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davidmorton

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  1. Heres a couple; T-Express (lucky shot over a fence); Eveyone's shot at DCA;
  2. I was there a couple of months ago ; there is a room full of fast-pass-like machines (setup near Space Mountain); You scan your park-ticket(s), enter your ticket "requirements" (show/time/number of peeps) on a screen and it spurts out (or not) the tickets;
  3. Half Pipe at Don Quijote http://rcdb.com/3383.htm (but it never opened)
  4. ^^ think that last image/rendering is flipped L-R? (or the first two are?) Either way, all looking very nice!
  5. I had never been to any of these sort of Halloween events before, but I made it to HHN this year; twice. On a Thursday and then the Sunday 2 weeks ago. Well I REALLY enjoyed it. Yes, there were Qs but thats the sign of popularity isn't it - so I bought the Express pass for the second night. I encountered the roaming hoards lots of times and managed the mazes a few times each. Bill&Ted I enjoyed, thought it was a good (& quite long) show - maybe the Circus show a bit less so, but even then it was worth doing. I realise I don't have "previous HHN" to compare it to, but if that made me enjoy it and its putting other people off, more power to me I suggest! Can't control the weather, and I guess it'd be pretty meh in the rain (did get rain for an hour or so on the Sunday) - but if you can look at the weather forecast, get an express-pass and have a happy attitude, I'd expect you to have a good time!
  6. It was definately working, but just a bit hard to spot unless you are looking for it! -- Waiting around outside the park for my friends with the tickets to arrive; SWARM-1 Looks good as you approach it then; SWARM-2 I liked the station fly-over bit (both on ride and off ride); SWARM-3 And the themeing on the control box was just great! SWARM-4 Its a very quiet ride (themed sound effects apart) SWARM-5 And I didn't realise there was a little manta-like splash thingy... it was a bit hard to see to be honest but it was working. SWARM-6 And the near-misses are good; SWARM-7 SWARM-8 SWARM-9 Instead of closing the park at 4pm, they did a evactuation drill at 4pm - fair enough really. Now everybody wave at the nice random girl waving to you in the picture. SWARM-10
  7. I'd heard that the media day was on the 9th, 10th was a Merlin Friends&Family day (at Thorpe) and 11th the same @Legoland. (could be well wrong about the media day, but I have a friend&family connection, so Saturday is looking good for me )
  8. Theres a cool video of that place over on the photographer Trey Ratcliff's site; http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2011/11/07/abandoned-chinese-disneyworld/ -- Couple of other links too; http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/12/chinas-abandoned-wonderland/100207/ http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china%E2%80%99s-deserted-fake-disneyland.html http://www.timeoutbeijing.com/features/Propaganda/11322/Wonderland-Amusement-Park.html
  9. ^^^ yep pretty sure X2 ate my spare set of glasses last Friday (despite being in a buttoned cargo pocket). I didn't notice they were gone until later on when I was just about to board Tatsu. (Its possible I lost them on that Roadrunner ride which I got in between X2 and Tatsu, but I doubt it). RIP glasses.
  10. Bit more done by Friday the 4th (in the rain ) And heres a bit more, at approx 12:07 Friday 4th November standing at the top of the Sea Lion stadium - that OK for you?)
  11. ^^ most of the Alton pics are HDR (thru Photomatix), basically if a pic looks processed it'll be HDR! And I love my wide angle lens. ^ Main camera is a Canon450D, pocket camera is an old OlympusC70 Zoom. Some of the processed HDR shots are from the Olympus, the main ones are from the Canon. (The only park pics from the Canon are @Alton and @Heide, rest are from the Olympus)
  12. (double-post - I blew the single post charcter limit! 60000!) Day 6 : Wednesday 1st June Right then, deliberately planned to be a no-travel day so I could spend all day in the park (last time I was here in 2006 I had left a bit earlier than I wanted to in order to get somewhere else in the evening). Anyway, same MO as Hansa; the park opens at 9am but they don't run the rides until 10am - except this time I realise that and wander into the park about 10to10 and join the Krake queue (Krake being just about the first big thing you hit when going into the park from the hotel). Theres a fair few peeps ahead of me in the queue filling up the midway, but once it starts testing and they open the queue proper its only 10 minutes or so until I'm on. About to Krake Loading Krake Quick second trip around and you can tell the queue is "light" Krake Queue They have a manned "bag storage" bit on the queue where you deposit your cr@p and pick it up on the way out - nice, but you'd think Merlin would have got some pay- lockers in on that deal pretty sharpish? OK the ride; I liked it. I've never really been an Oblivion fan-boy - its OK, one trick (its a good trick) but after that good start... it just stops. I've been on Sheikra as well and that was better, but felt a bit "lumbering" to me (if that makes sense) - Krake is kinda halfway between the 2. The cars feel lighter, more agile than either Oblivion or Sheikra (and they hold more than Oblivion). So Krake does its "one big trick" too - great view from the front down into the seas below (but not into the rather abandoned mouth of the Krake off to the side; hmmmm) and then you drop, splash (only you don't see any of that splash on ride until you hit the immelman and loop back over it when the water cloud is vanishing away above you. Nice. Then you hit an airtime hill with plenty of airtime and you are done. So short and sweet (much longer than Oblivion tho' ) but really good. I approve. (more pics later, only had the little camera with me in the morning) Since my last visit Heide had very kindly built 3 new coasters, 1 down 2 to get. Indy-Blitz Nothing to write home about here, but is this whole (tiny) western section "new" as well, I could not picture what was here before? There was a huge queue for the last +1 for me Desert Race, so I went off to play on one of my favourite coasters instead; Colossos lift hill Which had a 30 minute advertised wait - turned out to be a bit longer than that as they only had 1 train running (which was starting to wind me up a bit) but then added the second train and then the queue moved more swiftly (1 train opes were the problem with Desert Race too, but they added the second train to that as well about the same time... so why not start the day with 2 trains?) Love this ride - sure I've taken this same picture before as well; Colossos drop Not so sure about the veracity of this though (its not just PBB that is liberal with the interpretation of these things then!) - 6th steepest maybe? ORLY? Couple of goes on Colossos and the Desert Race queue moving much better now means I can get my !Rita credit - not much to say about that ride, possibly a bit more sensible a ride than Rita (which is just such an odd thing to have put into Alton IMHO) but still a bit of a filler-ride to me. Work my way around the rest of the park, skipped the SLC which inexplicably had a large queue whilst Krake was about 10 minutes Scream? Drop tower is fun, their bobsleigh coaster is possibly one of the best of that type, and you gotta think that Big Loop's days are numbered? The Splash Battle is a bit rubbish too; Not Splash Battle (OK I don't actually come across the real Splash Battle until the end of the day!) So half the day done, I nip back to the hotel and get the proper camera out for some fun. This is the entrance way from the hotel to the park (under a windmill) Under the windmill Krake's nicely done station building; Krake (Station) and Krake itself Krake (4) from various angles; Krake (3) and activities; Krake (2) from a distance (+zoom) Krake, drop this shot is probably the best though (and the first one I processed!) Krake Big Loop (corksrew bit thereof) Big Loop The big beauty that looms over the park in wide angle Colossos wideangle and closeup Colossos drop Colossos inbound Airtime! Colossos Hill Heide is all around a big lake if you don't realise; Heide Lake Didn't ride these rapids (they didn;'t have an amusing name like BonBon Land's) Rapids at Heide Good timed shot with Krake and Big Loop both doing something (and there are 5 coasters in this shot) Coaster Count if only the bob had timed it right too, like in this one Schweizer Bobbahn Finish up with a few shots of the hotel, which wasn't a great hotel I though, it was good but not as good as I expected. The bar, where I may have spent a while in the evening - they did put on a show and stuff so thats a good effort considering the hotel was quite quiet. Bar Port Royal Stairway to So really nice day I thought. Great park, couple of great rides, nicely chilled out by the all-you-can-eat (and drink) buffet; ate some German bean sprouts (which in hindsight may not have been the wisest move). ----------------------------------------------- Day 7 : Thursday 2nd June So after yesterday's "no travel" day, today was a "just travel" day. Drove up from Heide Park to Aalborg at the top of Denmark. Odd place; I got to Aalborg mid afternoon, so thought I'd have a wander around the town centre (hotel was just on the edge of the centre by the river) so I wandered up - and it was shut. Seriously, everything was shut. Mid afternoon on a weekday, shut. We used to have 1/2 day closing in the UK, but that went many years ago and our shops are open as much as they can be, but no, not in Aalborg it seems. Shut. Turns out the day before (the 1st) was some sort of late-night opening in the city, and today is in fact a national holiday of some religious significance I was unaware of (40 days after Easter) - (but I've only just worked that out 3 weeks later!) Anyway Aaloborg city was quite pleasant, few nice old buildings such as this one from 1624; Jens Bang's House In keeping with the "shut" theme with Aalborg, their town centre amusement park shut at the end of last season, but I have a wander around the outside of it to seem what I can see; which amounts to not much more than a boomer's lift hill. Quite sad. -- The boomerang's lift is still standing... but the rest of it is in bits on the floor; Rather sad; Bits of another coaster ("Looping" I guess); NO WAY IN here; Day 8 : Friday 3rd June OK clearly I'm only in Aalborg so I can come here; Fårup What a nice day - nice park, nice weather, nice rides. Really nice. Started out with a few trips on their nice launched Gerstlauer Lynet (Lightning) which I really liked. (Nice touch with a construction video going on in the queue line, staifying the geeky enthusiast interest while you wait!) Heres the station; Lynet Station and heres the ride; Lynet Lynet, looping Lynet Lynet Lynet launching Good ride then, very similar to the eurofighters, but the train is smaller and more comfortable I think. The other coasters here are a nice (but unspectacular) wooden one that appeared to have been built to celebrate the park's 50th anniversary (which must have worked since a couple of years later they can put in Lynet - well done you!) Falken way in Falken Hill (not may great places to photograph it from though) Falken They also have one of the ubiquitous spinning wild mice (of which more later) Bat? Which appears to be called "Bat" (Danish "Flagermusen"), Flying Mouse and their oldest (1992) coaster is a junior Vekoma minetrain deep in the trees, which I seem to have failed to take any pics of. Nevermind. The park itself is really nice (I think I mentioned that before), set amongst lots of trees and its very pretty. Boats Falken Pretty popular too, loads of folks out with their picnics; People at Fårup but the place did seem to have something of a trampoline obsession! Every spare bit of space seemed to have a trampoline dumped it in, health&safety nightmare! Trampolineworld On a Fårup train Fårup Swinger Fårup Splash So after my very nice time at the nice Farup, I say goodbye to Lynet (from the car park) and head south again. Lynet ------------------------------------ A little later then (and a bit further south). Check into my hotel in downtown Århus and take the 25 or so minutes stroll out of town to the local park, where lives Tivoli Friheden. Tivoli Friheden Home of one of those SCAD towers Sky Tower (which I did not ride, I blame a long queue, but I might well not have even if it was walk on) Sky Tower They made the punters wear all manner of protection (to save breaking peoples back I assume?) Sky Tower Safety Gear New for this season was a fairly standard big wheel, from where I ca take a few snaps Orkanens Øje All the rides are enclosed in these HUGE sound shields, to protact the locals from the sounds of people enjoying themselves no doubt. Perhaps Alton could invest in some? Eye of the Hurricane The main coaster is Cobra, a Sartori invert which has got to be a first for me. This is a panoramic shot (3 shots stiched together) Cobra at Tivoli Friheden Really slow ops, >3 minutes to cycle a train meant and the busy Friday night crowd meant that it was something like 40 minutes queue for this - not great then Cobra (Drop) Cobra (Roll) Unspectacular ride, not as painful as I anticipated but not very elegant Nicely done trains though. Cobra Flypast Next door to this is ANOTHER (thats 2 for the day) annoying spinning mouse, Tyfonen this time its a Zamperla rather than Farup's Reverchon. Not that that makes it any better of course. Tyfonen Much better is the old Pinfari looper Orkanens Øje seen in the shots from the wheel above. At least this had some character about it. There is also a kiddie credit. I may have been on this, but you can't prove that. Dragen And a big evil looking spin and puke job (which I passed on!) Pegasus The park was really busy, mainly for a concert going on (much like Tivoli in Copenhagen the week before), but that made for a nice enough atmosphere to chill out with a few beers and some food. Busy day then (nice though, although far too many spinning mice) -------------------------------------------- Day 9 : Saturday 4th June After yesterdays Sommerland fun, its off to the other one near Aarhus. That is Djurs Sommerland about 30 minutes drive away. Get there bang on opening and I'm not ashamed to say I was quite excited about the first ride of the day and I positvely rushed to get onto this thing straight away. Piraten And its very good indeed - we'll come back to this later I think! In the same area as the splendid Piraten is this year's new ride "Skatteøen" (Treasure Island). This is a Mack water coaster, so like Poseidon at Europa Park. Djurs advertise the ride as "europas-stoerste-water-coaster" which translates as "largest" - I guess it depends on how you interpret largest, sure this one is higher than Poseidon, but only half as long? Hmmm. Anyway, being new and it being a rather warm Saturday, this has a bit of a queue to it, so I take a few pics as I wait in line; Skatteøen Boat Skatteøen They have done a really good job on the themeing all full of pirate boats and giant skulls and the like Skatteøen Boats Skatteøen Skull And it gives off a lovely big splash Skatteøen from the queue And despite the busy queue, it moves pretty rapidly, really good ops keeping the line moving and they were consistanly dispatching so that one boat was hitting the lift hill as the previous one just drops into the splash. Well done them. The ride itself is good too, not as long (large) as Poseidon which it closely resembles, this one just drops down after the lift hill in a big circle then back up before the final drop into the splash zone. Short and sweet then, but pretty effective. Don't get much wet on the splash which does soak the bystanders though. Skatteøen (Splash) Right then, what else does this park hold... turns out it has a rather splendid mouse-like Gerstlauer bobsled (another type new to me). So off to Thor's Hammer I go with its rather ropey themeing (not ropey/bad, ropey/cheesy perhaps)? Thor looks rather hammered to me? Thor is hammered Hmmmm Scraggy goat! so I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but it was really good. Thors Hammer Thors Hammer Thors Hammer So thats 3 good coasters in the place then. Great stuff! I wander around the rest of the park for a while, and its all really nice too. Lots of greenery, nice healthy trampoline obsession too (not quite as many as at Farup, but still...) I get to their topple tower "Ornen" and watch that for a while, never seen one of these before so its a novelty. Ornen Looks fun? Ornen Wierd sensation riding it, rather like you are continually falling backwards as it spins around and rocks back and forth. Quite cool then. Added wetness - and they do move the ride into the fountains, didn't catch it on camera but they soaked the next cycle. Topple Tower Wet Next to the topple tower was the flume, but didn't ride that (silly queue) Splash Had some lunch and eventually found myself in the wild-west area where they have a wave swinger. I like wave swingers and usually have a go, but as I watch this one it does 2 things I have never seen on a wave swinger... first up it has a bunch of fountains that they use to soak the riders (and they do get soaked), then it stops and cycles in reverse. I brave the soaking just for the sake of the reverse experience and I don't think I've laughed as much on one of these before! Wet Wave Swinger Their rapids ride had been down all day, but I notice it had just opened, so I have a quick bash on that (and it must have literally only just opened since I walked straight through the queue yet as I exit the queue line is completly full; good timing there!) OK so I've "done" the park (didn't lower myself to te kiddie coaster this time) so I re-ride Skatteøen which prompty breaks down as my boat finishes the circuit. Skatteøen broken So after sitting on the exit ramp for a while, they evac the boats and I can escape from this treasure island! Skatteøen evac Onto serious business now and I just reride Praten again and again for a while. Interesting this too breaks down a couple of times so sometimes I have to wait while they fix it (never quite sure what was broken but they had to manually release people from a train a couple of times), otherwise its just a 5 minute queue between rides. Nice. Very nice in fact. Probably longest queue for it I saw, even this is only 10 minutes with no break downs. Piraten lift Take a final shot up its lift hill after my last ride; View up Piraten lift and then I spend a while taking some pics of the nice toys. Piraten Skulls Piraten drop Skatteøen Skatteøen dropping Skatteøen about to hit the water Skatteøen (Splash closeup) I leave you with a nice image of the rather brilliant pirate ride then. Piraten ---------------------------------------- Day 9 : Sunday 5th June Ok all coasters done now (but confusingly one more "theme park" to come). I had decided that I liked Arhus quite a lot so I'd spend my last full day in the city and have a looksee around. Thats where I was staying... Arhus, hotel And next door was the rather pash town hall place... Arhus There were a couple of things I fancied seeing in the city, so off I went first to the modern art museum place; ARoS ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum http://www.aros.dk/ Which I rather enjoyed. I do like a bit of modern art, and this place had rather a lot of the stuff since it was pretty big. ARoS Inside I particularily liked the "Get Lost" exhibition of Fredrik Raddum's stuff Neon Bag Head Boy Bag Head Boy http://www.fredrikraddum.no/ The museum has a couple of 'signature exhibits', firstly this Boy by Ron Mueck (which wikipedia tells me was originally exhibited at the Millenium Dome) Boy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck and up on the roof of the place is a panoramic walkway that gives you views out over the city all through various filtered coloured glass. Plays havoc with the cameras white balance though! Your Rainbow Panorama (Purple/Red) Tried a bit of HDR in there, ughhhhh Your Rainbow Panorama (Yellow/Green) But panoramas worked; Your Rainbow Panorama Inside Your Rainbow Panorama Panorama Its called Your Rainbow Panaorama and its by Olafur Eliasson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olafur_Eliasson http://www.olafureliasson.net/ So I really liked ARoS - good work Arhus. ARoS Right then, this other "theme park" to which I referred earlier is called Den Gamle By (The Old Town) and is a bit of one of the local park's set aside to house all these (genuine) olde-worlde Deanish builings. The place itself is 100 odd years old (and some of the buildings a few hundred more) - they regularily move buildings from all over Denmark to here to retain that history. Cool! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_Gamle_By Anyway was a pleasant place to stroll around for a few hours looking at the various buildings and failing to understans anything that the costumed characters that populated the place were going on about. Den Gamle By (1 of 9) Den Gamle By (2 of 9) Den Gamle By (3 of 9) Den Gamle By (4 of 9) Den Gamle By (5 of 9) Den Gamle By (6 of 9) Den Gamle By (7 of 9) Den Gamle By (8 of 9) Den Gamle By (9 of 9) Day 10 : Monday 6th June Nothing to see here. Drive back from Arhus to Copenhagen airport via the rather spectacular Storebælt bridge (http://www.storebaelt.dk/english) with its rather spectacularly steep toll charge 220 DKK = £26 ; ouch! (Clearly since I was driving I don't have any pictures of this and when I stopped on the far side there was not anywhere I could immediately see to get a good view of the thing) So thats it. Denmark (and a bit of Germany) done. Back to the daily grind for a while. Flags
  13. Hello, I recently had a couple of weeks holiday from work, and went off around Denmark and a bit of Germany (like you do). Just before that I had a day at my local park, just to get me in the mood. This is what went on then (its gonna be a LONG post); (and apologies if you've seen this TR elsewhere, I'm non-exclusive and I thought TPR could have a looksee too!) -- Summer is here, booked a couple of weeks off work and had totally failed to get myself sufficiently organised / motivated to do anything "long haul" I found myself sitting at home with the said 2 weeks stretching out in front of me... So a quick trip to Alton Towers to get me in the mood, then I book some flights, hotels, hire cars and hot foot it off to the continent. Alton doesn't really count as the "trip", but I'll dump some pics here just to get us going... (click through the pics to get to larger ones) Day -3 : Tuesday 24th May Nip down to Alton, spend the morning on the rides (needed to get the Th13teen credit), and the afternoon with the camera. So in no particular order; Nemesis Loop-de-loop Ritablur Towers Chapel Staircase Towers HDR Don't Look Down The Gardens at Alton Corkscrew - Rust In Peace Nemesis AIr Toadstool Hex Up on the Roof Inside a Tower XSector Ruined On The Edge Obilviblur EnterObilvion Ghost of the Sea He Made The Desert Smile Note that picture quality will vary as to whether I have my proper camera with me (as above, or when I'm not wandering around a park) or just my compact (as with most of the parks to come) Day 1 : Friday 27th May Easyjet from Manchester to Copenhagen, train from airport to the city, turns out I can actually see Tivoli from my hotel window (that was not exactly planned), so seeing that Friday nights are meant to be popular at the place off I trot to see why. Nice place - like a lot of the places in Denmark it seems to have evolved from somewhere that people just used to go to to chill out / picnic / have a meal into something a but more organised. Most of the people there were just there to be there (if that makes sense) and the rides and stuff was incidental to all that. The people there were there for the restaurants, the beer, the evening concert show thing (which was seemingly confused when the main band didn't turn up and the support band got promoted to the 10pm headline slot) Anyway, the rides; I'd be happy to say I just didn't fancy this (I didn't!) but there was a stupid long queue and a capacity of peeps every 5 minutes (only running one side) was enough to put me off anyway! It looked bonkers though - I've read the reviews but I'm still sure it would have messed my brain up! Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Vertigo Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen Star Flyers should scare me, they do a bit still. Didn't help by it starting to rain when I was up there! Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Star Flyer Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen Really liked the old wooden "roller coaster" (great name). Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Rutschebanen And I thought that the mini-B&M floorless was good enough, impressively squeezed into the park's limited space. Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Daemonen Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Daemonen As it got dark, the place got all lit up nicely. Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen Day 2 : Saturday 28th May No parks today - culture credit trip around Copenhagen! Quite a pleasant city I thought. Mermaid statue is a real anti-climax (but I knew this before I wandered up there). Mermaid Really liked the old Rundetårn in the city. Rundetårn Dumped myself in an Irish bar for the football match in the evening, loud cheers when Barca scored (yay!), but in fairness much louder from the Irish expats when Rooney equalised (boo). As an aside I saw a lot of Barca shirts around Denmark as a whole - a fair few Utd and Liverpool ones as well, but mostly the kids were wearing Barca. ------------------------------------------ Day 3 : Sunday 29th May Done Copenhagen then (nice), Barca having successfully negotiated the football to my satisfaction, light hangover caused by the former fading away I hit the train and head up the coast a little bit; To here. Aquarium I've mentioned before that I do like aquariums so when I'm somewhere random I do try to get the aquarium-credit as well as the coaster-credits. Denmark's (National) Aquarium was not much cop to be honest though, pretty small, very old looking. ("They" are going to build a super new "Blue Planet" aquarium in the next couple of years down near the airport so I guess no one cares much about this old one anymore; (New aquarium pic - not mine!; ) However a still had a good couple of hours there, looking at all the pretty fishes but there wasn't anything much spectacular to report on and I am still failing to take any devent pictures in these places These Stone Fish are great; not so much if you tread on one though, that'll kill you. Flat; PIRANAH (and awful reflections in the glass ) You are not a fish! The big show tanks, the highlight of the place; (not so great then) -- The Aquarium is actually right by the coast, so wandered down there and had some lunch in a cafe overlooking the sea and then headed a little further up the coast to Bakken. Quite liked the place, nothing spectacular though. Was pretty busy with the Sunday afternoon family day trippers (fair enough) and was in a great location bang in the middle of a forest (10 mins walk from the train). I don't apprear to have taken many pics at this park, so you'll have to do with these... The very splashy log flume (which I passed on!) New trains on Rutschebanen I really liked their Rutschebanen (as well as Tivolis the other day). Thought the automatic trains worked well (but I never experienced it with the brake man so nothing to compare against really) but they were pretty comfortable, nice enough restraints and if you didn't know there used to be a brakeman you wouldn't have realised it was different. Rutschebanen, Bakken Racing, their Flitzer, I've ridden only one other of these (at Morey's a couple of years ago) and wasn't wowed by either. But this I really liked; Was totally taken aback by the launch off the top of the lift hill and then you are thrown around (and around) something rotten. Great stuff, if a little short but you can hardly complain about that in a compact park this size and this old! The mine train was pretty good too (don't seem to have any pics of that) but it did "go down" after my ride so I only got the one go on that - BOO. ------------------------------------------ Day 4 : Monday 30th May Initially I thought today was going to be somewhat of a logistically complicted day. In the end it was pretty easy. Logistical step #1 Get to Hertz in Copenhagen, get hire car, negotiate Copenhagen traffic in car with driving wheel on wrong side AND gear stick in the wrong place (pretty familiar with being on the wrong side of the car/road, don't think I had done the manual gears before though?) Car Logistical step #2 Drive to here; BonBon Land Wasn't quite sure what to expect from this place, looked really "tacky" to me but it was in fact really nice. They definately have gone somewhat overboard with the fibreglass cartoon character type things, but the whole place is like that so it works! Dog! For some reason I had it in my head that the spinning coaster was just your standard (annoying) spinning mouse, so I was quite happy to discover this was not the case and it was much better; Hankatten (and I've only just realised that this is a clone of the ride at SFDK that I did last year - clearly I'm not paying enough attention to these things. Enjoyed this one more then!) Hankatten You can probably tell from the lack of peeps in these pics that the place was empty - one ride-op I was talking to said that it was the first operating Monday of the season and that was why. So with no queues to cope with it was all a pretty leisurely experience at the park for me. Next up was what I though was going to be a standard Zierer Tivoli which I'd done a few of, but it was a lot more custom than that with trenches dug into a lake and stuff like that, pretty good indeed then. Viktor Vandorm Onto the original Euro-fighter then; Vild-Svinet A bit rough I guess, but good fun anyway. Vild-Svinet And the final coaster is the infamous dog-fart ride. Which is just a little kiddy ride really (albeit with a somewhat low-brow theme!) Hundeprutte-rutsjebanen The place had a lot of other rides too, a pretty good rapids; Beaver Rafting (how can you resist a ride called that!) This is the entrance to their "new for 2011" attraction which was a "5D" shooter which just means that you are watching a 3D movie, sat on a little saddle thing that moves around (+1D) and trying to shoot stuff in the movie (+1D). Was OK, nothing earth shattering - but the ride-op very nicely (since I was the only one on the ride) ran it with the English soundtrack instead of Danish (or at least I assume he did that rather than it only having an English soundtrack!) Hestorado The ride is western themed and located in their cowboy town, which was really living up to the ghost town theme today. Ghost Town Have I mentioned the gaudy characters everywhere? Fibreglass stuff Job lot of firbeglass somewhere; Fibreglass stuff Turtle themed wave swinger - great stuff! Turtle wave swinger And a giant albatross disk-o - you just can't make this up! Albatossen Wacky themed (giant fish!) pirate ship thingy; Themed pirate ship More fibreglass stuff And they also have one of those monster Huss frisbees which ran a few times that day; Svend Singram But not for me since when I tried after seeing it running, I sat there talking to the ride-op for about 20 minutes waiting for more punters to turn up (they will only run it with 10 passengers) and no-one came, so I went off for some food instead. Logistical step #3 Drive off the the end of the country onto a ferry. Leaving Denmark Logistical step #4 Negotiate stupid German traffic jams for a while and find silly little hotel in the middle of noweheresville, Germany. All logistical problems now sorted (with the exception of where to eat that night which just ended up being some stuff I bought from the local supermarket!) -- It turned out that noweheresville, Germany was quite a pleasant seaside area with a nice beach and stuff; Haffkrug beach So I entertain myself for a while wandering the beach, taking some snaps Haffkrug Huts and admiring the view... Haffkrug/Hansa Closer up on that view... Hansa from a distance Haffkrug Pier (No prizes for working out where I am tomorrow then) --------------------------------------------------------- Day 5 : Tuesday 31st May So as expected I nip up the coast the couple of miles to Hansa Park. Got there at park opening (9am) not realising they just open the park and don't run anything 'till 10am - d'oh. Hansa Park (Like the fact all the maintenance workers were dressed as super Mario!) REALLY liked the place - it was much bigger than I had imagined, although it does seem to have a really well defined "park shape" and then suddenly there is this expansion area creeping off seemingly at random in the adjacent field - quirky! Headed up to the main ride first up then, past the scary queue line Scared crow? and off on the launched Eurofighter Fluch von Novgorod Which I really liked Fluch von Novgorod Enclosed lift hill is 2/3rds way round the ride and has lots of creepy stuff going on inside Fluch von Novgorod Overview (from the sky tower) Hansa Park, Fluch von Novgorod So yeah, liked this - I hadn't really read up on it much apart from the general impression that people thought it was good, so the way the elements worked together all took me a bit by suprise and that was good! The exit from the ride throws you out randomly in Mexico (very odd) next to this ride (which the park seems to count as a coaster, when its clearly not, silly people) but its fun anyway. El Paso Express A couple of the older coasters are at the front of the park, all entwined. Nessie Superrollercoaster I really liked the Nessie superrollercoaster (what!) which was a great old Schwarzkopf that actually dives into the mouth of the monster it is named after; Nessie Gets Eaten (unlike Krake manages to do tomorrow!) The other coaster in that lucky aerial shot above (lucky since both trains are in shot) is Rasender Roland which I couldn't get out of my mind calling Roland Rat all day in my head - it was a bit shaky to be honest but fun enough. So off in the seemingly random expansion area is a bunch of other rides, pretty worthy ones too. We have a spinny raft thing (which looked a lot better than this years effort from Thorpe?) Rio Dorado and the bizarre (stupid low capacity) but fun Bell ride; Die Glocke A nice Star Flyer (getting used to these things now) Star Flyer and tucked in a corner a pretty highly themed wild mouse, I do prefer these things to their spinning relatives and this one had a load of themey stuff going on Crazy Mine Also in this area is this years new ride "Die Schlange von Midgard" (Snake of Midgard), which isn't much more than a kiddy coaster over a little lake; Die Schlange von Midgard which they had not finished fitting out yet (queue line was incomplete, gift shop was still being built) and it appeared there was a tunnel to be built mid-ride which wasn't there yet; Die Schlange von Midgard but if you think I'm being critical about all of that, entirely the opposite is true - despite still working on the themeing the fact they had the ride open I was well impressed with! Heres the train in close up; New trains So yeah, really liked the place, suprisingly large and really nice. Nessie After saying goodbye to Hansa, headed down the motorway for a bit, got stuck in many traffic jams circumnavigating Hamburg in the pouring rain, but ended up at the hotel for the next 2 nights at Heide Park. Port Royal Which was nice.
  14. Great Pyrenees video. Whats with Parque Espana, is there ever anyone there (apart from coaster enthusiasts)? I've only ever seen pics of the place empty, and the day I went there it was deserted too. Does it EVER get busy? (Concerned for the place!)
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