Scandinavia Trip Report - Part 6: Linnanmaki, Finland

[Gavin]

I just got back to Hong Kong a couple of days ago after my long summer holiday. As usual, I headed back to the UK to catch up with friends and increasingly/worryingly old family, but broke that up with a trip elsewhere, wanting to get some new country/park creds in there. This then developed into a couple of revisits for other new stuff, which wasn't too much of a chore given that Scandinavia is just all-round lovely anyway.

Iceland

I started off by heading to Iceland, which had been on the "must-do" list for absolutely ages. The entire country is cred-free, which is an international disgrace, so feel free to scroll down until you see some coaster track later in the report. At this point, I write these things more as a record for myself anyway since I'm one of only about 6 enthusiasts who hasn't started their own s**ty blogs or "channels".

Day 1 - Reykjavik

I got to the hotel in Reykjavik at around 6pm. I hadn't really planned to do anything, but it was early and it's not like the flight from Manchester was particularly arduous - other than having to spend time in Manchester Airport - so I headed out for a bit of a wander. The weather was s**te unfortunately. The city itself is very pleasant though. Photo dump:

Day 2 - Golden Circle

The next day, I'd booked myself onto a "Golden Circle" tour. I'm generally not the biggest fan of doing tours, but since I don't drive it was the only realistic way of getting to see stuff. Even if I did drive, doing it this way would be far cheaper than hiring a car anyway. Luckily, it was a huge tour group, which most people would complain about but I preferred as it meant it was easy to just see it as a bus service and f**k off by myself after checking what time the bus was leaving for the next stop, rather than being stuck with a tour guide and dutifully nodding and smiling all day.

The weather was still awful and the cheap, crappy, pound-shop-style umbrella I'd bought the day before (of which I didn't check the price and had actually cost close to £20!) was useless thanks to the wind, so I spent the day being wet. It was all really impressive though, and the crap weather added to the drama of it I suppose. Photos posted without explanation:

Day 3 - South Iceland

The next day was another tour to the south of the country - again with a huge group, so I treated it as mere transport rather than a tour - and taking in a couple more waterfalls, black sand beaches and a glacier. You'll be pleased to know that the rain had mostly stopped.

Day 4 - More Reykjavik and Leaving

I had a late afternoon flight, leaving myself with most of the day to spend in Reykjavik. This was my planned sightseeing in the city day, but I'd already done that on the first day. I saw a bit more of it this time around though, and the weather had totally cleared up. Here are some pictures of mostly the same stuff you scrolled past earlier, but with sunshine:

Iceland then. Gorgeous place. I was there at peak season, so it was very busy, but that was expected. Reykjavik was a lovely little city and the scenery of the country as a whole is obviously pretty spectacular. I had a flight that evening from Reykjavik to Oslo, Norway being another new-to-me country. With the flight and time difference, it was around midnight by the time I got the hotel, but all easy enough since there was an easy train from the airport into the city and I'd chosen a hotel near the main train station.

Norway

Day 5 - Tusenfryd and Oslo

I'd only given myself a couple of days in Norway, which I'm now regretting slightly as it would have been nice to have seen more of the country. This was the only full day I had, having booked a bus out of there the following evening, so I headed out to Tusenfryd, which was very easy: a regular bus from the main bus station, which itself is located next to / behind the train station.

I got there shortly before opening, making the decision to head straight to the back/top of the park for the newest coaster, Storm- Dragon Legend, a launched, suspended Gerstlaur thing. Pictures I grabbed on the way:

I was first in the queue and headed for a back-row ride for the first train of the day. I've just realised that a bunch of photos have failed to upload, but I don't have them at hand to do again, so whatever. Here are the few that actually uploaded:

It's a really good coaster, probably Gerstlauer's best after Karnan I'd say unless I'm forgetting something right now. It's lap bars only, which makes for quite a disconcerting ride, especially in the back row since you get some quite extensive hang time on the reverse launch as you get right up into the inversion. The airtime hill is really good as well. Plus, you get two full runs through the circuit, so although it's not the longest coaster, you get a decent amount of ride time. It has a few jolty moments - not really a problem since there are no OTSRs - so it'll be interesting to see how it ages.

There weren't many people up at that end of the park that early on, so I grabbed a few rerides. I think there was a single-rider queue, but there was no need to use it at that stage. Operations were excellent as well. Even though it was quiet that early in the day, they just got the train right out with just a handful of riders rather than waiting for more people to fill it.

The nearby mine train coaster was closed, so I headed to Thunder Coaster. It did very little for me on that first ride, but was better later in the day. It meant that I'd collected the full set (three) of the Vekoma woodies at least.

From there it was down to a pain-in-the-arse, out-of -the-way area for the water coaster. The people getting off the rapids didn't seem too wet either, so I had a ride on that. Both were decent enough.

There was also a dark ride down at that end with a closed sign out front, but a sign further up the path at the entrance to that area, as well as the park app, had it opening at 12pm. It wasn't too far off at this point, so I stuck around until then, as did a few other people. Nope, it was actually closed.

The mine train had opened though, so I did that and then realised later that I had the cred already since it's a relocation from (I think; can't be arsed to recheck) Italy.

This kiddy coaster never opened all day though, which is obviously s**t from the cred count point of view, but far preferable to anything else being closed, and it was the only spite of the trip, so all-in-all I'll take that as a win.

Loopen, while not being anything special, was at least a new ride/layout type for me. Defininetly a one-and-done, and the operations on this were pretty slow as well due the old-school trains needing to have the restraints manually released and the staff on this ride being absolutely in no hurry to do so.

A second ride on Thunder Coaster was marginally better than the first.

This just left Speed Monster, which since hoofing past it earlier in the day had weirdly been slightly forgotten about. This had a bit of a queue, but operations were good and it was only taking about 15 minutes.

I'd never heard particularly glowing reviews for this ride, but I actually quite liked it. The launch doesn't have that gut punch that you'd usually expect from an Intamin hydraulic, but the rest of the layout was decent enough, with some decent pops of airtime. I did a couple of rides and took a quick break from it to give Thunder Coaster a final chance.

Nah. It was definitely better again than earlier, but still not doing a great deal. It was mid afternoon by this point and it had been running constantly for hours, so it was pretty much as "warmed up" as it was going to get. Go ahead and tell me that I'm wrong and I should've gone back to it at 6:59 P.M. I don't care.

I considered heading back up to Storm for a reride, but, forgetting about the single-rider queue, figured that it would be pretty busy by that point, so settled on a Speed Monster reride on the way out.

The park was open until seven, and it was only around half three at this point, but I decided to call it a day and see a bit of Oslo. I liked this park though. The terrain and layout makes for a bit of a workout in places, but the setting on the hill is really nice. Considering how awful Parque Reunidos can be, I thought it was run really well, with (mostly) quick dispatches from effiecient and friendly ride ops. Storm, which seems to me to have really flown under the radar, is an excellent addition to the park and deserves a bit more attention.

I got the bus back into the city, a short but very nice ride, and headed to the area around the opera house, checking out the Munch Museum (which I really liked) since it still had a couple of hours until closing. They have two of the four original versions of "The Scream" along with hundreds of other works by Munch. From there it was a bit more of a wander around the city for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel. It was much bigger than Reykjavik, but all still very walkable.

Day 6 - More Oslo

As I'd done with Reykjavik, and as I continued to do for this trip, I'd booked to head out of the city in the late afternoon/early evening so had time to go out and do/see some more stuff. This consisted of another wander into the city and then down to the national museum down at the waterfront, which had another "Scream" - this time the very first one - and a bunch of other stuff. While I was down there, I booked myself onto a boat cruise since I still had loads of time and had had enough of walking around.

I really liked Oslo as well. From previous reports, I'd not been expecting much. I'd heard very little praise for the place, with it being made to sound quite concrete/functional/industrial. I was expecting a Scandinavian Birmingham to be honest, but it wasn't like that at all; it was really nice.

I got a bus from there down to Gothenburg. It took about the same amount of time as the train would have but was quite a bit cheaper, and the bus stations/train stations of each city were conveniently right next to each other anyway. It was also almost empty, so was very quiet and comfortable.

This is already way too much for one post, so I'll come back to this later.

 

[ScottLann]

Looks like there's some absolutely breath taking views on this trip! Love that you managed to visit Klugheim too

 

[Gavin]

Looks like there's some absolutely breath taking views on this trip! Love that you managed to visit Klugheim too

That was exactly my first thought when I saw it.

 

[JoshC.]

Iceland is high up on my to visit list (I applied for a job there a few years back...); it's nice to see a little TR about doing it solo - thanks for that!


Happy to see some more Storm love on here. It was very much the "sleeper hit" addition of 2023 in my opinion. When I visited Tusenfryd last year I enjoyed it quite a lot too; whether it's turned around in recent years to shake off its bad reputation, or that rep just isn't justified I dunno. But yeah, it's a neat park.

Real shame the dark ride wasn't open - it's by no means world class, but a proper cracker of a ride

 

[Hutch]

I'm generally not the biggest fan of doing tours, but since I don't drive it was the only realistic way of getting to see stuff. Even if I did drive, doing it this way would be far cheaper than hiring a car anyway.

Not that it’s any of my f—ing business, but is there a reason you don’t drive or do you just prefer to avoid it? Not that you’d need to most of the time when there are other options. But your US trips have left me curious about it as public transit here is abysmal for park trips outside Florida.

I’m interested to hear the routes you ended up doing in Finland (thinking about a trip next year). I’m hoping there’s a simple route to get up to Powerland.


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[Gavin]

Next bit then. Like I mentioned in the last post, I'd taken a bus from Oslo to Gothenburg and arrived quite late in the evening, so it was just straight to the hotel, which was opposite the train/bus station.

Days 7 + 8 - Liseberg and Gothenburg

I'd been to Liseberg twice before, both times on CF trips, but had seen pretty much nothing of Gothenburg, so made sure to give myself a bit of time to rectify that. The view from the hotel window that morning helped to prioritise the time here:

I got the tram over to the park a little before opening and it was already looking really busy. Liseberg has a free fast pass system on their app, so while I was waiting to get in, I booked one for Helix. By the time I got in (totally chose the "wrong" queue and got stuck behind faffers), it was already starting to get a queue, so it was great to skip that immediately. I booked another pass again right away for an immediate reride since nobody seemed to be using it at that point.

I'd forgotten quite what an amazing coaster it is. Recently, when asked about best Mack coasters, I'd put Beyond the Cloud and possibly Flash / Hyper Coaster above Helix, but I now I think I'd move Helix back up to the top spot. It's just a much more well-rounded coaster I think.

I'll throw some pictures in, but they don't really reflect any kind of ride order. I booked a fast pass for Balder - by now people were starting to use them more, so the waiting time to get on the rides was increasing - and checked out the newish Vekoma junior boomerang thing, but decided against joining the queue at that point as I might've missed the Balder time slot.

Valkyria, along with the aforementioned Vekoma, was also a new-to-me coaster, and it's got a single-rider line, which literally nobody was using, meaning a couple of walk-on rides right away and a couple more later in the day.

I can't decide what I made of it really. I like dive machines more than most, and I enjoyed this, but something wasn't quite hitting right for me and I don't know what it was. Maybe it was a bit too inversion-focused?

I didn't ride Loki. I like these rides, but it had a pretty long wait and I didn't want to use fast passes for it. I hadn't realised at the time that it was a slightly updated version of Intamin's Gyroswing, but got a chance to try another one later in the trip anyway.

Balder then. Throughout the day, this had consistently the longest queue times, with the fast passes getting eaten up very quickly. Previously, I'd enjoyed it, but found it to be quite overrated, but I loved it this time around. I think it was because (humble brag warning) I'd ridden all four of the Intamin prefabs within a fairly short space of time, and found Balder to be the weakest of the bunch. That's still true, but having not ridden any other them for absolutely ages, I was able to see that it's actually really good.

I'll just do a bit of a photo dump in a minute. I can't remember the exact order now, but I used the fast pass for Luna (Vekoma junior boomerang) and Lisebergbanan. Luna was very good for what it was, better than the stock models at any rate. Lisebergbanan can f**k off though. I don't care that it's a classic; it doesn't do anything other than fanny about doing constant right turns.

I also rode my first Zamperla Nebulaz thing, which was crap and ended up being one of the longest waits of the day thanks to not being on the fast pass, having one ride op and only getting it half filled. I didn't need any of the kiddy creds, so they were ignored. I seem to have not taken any pictures of it, but I also did Uppswinget (S&S Screaming Swing), which strangely had no queue whatsoever for the whole day.

I couldn't remember if I'd ridden Atmosfear or not. I know on the first Liseberg visit, it had still been an observation tower, but I can't remember whether it had reopened as a drop tower by that second visit. Riding it didn't feel too familiar, so maybe not? I might just be having a total brain fart with that one. Anyway, I joined and left the queue twice thanks to "full" fast passes popping up on Balder and Helix (people cancel them frequently, so there a constant change in availability), but ended up doing it at some point before I left. It's excellent, and quite unnerving with those quite flimsy shoulder straps; it's essentially just lap bars really.

I'll finish with another photo dump, but I got another couple of rides in on each of Helix, Balder and Valkyria at certain points during the day, plus a new kiddy dark ride and the Haunted Hotel walkthrough. The fast passes for that only came online later in the day, so I did a Disney and refreshed it right as it was due to be available and got a group for right after it opened at 3pm. When I checked back very soon after going through, there were no more available, so that was definitely the right choice.

I did the Ferris wheel for some photo opportunities (you're welcome) and called it a day.

The park was still open for another 4 hours or so, but I'd done everything I wanted - multiple times in some cases - so decided to see a bit of the city by walking back to the hotel. Despite being very busy, it had been a really good day with very little actual waiting thanks to using the fast passes effectively and an empty single-rider queue on Valkyria. The crappy Nebulaz thing notwithstanding, the operations were really good, too. Liseberg is definitely still up there as one of the better European parks and probably the best "city" park anywhere.

The walk back to the hotel was nice. Like I said, I'd seen pretty much nothing of the city before. I went from Liseberg to the very nearby area with the art museum and then followed the main street down from there until I was back near the hotel.

See? Still open:

I did more wandering the next day, starting at the waterfront near the opera house - this looked vaguely familiar since a few of us had headed to that area on that last Liseberg visit - and then just a general meander, including a little trek up some hill for the views. I took loads of pictures, but won't bother sticking too many in. It's a lovely city though, so I'm glad I made the effort to see it properly this time.

That evening I took a train across to Stockholm, which was the first proper revisit of the trip since I'd spent a bit of time there previously. Some new creds and that though, innit?

 

[Gavin]

I’m back at work properly now, so more of this report will be getting done. Can’t be wasting my own valuable time on it…

I mentioned in the last bit of the report that Stockholm was a revisit, but there was a park sort of nearby that I hadn’t done, so I took a train/bus combo, which took a couple of hours if I remember correctly.

Kolmarden

I can’t remember what time the park had opened, but I got there at around 11 and obviously started heading directly to Wildfire, but ended up stopping off for the cred more in the middle of the park, luckily not waiting too long despite the area being quite busy. +1

There are animals in there as well. Probable unpopular opinion: I thought the zoo was a bit crap. Yeah, it’s great for the few animals they have since the enclosures are massive, and I’m a fan of mixed-species exhibits as well, but they really didn’t have much at all. There were so few species, and the ones they did have were incredibly generic, the stuff you can see at pretty much any zoo anywhere. I skipped the cable car since the queue was at over an hour. Go ahead and tell me how wrong I am about the zoo based on that decision, but looking at the map, there was nothing special in there either. A whole lot of “meh”.

After hiking for about three hours, I finally made it up to Wildfire. The queue was at around the 30-minute mark (though I seem to remember there was a lying sign saying 10 minutes somewhere?) and stayed around there, maybe slightly less, for the whole time I stayed around that area, which admittedly wasn’t long. I imagine it would’ve gone up quite a lot later in the day as more people made it up from the bottom of the park and off the cable car.

I liked it, but I was expecting so much more based on the almost unwavering praise I’d seen of it before. I have absolutely no interest in trying to be “edgy” by going against the common consensus, but I just didn’t get the hype. The first drop and zero-g stall were excellent, as was to be expected, but no better or worse than a lot of other RMCs at this point. After that though, not a lot happens. It’s “good” in the way that all RMCs are good, but without having anything that really stood out. The location/terrain aspect, I guess? And what the f**k was that final drop which does absolutely nothing? Not overly impressed.

I did an immediate reride and then picked up the other +1

Then it was a 3rd ride on Wildfire just to make sure I hadn’t been completely wrong about it. I hadn’t been.

And I was pretty much done at this point. I couldn’t be bothered waiting another half an hour for a ride that I wasn’t particularly enamoured with, wasn’t interested in dolphin or sealion shows, and wasn’t about to wait an hour+ for the cable car, so I decided to head out. I had a train booked for much later in the day, thinking I’d need a lot of time at the park given the physical size of it, but ended up getting one much earlier.

I had some time to kill in the late afternoon/evening by the time I got back, so had a quick walk from the hotel (again near the main train station) to Gamla Stan, the old-town district of Stockholm. I’d been before, but it’s a nice area and not too much effort.

From a couple of points in the old town, I caught a glimpse of Grona Lund, so headed down the water front and around to a couple of the islands opposite the park to get a few pictures.

The park was open for a couple more hours, and I only needed one new cred there, but I decided to hold off since I had plenty of time. That’ll be the next bit of the report then.

 

[Gavin]

I’m really losing the will to live with this report, but here we go anyway.

I did some touristy stuff (repeated from a visit ages ago) in Stockholm in the morning before heading to Grona Lund in the afternoon, starting off with the tower at City Hall, which had a broken lift, so that was nice. It’s good for the views.

From there, it was a bit of a meander through the city towards the museum district. It’s all perfectly lovely. I think I’d probably say that Stockholm is my favourite of the Scandinavian cities I’ve been to.

There are loads of museums in Stockholm, most of which I haven’t bothered with, but one of the highlights has to be the Vasa museum, housing a 17th-century ship that sank on its maiden voyage and was raised in the 1960s. It’s extremely impressive and only a very short walk to/from Grona Lund, so if you’ve been to Grona and not here, why not? Have some repetitive pictures:

Onto the park then. As with Liseberg, this was my third visit here, but they’ve added a B&M since my last time. There was ticket/wristband faff when the self-service machine decided to not dish out the wristband for my internet booking, but then insist that it had, so a waste of time trip back out of the park to guest services was required.

You get two free fast passes which you can book on the park app. I resisted the urge to immediately just use one for Monster, knowing that a B&M invert was going to have a better capacity than some of the other stuff at the park. This turned out to be the right decision. The park was very busy, but Monster seemed to keep a fairly consistent 15-minute queue, so that was fine for a few rides.

It’s very good. It’s unlikely to hit the top of anyone’s favourite invert list, but what they’ve managed to do with such a limited space is very impressive. Is it weird to call a B&M invert “cute”? I just thought it was a cute, little ride really. I’ll just dump a few of the other pictures that I took over the course of the afternoon.

Ikaros, the huge tilting drop tower thing, had no queue at all throughout the day: total walk-on. The park was busy, and the S&S tower right next to it was holding a decent line, but nothing for this. Are people too intimidated by it? Anyway, it’s excellent. I’ve never rated Falcon’s Fury at Busch, but this one hits differently. It’s especially unnerving when you start moving above the S&S tower, making it look really short, and realising how tall this thing really is.

I felt no urge whatsoever to ride Insane. These coasters are just steaming dog turds and should all be ripped out and replaced with Premier sky rockets.

I obviously did want to reride twister though, which was extremely popular and had a queue hovering around the hour-long mark. I used one of the free fast passes for it, then stuck out the regular queue for a reride before I left. It’s still excellent for its small size and seems to be holding up well.

I’m just going to chuck in some more pictures and finish this bit off. I used the other fast pass for Wild Mouse, which also had a long queue, but skipped Kvasten in favour of the aforementioned Twister reride. I also did both the regular and tilting sides of Fritt Fall - which had a bit of a queue, but nowhere near as long as the S&S tower – a couple of rerides on Monster and a ride on Bla Taget, the ghost train.

I didn’t spend a huge amount of time at the park, arriving in the early afternoon and leaving in the early evening even though it was open for a few more hours. It’s great how much they’ve crammed in to such a small space, but that also means that when it’s busy, it feels very packed/claustrophobic. You can kind of get away from people by heading to the area right on the water, and they’ve done a really good job of putting seating literally everywhere, but moving between rides can be a bit of a chore and the queue lines are not pleasant to stand in at all. I guess it can depend what frame of mind you’re in. Does it have a fun, old-school seaside pier kind of vibe? Yes. Do you have any personal space whatsoever? No.

Anyway, it’s a great little park and such an asset to have right in the middle of the city. In terms of the Swedish city parks, I think most people would agree that Liseberg is better, but it’s almost unfair to compare them when you think about the space they have, or lack of it.

I had another day in Stockholm, so did some stuff I hadn’t done before such as the Royal Palace, art museum and a boat tour, but I can’t be arsed to faff around with pictures of that.

From there, it was a flight to Helsinki, so some of the Finland parks will be in the next couple of bits, if and when I can be f**ked to finish this.

 

[Gavin]

Not that it’s any of my f—ing business, but is there a reason you don’t drive or do you just prefer to avoid it? Not that you’d need to most of the time when there are other options. But your US trips have left me curious about it as public transit here is abysmal for park trips outside Florida.

I’m interested to hear the routes you ended up doing in Finland (thinking about a trip next year). I’m hoping there’s a simple route to get up to Powerland.


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Sorry, I completely missed this earlier; how rude of me!

I just never got around to it. When I was old enough to have lessons, I couldn't afford them. Well, technically, I could have since I always had some kind of part-time job as a teenager, but I wasn't making much. I also knew I'd be heading off to university, so I was trying (and failing) to save a bit of money for that and also knew that even if I got my driving license, I wouldn't need (or be able to afford) a car while I was there.

After I graduated, I immediately left the UK and lived in South Korea for 7 years (6 of those in Seoul) followed by a brief stint in Tokyo, so driving was completely unnecessary thanks to the the excellent public transport systems. The practicalities of learning to drive in those countries also made it not worth looking into properly.

I absolutely should have got it sorted after that though. I ended up being back in the UK for a while, and totally had the time and means to get it done. I was only supposed to be back for "a year" though, so didn't bother, but then it turned into "just one more year" and ended up being 4 years. If I'd have had any idea I'd have been back that long, I would've got it sorted then.

I've been in Hong Kong for 11 years now and obviously don't need a car here either. I'll just add that in these big, Asian cities, it's not just a case of "not needing" and somehow muddling through; it's actually far easier/quicker to use public transport than it would be to drive in most cases.

The only time I really kick myself for not having got it sorted is on US trips. Having said that, while the US is notoriously bad for public transport, it's not impossible to get stuff done if you've got the time to do it, and I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people think. If people drive, as most Americans do, then there's absolutely no need to look into public transport options, so it's easy to assume there aren't any, and most of the time, that's not actually really true. Having said that, on my solo trips I've mostly stuck to parks close to major cities.

Is it as easy as Asia or Europe to get s**t done on public transport? Absolutely not, and it's not even close, but you can usually find a way to do it. It's pretty impossible to do multi-park days though due to the infrequency and time commitments of a lot of the transport, and I've had to spend more time than necessary in certain places, including overnight stays, in order to make things work. I'm also increasingly a fan of the "f**k this; I'm getting an Uber" method of getting around these days.

 

[Gavin]

Back to the report then...

From Stockholm, I flew over to Helsinki. The flight landed quite late, but the trains into the city were still running regularly and my hotel was basically connected to the main train station, so it was all simple enough. Again, I’d been to Helsinki before, so this was a revisit for a major new coaster, plus a trip out to a park I hadn’t done before.

PowerPark

Despite this place being pretty far away from Helsinki – about three and a half hours by train – I decided to day trip it rather than spend a night up there. There’s only one train a day in each direction, allowing for around 6 hours in the park. Conveniently, there’s a free bus between the nearest train station and the park, which is timed to meet the arriving train / drop off in time for the one leaving.

Not so conveniently, my online booking proved to be rather pointless since you still need to queue up at a ticket booth to show/exchange it anyway. Waste of time. First impressions weren’t really the best; it’s very clearly not on the same level as the other Scandi parks.

I didn’t ride the drop tower until later in the day, but took this picture on the way into the park, so will shove it in now. I hadn’t done one of these Moser towers before. They’re ugly as f**k, but the drop was a lot better than I’d expected. They had two queues, one for a proper drop, and one for a slow descent, basically turning it into an observation tower.

Joyride was definitely not a priority coaster, but the queue wasn’t very long at that point – I think I waited about 10 minutes - so I just got it out of the way. Meh, +1.

Next up was Pitts Special. I thought this thing was newer than it actually is, but it turns out it’s four years old already. It’s a Gerstlauer infinity coaster, which has been rather confusingly placed next to Junker, another Gerstlauer infinity coaster which had opened 5 years previously. A strange choice already, but made stranger by having the exact same colour scheme. I’ll probably end up getting some pictures mixed up…

It was pretty good, but didn’t seem to do what it was probably supposed to. It doesn’t have inversions, unlike Junker, so seems to be built for airtime, but it’s lacking there as well. I enjoyed it well enough, but it looks like it should do a bit more.

However - and this for me makes no f**king sense whatsoever – it was only running one train. Well, one car to be more accurate. It was not a quiet day, with the queue line spilling out onto the main path at some points during the day. The queue moved as quickly as it possibly could given the stupidity of the single-car decision, and ride ops were trying to fill single seats as much as possible (no single rider line), but it was still ridiculous.

It was exactly the same situation with Junker. I rode both twice each over the course of the day, getting lucky with a reride on Pitts when it went down for a while, clearing the queue, and getting practically straight on as it reopened a bit later. The ride ops calling single riders forward also shaved a few cars’ wait off the other rides. I’ll just throw in a bunch of pictures and let you try and figure out which coaster is which. There’s no interaction between them at all, but from some angles it just looks like one big mass of track.

Junker is by far the better coaster of the two, which makes the decision to add Pitts even stranger. If you’re going to add something so similar, shouldn’t it at least be an upgrade to the older ride? Sure, they’re designed to offer different experiences, but they’re still very similar, especially from an aesthetic point of view.

The Fabbri spinning piece of s**t was s**t, but at least they had the decency to run multiple cars, so the wait time wasn’t too insulting.

There’s a decent woodie here though, isn’t there? Thunderbird, again on one train, was very good. I’d really liked the clone at Six Flags St Louis a long, long time before, and while this one didn’t live up to my recollections of that version, it was still a really solid ride. I only got one ride in though thanks to long queues and less than enthusiastic ride ops on this one.

Some more pictures of the Gersts since this is the order I took the photos in and I’m being too lazy to think about presenting them in a more coherent way:

The boomerang had no queue at all, thank f**k, and it wasn’t too awful. I don’t think I’ve seen this type of train on one before, but I’ve seen them retrofitted to an old Arrow looper (Rolling X-Train at Everland), so they can’t be a particularly new design.

The kiddy cred had almost no riders thanks to being hidden away in a small forested area (and a lack of families with young kids). There was also a shooting dark ride nearby which I seem to have not uploaded any pictures of. It wasn’t great, I seem to remember the targets being very “plonked”, with the wires/cables fully visible. Apart from the drop tower, it was the only non-coaster I did, though.

By the time I’d got those earlier-mentioned rerides on Junker and Pitts, it wasn’t far off the time for the bus to be leaving to the train station for the three and a half hour ride back to Helsinki. That’s not a complaint. The trains were quiet and comfortable, so it wasn’t exactly a chore. I’m just going to finish up with another photo dump of Junker/Pitts Special and then throw some final thoughts in. You don’t exactly need to be Nostradamus to predict how those are going to go.

I didn’t like this place much at all unfortunately. Junker was excellent, Thunderbird was very good and Pitts Special was decent, but the positives end there really. The place just totally lacked any atmosphere. It’s probably down to a lack of theming (a little bit around the boomerang to be fair) and not much landscaping for the most part; there’s very much a “rides-on-concrete” vibe about the place. Taken on its own merits, it's probably fine, but when comparing it to other parks in that part of the world (perhaps unfairly), it really doesn't hold up.

I’d probably be a bit more positive if they hadn’t been running single, 8-person cars on their two newest and biggest coasters, but that’s just completely inexcusable. Staff were a mixed bag as well. Some were great (Junker and Pitts) and others were just slow, inefficient and miserable, which isn’t something you often find at Scandinavian parks.

Anyway, it was one of the few major European parks I still needed, so at least there’s that box ticked. I don’t know what they’d need to add to entice me back given the effort involved, but it would need t be more than another Gerstlauer infinity coaster.

 

[Gavin]

Right, let’s get this finished then.

I had about a day and a half left in Helsinki, and Linnanmaki had added a major coaster since I was last there, so that was the first priority. As I mentioned before, my hotel was right at the train station, and I decided to walk around the lake to the park, which took about half an hour I think, but it’s a very pleasant walk. Approaching from that angle also brings you right up alongside Taiga.

I’d forgotten that it’s a free-to-enter park, and I debated just getting some coupons to ride Taiga a couple of times and leaving it there, but opted to get the wristband in the end. At that time in the morning, although there was a solid stream of people arriving at the park, there was no queue for Taiga at all. I think I took all of these pictures through the gift shop window at the exit.

It’s absolutely fantastic. Decent launches, strong positive Gs, fun inversions and strong airtime. It was also very reridable. I’m not one for doing multiple rerides these days, but I ended up doing 5 rides back-to-back (already covering the cost of the wristband) before moving on to other stuff. I waited for a front row ride once – it was quiet enough to not take very long – but it was definitely a back-row ride for me.

I’d already got the Ukko and Kirnu creds, so there was absolutely no need to ride them again this time since the ride types are just s**te. They’re a good fit for a small park like Linnanmaki though since they take up a tiny footprint each.

I did, however, want to reride Vuoristorata, the old woodie, a couple of times. This consistently had the longest queue at the park, but really good operations meant that it was only a 20-minute or so wait. It’s a fun ride, and in the back has a really strong pop of airtime on one of the hills later in the layout.

Having skipped Loki at Liseberg, not realising that it was a newer gyroswing model with more open restraints, I made sure to try out Swingi at this park. Yep, those new lap bars definitely make for a better ride than the old style.

Based on the order of the photos, I must’ve done the observation tower next.

This dark ride didn’t seem at all familiar from my last visit, so I guess we must’ve missed it. It’s not really in the most obvious location. It was an interesting ride system at least.

Linnunrata was running without the VR, which I was fine with since it's always crap. I’d forgotten that the coaster itself is crap as well though. It’s cool to have it built inside an old water tower, but surely something better could be put in that space.

I’ll throw in a bunch of pictures in a bit. I skipped the powered mine train thing (got it already), but had a ride on Salama (the spinner), which I’d quite liked before and still holds up.

I was also stupid enough to do a reride on Tulireki, which I remembered disliking but couldn’t remember why. It’s a Mack E-Motion Coaster, with the cars supposedly having some kind of swing/drift to them which is 100% unnoticeable. It does next to nothing apart from one fun moment at the bottom of the drop which tries to compress your spine. It's not surprising that the ride type didn't go anywhere. It was also running with only one six-person car, so I ended up waiting close to an hour for that piece of absolute s**t. Getting rid of it has to a priority, surely? I'm sure even Mack would be happy for it to disappear since it's a massive blemish on an otherwise very decent ride catalogue.

One good thing about it was that while you’re waiting for ages in a barely-moving queue, you can get some good views of Taiga.

The witch-themed ghost train thing seemed very vaguely familiar, but I’m really not sure if I rode it last time or not. It was good though.

I definitely hadn’t ridden Pilotti one the first visit. It’s kind of hidden and not listed on RCDB, so we’d missed it. It’s one of those “is it a cred” things. I’ve ticked it off on Coaster-Count, but I’m not going to include it personally.

I did the Ferris wheel – I’ll throw those pictures in here to finish off with – and headed back to Taiga for 3 more rides (a bit of a queue, but good operations and two trains only meant a 15-minute wait) before heading out.

Linnanmaki is a great little park. It seemed smaller than I'd remembered it, but they’ve used that small space really well to squeeze a lot of stuff in. The park felt busy, but queues were mostly minimal thanks to really good operations. With the free entry, I’m guessing a lot of people weren’t riding, or were maybe using ride tickets to ride a couple of things rather than going with wristbands. It’s got a great atmosphere and the fact that it’s run by a children’s charity is pretty fab as well. Add Taiga to that mix, along with the location on the lake and being within walking distance of a major capital city centre, and you’ve got something quite special really.

I got a tram back into the city and had a wander for a bit, getting some food from the market stalls at the waterfront. I had some time free the next day as well, but just decided to have a lazy hotel morning, get a slightly late checkout and head straight to the airport. I can’t be arsed to upload more pictures, so there are none of the city itself.

That’s the end of this report then. Finally. All-in-all it was great trip. Scandinavia is just all-round lovely, isn’t it? Everything is just clean and seems to work properly/on time and the people are just nice.

Iceland and Norway were both great additions to the country cred list (I definitely need to see more of Norway though), it was nice to finally see Gothenburg properly after having technically been there twice before, and there were some very good new coasters ridden, with the standout definitely being Taiga, but with honourable mentions to Junker and Storm.

Done.

 

[Flash Shift]

"Well actually, Iceland and Finland aren't part of Scandanavia"

No but seriously this looks like an awesome trip. I've always enjoyed visiting the northern countries. Definitely missed out on Linnanmaki's observation tower, was kind of focused on getting the creds in plus Taiga rerides. Taiga is definitely worth the Helsinki trip alone.

 

[Hutch]

Sorry, I completely missed this earlier; how rude of me!

I just never got around to it. When I was old enough to have lessons, I couldn't afford them. Well, technically, I could have since I always had some kind of part-time job as a teenager, but I wasn't making much. I also knew I'd be heading off to university, so I was trying (and failing) to save a bit of money for that and also knew that even if I got my driving license, I wouldn't need (or be able to afford) a car while I was there.

After I graduated, I immediately left the UK and lived in South Korea for 7 years (6 of those in Seoul) followed by a brief stint in Tokyo, so driving was completely unnecessary thanks to the the excellent public transport systems. The practicalities of learning to drive in those countries also made it not worth looking into properly.

I absolutely should have got it sorted after that though. I ended up being back in the UK for a while, and totally had the time and means to get it done. I was only supposed to be back for "a year" though, so didn't bother, but then it turned into "just one more year" and ended up being 4 years. If I'd have had any idea I'd have been back that long, I would've got it sorted then.

I've been in Hong Kong for 11 years now and obviously don't need a car here either. I'll just add that in these big, Asian cities, it's not just a case of "not needing" and somehow muddling through; it's actually far easier/quicker to use public transport than it would be to drive in most cases.

The only time I really kick myself for not having got it sorted is on US trips. Having said that, while the US is notoriously bad for public transport, it's not impossible to get stuff done if you've got the time to do it, and I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people think. If people drive, as most Americans do, then there's absolutely no need to look into public transport options, so it's easy to assume there aren't any, and most of the time, that's not actually really true. Having said that, on my solo trips I've mostly stuck to parks close to major cities.

Is it as easy as Asia or Europe to get s**t done on public transport? Absolutely not, and it's not even close, but you can usually find a way to do it. It's pretty impossible to do multi-park days though due to the infrequency and time commitments of a lot of the transport, and I've had to spend more time than necessary in certain places, including overnight stays, in order to make things work. I'm also increasingly a fan of the "f**k this; I'm getting an Uber" method of getting around these days.

Nice, appreciate the long answer. Wasn't expecting a life story more or less, ha. Obviously you've done well without one, and that's good to hear you've done okay with the US (I suppose it depends on where you are or what kind of trip it is). Logistics aside, it's still much cheaper to not have to worry about a car anyway.