Wednesday 8th May
Rach and I left my house at a 3:30 AM to catch a bus to lovely Croydon to get a train to London Gatwick airport. It was way too early to be up and functioning but we managed it somehow. We got to Gatwick with plenty of time to spare. We had a lovely breakfast at the 'Spoons, Rach got a new bag for her camera before we headed to our gate. The flight with easyJet was like any other flight with them, simple, short and not comfy enough for a snooze. There was a burden who was causing bag faff though which delayed us a bit but due to some pilot magic we landed bang on time.
We arrived in Madrid around 11 AM and we headed straight for the Metro station. It was a long walk to the Metro station, we hadn't anticipated this. Still, we managed to finally get there and purchase a visitor pass for 2 days which came to €13.40. Which we thought was good value, maybe it wasn't but it was a lot easier than faffing with buying tickets every time.
We got on the train down to 'Nuevos Ministerios' to change over to the dark blue line (10) and catch another train to 'Batan' station. Right outside the station is Parque de Atracciones. We couldn't believe how easy it was to get here and it was so quick. I think it took us about an hour to get from off the plane to the park gates.
The weather was a little cloudy throughout the day but it was fairly warm (around 20*C). We purchased our tickets and entered the park. Our first impressions were that the park was really nice and 'WTF is that ride?'
It's a monorail attraction themed to Zeppelins, this was something we had to ride at some point. Still there was a massive star flyer right in front of us and it didn't have a queue so after waiting for the current cycle to finish we went on. We then had to wait for more people to turn up.
The ride actually had some nice theming elements dotted about (including some cool UFOs attached to the top of the tower). I spent most of the ride making myself feel ill by trying to focus on the beautiful views. You can see the rest of the giant park that the amusement park sits in and the whole of Madrid and the mountains off in the distance. Madrid looked like a beautiful place, we couldn't wait to see it close up later on in the day.
We hadn't really seen or heard any of the coasters going which really worried us. The fact the park felt dead wasn't helping. We went over to Abismo in hope of it opening. Turns out it just has stupid capacity rules. Abismo won't run until there's enough people to fill the whole train, how burdenous. Still, we managed to go over just as one of the several school groups joined the queue. After one cycle we were on.
Our initial reaction was simply: "That was WEIRD!" I don't think either of us could understand if we like it or loathed it. We definitely loathed the restraints as its still the design where half way round it decides to cut you in half and nearly wins. I don't really like hangtime which this has plenty of near the start so I didn't get off to a good start but the rest is ok despite the staple of death.
We then walked round to Tarantula, the park's spinning coaster. I'd heard good things about this coaster and I do like a good spinner. This one is odd, it's a great coaster yet barely spins. Definitely one of the better ones out there though. The odd Nemesis-like theming in the queue is pretty cool too (photos of that later).
I wanted to check out the random shooty thing that is sort of attached to the coaster. It was odd. Our guns didn't work which we didn't approve of, you didn't see your score until you got back to the station and was just very cheap looking. I suppose it's a good effort for a park that doesn't really seem to invest in theming.
Next it was time to see if Intamin could do a better job than Vekoma at making an invert. Once again there was a wait for more people. Tornado required 24 peeps before loading and despatch! Couldn't believe it, TWENTY FOUR PEEPS! As you can imagine, it barely runs throughout the day though once again we were lucky enough to time it with the arrival of one of the school groups.
Bloody hell this thing was intense....and SMOOTH! We both loved it, a fantastic coaster from the moment you leave the lift hill right till you touch the break run. It tends to barely make it over the vertical loops but I felt like it sort of added to the experience, gave you time to appreciate the awesome. The corkscrew was probably my favourite moment, it's just nuts.
We then randomly decided to ride the chairswing. Not much to say apart from it had a really long cycle so we both felt very dizzy afterwards.
The Intamin drop tower was walk on so we went straight on that. It was great, very tall. Managed to really hurt a body part on the way down, that bit wasn't fun.
We then rode the wild mouse cred which is the same as all the others. I quite like them though and it was fun when one of the brakes wasn't turned on and we just flew through unexpectedly.
As we were taking photos of the awesome fort which serves as an entrance for TNT Mine train cred and the splash boat we noticed a ride we'd never seen before. I was so curious I wandered over to it, I was fascinated, how could a ride like this exist? Just looking at it made me happy and excited. Ladies and Gentleman I present to you my favourite ride ever... TELESAURIO!
Yes, this ride combines the fairly tame concept of the dumbos ride, makes it bigger, adds some extra spinny action and themes it to ROBOT F*CKING PTERODACTYLS!!!!!!!! I don't know who made it but I want to shake their hand, it's just so weird and wonderful and I'm so glad I've experienced it. I filmed a POV to show off it's brilliance...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auRCAkS3eC4[/youtube]
I had to calm myself down after that. It was time to go grab the TNT mine train cred. Here's the fab fort...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnOPtHRUYY[/youtube]
It's a great family coaster, so smooth. The transitions are beautiful and it's surprisingly fast, there's clearly a very good reason the lift hill pretty much comes to a stand still when you reach the top.
Hearing that it's rare adults are allowed on the kids coasters alone we were concerned that we wouldn't get on the last two creds at the park. However the fab lady working on Vagones Locos didn't seem to care, I think she was just happy to see human beings. Obscure cred obtained we tried our luck with the airplane theme cred. Once again, no hassle, we were very happy. Both the creds suck but it was another +2 to the count.
We then went on TNT again because it's awesome.
I think we grabbed some food next. I had a little pizza like thing which was nice and then some lovely melty ice cream. After food we headed over to los Rapidos. I was concerned for my belongings as we had no idea how wet these rapids were and I'm usually soaked on every water ride. It turned out ok and I think the two little girls sitting opposite us got more wet. It was a fun ride though and actually relied on actual rapids to get us wet. Good times.
lolz
I wanted to do the shooty Tarantula thing again because it was ridiculous. This time my gun decided to work but Rach was once again burdened with one that didn't.
We then went on Tarantula again but this time we got a bit more of a spin.
We then went round to Tornado for another two goes. We then rode the chairswings for a second time and watched the work being done on the flat ride which later on crushed a staff member working on it. Fun.
We then checked out Desperados which is one of those sit on a seat and shoot at a screen things. It was fun but a bit pointless being in a theme park.
We were going to go on the Zeppelin ride next but La Jungla caught our attention instead. No idea what it was we meandered through the queueline to discover a Jungle Cruise rip-off. To be fair to them they had put a lot of effort into the attraction and most of the animatronics were still working.
It was then time for the ride we were really looking forward to. The Zeppelin!
It turns out to be a 9 min meander around most of the park. Very random but we enjoyed the tranquilness of it.
We then went to check out the kids area. There was a typical classic car ride but the theming for this one was weird, the Eiffel tower and dinosaurs? If someone knows the connection please let me know!
Anyway we found the porn ponies and decided to give them a go. Unlike all the others we've seen these ones go round in groups. Very unusual.
The theming was pretty decent if a little random. We were running out of rides we wanted to go on so we went on TNT once more, tried out the scary carousel (boars and tigers?) which had violent movements and then rode the best ride ever another two times.
We left the park satisfied and glad we'd been. It was a really nice, clean park with a random selection of rides. I think the only thing that lets it down is the operations and silly rules but apart from that it's a great place.
We hopped back onto the Metro and checked in to our hotel which was very close to Plaza de Espana. Turns out the road we were on was like Madrid's version of the Strand or Times Sq. Loads of cinemas, theatres and restaurants. Happy about the excellent location we went up the room which turned out to be modern and very big. Happy days. We relaxed a little bit before going on a tourist trek around the area and search for food based times.
We walked over towards the massive palace, stopping and looking at several randomly cool places on the way.
The square above had lots of street 'entertainers' and all the usual branded places you'd find in a touristy area.
The Opera house looked very impressive. On the other side was the palace.
At the back is some huge gardens but we didn't go down there. It's a must for when I next go to Madrid. We ended up going for some pizza near our hotel. It was good if a little burnt around the edges.
We then went over to Plaza de Espana which had a really cool and very tall monument.
In my 2 seconds of research a couple of nights before I'd found out that there was an Egyptian temple nearby and being a mega fan of Egyptian architecture I just HAD to check it out. Turns out it's a beautiful place to visit at night.
Tired and exhausted we went back to the hotel room and died.
Thanks for reading, you know you want to leave a comment to show me you love me. I'll be back soon with part two!
Rach and I left my house at a 3:30 AM to catch a bus to lovely Croydon to get a train to London Gatwick airport. It was way too early to be up and functioning but we managed it somehow. We got to Gatwick with plenty of time to spare. We had a lovely breakfast at the 'Spoons, Rach got a new bag for her camera before we headed to our gate. The flight with easyJet was like any other flight with them, simple, short and not comfy enough for a snooze. There was a burden who was causing bag faff though which delayed us a bit but due to some pilot magic we landed bang on time.
We arrived in Madrid around 11 AM and we headed straight for the Metro station. It was a long walk to the Metro station, we hadn't anticipated this. Still, we managed to finally get there and purchase a visitor pass for 2 days which came to €13.40. Which we thought was good value, maybe it wasn't but it was a lot easier than faffing with buying tickets every time.
We got on the train down to 'Nuevos Ministerios' to change over to the dark blue line (10) and catch another train to 'Batan' station. Right outside the station is Parque de Atracciones. We couldn't believe how easy it was to get here and it was so quick. I think it took us about an hour to get from off the plane to the park gates.
The weather was a little cloudy throughout the day but it was fairly warm (around 20*C). We purchased our tickets and entered the park. Our first impressions were that the park was really nice and 'WTF is that ride?'
It's a monorail attraction themed to Zeppelins, this was something we had to ride at some point. Still there was a massive star flyer right in front of us and it didn't have a queue so after waiting for the current cycle to finish we went on. We then had to wait for more people to turn up.
The ride actually had some nice theming elements dotted about (including some cool UFOs attached to the top of the tower). I spent most of the ride making myself feel ill by trying to focus on the beautiful views. You can see the rest of the giant park that the amusement park sits in and the whole of Madrid and the mountains off in the distance. Madrid looked like a beautiful place, we couldn't wait to see it close up later on in the day.
We hadn't really seen or heard any of the coasters going which really worried us. The fact the park felt dead wasn't helping. We went over to Abismo in hope of it opening. Turns out it just has stupid capacity rules. Abismo won't run until there's enough people to fill the whole train, how burdenous. Still, we managed to go over just as one of the several school groups joined the queue. After one cycle we were on.
Our initial reaction was simply: "That was WEIRD!" I don't think either of us could understand if we like it or loathed it. We definitely loathed the restraints as its still the design where half way round it decides to cut you in half and nearly wins. I don't really like hangtime which this has plenty of near the start so I didn't get off to a good start but the rest is ok despite the staple of death.
We then walked round to Tarantula, the park's spinning coaster. I'd heard good things about this coaster and I do like a good spinner. This one is odd, it's a great coaster yet barely spins. Definitely one of the better ones out there though. The odd Nemesis-like theming in the queue is pretty cool too (photos of that later).
I wanted to check out the random shooty thing that is sort of attached to the coaster. It was odd. Our guns didn't work which we didn't approve of, you didn't see your score until you got back to the station and was just very cheap looking. I suppose it's a good effort for a park that doesn't really seem to invest in theming.
Next it was time to see if Intamin could do a better job than Vekoma at making an invert. Once again there was a wait for more people. Tornado required 24 peeps before loading and despatch! Couldn't believe it, TWENTY FOUR PEEPS! As you can imagine, it barely runs throughout the day though once again we were lucky enough to time it with the arrival of one of the school groups.
Bloody hell this thing was intense....and SMOOTH! We both loved it, a fantastic coaster from the moment you leave the lift hill right till you touch the break run. It tends to barely make it over the vertical loops but I felt like it sort of added to the experience, gave you time to appreciate the awesome. The corkscrew was probably my favourite moment, it's just nuts.
We then randomly decided to ride the chairswing. Not much to say apart from it had a really long cycle so we both felt very dizzy afterwards.
The Intamin drop tower was walk on so we went straight on that. It was great, very tall. Managed to really hurt a body part on the way down, that bit wasn't fun.
We then rode the wild mouse cred which is the same as all the others. I quite like them though and it was fun when one of the brakes wasn't turned on and we just flew through unexpectedly.
As we were taking photos of the awesome fort which serves as an entrance for TNT Mine train cred and the splash boat we noticed a ride we'd never seen before. I was so curious I wandered over to it, I was fascinated, how could a ride like this exist? Just looking at it made me happy and excited. Ladies and Gentleman I present to you my favourite ride ever... TELESAURIO!
Yes, this ride combines the fairly tame concept of the dumbos ride, makes it bigger, adds some extra spinny action and themes it to ROBOT F*CKING PTERODACTYLS!!!!!!!! I don't know who made it but I want to shake their hand, it's just so weird and wonderful and I'm so glad I've experienced it. I filmed a POV to show off it's brilliance...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auRCAkS3eC4[/youtube]
I had to calm myself down after that. It was time to go grab the TNT mine train cred. Here's the fab fort...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnOPtHRUYY[/youtube]
It's a great family coaster, so smooth. The transitions are beautiful and it's surprisingly fast, there's clearly a very good reason the lift hill pretty much comes to a stand still when you reach the top.
Hearing that it's rare adults are allowed on the kids coasters alone we were concerned that we wouldn't get on the last two creds at the park. However the fab lady working on Vagones Locos didn't seem to care, I think she was just happy to see human beings. Obscure cred obtained we tried our luck with the airplane theme cred. Once again, no hassle, we were very happy. Both the creds suck but it was another +2 to the count.
We then went on TNT again because it's awesome.
I think we grabbed some food next. I had a little pizza like thing which was nice and then some lovely melty ice cream. After food we headed over to los Rapidos. I was concerned for my belongings as we had no idea how wet these rapids were and I'm usually soaked on every water ride. It turned out ok and I think the two little girls sitting opposite us got more wet. It was a fun ride though and actually relied on actual rapids to get us wet. Good times.
lolz
I wanted to do the shooty Tarantula thing again because it was ridiculous. This time my gun decided to work but Rach was once again burdened with one that didn't.
We then went on Tarantula again but this time we got a bit more of a spin.
We then went round to Tornado for another two goes. We then rode the chairswings for a second time and watched the work being done on the flat ride which later on crushed a staff member working on it. Fun.
We then checked out Desperados which is one of those sit on a seat and shoot at a screen things. It was fun but a bit pointless being in a theme park.
We were going to go on the Zeppelin ride next but La Jungla caught our attention instead. No idea what it was we meandered through the queueline to discover a Jungle Cruise rip-off. To be fair to them they had put a lot of effort into the attraction and most of the animatronics were still working.
It was then time for the ride we were really looking forward to. The Zeppelin!
It turns out to be a 9 min meander around most of the park. Very random but we enjoyed the tranquilness of it.
We then went to check out the kids area. There was a typical classic car ride but the theming for this one was weird, the Eiffel tower and dinosaurs? If someone knows the connection please let me know!
Anyway we found the porn ponies and decided to give them a go. Unlike all the others we've seen these ones go round in groups. Very unusual.
The theming was pretty decent if a little random. We were running out of rides we wanted to go on so we went on TNT once more, tried out the scary carousel (boars and tigers?) which had violent movements and then rode the best ride ever another two times.
We left the park satisfied and glad we'd been. It was a really nice, clean park with a random selection of rides. I think the only thing that lets it down is the operations and silly rules but apart from that it's a great place.
We hopped back onto the Metro and checked in to our hotel which was very close to Plaza de Espana. Turns out the road we were on was like Madrid's version of the Strand or Times Sq. Loads of cinemas, theatres and restaurants. Happy about the excellent location we went up the room which turned out to be modern and very big. Happy days. We relaxed a little bit before going on a tourist trek around the area and search for food based times.
We walked over towards the massive palace, stopping and looking at several randomly cool places on the way.
The square above had lots of street 'entertainers' and all the usual branded places you'd find in a touristy area.
The Opera house looked very impressive. On the other side was the palace.
At the back is some huge gardens but we didn't go down there. It's a must for when I next go to Madrid. We ended up going for some pizza near our hotel. It was good if a little burnt around the edges.
We then went over to Plaza de Espana which had a really cool and very tall monument.
In my 2 seconds of research a couple of nights before I'd found out that there was an Egyptian temple nearby and being a mega fan of Egyptian architecture I just HAD to check it out. Turns out it's a beautiful place to visit at night.
Tired and exhausted we went back to the hotel room and died.
Thanks for reading, you know you want to leave a comment to show me you love me. I'll be back soon with part two!
