ghost train that isn't just a seemingly random menagerie of ghouls, zombies, spiders, skeletons. In my opinion, it works so much better when it's just one type of spooky character. By the end I felt like I had really got to know those witches!
It also had a cool façade:
There was also a scary walkthrough so I did that too, the inside looked like 3D paint but yet no 3D glasses were to be worn. I loved the toxic neon green 80s horror aesthetic, and the attraction finished with a mirror maze with some good jump scares. Another pleasant surprise!
Thanks to a previous visit, I already had most of the creds at Linnanmäki so I didn't need to endure painfully long queues for the spinner or the Mack E-Motion coaster etc.
Did a few more indoor rides and the rapids then went back for a final ride on Taiga. Sat in the front row, it was gone 8pm - so surely this was going to be good by now?
It was cool but still nowhere near world class. The change between my slow ride earlier and this warmed up ride wasn't as drastic as I'd hoped. I'd give my final ride a 7/10. I enjoyed the ride more in the front row as the airtime was a tad more sustained, but the layout and pacing is still just...a bit strange?
Tell you what Taiga reminds me of. Blue Fire. Not a bad ride by any means, pretty fun but just lacking something special.
In all honesty, I think I really wanted to like Taiga more than I actually did.
Grabbed a quick slush on the way out and walked back to the venue. 1 hour later I was on stage thinking..."what's this annoying thing collecting all the sweat on my arm while I'm playing guitar?" Oh. It was my Linnanmäki ride wristband!
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