Massive Europe Trip Report

by **jynx242** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:16 am

Thanks SO MUCH for taking the time to post your pictures and thoughts!! I have enjoyed every bit of your trip report thus-far and look forward to seeing more!

by **Mrenata** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:34 am

Day 8: Wild und Freizeitpark Klotten and Frankfurt Dippemess

Everytime TPR visits Klotten, I ask myself the same question: Why are they so excited about a 17m tall rollercoaster? I mean, this guys have traveled the world, have ridden the biggest and the fastest roller coasters. Why? Why does Heisse Fahrt makes TPR members so happy?

When I told my friends that I was going to drive 168km (104 miles) to visit a park that has just ONE rollercoaster, they called me crazy. Specially because I was going to visit Tripsdrill later on the same trip, and tecnically Tripsdrill has a "Heisse Fahrt" coaster itself. But there had to be something special with Heisse Fahrt. And I had to find out what it was.

Klotten is really in the middle of nowhere. At some point you leave the big roads and drive almost half an hour in some really small roads, with horses and tractors crossing your way. I don't mind that, but it is kinda weird to think that in just a few months that same park will have Germany's tallest water ride.

Klotten was built at the top of a hill, so you have a nice view of villages and pastures that surround the area. The parking is free, they have a nice restaurant at the entrance and a lot of self-operate rides, like the Nautic Jet. They also have a fairly sized zoo.

Heisse Fahrt is really good. On my first ride I was on the front row, so I didn't see anything special about this ride, but it is a complete different experience if you seat on the back row. That's where the fun happens!

I took a lot of pictures of Big Splash's construction. The paint job on the elevator lift seems done and the boats are already there, and they seem ready to go.

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: Heisse Fahrt; Viewed 1288 times

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Frankfurt Dippemess

Best kermis I've ever been!

I felt in love with Frankfurt and everything Frankfurt-related. The people are nice, the buildings are pieces of art and you can find a parking spot anywhere. Lovely, lovely city! I wish I have had more time to visit it.

Frankfurt's Dippemess was special for me because it had 2 rides that were Brazil-related. The first one was TestStrecke, that once was at Playcenter (São Paulo) under the name of Colossus until 1986. The second one was The King, a loop fighter ride. A traveling brazilian park recently bought one of those and it is a HUGE success here in Brazil and I haven't had the chance to ride the brazilian one yet.

The king is a very good ride. It's not Artistico/Konga/XXL material, but I can see why brazilians love it. It's probably the best flat ride we have in Brazil.

Teststrecke was awesome. I've never seen those trains on a Schwarzkpof coaster, but they fit very well.

There were also all the traditional rides and Wild Wasser, a huge, huge log flume. Too bad it was too cold to ride it.

I really loved Frankfurt Dippemess, it was the best kermis of this trip, even better than Hamburg Dom.

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by **jynx242** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:19 pm

I do like the trains!! Question, what was the tower thing??

by **larrygator** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:02 pm

It's great to know the coaster is still running so well. Also nice to see the water ride almost complete, even if it didn't keep it's originally proposed Volcano theme.

by **mattnz** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:06 pm

Awesome trip report. I hope to get to many of these parks in the near future. Great to see Colossus/Laser operating again, and with new trains to boot.

by **alexinla** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:30 pm

jynx242 wrote:I do like the trains!! Question, what was the tower thing??

The Tower is a 9 Story interactive Funhouse with a cocktail/beerbar on the 7th Floor :lmao:

Official Website: http://www.blume-service.de/the-tower/

YouTube Videolink

by **simon8899** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:23 pm

Its funny to see that on the Big Splash construction site the beverage supplier has the same-sized board than planning and engineering - but on the other hand the "Richtfest" is always quite a big party with lots of beers and snaps....

Too bad it's not in Brazil anymore

We trade it with Thriller in Mexico... :roll:

Youtube · by **Randomman295** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:04 am

Great report! Loved the picture of that glorious Schwarzkopf looper. Almost forgot that one existed; glad you reminded me!

by **chadster** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:42 pm

Excellent TR, very impressive, thanks for sharing!

by **Mrenata** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:49 am

Day 9: Europa-Park

Europa-Park was one of the most disappointing parks of this trip. If it wasn't for Blue Fire and Euro Mir, I would say they don't know how to make good rides.

Phantasialand, for example, has less rides, but they have the best ones (best mine train, best inverted coaster, best drop tower...). Europa-Park managed to make crap rides out of big ones.

Their first mistake: The park is too big, and getting around sometimes is a little bit confusing. It rained a lot that day, so you can imagine I had a hard time trying to open the park map to find my way.

The park is really pretty, really wll taken care of, but sometimes I got the feeling that it had too much information.

My first ride was Eurosat, as I was trying to get out of the rain. Another enclosed coaster with a neverending spiral lift, and a catchy eletronic music on the background. The ride os ok, but it's nothing like Disneyland's Space Mountain.

Silver Star was the second ride of the day. I've ridden 4 B&M megas (Nitro, Apollo's Charriot, Diamondback and Silver Star), and Silver Star is for sure the most disappointing one. It has like 1/3 of Nitro's or Apollo's airtime, even thought it has the biggest drop of the four. At least it has a nice building and queue area, with all those race cars displayed.

Matterhorn Blitz has one of the nicest theming on a wild mouse coaster and Schweizer Bobbahn was ok. Better than Efteling's, worst than Heide's bobsled coaster.

Poseidon is probably the best water coaster I've ever ridden. But something just doesn't make sense to me: Why did they build another water coaster (Atlantica SuperSplash), if they already had Poseidon? Specially because Poseidon is better, in my opinion. It is weird a park with 2 water coaster, the newest one being worse than the oldest.

Euromir was really fun, even though it had another neverending spiral lift with a eletronic catchy musinc playing on the backgroung. The ride can be rought sometimes, specially if you're traveling backwards (witch I did), but it's one of the best of it's kind, for sure.

Blue Fire was AMAZING! Specially because I wasn't expecting much. I thought it would be another launched/multi inversion coaster, but it was AWESOME! Made my top 10, for sure. I had no idea that you could have that much of airtime on this kind of layout. And the use of lapbars instead of the otsr is just genius!

Last but nos least, Wodan. I was expecting soooo much from Wodan. But it is just a nice wooden coaster. Not amazing, not awesome. I don't know if it was the weather, the lack of it's original wheels, but it was running slow. I could barely feel any airtime on it. I really hope it gets it's original wheels back, as it seems that Wodan ran 8 seconds faster with them. Any thoughts on that?

On my way back to Frankfurt, I got stuck on a 3 hour trafic jam in the middle of nowhere. The odd thing is that it happened to me 3 times on this trip, all of them in Germany! It seems that they are doing some road work all over the country, and sometimes they just close the road and make you take an alternative route. My GPS didn't understand that and was unable to find me another route, witch made me go throught some scary moments, not knowing what to do. Thank god, it all ended up well!