Theme Park Discussion / European Tour 2012!

Hahaha, no Louis, for real. That's the driest spot there

Not if the 3 persons in front of you duck just before the splash
It's something we did to ine of my classmates a long time back on the Crazy River in Walibi Holland (or whatever it's called now). He just didn't have a chance . Another great story on that one was when I went on it for the first time with a friend of mine. He went to sit at the back to keep driest only to find out that just before the first drop there was turntable, plunging him backwards in the splashline
Great times, great times.

Also a general tip who visit Europa Park during a hot period. The Atlantica Supersplash is only worth it if the line is 15 minutes max. You'll get grilled in the sun there when queuing for it while you often hardly get wet on the ride. When that happened too my I was kinda PO-ed so I went straight to the splashone to get drenched. Considering it was 30 degrees C I was dry in 30 minutes anyway + being completely refreshed. The whale tour splash battle is also a great way to cool when the weather is good. Best wet ride I've ever been on.

Two other tips, head to the back of the park first (I'm assuming it's the summer season on this). A lot of people head straight for the Silver Star, but it's line is usually the longest at the start of the day. If you like to get good scores on Atlantis Abentuer go to that ride 1-2 hours before closing time. Not that it's extremely busy all day, but at that time you sometimes are allowed to remain seated or in worst case there's no line at all. Best thing is everyone can get a single car with some cars seperating eachother giving you clear shots. Believe my topscore was 131850.

It's gonna be pretty funny when we first get on the mainland with driving on the other side of the road.

Fred I hope your right with the back being driest or else Lewis will be moaning all day like he normally does

Tyandor, hopefully it won't be too busy. We're staying in one of the hotels so I believe we can access the park from a different entrance, but good tip on avoiding Silver Star. Thanks


What rides in the morning are normally available to hotel guests, does anybody know?

The fifth of april I'll be working at "De Draak" (The Dragon), a Mack powered coaster. If I'm not there, that means that I have my lunch hour, or they placed me elsewhere. And believe me Louis, you don't get really wet in the back of the log flume.

We'll be playing spot the NE-er Thursday on the Dragon then Fred.

... as much as I am shitting it about driving on the other side of the road ...

That's just because you drive on the wrong side of the road.

why don't you punks come up to Lancashire on your tour of Europe?!

Oh you missed the Lancashire segment of the European tour? You'll have to catch us next time Blackpool attracts us since there's no decent parks up there

Which wont be for a long time as Blackpool is vile lol

Yorkshire > Lancashire.

We has Lightwater Valley and Flamingo Land, so much better than Pleasure Beach

To be fair though trav, 'Mingo is an awful place. Lightwater is where it's at, purely for T'Ultimate bashing.

Midlands > Yorkshire > Lancashire

I love FlamingMinge Land! The theming is getting pretty good there now, and it's very clean, and the zoo is one of the best in the country in my opinion. It's a good day out all in all. Sure it's not Alton Towers standard, but I'd say it's leading the way in the mid tier British parks (Only being beaten by Alton and Thorpe).

Hmmm, I dunno, everything on the right of the monorail (looking from the entrance) is dire. Everything else is nice-ish. I'd place Drayton higher than 'Mingo still and BPB

So you mean pretty much everything in the park? Haha. I think Kumali, the zoo and the Lost River Ride are good and right of the monorail

Drayton has the potential to be really good, but it's so damn small it feels very crowded and it's really really really dirty. Or it was last time I went anyway.

Flamingoland was dire, not as vile as Blackpool, Pleasure Beach isn't too bad, but Blackpool itself is vile. But yeh, Flamingoland was somewhere that I'm not in a rush to revisit.

What did you think was vile about Flamingo Land? I think it's a hell of a lot cleaner and pleasant than the Pleasure Beach, never mind the rest of Blackpool.

And you don't truly realise how vile Blackpool is until you go for a night out there, which is where I spent my 19th. Safe to say all the childhood memories I had of Blackpool were ruined on that night.

Nice to see you Fred operating Draak. Speed up your operation though you had a quite a big queue later in the day lol

^Thaha!
I love Draak. And Plopsaland.
Do you guys show some photos later on?

"MFG"

Yeh we will have some photos of Europa and Plopsa. I was a bit disappointed with Plopsa, but I think that was primarily due to how cold it was, we had gotten used to the sunny south of germany and wasn't ready to go back to the cold 'british' weather.

Wodan is a spectacularly looking coaster, just it was a complete let down. GCI's are overrated if they all ride like Wodan does. First drop was great, the rest was just turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. Nothing special whatsoever.

Blue Fire was great, best surprise of the trip, bettered my expectations by a long shot.

Trav - Blackpool is just completely vile. I felt incredibly 'unsafe' there. Flamingoland just lacked any quality. The staff were abismal, and it just felt like a bunch of rides on a field.

Facebook is awful for handeling large amounts of photos. My Europe albums are total fucked up now with duplicates all over the place.

I took a ton of photo's of pretty much everywhere in the park.
If you're friends with either me or Louis you should be able to see them on Facebook and this album. If not I plan on posting as many pictures as possible

Quick trip report.


We had a 7:35 ferry from Dover monday with a potenial 2 hour drive from Brighton so it was an early morning. 4:00am wake up. We got to Dover an hour earlier than expected but luckily got on an earlier ferry.






Just before I felt like awful. I used to like ferries but I'm pretty much destined to not travel outside of this country. Our next roadtrip will be via the channel tunnel.


One of my favourite games is trying to get photos of good signs we pass. I fail a lot of the time but here's the ones I caught




Luxemberg<3


Urgh, France, I'm sorry to anyone who's French but I really don't like france. It's pretty grim. Everything seems so industrial and graffiti everywhere. Out of the hundreds of miles we traveled through the countryside, we went past one or two places that looked nice, Metz and Nancy. Everything else was just awful.

We drove straight past Walygator at one point, saw some great B&M from a distance but couldn't ride it.



Also we have no idea what this sign means. Would someone like to enlighten us?


Exciting.


The amazing sight to greet us!


The mighty Hotel Colosseo, on the other side of the road.


The hotel complex and area was awesome.





We checked in at around 4:30pm. We wasn't planning on entering the park today becuase it would be a waste of one of our two day park tickets. We we're given the last hour of the park complimenty though, great!

The view from our hotel room was great! Had a nice balconey as well.




We rushed through the park to hit up Silver Star first. Wow! I was not expecting such a good ride! We had back row though but even after quite a few rides over the several days it still impressed me. Great ride!

We hit Schweizer Bobbahn after to get my 100th credit purely for comical reasons. Not bad, Avalanche at Blackpool is better.

Some photos of those two coasters will come later...

I think we was the only people in the whole park that was in shorts.


Walking back through the park after closing to our hotel.




Awesome sight!




Our hotel, Castillo Alcazar towering over the spanish area of the park.


The themeing and pure atmosphere in each area is incredable. It really feels like your in a different country with each area.










We went to Hotel Colosseo for food that night. Which was just the basic continental buffet rubbish you get from any European hotel resturant. Not that good and very overpriced.

At one point I asked for another Sprite. I got something that looked like a weak Coke.

Turned out to be a MezzoMix, whatever that is I don't know.


I'll post the next few days tomorrow or something.

The buildings look great but atmosphere ? The place looks like a ghost town. And with france have you ever been to London lol Its the same, Anyway hope you enjoyed your trip