Photo TR: European Extravanganza: Updated 31/05/10

[exmouseHave I mentioned how awesome donkeys are?]

Last week I went on a bit of a crazy long way round mainland Europe tour. The tour would involve visiting, France, Germany, Belgium, UK, Germany, Finland using a minibus, the Channel Tunnel and good old Ryanair.

The first leg was to take our minibus via Channel Tunnel to France to visit Nigloland. But due to an incident in the Tunnel, involving a full evacuation and the fire brigade, our crossing was delayed by 3 hours. This meant there was no way we'd make to Nigloand. So thanks to RCDB and a Motorola Droid we found an alternative park. And so day 1 of the tour started at Dennlys Parc near Calais.

Dennlys is in the process of building an Intamin compact coaster, which was sadly far from ready. But the park did have one small coaster, and more importantly a large playground with lots of rides that adults could enjoy.

[larrygatorObsessive Overlord of the TPR Park Index]

Too bad you didn't make it to Nigloland as we haven't seen a Photo TR from there in years, but at least you were about to detour to another park, that has not been showcased on TPR in the past.

[giscoStarbucks Enthusiast]

This looks like a park TPR should visit with those rides. I'm sure at least a few of us would come away with injuries!

[exmouseHave I mentioned how awesome donkeys are?]

Two of us did walk away with injuries. A mate fell over on the large swinging thing, he miss timed his body weight, fell over and skidded along the platform as it carried on swinging. Not sure if his face or knee came off worse. Meanwhile on the do it yourself wave swinger I managed to smack my ankle into one of the fence posts as I'd been swung out so far.

Will upload pix from Walygator in the next couple of days.

[exmouseHave I mentioned how awesome donkeys are?]

Next stop on the tour was Walygator Parc. The reason for going to this park was for their new, 2nd hand, B&M inverter The Monster. The press release I was sent said it was opening end of April, so the trip was planned in mid May to allow for initial bugs to be ironed out. A quick check on the website 2 weeks before confirmed they were on target to open the ride at the end of April. However once we arrived at the park and reached the back end it became blindingly obvious they were months away from opening the new coaster. The track was a long way off being complete, there was zero landscaping done and the stairs from the station didn't reach the ground. I was seriously unimpressed that their website showed it was opening at the end of April when it was never going to happen. Had we known we would have gone to Nigloland instead.

Anyway here are some pix.

[piersTPR's Hairstylist to the Stars!]

Atleast now we know the Topple Tower is still operational! It's usually always closed in people Photo TR's.

[exmouseHave I mentioned how awesome donkeys are?]

After a day at Walygator Parc we spent the evening at a large travelling fair which had 3 credits on offer. The fair is called Metz Foire Du Mai and is held in May in Metz.

There were a few crazy spin n spews, making it's début was a KMG Move It, the largest size they make, Xenox a home made baby Move It, and of course a Huss Breakdance being run on crazy arse setting. Normally I wouldn't go near a Breakdance as their dull, but the European Showmen know how to run these machines properly.

Coaster Wise there was a powered coaster called Tokaido Express which on full chap was pretty intense, a Big Apple and finally Super Railway a very strange beast where the cars literally straddled the track. It had some serious out of your seat AIRtime and the fact it had no restraints made it even more crazy. There had to be a minimum of 3 people to ride so as to wedge people in a bit more to stop riders from flying out. It was great fun and a must do.

[the ghostIt all started with a donkey]

Europe is awesome! Enough said!

[smithlangerI Guess Donkeys Are Okay]

sounds good to me