2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Hansa Park, Hamburger Summerdom
Saturday July 24th
Travelling
We left the Holiday Inn at 7:15am to catch a lift to the airport. Andrew was told that George was going to a business meeting in Italy, and we were just hitching a lift back to the terminal to catch the Heathrow Express into London.
While walking through the gate of the terminal I decided the charade had run its course, so I asked Andrew if he remembered how I'd asked him the night before if he'd like to go another park? He replied in the affirmative. I said I'd arranged something, and I handed him the schedule for the German trip. He responded initially with disbelief, and then with a string of insults in my direction for the alternative scenario he had been expecting! I think the disbelief only began to disappear when I took his photo in front of the Lufthansa flight that was to bring us to Hamburg.
Our flight, the second from Heathrow carrying club members, was uneventful. Apparently there was a crazy mix up in the first flight leading to them arriving at Hansa Park just five minutes before we did despite a much earlier departure. I'll let someone actually on the flight fill in the details in their report!
Hansa Park
Hansa Park has an interesting history. It was originally opened in 1973 as Legoland Sierksdorf, only the second Legoland after Billund in Denmark. The park was sold a few years later, and Lego set up its German park at another location.
The first coaster of the day became Nessie (#298). I was planning to save this for my three hundredth coaster, but it was the first thing the group arrived at, so I decided I'd ride it anyway. Like so many of Schwarzkopf's other creations, this ride has aged very well and runs as good as new. It was, in fact, the smoothest coaster in the park, despite the fact that it is by far the oldest, dating from 1979. This was also our first experience of German efficiency; this ride runs two trains with just a single ride operator, who walks quickly up the train to make sure all the lap bars are down correctly before dispatching. In any other park anywhere else in the world there would be six people running this ride and they would not be dispatching the trains as frequently.
Rasender Roland (#299) is an unusual Vekoma ride which threads through Nessie's loop on two seperate occasions. It doesn't have any major drops; the emphasis here is on lateral forces, with sustained lateral Gs reminiscent of Titan at Six Flags Over Texas. Having coasters intertwine like this adds significantly to the ride excitement; I wish more parks would design their rides like this.
The third and final coaster at the park was Crazy Mine (#300), a Maurer Wild Mouse identical to the Rattlesnake at Chessington yesterday. When we arrived at it all the ride had e-stopped; there were cars sitting in all the visible block brakes. However, they quickly got the ride going again, and we were soon able to ride. As a side note, even without the breakdown this ride had the longest wait of the day, at twenty five minutes. I'm not entirely sure why; it was pretty violent, just like the one at Chessington, but with an added twist; the few trim brakes on the ride were quite sudden and caused quite a few pained expressions from riders.
On the plus side, this ride had an unusual feature; a staircase beside it for taking photographs from. I caught quite a few good pictures from here. The picture above shows Martin and Jeff in the front seat, with George and Paul in the back. They all look happy, probably because it was taken at the start of the ride before any of the more sudden jolts!
Andrew wanted a try on the Blaue-Berge, a giant bouncing castle style ride for adults. I have never seen anything quite like this before, but nevertheless I elected to stand beside it to take photographs while he jumped high in the air. Jumping high into the air seemed to be a theme for Andrew today; I took some pretty funny photographs of an airborne Andrew in front of different signs.
In the queue for the Giant Drop, we ran into George and Martin. The tower itself was a Maurer model, and therefore motor driven rather than gravity driven. For this reason, the limited height of about 90 ft meant the ride was effectively pointless, and we were all bored by it. Motor driven drops can work well, as evidenced by Ewald Schneider's Power Tower 2 that visited Dublin this past christmas, but they need to be pretty big to be effective, and this wasn't.
This was in sharp contrast to the Rio Dorado, a rather good spinning rapids ride. The only other ride of the type I have been on was at Six Flags Astroworld, and I very much enjoyed this one.
At this point we were all getting hungry. It was, after all, 3:30pm and none of us had eaten since breakfast (unless you count in flight catering -- I don't!). We stopped for a very welcome lunch break, and it was a major relief to find a waitress who spoke English. It was also a relief to realise we were back in a country using the Euro; it would be so much easier if the UK used the Euro too.
We hit Nessie another time on the way across to the Wildwasserfahrt log flume. With five people in the boat at this point (we'd picked up Talmat along the way), we created a very impressive splash on the final drop. This was supplemented by somebody in the boat reaching out and sending a large splash over everybody else. I wonder who!
We finished up our time in Hansa with a final ride on Nessie.
Hamburger Summerdom
The Hamburgerdom Fair was my first encounter with a German fair. The first thing you see upon approaching the fairground - once you have passed under the brightly coloured sign, that is - is Alpina Bahn (#301). Despite being entirely portable, Alpina Bahn presents quite an appearance. It is, to say the least, huge; one can only begin to imagine how much work is involved in moving it around. Rather than going straight to ride, we were taken around the back of the ride and introduced to Angela Bruch, the owner of the ride. Angela generously allowed groups of us to take photographs from inside the structure of the coaster. The only provisos were the obvious ones; watch your head, watch your step, and don't touch anything!
One of the most interesting things for me was seeing the electrical shed inside the coaster boundaries. I was quite amazed at the sheer number of switches and indicators for the ride. The lights are constantly changing to indicate where trains are on the track, and you can hear the constant clatter of relay switches keeping everything under control. After our tour, during which I got some wonderful photographs, we were given two complimentary ride tickets and some other assorted souvenirs. Of course neither Andrew or myself could wait to ride, so we'd already taken one circuit while some of the group were still touring inside. But we were nevertheless glad to get extra goes for free!
Our first circuit on Alpina Bahn was taken in the back seat. It wasn't as smooth as Nessie was this afternoon, suffering from some mild vibration. On the other hand, it is both taller and faster in addition to being portable, so it is unfair to be critical, especially when you consider the usual state of the Pinfari looper that appears in Dublin from time to time.
A rapid walk across the fairground took us to Black Hole (#302), the other coaster, in this case a very old partially enclosed model by Schwarzkopf. I'm reasonably certain I've ridden this layout before, but not in the dark, and the general consensus among the group was that it wasn't bad at all. Moving a roller coaster from place to place is a big job in itself, which makes me wonder why anyone would want to move a big building to go around it too. It works though; the enclosure improves what would be a fairly decent ride anyway.
We used our free vouchers to get in a second circuit on Alpina Bahn, this time in the front seat. Many thanks to George for taking the photograph you see across. Alpina Bahn is much more fun in the front seat compared to the back. The slight vibration felt in the back was totally absent, and the rush of the wind rushing in your face was the perfect way to end the night.
Though there were many interesting looking spinning rides at the fair, I decided to bring Andrew back to the hotel early (defined as about 10:15pm) as breakfast tomorrow is at 6:15am and I figured both of us would cope better with the extra sleep.