Kolmarden Trip Reports
- Thread starter Hixee
- Start date
caffeine_demon
Strata Poster
Thanks for the subtlety....
^ At last, a "thank you" from you! See, it's really easy to say. I don't make money from trips and I always pass on savings and perks to the group. It irks me when people turn up, enjoy the perks and then sashay away. That's why I glared at you after I gave you a queue jump ticket for Helix. You didn't even acknowledge the lovely lady at Liseberg who gave us the free wristbands. If it wasn't for the fact that everybody else genuinely thanked the lady, she would have considered CoasterForce to be ****. Everybody except you smiled at me or said thanks when they got a freebie; you needed to be prompted. I'm fed up with free loaders. I don't expect people to like me, but I do expect basic manners and gratitude. It's costs nothing....as did the Liseberg wristbands, fast passes and Kolmarden ERT and entry.
davidm
Strata Poster
CAUTION : Lots of photos (many of which will be of little interest I'm sure)...
--
So the attraction of a European RMC and a few days away in Sweden overrode the burden of having to travel to Stansted's chav
filled airport in order to get a CheapoAir flight (for some reason flights from Manchester to/from Sweden were either stupidly
expensive and/or involving a stupid transfer somewhere).
Anyway, I flew out the Friday night to Skavsta and stopped at a airport hotel before picking up an overpriced hire car the
following morning (only overpriced as it was a short-hire with one-way fee, but what can you do)
Kolmården is about a 40 min drive thru the very pleasant Swedish countryside from the airport and I turned up first of the goons
but not long later Andy&Chris appeared and then amazingly quite shortly thereafter the rest of the goon-transport turned up -
only amazing since everyone seemed to be on-time ; a CF-first?
We all wandered up to the entrance then, to be met by some friendly employees who ushered us into the still-closed park ; one
of the nice employees offered to take a group photo of us at the gates, but most of the assembled peeps had rushed off into the
park ; somewhere there is a "group photo" with about 5 of us then!
Its a fair trek from the entrance to where we wanted to get ; experienced employees took us up an escalator-the-ride first up
so at least some of that trek would be downhill...
Despite the lure of the BIG WOODEN COASTER, some of us were getting distracted by the CUTE FURRY ANIMALS during the trek through
the park. Frankly I was disappointed by the lack of goonthusisam that this represented ;-)
Eventually we could see it through, peeking through the trees, the reason we were all here at silly-o'clock (for a Saturday
morning) in a foreign country Wildfire...
And it was looking good
very good
very very good
After a quick aborted "shall we just go up the exit? - yes thats fine - oh ok its not fine we have to walk around" we were soon
at the ride and setting into position.
That first ride was awesome - I rode in row 2 ; massive lift hill (topped off by a swarm of wasps), cool little turn around that
picks up a bit of speed then hits a little rise before dropping down a huge first drop - and then it gets silly with a massive
airtime hill (that you just happen to take upside down), another huge airtime hill (that you just happen to take a 90 degrees) -
what an opening 1-2-3 that is. Some low-level rushing around is swiftly following by another sideways hill and then another
inversion (which to be critical was the worst bit of the ride), then some more speedy stuff and into a zero-g roll that was just
sublime before another little hill that kills a bit of speed (briefly) and some final swooping around the ride footers before
we end up back in the station. FANTASTIC STUFF.
Straight up the back for the next ride and its even better in the back ; some of the "slowness" you feel at the front disappears
in the back as you get pulled over the slow bit of the hills - just brilliant.
We ride it 5 times, just swapping seats ; in the middle of the train the zero-g roll was the best ; just float through it - but
overall the back couple of rows had it for me. Just as we are preparing for our 6th ride the GP are let on so they kick us off
the back rows and make us walk around the Q - only to get back on the same back rows as clearly the few normal punters who
had turned up didn't know better.
I manage to sneak one extra ride as I spot Andy waiting for the front and hop in with him. Front's rubbish though, back is where
its at.
I think we all loved it. I loved it anyway and thats all that really counts. Quite possibly the best coaster I've ever ridden
(certainly the best Vekoma by far anyway). Not a bad start to the weekend then.
We loiter a bit taking goon photos, most of the coaster is hidden away in the trees (or back in on itself) so there aren't that
many easy photo-access points (as you can probably tell from everyone's similar shots!)
Next to Wildfire was an older amusement section ; there was a +1 Vekoma Junior Coaster Delfinexpressen here that we all
dutifully trekked through ; unremarkable.
But it does have a great looking neighbour!
Some brief faff followed, before a fairly unanimous "got to do the safari" decision was made.
This was pretty great too ; really nice long sky ride trek through various animal enclosures ; like a car-safari-park without the
burden of being in your car. Very good.
Bonus of the safari is some photo-angles on the lovely Wildfire too;
But we can't control the timing of the trains unfortunately
Got one!
Stupid tree in the way
Back to the animals then...
Officially, giraffes are the best animals of course
There was one more kiddie cred to get, but it was way back the other side of the park - so we slowly meandered that way, via
more furry animals
Shots of these somewhat spoiled by the Merlin-style tin shed behind them though
Camels are also the best animals
As are (red) pandas
Last +1 Godiståget was even less worthy than the previous one, meh.
Lunch followed, which as these things do with CF, took up a lot of time, some peeps went off after that to see the Dolphin show
but most lingered and decided to do the skyride-safari again to give lunch a chance of digesting before we tackled Wildfire again.
A much better timed trip past the zero-g stall this time though;
But nothing on the sideways hill ; pah.
We headed back to Wildfire then, met up with the dolphin botherers and had ourselves another few goes on the lovely wooden beast.
Most peeps were done by then (mid afternoon) though - and headed off to Stockholm, leaving just me and Andy & Chris left to
ride Wildfire a bit more - after another couple of rides (virtually walk-on by the last ride due to a lack of people and 2 train
operations) I'd outlasted even them and they went off in search of Swedish beers I think, whilst I carried on.
But DISASTER then!
After saying 'bye to Andy & Chris I headed back into (the previously walk-on) Q only to find that ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAD JUST
WATCHED THE NEARBY DOLPHIN SHOW HAD DECIDED NOW TO RIDE THE COASTER. Pah - and then worse that that, it seemed that since there
was zero Q 10 minutes earlier they had decided to remove one of the trains - so as the Q built up, no trains were even running.
So I only got one more ride in - and had to Q for best part of 30 minutes for that - honestly the cheek of it!
Lovely day then - thanks CF-peeps for being lovely ; thanks CF-chief goon for CF-organising the day ; thanks Kolmården-peeps
(firstly just for commissioning such a top ride, and secondly for letting us play on their new toy just to ourselves for a while )
; thanks RMC (and Vekoma) peeps for the ride - its a very good one.
I was not heading in the same direction as the rest of the CF-peeps (for somewhat unexplainable reasons) so as they headed to
Stockholm I was headed West towards Liseberg for the next day, pausing only 2 hours away to crash out for the night in a
soulless tin-box hotel just off the motorway in Jönköping (I felt somehow that Ian would approve).
----
Right then, despite the next few days not being spent with CF-ers, I was doing a number of things that CF-ers had done a few
days before, so (like it or not) you are going to get some details of that here too...
------------------------------------
Sunday's plan was to do Liseberg, but before that diversion North to cred-run Skara Sommarland.
Got there a bit before they were open so loitered around the unremarkable car park ; 50SEK to park and 349SEK to get in does
not make a cheap cred-run.
Their very strange freefly thing was the only thing of real interest here, so headed to Tranan first up.
Looks odd, is reasonably big, but doesn't do much ; restraints are only a seat belt so theres little "thrill" to this thing -
very family ride despite the possibly intimidating mechanics of the thing.
Ride both sides (obviously), somewhat different experience I guess on each side, but still hardly earth-shattering.
Next door is a spinning mouse, which surprised me!
The surprise on Spinner was just that it was not the normal trains ; was Maurer spinning coaster trains, but on a mouse ;
never seen that before (and I've ridden many (far too many) spinning wild mice).
Wandered around the park lake, just because it was there ; reasonably pleasant looking place, if a little devoid of attractions.
There was an amusing waterski ride ; so entertained myself for a few minutes watching some local get dragged into the water.
Once around the lake I hit the last coaster ; powered and partly a shed-cred Gruvbanan this was as thrilling as you might
imagine.
Done then.
Had spent about 40 minutes in the place and no great desire to spend any more time there I headed off to Gothenburg.
----
Dumped the hire car at the hotel (but couldn't check in yet) and wandered up the street 5 minutes to Liseberg...
Yay ; was looking forward to seeing what this place was like ; CF raves about it and Helix in particular, so armed with a bunch
of spare fast-passes (from the lovely Ian) and the ones I got with my entrance ticket I expected to get quite a few rides in
Wasn't too clear on the park layout before I wandered in, luckily wandering past an entrance to Helix straight away
Had heard good things about the Q so figured I'd walk thru that once at least before breaking out the fast-passes. Hmmm wasn't
quite as wonderful as I'd expected, some interesting walkways I guess but still a fair amount of cattle-pens in a concrete
bunker.
Q'd for the front first time and it was good. Really liked the drop out of the station rolling into the first launch. Launches
weren't that powerful though and while it was clearly a very good ride I didn't come off it loving it like I had Wildfire the
day before.
Re-rode straight away using a pass ; this time towards the back and the airtime was better back there for sure but I was still
not convinced. Figured I come back in the evening armed with the passes for some of the fabled "night rides" to see if that helped
it out any...
Wandered down the hill and found the entrance to the old Schwarzkopf Lisebergbanan - a terrain coaster that clearly
inspired some of the stuff that its newer neighbour was trying to emulate.
Liked this a lot then, was a lot bigger and faster than I had expected and I could see why it had been a park favourite for
many years.
My timed fast pass for Kanonen was up then so headed into that next - I'd not heard good things about this one though
so was prepared for some pain, but rode it at the front and had no problems with it ; pretty good I thought.
Good that at least this was an accelerator that did something else with the launch speed rather than just up&down like the
big ones or Stealth (or Xclerator even) and what it did with that speed was more interesting than Rita/Desert Race.
Kiddy creds and Balder to get, I hadn't spotted where the kiddy creds were yet though (Balder is hard to miss)
so I keep wandering ; hit up the Ghost Hotel walkthrough thingy which was good, but didn't like the hands-on-the-person-in-front
business that they insisted on ; felt like I spent too much time trying to not fall over / fall into / keep hold of some random
Swedish bloke that I did looking at the attraction.
Q for the hotel had a good angle on the rapids though (didn't ride them)
Found the kiddy creds then - not like they were hiding or anything just hadn't walked that way. First was Stampbanan,
awesome stuff
And nearby Rabalder which at least teased us with the prospect of getting a bucket of water poured over you as you came
back into the station (I didn't but the previous train did)
My Balder fast-pass time had come up by then so headed over to that for the last cred-of-the-day. Was pretty much looking
forward to this one too, ridden the other pre-fabs and they are all very good so had high hopes for this too.
And this I did love straight away ; TONS of airtime, lots of speed, lovely looking structure that you weave in and out of.
Great stuff.
Have a timed ticket for Helix too so head back to that to see if it can convince me, but theres a sight to sadden any coaster goon
to be had at the bottom of the escalator ("Stängd" being foreign-speak for "closed" );
Wander up to the station and it is indeed shut, so have a go on the drop-tower ; I'd assumed that this was a gyro-drop ; in that
it looks like a gyro-drop ; but whilst it definitely and spectacularly dropped, it certainly didn't gyro at all. Hmmm.
Had started to rain a bit by then (was forecast) and after hiding out for a while decided to head back to the hotel in a bit of
pause in the rain to check-in / get a coat / grab some rest before the evening's goonery.
Headed back into the park a bit later ; rain had cleared by then and the park was filling up with OAPs coming it seems to see
some OAP-friendly crooner performing in the outdoor concert venue place
Lets ROCK!
Couldn't see Helix running, signs still said "Stängd" ; not good
Station was even more closed-up than earlier
Asked a nearby staff-member what was going on ; "technical problems" he said and it was not going to reopen today. What a
useless bloody thing it is then, come all this way, armed with fast-passes and then its not running ; pah. At least I'd got
my +1 on it earlier I guess. And it thus has not had the opportunity to make me love it at all ; so it remains "good, but not
fantastic" IMHO.
I like big wheels, so had a spin;
This might have been a good shot from here if it was running at all
Light was string to fade and the park was lighting up ; looking very nice indeed by then it was - took some time out for some
food and a beer, all very nice.
Decided Kanonen needed a re-ride and it was walk-on (empty station in fact) ; still enjoyed it.
Right then, time to get serious about this. Park is open another hour and a bit ; I've only ridden Balder 3 times today so far,
so lets just do that then.
And it just kept getting better and better. I was riding it and walking around the Q to get on the next train continuously for
the rest of the night. Seriously loving every single ride on it.
(gave away the unused fast passes (stupid Helix) to some Swedish kids I was chatting to on Balder ; they seemed happy with
that - bit embarrassing when the 10 year olds can speak your language and all you know is "tack" and how to count to 10 in their
language)
So really liked Liseberg as a place ; loved Balder, liked Helix, Lisebergbanan & Kanonen - and a not bad +9 for the day.
------------------------------------
Next day (Monday) was planning just to wander around the city to have a look at it. I suspect you are even LESS interested in
that than any of the goonery of the previous day, but I'm still going to inflict some pics on you...
Had to take the hire car back first, was dumping it at the station so that put me in a good "random wandering" place to start off
Found some random street-art stuff (apparently there was a culture festival going on that had just ended the day before, the
concert at Liseberg was seemingly related to this)
Themed food trucks were still parked up from the festival thingy
The Cathedral was not too impressive;
But the multi-storey-car-park-on-a-boat was;
Because it was a Monday, all the museums were shut, so that was annoying. This is the city-museum (shut);
And the view down from the art-museum (shut)
The one place that wasn't shut was the science-y place "Universeum" near Liseberg, so I wandered around that for a while
Cred? (ok a funicular/elevator thingy)
The place was odd ; a very mixed bad of things. Some real animal exhibits;
some fake animal bits;
and some science-y bits.
A Swedish Tim Peake?
Killed a couple of hours I guess, but I wasn't really convinced of its identity as a museum at all. Hmmm.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT : if you have recently been to Sweden and have returned home with any left over 100 SEK notes, then
do not hold onto them for your next Swedish trip - the notes are being reissued in October and any pre-October notes will
soon cease to be legal tender ; just change them back to real money now. END ANNOUNCEMENT
I decided that the best way to deal with the 100SEK note problem was to convert them one by into transient liquid assets, the
exchange rate of one 100SEK note to a liquid asset was almost 1 to 1 (92 SEK this one cost me to start off with) which made the
maths easy, albeit a pretty expensive pub crawl.
Balder even made it to the pub-zone?
Taking random pictures by now though;
Oldest pub in the city apparently - see I'm doing "culture" not just "drunken-ness";
Following morning, nursing a bit of a sore head I get the bus to the airport, waving goodbye to the lovely Balder as I go...
Great weekend then, ta CF-ers, ta Sweden. =D>
--
So the attraction of a European RMC and a few days away in Sweden overrode the burden of having to travel to Stansted's chav
filled airport in order to get a CheapoAir flight (for some reason flights from Manchester to/from Sweden were either stupidly
expensive and/or involving a stupid transfer somewhere).
Anyway, I flew out the Friday night to Skavsta and stopped at a airport hotel before picking up an overpriced hire car the
following morning (only overpriced as it was a short-hire with one-way fee, but what can you do)
Kolmården is about a 40 min drive thru the very pleasant Swedish countryside from the airport and I turned up first of the goons
but not long later Andy&Chris appeared and then amazingly quite shortly thereafter the rest of the goon-transport turned up -
only amazing since everyone seemed to be on-time ; a CF-first?
We all wandered up to the entrance then, to be met by some friendly employees who ushered us into the still-closed park ; one
of the nice employees offered to take a group photo of us at the gates, but most of the assembled peeps had rushed off into the
park ; somewhere there is a "group photo" with about 5 of us then!
Its a fair trek from the entrance to where we wanted to get ; experienced employees took us up an escalator-the-ride first up
so at least some of that trek would be downhill...
Despite the lure of the BIG WOODEN COASTER, some of us were getting distracted by the CUTE FURRY ANIMALS during the trek through
the park. Frankly I was disappointed by the lack of goonthusisam that this represented ;-)
Eventually we could see it through, peeking through the trees, the reason we were all here at silly-o'clock (for a Saturday
morning) in a foreign country Wildfire...
And it was looking good
very good
very very good
After a quick aborted "shall we just go up the exit? - yes thats fine - oh ok its not fine we have to walk around" we were soon
at the ride and setting into position.
That first ride was awesome - I rode in row 2 ; massive lift hill (topped off by a swarm of wasps), cool little turn around that
picks up a bit of speed then hits a little rise before dropping down a huge first drop - and then it gets silly with a massive
airtime hill (that you just happen to take upside down), another huge airtime hill (that you just happen to take a 90 degrees) -
what an opening 1-2-3 that is. Some low-level rushing around is swiftly following by another sideways hill and then another
inversion (which to be critical was the worst bit of the ride), then some more speedy stuff and into a zero-g roll that was just
sublime before another little hill that kills a bit of speed (briefly) and some final swooping around the ride footers before
we end up back in the station. FANTASTIC STUFF.
Straight up the back for the next ride and its even better in the back ; some of the "slowness" you feel at the front disappears
in the back as you get pulled over the slow bit of the hills - just brilliant.
We ride it 5 times, just swapping seats ; in the middle of the train the zero-g roll was the best ; just float through it - but
overall the back couple of rows had it for me. Just as we are preparing for our 6th ride the GP are let on so they kick us off
the back rows and make us walk around the Q - only to get back on the same back rows as clearly the few normal punters who
had turned up didn't know better.
I manage to sneak one extra ride as I spot Andy waiting for the front and hop in with him. Front's rubbish though, back is where
its at.
I think we all loved it. I loved it anyway and thats all that really counts. Quite possibly the best coaster I've ever ridden
(certainly the best Vekoma by far anyway). Not a bad start to the weekend then.
We loiter a bit taking goon photos, most of the coaster is hidden away in the trees (or back in on itself) so there aren't that
many easy photo-access points (as you can probably tell from everyone's similar shots!)
Next to Wildfire was an older amusement section ; there was a +1 Vekoma Junior Coaster Delfinexpressen here that we all
dutifully trekked through ; unremarkable.
But it does have a great looking neighbour!
Some brief faff followed, before a fairly unanimous "got to do the safari" decision was made.
This was pretty great too ; really nice long sky ride trek through various animal enclosures ; like a car-safari-park without the
burden of being in your car. Very good.
Bonus of the safari is some photo-angles on the lovely Wildfire too;
But we can't control the timing of the trains unfortunately
Got one!
Stupid tree in the way
Back to the animals then...
Officially, giraffes are the best animals of course
There was one more kiddie cred to get, but it was way back the other side of the park - so we slowly meandered that way, via
more furry animals
Shots of these somewhat spoiled by the Merlin-style tin shed behind them though
Camels are also the best animals
As are (red) pandas
Last +1 Godiståget was even less worthy than the previous one, meh.
Lunch followed, which as these things do with CF, took up a lot of time, some peeps went off after that to see the Dolphin show
but most lingered and decided to do the skyride-safari again to give lunch a chance of digesting before we tackled Wildfire again.
A much better timed trip past the zero-g stall this time though;
But nothing on the sideways hill ; pah.
We headed back to Wildfire then, met up with the dolphin botherers and had ourselves another few goes on the lovely wooden beast.
Most peeps were done by then (mid afternoon) though - and headed off to Stockholm, leaving just me and Andy & Chris left to
ride Wildfire a bit more - after another couple of rides (virtually walk-on by the last ride due to a lack of people and 2 train
operations) I'd outlasted even them and they went off in search of Swedish beers I think, whilst I carried on.
But DISASTER then!
After saying 'bye to Andy & Chris I headed back into (the previously walk-on) Q only to find that ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAD JUST
WATCHED THE NEARBY DOLPHIN SHOW HAD DECIDED NOW TO RIDE THE COASTER. Pah - and then worse that that, it seemed that since there
was zero Q 10 minutes earlier they had decided to remove one of the trains - so as the Q built up, no trains were even running.
So I only got one more ride in - and had to Q for best part of 30 minutes for that - honestly the cheek of it!
Lovely day then - thanks CF-peeps for being lovely ; thanks CF-chief goon for CF-organising the day ; thanks Kolmården-peeps
(firstly just for commissioning such a top ride, and secondly for letting us play on their new toy just to ourselves for a while )
; thanks RMC (and Vekoma) peeps for the ride - its a very good one.
I was not heading in the same direction as the rest of the CF-peeps (for somewhat unexplainable reasons) so as they headed to
Stockholm I was headed West towards Liseberg for the next day, pausing only 2 hours away to crash out for the night in a
soulless tin-box hotel just off the motorway in Jönköping (I felt somehow that Ian would approve).
----
Right then, despite the next few days not being spent with CF-ers, I was doing a number of things that CF-ers had done a few
days before, so (like it or not) you are going to get some details of that here too...
------------------------------------
Sunday's plan was to do Liseberg, but before that diversion North to cred-run Skara Sommarland.
Got there a bit before they were open so loitered around the unremarkable car park ; 50SEK to park and 349SEK to get in does
not make a cheap cred-run.
Their very strange freefly thing was the only thing of real interest here, so headed to Tranan first up.
Looks odd, is reasonably big, but doesn't do much ; restraints are only a seat belt so theres little "thrill" to this thing -
very family ride despite the possibly intimidating mechanics of the thing.
Ride both sides (obviously), somewhat different experience I guess on each side, but still hardly earth-shattering.
Next door is a spinning mouse, which surprised me!
The surprise on Spinner was just that it was not the normal trains ; was Maurer spinning coaster trains, but on a mouse ;
never seen that before (and I've ridden many (far too many) spinning wild mice).
Wandered around the park lake, just because it was there ; reasonably pleasant looking place, if a little devoid of attractions.
There was an amusing waterski ride ; so entertained myself for a few minutes watching some local get dragged into the water.
Once around the lake I hit the last coaster ; powered and partly a shed-cred Gruvbanan this was as thrilling as you might
imagine.
Done then.
Had spent about 40 minutes in the place and no great desire to spend any more time there I headed off to Gothenburg.
----
Dumped the hire car at the hotel (but couldn't check in yet) and wandered up the street 5 minutes to Liseberg...
Yay ; was looking forward to seeing what this place was like ; CF raves about it and Helix in particular, so armed with a bunch
of spare fast-passes (from the lovely Ian) and the ones I got with my entrance ticket I expected to get quite a few rides in
Wasn't too clear on the park layout before I wandered in, luckily wandering past an entrance to Helix straight away
Had heard good things about the Q so figured I'd walk thru that once at least before breaking out the fast-passes. Hmmm wasn't
quite as wonderful as I'd expected, some interesting walkways I guess but still a fair amount of cattle-pens in a concrete
bunker.
Q'd for the front first time and it was good. Really liked the drop out of the station rolling into the first launch. Launches
weren't that powerful though and while it was clearly a very good ride I didn't come off it loving it like I had Wildfire the
day before.
Re-rode straight away using a pass ; this time towards the back and the airtime was better back there for sure but I was still
not convinced. Figured I come back in the evening armed with the passes for some of the fabled "night rides" to see if that helped
it out any...
Wandered down the hill and found the entrance to the old Schwarzkopf Lisebergbanan - a terrain coaster that clearly
inspired some of the stuff that its newer neighbour was trying to emulate.
Liked this a lot then, was a lot bigger and faster than I had expected and I could see why it had been a park favourite for
many years.
My timed fast pass for Kanonen was up then so headed into that next - I'd not heard good things about this one though
so was prepared for some pain, but rode it at the front and had no problems with it ; pretty good I thought.
Good that at least this was an accelerator that did something else with the launch speed rather than just up&down like the
big ones or Stealth (or Xclerator even) and what it did with that speed was more interesting than Rita/Desert Race.
Kiddy creds and Balder to get, I hadn't spotted where the kiddy creds were yet though (Balder is hard to miss)
so I keep wandering ; hit up the Ghost Hotel walkthrough thingy which was good, but didn't like the hands-on-the-person-in-front
business that they insisted on ; felt like I spent too much time trying to not fall over / fall into / keep hold of some random
Swedish bloke that I did looking at the attraction.
Q for the hotel had a good angle on the rapids though (didn't ride them)
Found the kiddy creds then - not like they were hiding or anything just hadn't walked that way. First was Stampbanan,
awesome stuff
And nearby Rabalder which at least teased us with the prospect of getting a bucket of water poured over you as you came
back into the station (I didn't but the previous train did)
My Balder fast-pass time had come up by then so headed over to that for the last cred-of-the-day. Was pretty much looking
forward to this one too, ridden the other pre-fabs and they are all very good so had high hopes for this too.
And this I did love straight away ; TONS of airtime, lots of speed, lovely looking structure that you weave in and out of.
Great stuff.
Have a timed ticket for Helix too so head back to that to see if it can convince me, but theres a sight to sadden any coaster goon
to be had at the bottom of the escalator ("Stängd" being foreign-speak for "closed"
);Wander up to the station and it is indeed shut, so have a go on the drop-tower ; I'd assumed that this was a gyro-drop ; in that
it looks like a gyro-drop ; but whilst it definitely and spectacularly dropped, it certainly didn't gyro at all. Hmmm.
Had started to rain a bit by then (was forecast) and after hiding out for a while decided to head back to the hotel in a bit of
pause in the rain to check-in / get a coat / grab some rest before the evening's goonery.
Headed back into the park a bit later ; rain had cleared by then and the park was filling up with OAPs coming it seems to see
some OAP-friendly crooner performing in the outdoor concert venue place
Lets ROCK!
Couldn't see Helix running, signs still said "Stängd" ; not good
Station was even more closed-up than earlier
Asked a nearby staff-member what was going on ; "technical problems" he said and it was not going to reopen today. What a
useless bloody thing it is then, come all this way, armed with fast-passes and then its not running ; pah. At least I'd got
my +1 on it earlier I guess. And it thus has not had the opportunity to make me love it at all ; so it remains "good, but not
fantastic" IMHO.
I like big wheels, so had a spin;
This might have been a good shot from here if it was running at all
Light was string to fade and the park was lighting up ; looking very nice indeed by then it was - took some time out for some
food and a beer, all very nice.
Decided Kanonen needed a re-ride and it was walk-on (empty station in fact) ; still enjoyed it.
Right then, time to get serious about this. Park is open another hour and a bit ; I've only ridden Balder 3 times today so far,
so lets just do that then.
And it just kept getting better and better. I was riding it and walking around the Q to get on the next train continuously for
the rest of the night. Seriously loving every single ride on it.
(gave away the unused fast passes (stupid Helix) to some Swedish kids I was chatting to on Balder ; they seemed happy with
that - bit embarrassing when the 10 year olds can speak your language and all you know is "tack" and how to count to 10 in their
language)
So really liked Liseberg as a place ; loved Balder, liked Helix, Lisebergbanan & Kanonen - and a not bad +9 for the day.
------------------------------------
Next day (Monday) was planning just to wander around the city to have a look at it. I suspect you are even LESS interested in
that than any of the goonery of the previous day, but I'm still going to inflict some pics on you...
Had to take the hire car back first, was dumping it at the station so that put me in a good "random wandering" place to start off
Found some random street-art stuff (apparently there was a culture festival going on that had just ended the day before, the
concert at Liseberg was seemingly related to this)
Themed food trucks were still parked up from the festival thingy
The Cathedral was not too impressive;
But the multi-storey-car-park-on-a-boat was;
Because it was a Monday, all the museums were shut, so that was annoying. This is the city-museum (shut);
And the view down from the art-museum (shut)
The one place that wasn't shut was the science-y place "Universeum" near Liseberg, so I wandered around that for a while
Cred? (ok a funicular/elevator thingy)
The place was odd ; a very mixed bad of things. Some real animal exhibits;
some fake animal bits;
and some science-y bits.
A Swedish Tim Peake?
Killed a couple of hours I guess, but I wasn't really convinced of its identity as a museum at all. Hmmm.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT : if you have recently been to Sweden and have returned home with any left over 100 SEK notes, then
do not hold onto them for your next Swedish trip - the notes are being reissued in October and any pre-October notes will
soon cease to be legal tender ; just change them back to real money now. END ANNOUNCEMENT
I decided that the best way to deal with the 100SEK note problem was to convert them one by into transient liquid assets, the
exchange rate of one 100SEK note to a liquid asset was almost 1 to 1 (92 SEK this one cost me to start off with) which made the
maths easy, albeit a pretty expensive pub crawl.
Balder even made it to the pub-zone?
Taking random pictures by now though;
Oldest pub in the city apparently - see I'm doing "culture" not just "drunken-ness";
Following morning, nursing a bit of a sore head I get the bus to the airport, waving goodbye to the lovely Balder as I go...
Great weekend then, ta CF-ers, ta Sweden. =D>
caffeine_demon
Strata Poster
Crikey, hadn't realised I'd come across so rude.
anyway - http://www.riksbank.se/en/Notes--coins/ ... and-coins/ shows the timings for the note and coin changeover. basically - any 20 or 50 krona notes (or if you're lucky enough, 1000kr) should now be the new notes, but any 100 or 500 kronas will become invalid after next june. The 200kr note is a new one anyway, and 1, 2 and 5 krona coins also become invalid next year. 10 krona coins aren't changing (yet)
anyway - http://www.riksbank.se/en/Notes--coins/ ... and-coins/ shows the timings for the note and coin changeover. basically - any 20 or 50 krona notes (or if you're lucky enough, 1000kr) should now be the new notes, but any 100 or 500 kronas will become invalid after next june. The 200kr note is a new one anyway, and 1, 2 and 5 krona coins also become invalid next year. 10 krona coins aren't changing (yet)
ATTACKHAMMER
Strata Poster
Sorry for the delay, here is my report!
Both Liseberg and Grona were fab!
However I'm just going to focus on the official live day!
I had literally all of the problems trying to buy a ticket online. Due to the genius of Ian from Coasterforce I managed to enter for free!
We were led through the park, for what felt like an eternity! Some of us began to wonder if this park even had an RMC...
But then! A glimpse!
Was it our minds playing tricks on us? Was it all an illusion?
We had to go further!
Alas, we reached our destination! The fabulous ERT began!
Wildfire is incredible!
The turn around, drop and first inversion are the best parts!
The first inversion is just mental! Upside down, hang time and gravity is just not a thing!
Wildfire is very well paced, and only got better as it warmed up!
The Rest of the park
These are a thing and they taste nice.
To see most of the animals you ride this awesome cable car! Here are some animal photos:
The park has two other coasters:
Apparently I only took photos of their signs.
Overall, the whole trip was fab!
Thank you to everyone who came! It was nice to see some new faces!
Special thank you to Ian, who once again excelled at organising the trip and getting us all perks.
Thank you to Howie for driving!
Thanks to CD for booking hotels!
Both Liseberg and Grona were fab!
However I'm just going to focus on the official live day!
I had literally all of the problems trying to buy a ticket online. Due to the genius of Ian from Coasterforce I managed to enter for free!
We were led through the park, for what felt like an eternity! Some of us began to wonder if this park even had an RMC...
But then! A glimpse!
Was it our minds playing tricks on us? Was it all an illusion?
We had to go further!
Alas, we reached our destination! The fabulous ERT began!
Wildfire is incredible!
The turn around, drop and first inversion are the best parts!
The first inversion is just mental! Upside down, hang time and gravity is just not a thing!
Wildfire is very well paced, and only got better as it warmed up!
The Rest of the park
These are a thing and they taste nice.
To see most of the animals you ride this awesome cable car! Here are some animal photos:
The park has two other coasters:
Apparently I only took photos of their signs.
Overall, the whole trip was fab!
Thank you to everyone who came! It was nice to see some new faces!
Special thank you to Ian, who once again excelled at organising the trip and getting us all perks.
Thank you to Howie for driving!
Thanks to CD for booking hotels!
caffeine_demon
Strata Poster
ahh yes - I'd forgotten about the hot snacks!
Image request, which is probably aimed at @ATTACKHAMMER or @Rachel because their FB linked images no longer appear...
Who took this photo?
Please could the photographer get in contact with me? Thanks!
Who took this photo?
Please could the photographer get in contact with me? Thanks!