2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Europa Park (#2)
Friday July 30th
Europa Park
Our morning at Europa Park began with a thirty minute ERS on Silver Star (#326). This is the newest of the four existing B&M hyper coasters, but you wouldn't know it to ride; it has some very un-B&M like shuddering. That's not to say it's rough by any means; it's just not quite as smooth as other two I've been on. As a ride itself it is not bad by any means, featuring floating airtime throughout. It is not an upper echelon coaster, but as the park manager explained to us last night, it is aimed at a target audience of families, not thrill seekers; one only has to watch the faces of riders disembarking to see that the park has gotten exactly what they wanted. I managed a total of eight rides during the ERS. Thank you to the park for allowing us to use cameras on ride.
The ERS began only after the second engagement of the trip, when Robert proposed to Lisa. She said yes, and both sat in the front row of an otherwise empty train for the first ride of the day.
Based on advice from Miro the night before, we headed over to the two busiest attractions immediately after the ERS, riding both Poseidon and Matterhorn Blitz. Though I'd ridden both yesterday, it was nice to ride them again without being so tired.
We moved over to Schweizer Bobbahn (#327) next. This was a disappointly average bob sled ride, not a patch on the one at Heide Park a few days ago. The middle section of the ride wasn't bad, but the start (and end) were boring. On the plus side, I was very impressed with the speed of dispatches; the ride was running five trains, and the trains were being dispatched ridiculously fast - almost as fast as the people could board.
At this stage of the day, Euro Mir was closed due to the accident the day before. After admiring it briefly - it is pretty photogenic as coasters go, after all - we decided to go ride the powered coaster. On the way, however, we encountered the Tiroler Wildwasserbahn log flume. I am still not sure why the ride had a Yodelling course in the queue line; the only purpose I could come up was to annoy the guests waiting in line!
Beside the log flume was the Alpenexpress powered coaster. The very nature of a powered coaster design precludes operating more than one train, but Europa have solved that one by running a nineteen car train, seating thirty eight people for the ninety second ride. In comparison to the other rides in the park the capacity is nothing special, but in comparison to other powered coasters it's pretty good, especially when you consider the dispatch time of around fifteen seconds, in which the train is unloaded and loaded again.
Lunch was served at the Balthasar Castle, and was very good. Due to a rather amusing mix up by the kitchen, our group ended up with eighty seven vegetarian lunches and only three normal meals, but most people didn't mind. I have to admit that I am amazed that the kitchen didn't query such a strange order; I can only speculate that they thought we were a club of vegetarians or something like that? At any rate, Miro announced that because it was the park's fault, they were going to give us one complimentary drink each, which went down very well. Well done Europa.
The entire group went straight from lunch to ride Euro Mir (#328), which was now up and running again. The lift system on the ride is identical to that on Eurosat, but the similarities end there; Euro Mir features trains of four spinning cars. The spinning is strictly controlled and the cars rotate at specific and predictable times, but nonetheless it does mean that riders take sections of the ride facing backwards. Niki enjoyed the coaster so much that Andrew and I joined her for a second circuit.
I took Andrew over to the Magic Cinema 4D next; I knew he had never experienced a 4D cinema attraction before, and I figured that Europa Park would probably be the last opportunity on this trip for me to take him to one. It was very amusing to watch him flinch and duck out of the way as various projections appeared to leap out of the screen!
Europa's answer to Disney's Haunted Mansion is the Ghost Castle. The ride has a darker theme than the Disney version, with some scenes that were genuinely startling. It took several minutes but I finally dragged Andrew away from the ghost shop, and we took a quick trip up the Euro-Tower observation tower and I attempted to take some photographs. It remains to be seen if any of them will be any good; the windows were clean but scratched in a few places, so this will probably be a job for Photoshop.
Andrew spotted the Schlittenfahrt dark ride. I think the name may have caught his attention; the actual translation is that of Sleigh Ride. Regardless, the ride itself was a strange experience, not up to the standard of the rest of the park.
This was in sharp contrast to the Cassandra's Curse haunted swing ride. This ride is quite small by Europa Park standards, with a limited throughput of people. However, it is the best theming I have seen on a haunted swing to date, and it didn't have the rather embarrasing ending found on the one in Phantasialand a few days ago.
A second ride on Schweizer Bobbahn was a major improvement on earlier in the day; the ride had obviously warmed up properly. The middle section of the ride was very good, good enough that the lacklustre first section could be forgiven.
Where Ghost Castle is a slightly modified Haunted Mansion, Pirats in Batavia is a major development of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. The lack of that godawful Yo! Ho! Ho! song is a major improvement of course, but even with that out of the way the detail on the models is simply spectacular. WHile nowhere near as long as the Disney ride, it wouldn't surprise me if the total investment was larger; I can only imagine how much work has gone into the ride.
Mark had suggested earlier in the day that everyone to the World of Diamonds walkthrough. This didn't do much for me, though I can see why others would like it. The one interesting thing about it, though, is that it shares a building with both the log flume and the powered coaster, with superb results. As I mentioned in my diary from Hansa Park, I really like when parks design rides to interact with each other, as I believe it adds excitement value, even if it makes them somewhat of a challenge to photograph.
Neither Andrew or I had ever seen a laser show before, so we went into the Time Travel show. The concept is pretty simple; brightly flashing laser beams draw colourful images right in front of you. I really liked this, though Andrew was bored by it.
We ran into Peter and Niki outside the laser show, and the four of us walked over to the Universe of Energy dark ride, a trip through a land full of Dinosaurs. Once again, the detail on the ride was super; the entire ride felt like travelling through a scene from Jurassic Park.
We finished the day in the park with a second ride on the Fjord-Rafting, followed by a period of time standing on one of the bridges armed with cups of water. We finally stopped after one of the riders we'd hit unleashed a few sentences of irate german. None of us had a clue what had been said, but we decided enough was enough!
The two hour drive to the Holiday Inn in Stuttgart was uneventful. After the luxury of the Colosseo last night, this is a bit of a rude awaking; more than half the floor we're on is a construction site! Nevertheless, our room looks like it has just been refurbished, which is something...