17th July – Tripsdrill
The idea was to leave Holiday Park around 2:30pm after our ERT, then head over to Trispdrill, which was open until 6pm for a few extra credits.
We left Holiday Park bang on time, and began our journey to Tripsdrill. The first part of the journey went fine, but as soon as we left the motorway, we all got completely lost!
Signposts to the park were contradictory and the sat navs wanted us to take different routes completely! In the end it resulted in dropping the maps and signposts, and let the sat navs take us there, with Marc’s car close behind, and Mushy’s car having to make an emergency dive to a petrol station.
We arrived at about 3:50pm, with the 3rd car about 15 minutes behind us. Whilst getting the tickets, we noticed a board with the words “Mammut” and “4:00pm” written on, with the rest being in German. We assumed that Mammut was closing at 4:00pm, giving us only 5 minutes to get into the park and into the queue! Slade was great and told those of us who were there to run to Mammut whilst he was still sorting out the tickets (there weren’t any barriers to stop you going in, so we just ran through!)
Finding Mammut was just as hard as finding the park itself! We ran right to the back, then to the front, then to the back of the park again, getting completely lost and out of breath. We finally got to Mammut dead on 4pm, and the queue line was roped off, but trains were still running to clear the queue. The 4 of us jumped the ropes blocking off the queue, ran to the station where the ride op was telling us in German to turn around. We acted all out of breath, said we came from England to ride it, and pointed out that there were still about 10 people in the queue, and eventually he gave in and let us on for a back row ride!
The ride itself is a good family ride, but nothing stunning. The first drop is alright, and you get the occasional pop of airtime, but it’s quite clearly aimed at families, offering a very smooth ride.
As we entered the break run, Slayed was running up to the ride. We shouted at him to get in the queue, he played the same trick with the ride op and we got a second go, this time with Slayed onboard too! By the time we got back to the station, the people in Marc’s car had arrived at Mammut, and the ride op kept the ride open for them too!
I got off after that ride to get a drink, and when I walked back to the exit to meet up with people, I found that everyone (including those in Mushy’s car) were all on the ride for another go, besides Anthony who didn’t quite make it for some reason. Me an Anthony went up the exit ramp, and walked onto the station where the 2nd empty train was waiting. We asked the ride op if we could go on, he let us and me and Anthony got a front row ride, with the train to ourselves!
It’s worth noting that Mammut is still far from finished. They were still working on the station, transfer track shed, exit paths and so on. All of the paths around the area were just dirt, but hopefully in a years or so time, it will all be looking nice and fit in with the rest of the park.
Mammut was supposed to close at 4:00, but we managed to keep it running until about 4:30pm! Big thumbs up for that ride op!
Someone then discovered that most of the rides were closing at 4:30pm, so we rushed over to G'sengte Sau, the Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster, which has the same layout as Cobra at Paultons, besides an extra helix. The themeing on this coaster was pretty impressive and I liked the way it interacted with the log flume. Shame the ride wasn’t as good as Cobra.
A run round to the kiddie coaster, Rasender Tausendfüßler, a clone of the Treetops coaster at Oakwood. We entered the station to find it deserted. Control booth was left open with keys in, but no ride op in sight. Turns out the ride op was operating 2 rides at the same time, and so we had to wait 5 minutes for a ride op to turn up before we could get on.
We wanted to get the rapids and log flume in next, since they are supposed to be quite impressive, but they had already closed. Feeling rather down, we stopped at the local sweetshop for some sugar and drinks. We ended up waiting next to a weird spinny ride that was on a track. I’ve no idea what it is, what it was called, or what it was even supposed to do, but it was still open, so we gave it a go!
We walked back to Mammut for a group photo, and discovered that G'sengte Sau was running until 6pm. Only when I got on for a re-ride did I realised that no where in this park were they checking your restraints, and in the end we decided to see how far they would let you go. It started with a circuit on 3 clicks on the restrains, then next lap was 2 clicks, and finally we managed 1 click on the restraint, and boy did you go flying over those airtime hills! Stone Cold won though, managing to trick the ride op, and getting dispatched with his restraint still fully open!
Lookie! 1 click restraint! Thats loads of room.
Finally it was time to head back towards the entrance. On the way a bee flew down the back of my T-Shirt, and stung me, which wasn’t very nice of it. We mucked around in the little play areas and slide for half an hour, which was quite fun and full of antics. Hopefully some people have got some good video of all that.
In the evening we had a little adventure into Stuttgart city centre, which was fun. We seemed to walk miles, past most of the city, just to find a McDonalds.
On the way back, Joey stole my camera for a bit and started taking random photos of everything he saw…
Zomg! Random evil tram thing.
Random trippy Joey.
This is what looked like the city centre. Something important anyway...
Look! Its Lain under some sort of wierd statue thingy
w00t! Me! Looking rather wasted although i've had nothing to drink! I like the way Joey always had to look up to people.
The rest of a rather nackered CF group
Ride Count
Mammut
Mammut
Mammut
G'sengte Sau
Rasender Tausendfüßler
Weird Spinny Thing
G'sengte Sau
G'sengte Sau
G'sengte Sau