witchfinder
Giga Poster
Having missed out on the CF Live to Poland last year, it was high on my list of places to visit this year and so on May 4th (my birthday) we headed out for a 5 day break that would encompass coasters, culture and more besides.
We flew on a new route to Krakow from Doncaster/Sheffield airport, which was a new airport cred for us! I can’t really fault this tiny airport as we arrived, parked up, got through check-in and security and were sitting in the bar in less than 30 minutes. We flew with WizzAir who have a particularly infuriating policy around random seat assignment that tries to force you to pay up to £15 to reserve a seat, but otherwise it was a decent enough flight with no issues.
We arrived in Krakow at about 23:30, stayed in some accommodation very close to the airport, then picked our rental car up the next morning and headed straight to Chorzow in some fairly miserable weather for our first theme park of the trip.
We arrived at Legendia around midday. Sunday marked the end of a public holiday in Poland so we thought the park might be a bit busy, but then on the flip side I’d read that many rides don’t open when it rains so that made me wonder whether anything decent would be open at all. The park is only open at weekends this time of year so this was our only shot at getting in, so it was a relief that the rain had eased off by the time we arrived. Any thoughts of it being busy were immediately dispelled when we entered the car park to find just 4 cars there!
We headed to the park entrance and as we approached a large drip hit me on the head from one of the trees… or at least that’s what I initially thought. Turns out a bird had decided to welcome me to Chorzow with a big **** that splattered my head and jacket! So the next stop was the toilets to clean up before eventually buying our tickets from the solitary open kiosk and entering the park.
With the lack of cars and below-par weather, we were expecting the park to be quiet, but it’s wasn’t quiet. It was dead! I mean totally dead – we didn’t even see any other guests for the first 10 minutes we were in there, most of the restaurants and shops were closed and the staff outnumbered guests at least 2 to 1. It was rather eerie as we made our way anti-clockwise around the lake towards the main attraction.
We’d already been forewarned at the entrance that two of the four creds were closed. One was expected, as the former Tornado is being rethemed under its new name, which roughly translates as ‘Devil’s Loop’. Here’s a few pictures – it’s looking pretty good!
The other cred that was closed was one of the two old Zyklons, Scary Toys Factory. Annoying to miss out on the +1 but no great loss. I didn’t take any photos. There were quite a few other rides that seemed to be undergoing maintenance, probably because it’s still quite early in the season. We also passed the construction site of the park’s new ride for 2020, which I believe is a Rapids ride. Didn’t look like they’d made much progress yet!
So having made our way half way round the park and only seen two people (both staff members) we got to Lech coaster, which we’d seen running once as we approached. Obviously we weren’t expecting much of a queue, and once we’d negotiated the excessively long and confusing queue line (which I suspect is never full) and made our way through the pre-show (which looks nice but was in Polish) we got to the station, which was completely empty aside from two ride ops. So straight on to the front row we went… and then when we got back to the station we just stayed in our seats and went again!
Initial thoughts after 2 front row rides were probably similar to most people - wow, is this really a Vekoma? Such a smooth ride, with an incredible first drop, some serious intensity and a fab floater airtime hill immediately followed by that corkscrew through the station, which was just as good as I hoped it would be. Following that there are more twists and turns, inversions, airtime moments and a great helix near the end. All in all a fantastic ride, but it would need further rides to fully assess just how good.
With the knowledge that we were going to get as many rides as we wanted on whatever we wanted that day, we left Lech for the time being and grabbed lunch in the nearby restaurant, which has the same medieval theming as the coaster, which is really impressive for a park of this stature btw. We were probably the first people to enter the restaurant that day and were greeted by pleasant staff that helped us decipher the menu and explain the dishes on offer, which were traditional hot meals served canteen-style. We both enjoyed our choices although they could’ve been a bit warmer. I also had a pint with my lunch, which was the obvious brand…
After lunch we headed over to the other big new attraction, the dark ride Basilisk. We thought Lech had a ridiculously long queue line until we saw this one, which must take up almost half the building! I can only assume that Legendia gets very busy in the summer or they are planning for when the park gets more popular as it grows and gets more international appeal.
Once again the theming was very nice for this ride, especially in the queue line, and it’s certainly a high quality attraction. We had a couple of rides as it took a bit of time to work out exactly what could and couldn’t be shot, and I think we got the general gist of the story despite the language barrier.
The problem I had with the ride is that while it is generally good quality, it’s a bit short and doesn’t really seem to reach any climax story-wise. There are references to vampires and werewolves in the queue line but no significant monsters really appear in the ride other than some kind of bizarre chicken/dragon hybrid in the final scene. Also the guns feel cheap and have no kind of feedback that lets you know you’re actually hitting anything, which coupled with the fact that it seems to take multiple hits to kill anything makes the whole experience quite unrewarding. That said, the mixture of practical and digital targets was clever and for a park of this scale it’s a pretty impressive bit of kit.
After a short wander around the rest of the park we headed back to the only other cred that was open – Dream Hunters Society, the other bright pink Zyklon. Obviously this had no queue and that’s where the problems started, as the ride op advised that this needed a minimum of 3 riders per car. There were only 2 of us and nobody else to be seen nearby that looked like they wanted to ride a crappy old coaster, so we left it in the hope that we’d see another group of 2 join the queue later.
Instead we tried the oldest ride at the park, Dream Flight Airlines. I believe this dates back to the 1950s when the park opened, and is a spinning aeroplane ride similar to the Flying Machines at Blackpool. The cool addition to this version is working propellers on the front of the little planes! It actually went quite a bit faster and flung the planes out wider than we’d anticipated, which made for quite a hair-raising ride when the only thing holding you in is a flimsy seatbelt and centrifugal force.
With no interest in any of the other flat rides, all of which looked vomit-inducing, we headed to the park’s water ride, Diamond River. It’s a pretty straightforward splash boat ride with two drops, neither of which got us particularly wet, which we were thankful of given the cool weather. This looked to have been themed fairly recently too, with a fresh-looking station building and some cute dwarves throughout.
With no other rides of interest other than the Zyklon (which we returned to later) it was time to head back to Lech and grab as many rides as we saw fit. Amazingly when we arrived back at the station we’d hit the busiest time of the day, as there were a colossal 4 people riding it! We joined them and took the back row.
Holy ****, this thing is intense on the back row. The way the train is yanked over the lift hill sets the tone for the rest of the ride as you’re thrown through the elements seemingly with much more force than the front. Interestingly the only other time I’ve felt that ‘yanking’ sensation over a lift hill is The Big One, which obviously also has a twisted drop, so maybe that feeling is unique to that kind of drop? Anyway, it was certainly very intense and although I didn’t grey out, Anna did and that was enough for her. She sat out while I continued to have a couple more rides – another on the back row and then two more on the front, the second of which was my first completely solo ride.
It’s a weird feeling to be the only rider on a cred of this size and calibre, and an opportunity you don’t get too often. While it was quite cool to think that this ride was running just for me, the lack of atmosphere that you’d usually get from fellow riders was a bit of downer.
After four successive rides I was starting to see stars myself so took a break for 15 minutes and then went back for another few rides, all solo again. After another two back row rides I was actually starting to feel a bit sick so I called it a day at that point. I’d certainly had enough rides to form an opinion and the solo riding was starting to get a bit embarrassing.
Thoughts on Lech Coaster then. It’s certainly a brilliant ride – smooth, incredibly forceful and with a great layout and nice theming. My favourite moment was definitely the airtime hill followed by the corkscrew through the station. There’s a fair amount of floater on the hill no matter where you sit and the station inversion is just a fantastic piece of design. After 5 front and 4 back row rides, I definitely prefer the front, as the back is insanely intense and I found the train does rattle a bit at the back.
When considering how highly to rank it, I compared it to Icon, which was my No.10 coaster at that point. In some ways it’s quite similar – really smooth, lots of twists and turns and decent airtime – but I decided that I didn’t enjoy it as much as Icon overall. That was mainly due to concerns about re-rideability, as I could happily ride Icon all day but several successive rides on Lech made me feel unwell. I also think the lack of atmosphere and fellow riders had an impact on my overall enjoyment of the ride, but it is still comfortably a Top 20 coaster for me and the sooner other parks around the world realise just how good these new Vekomas are, the better.
With Lech done, there wasn’t much else left of interest in the park other than trying to get the other operating cred. Sadly by now the park seemed even quieter (which was some feat) and we hung around near the entrance to the Zyklon for five minutes, seeing nobody, before giving up and calling it a day. We’d been in the park about 3 hours and probably seen no more than 15 paying visitors! I was a bit annoyed about missing out on an operating ride, but since it was a crappy +1 and there were two others that weren’t running, I’ll probably go back and get those sometime anyway.
Thoughts on Legendia – well firstly I hope the day we went was not representative of a normal weekend there, because they can’t be making any money if that’s the case! The lack of atmosphere certainly made our visit a bit sad, but I think on a sunnier, busier day it would’ve been a really nice park. Any park built around a lake has that classic feel, and they have the rides to match in some cases, but they’re obviously also focussed on bringing the park up to modern standards with rides like Lech and Basilisk, the upcoming rapids and the retheming of the older rides. Given that they have the thrill coasters covered for now, if I was running the park I’d be investing in a drop tower and a modern family coaster (maybe with a launch) next, and maybe replace one of those crappy Zyklons with a kiddie cred (which would doubtless be an SBF Visa spinner).
The landscaping in the park is pleasant, the new entrance plaza and street is good and the restaurants seemed decent. Plenty of staff spoke reasonable English, which was unexpected based on reports I’d read, and they were all friendly and as enthusiastic as you can be when the park is so quiet. So it has the potential to be a decent park if the investment continues. I just hope the general public, local and international embrace it as it would be a real shame if the work they’ve done so far goes to waste.
That’s it for Legendia. The next day was a non-park day which I’ll briefly cover before moving on to the big park of the trip – Energylandia!
We flew on a new route to Krakow from Doncaster/Sheffield airport, which was a new airport cred for us! I can’t really fault this tiny airport as we arrived, parked up, got through check-in and security and were sitting in the bar in less than 30 minutes. We flew with WizzAir who have a particularly infuriating policy around random seat assignment that tries to force you to pay up to £15 to reserve a seat, but otherwise it was a decent enough flight with no issues.
We arrived in Krakow at about 23:30, stayed in some accommodation very close to the airport, then picked our rental car up the next morning and headed straight to Chorzow in some fairly miserable weather for our first theme park of the trip.
We arrived at Legendia around midday. Sunday marked the end of a public holiday in Poland so we thought the park might be a bit busy, but then on the flip side I’d read that many rides don’t open when it rains so that made me wonder whether anything decent would be open at all. The park is only open at weekends this time of year so this was our only shot at getting in, so it was a relief that the rain had eased off by the time we arrived. Any thoughts of it being busy were immediately dispelled when we entered the car park to find just 4 cars there!
We headed to the park entrance and as we approached a large drip hit me on the head from one of the trees… or at least that’s what I initially thought. Turns out a bird had decided to welcome me to Chorzow with a big **** that splattered my head and jacket! So the next stop was the toilets to clean up before eventually buying our tickets from the solitary open kiosk and entering the park.
With the lack of cars and below-par weather, we were expecting the park to be quiet, but it’s wasn’t quiet. It was dead! I mean totally dead – we didn’t even see any other guests for the first 10 minutes we were in there, most of the restaurants and shops were closed and the staff outnumbered guests at least 2 to 1. It was rather eerie as we made our way anti-clockwise around the lake towards the main attraction.
We’d already been forewarned at the entrance that two of the four creds were closed. One was expected, as the former Tornado is being rethemed under its new name, which roughly translates as ‘Devil’s Loop’. Here’s a few pictures – it’s looking pretty good!
The other cred that was closed was one of the two old Zyklons, Scary Toys Factory. Annoying to miss out on the +1 but no great loss. I didn’t take any photos. There were quite a few other rides that seemed to be undergoing maintenance, probably because it’s still quite early in the season. We also passed the construction site of the park’s new ride for 2020, which I believe is a Rapids ride. Didn’t look like they’d made much progress yet!
So having made our way half way round the park and only seen two people (both staff members) we got to Lech coaster, which we’d seen running once as we approached. Obviously we weren’t expecting much of a queue, and once we’d negotiated the excessively long and confusing queue line (which I suspect is never full) and made our way through the pre-show (which looks nice but was in Polish) we got to the station, which was completely empty aside from two ride ops. So straight on to the front row we went… and then when we got back to the station we just stayed in our seats and went again!
Initial thoughts after 2 front row rides were probably similar to most people - wow, is this really a Vekoma? Such a smooth ride, with an incredible first drop, some serious intensity and a fab floater airtime hill immediately followed by that corkscrew through the station, which was just as good as I hoped it would be. Following that there are more twists and turns, inversions, airtime moments and a great helix near the end. All in all a fantastic ride, but it would need further rides to fully assess just how good.
With the knowledge that we were going to get as many rides as we wanted on whatever we wanted that day, we left Lech for the time being and grabbed lunch in the nearby restaurant, which has the same medieval theming as the coaster, which is really impressive for a park of this stature btw. We were probably the first people to enter the restaurant that day and were greeted by pleasant staff that helped us decipher the menu and explain the dishes on offer, which were traditional hot meals served canteen-style. We both enjoyed our choices although they could’ve been a bit warmer. I also had a pint with my lunch, which was the obvious brand…
After lunch we headed over to the other big new attraction, the dark ride Basilisk. We thought Lech had a ridiculously long queue line until we saw this one, which must take up almost half the building! I can only assume that Legendia gets very busy in the summer or they are planning for when the park gets more popular as it grows and gets more international appeal.
Once again the theming was very nice for this ride, especially in the queue line, and it’s certainly a high quality attraction. We had a couple of rides as it took a bit of time to work out exactly what could and couldn’t be shot, and I think we got the general gist of the story despite the language barrier.
The problem I had with the ride is that while it is generally good quality, it’s a bit short and doesn’t really seem to reach any climax story-wise. There are references to vampires and werewolves in the queue line but no significant monsters really appear in the ride other than some kind of bizarre chicken/dragon hybrid in the final scene. Also the guns feel cheap and have no kind of feedback that lets you know you’re actually hitting anything, which coupled with the fact that it seems to take multiple hits to kill anything makes the whole experience quite unrewarding. That said, the mixture of practical and digital targets was clever and for a park of this scale it’s a pretty impressive bit of kit.
After a short wander around the rest of the park we headed back to the only other cred that was open – Dream Hunters Society, the other bright pink Zyklon. Obviously this had no queue and that’s where the problems started, as the ride op advised that this needed a minimum of 3 riders per car. There were only 2 of us and nobody else to be seen nearby that looked like they wanted to ride a crappy old coaster, so we left it in the hope that we’d see another group of 2 join the queue later.
Instead we tried the oldest ride at the park, Dream Flight Airlines. I believe this dates back to the 1950s when the park opened, and is a spinning aeroplane ride similar to the Flying Machines at Blackpool. The cool addition to this version is working propellers on the front of the little planes! It actually went quite a bit faster and flung the planes out wider than we’d anticipated, which made for quite a hair-raising ride when the only thing holding you in is a flimsy seatbelt and centrifugal force.
With no interest in any of the other flat rides, all of which looked vomit-inducing, we headed to the park’s water ride, Diamond River. It’s a pretty straightforward splash boat ride with two drops, neither of which got us particularly wet, which we were thankful of given the cool weather. This looked to have been themed fairly recently too, with a fresh-looking station building and some cute dwarves throughout.
With no other rides of interest other than the Zyklon (which we returned to later) it was time to head back to Lech and grab as many rides as we saw fit. Amazingly when we arrived back at the station we’d hit the busiest time of the day, as there were a colossal 4 people riding it! We joined them and took the back row.
Holy ****, this thing is intense on the back row. The way the train is yanked over the lift hill sets the tone for the rest of the ride as you’re thrown through the elements seemingly with much more force than the front. Interestingly the only other time I’ve felt that ‘yanking’ sensation over a lift hill is The Big One, which obviously also has a twisted drop, so maybe that feeling is unique to that kind of drop? Anyway, it was certainly very intense and although I didn’t grey out, Anna did and that was enough for her. She sat out while I continued to have a couple more rides – another on the back row and then two more on the front, the second of which was my first completely solo ride.
It’s a weird feeling to be the only rider on a cred of this size and calibre, and an opportunity you don’t get too often. While it was quite cool to think that this ride was running just for me, the lack of atmosphere that you’d usually get from fellow riders was a bit of downer.
After four successive rides I was starting to see stars myself so took a break for 15 minutes and then went back for another few rides, all solo again. After another two back row rides I was actually starting to feel a bit sick so I called it a day at that point. I’d certainly had enough rides to form an opinion and the solo riding was starting to get a bit embarrassing.
Thoughts on Lech Coaster then. It’s certainly a brilliant ride – smooth, incredibly forceful and with a great layout and nice theming. My favourite moment was definitely the airtime hill followed by the corkscrew through the station. There’s a fair amount of floater on the hill no matter where you sit and the station inversion is just a fantastic piece of design. After 5 front and 4 back row rides, I definitely prefer the front, as the back is insanely intense and I found the train does rattle a bit at the back.
When considering how highly to rank it, I compared it to Icon, which was my No.10 coaster at that point. In some ways it’s quite similar – really smooth, lots of twists and turns and decent airtime – but I decided that I didn’t enjoy it as much as Icon overall. That was mainly due to concerns about re-rideability, as I could happily ride Icon all day but several successive rides on Lech made me feel unwell. I also think the lack of atmosphere and fellow riders had an impact on my overall enjoyment of the ride, but it is still comfortably a Top 20 coaster for me and the sooner other parks around the world realise just how good these new Vekomas are, the better.
With Lech done, there wasn’t much else left of interest in the park other than trying to get the other operating cred. Sadly by now the park seemed even quieter (which was some feat) and we hung around near the entrance to the Zyklon for five minutes, seeing nobody, before giving up and calling it a day. We’d been in the park about 3 hours and probably seen no more than 15 paying visitors! I was a bit annoyed about missing out on an operating ride, but since it was a crappy +1 and there were two others that weren’t running, I’ll probably go back and get those sometime anyway.
Thoughts on Legendia – well firstly I hope the day we went was not representative of a normal weekend there, because they can’t be making any money if that’s the case! The lack of atmosphere certainly made our visit a bit sad, but I think on a sunnier, busier day it would’ve been a really nice park. Any park built around a lake has that classic feel, and they have the rides to match in some cases, but they’re obviously also focussed on bringing the park up to modern standards with rides like Lech and Basilisk, the upcoming rapids and the retheming of the older rides. Given that they have the thrill coasters covered for now, if I was running the park I’d be investing in a drop tower and a modern family coaster (maybe with a launch) next, and maybe replace one of those crappy Zyklons with a kiddie cred (which would doubtless be an SBF Visa spinner).
The landscaping in the park is pleasant, the new entrance plaza and street is good and the restaurants seemed decent. Plenty of staff spoke reasonable English, which was unexpected based on reports I’d read, and they were all friendly and as enthusiastic as you can be when the park is so quiet. So it has the potential to be a decent park if the investment continues. I just hope the general public, local and international embrace it as it would be a real shame if the work they’ve done so far goes to waste.
That’s it for Legendia. The next day was a non-park day which I’ll briefly cover before moving on to the big park of the trip – Energylandia!
