Theme Park Discussion / #Fuck Slow - Go hard | Walibi Holland trip report 30 - 05 - 2016

On monday the 30th of May 2016 I visited Walibi Holland with my mom. 

She used to love visiting Six Flags Holland with her family, so I was excited to revisit the park (with new owners) with her as a mother's day present. There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not the park sucks nowadays (spoiler alert: it does) so I'd like for that discussion to continue in this topic. Onto the pictures:



We started with this one. I've actually never ridden this one when I was smaller and we had a season pass for Six Flags because it looks like it can fuck you up. Back in the days it was called La Via Volta (when that area still had a classic European theme). Now it's called Speed of Sound, and it is still in an area with a classic European theme, except that every element of theming is painted bright blue or orange, like this cool fountain and this classic Italian restaurant which is now Orange and has soundwaves:



The boomerang is also themed to music, which was noticable because of the shitty house music that kept playing. I found out my mom is getting old and isn't such a coaster fan anymore because it turned out this coaster was too intense for her and just looking at it made her feel sick. She rode it anyway and it screwed her up. 

Then it was time for the new roller coaster, Lost Gravity, which is themed to containers (???) and has a bee colour scheme (???). My mom still hadn't recovered from speed of sound but part of the reason we visited Walibi (apart from the nostalgia factor) was the fact that they had a new coaster. The first drop was pretty cool, as was the tophat, but the rest of the ride was pretty tame. My end verdict is a 6/10. It wouldn't score design in my opinion. This is me giving the ride a 6/10 (also check out the canadian stall which has a bright blue stripe on it and now sells döner kebab?):



By now my mom was almost dead, so we chose to take a ride in the car ride. Great landscaping here, the handymen were doing a good job (I tried to ignore the fact that the huge ferris wheel is now also bright blue(?))





After walking around for a while and trying to find something to do that wouldn't make my mom even more nauseous (we couldn't find anything, and the fact that everything was bright blue or orange didn't help), I decide to take a ride on one of my favourite coasters of the park, Robin Hood. 

The area of the coaster (back of the park) was pretty much untouched (luckily) and the ride is still great and still looks good. I'm glad they didn't paint it orange or blue. This is me climbing the lift hill. 



I'll give the ride an eight out of ten, good job not fucking this one up Walibi! 

It was time to grab a bite at the plaza between the log flume (lovely ride) and Lost Gravity. This area was also pretty much untouched, since there was nothing wrong with the log flume to begin with. I do agree with Walibi however that the area where you can look at the splash needed a bright red container selling Coca Cola stuff blocking the view. 



Thank god for Walibi! You wouldn't want me to actually think I'm in a Canadian mining village right? 

Now it was time to ride one of the best roller coasters I've ever ridden (there aren't much), Goliath.



Here is an obligatory standard picture of the lift hill, with a happy bald man (who by the way was the only person that wasn't fourteen years old and talking way too loud to their friends about wanting to ride the go kasts for the sixteenth time. 

Goliath is still a great ride, 8,5 out of ten. I don't mind the new paint job Walibi gave it, not bad and fits the ride (and not blue or orange, hurray!)

Next up was the kiddie coaster, which was replaced and was now in place of the old wild mouse (loved that one ). Thank god this one has a clear theme. It's obvious that this is themed to a Western metallic dragon bird some sort of thing? Time travel? I don't know. Ride is pretty fun.



I didn't do the SLC and the spaghetti bowl since I wanted to spend some time with my mom. So we did the log flume and the river rapids a few times, which are fun rides. The concept of never changing a winning team was well implemented by Walibi on these. It's a shame there isn't much more to do or to look at when you don't want to ride thrill rides in this park. But I understand it's not their focus. Their focus is on teenagers who are high on energy drink and who like to scream at each other and start fights. 

What will follow are some pretty self explanatory pictures of weird colours and weird theming and weird cringeworthy merchandise that will explain why I hate what Walibi did to the park.



Drink MORE red bull;



??





And finally some more (kind of cool) pictures of the park.







Conclusion: They basically took a pretty cool park (my home park) with some great roller coasters, where I spent a lot of my childhood and have a lot of family memories and fucked it up beyond repair by doing weird, unexplainable shit to it. It's a weird mix of the Six Flags themed zones (areas of the world), but painted blue and orange, and no further references to the areas. Instead they gave the rides some weird vague semi-worked out themes like containers, the loss of gravity, a metal birdsnake in a western village or or classical European house music. 

I won't come back soon. 

That was it. I hope you enjoyed my review. 




 

Click the pictures for better quality and scale. 

Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion. I like the place as it is now. Hell, I prefer it over the old Walibi World/Six Flags style. Dreary unoriginal themes with the dullest of colours. In my opinion, the current themes are great and the colours fit the summer vibe that the park has now. It radiates fun. Also Lost Gravity feels like something special, although I do have to admit the container theme is just lazy.

 

I can understand you're opinion. Especially if it's a park from your childhood. I do have to agree about the whole #hardgaan concept, they're pushing that a little too much, it's becoming a joke.

You say the current themas are great. Does that mean you know what the themes are? Can you explain them to me? Because visiting the park didn't make me any wiser.

I really enjoyed the theming idea of Lost Gravity. Sure, they didn't put as much thought into it as Efteling or Phantasialand would, but I really liked the whole idea of screwed up gravity. Additionally, you shouldn't critisise a park, if you didn't even see its best queue (Xpress). Again my question is: How many parks have you actually visited? There are tons of worse parks out there, and 27,50€ is a really reasonable price for a park with a good number of rides. Your main point of critisism seems to be weird, as you could have known that the park is pretty intense overall.

I really enjoyed the theming idea of Lost Gravity. Sure, they didn't put as much thought into it as Efteling or Phantasialand would, but I really liked the whole idea of screwed up gravity. Additionally, you shouldn't critisise a park, if you didn't even see its best queue (Xpress). Again my question is: How many parks have you actually visited? There are tons of worse parks out there, and 27,50€ is a really reasonable price for a park with a good number of rides. Your main point of critisism seems to be weird, as you could have known that the park is pretty intense overall.

I haven't visited a lot of theme parks, but would visiting more parks make this park better? Like Liampie said, if the park isn't in my top five now, how would visiting more parks change that? 

My main point of criticism wasn't the intensity of the rides, like I said, it's about their target audience, I understand that. My main point of criticism is summarised in the last paragraph of the trip report, and I don't see how visiting more theme parks would change any of the things I said there. 

Is it just me or does every coaster in Walibi Holland (except for Goliath) try to snap your neck?

Faas, your criticism is completely invalid to me, because I recognise how Walibi themes the park. I don't expect them to go full immersion like Phantasialand. To me, Walibi Holland would be a high Silver Park.

Faas, your criticism is completely invalid to me, because I recognise how Walibi themes the park. I don't expect them to go full immersion like Phantasialand. To me, Walibi Holland would be a high Silver Park.

I don't expect them to either, it's just that I can't figure out what they're doing. But maybe it's because i wasn't BORN WITH SWAG.  

What is that hunk of metal hanging below Goliath's lift?

No idea.

 

A walibi employee smashed a 15 year old girl's phone (worth 700 euros) recently and as a compensation they gave her two free tickets to the park and a condom. They smashed a 15 year old's phone and gave her a condom! The clip can be seen below (in Dutch):

 

http://www.dumpert.n..._tim_helpt.html

Not surprising coming from a Dutch park.

Got em

If a 15 year old girl runs around with a 700€ phone, that tells me two things:

 

1. She deserved it to be smashed

2. Her family won't really care

^This guy gets it.

Yeah you guys are right she deserved her phone getting smashed. Fuck that bitch and her nice things. Enjoy your walibi condom you fucking slut! (better?) 

Come on Faas, the story is way more nuanced than an employee smashing a girl's iPhone. From what she tells, her bag fell out of the rack because an employee opened the rack too rough. Not quite the same thing. It looks more like an accident which can happen. 

 

Besides a 15-year old girl doesn't need an iPhone, bad parenting. 

You think they dealt with it properly? What would you think if your 15 year old daughter came home with a broken phone and they gave her a condom? And quit the bullshit that 15 year old girls don't need cool smartphones nowadays. She would be the only 15 year old girl without one. How can you go from this to claiming she has bad parents?

I find her story way to strange to believe that an employee would be so rough her bag falls out. Maybe they were too many bags on the shelf so when it opened one fell out?! Don't know...

 

Saying that she would be the only 15-year old girl without a smartphones is like jumping from a bridge because everybody else does it. Stupid. I wouldn't allow my 15-year child to have an expensive smartphone, why the hell?! The condom is indeed quite awkward. 

700€

 

I went on a UK Coaster trip for that money! I can live for one month for that money!