2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Skyline Park, Legoland Deutschland
Saturday July 31st
Skyline Park
Another early start, followed by a two hour drive, brought us to Skyline Park. I used the time to finish off my trip diaries from the previous few days. I'd written drafts already, but as with anything written while tired, some of the grammar and spelling was more than a little suspect.
As a general rule, when I visit a park, I hit all the coasters first; one after another. Today at Skyline Park, however, was to be an exception. The reason for this is that Skyline Park includes a Booster-style ride (a fifty metre plus rotating arm with seats on each end) and a Reverse Bungee as part of the admission price. Both normally cost at least five euro and often more, so riding both for free was an opportunity not to be missed. If nothing else, though I had previously ridden a booster, I had never ridden a Reverse Bungee.
First off, therefore, I made my way to the Sky Circle, the booster style ride. The Fabbri model that I had ridden before has very secure restraints closed via machinery at the loading platform. This one, however, had much more flexible restraints, leaving the rider a lot of room to bounce around. I am of mixed minds as to whether this was a good thing or not; there is no doubt that it made the ride a much more exhilirating experience, as you were free to enjoy the floating sensation to the max, but on the other hand it did result in some nasty collisions with the front and the back of the seat. Once was enough (but on the other hand, once a day is enough for any Booster ride as a rule).
The Sky Shot reverse bungee is one of the modern models using a cage of springs to accelerate the rider capsule instead of bungee cords. This allows for vastly improved reliability and safety; bungee cords do snap occasionally after all. Unlike the Sky Circle, the restraints on this are very firm; once harnessed, you are not going anywhere. As the cage rolls backwards in preparation for launch, you cannot help but feel butterflies in your stomach, but once the launch happened it was like a revelation. I can't believe I put off riding one of these for so long; flipping around ninety metres up in the sky was really good fun.
Having been in the park over an hour and a half, it was time to start on the coasters. Sky Rider (#329) is a very rare Caripro suspended spinning coaster.
Bob Racing is a highly unusual bob sled ride. I have never seen anything like this before; the rider can control their speed via a lever on their sled, like any bob sled, but this one has no drops for picking up speed; instead, there is an electrical pickup on the left hand side of the sled driving a motor.
The Sky Fall is by far the strangest tower ride I have ever been on. Both Niki and I were in stitches laughing about this. It needs to be ridden to be believed, but basically the ride moves up and down gently, tilting bafckwards and forwards. Some of the drops are quite sudden but none are more than five feet; I'd guess the whole tower might have been 40ft high? Whatever it was, it was strange; the general consensus from the group later on the coach was what the heck was that?
The Achterbahn (#330) is an aging Schwarkzopf wild cat ride which looks like its days are numbered. It is one of the noisiest coasters I have ever been on, and though it rides smoothly enough it definitely needs a new coat of paint, and maybe some other maintenance too. Some other group members managed to get stuck in a car at one stage of the day, and the ride operator had to push it to the next drive tire, though no such problems were evident when we rode it.
The last coaster in the park is really two side by side coasters. However, the park map refers to them as one, so I will do likewise; they are the Butterflies (#331). The Butterfly ride is built by Heege Freizeittechnik, and is very popular in Germany. It consists of a V-shaped track holding a single two seater car, which is towed to the top of one side and released to roll back and forth until the car stops again in the middle. The ride is operated by the rider and by one person outside it who presses the button to start it when all the harnesses are secure. I took one ride on each of the tracks; the first was shuddering a little but the second was much smoother; perhaps the first had a loose wheel bearing or something?
After a quick diversion to do the ridiculous Sky Fall tower again, we did the Alte Liebe, a Huss Pirate Boat, and the Reisenrad ferris wheel. We walked over to the Sky Carts ride but the queue was too long for our remaining time in the park, so we made our way back to the coaches. After a brief talk with the park owner, we were on the road again, this time on the way to Legoland Deutschland.
Legoland Deutschland
Legoland Deutchland is my third lego park this year, having visited both Windsor and Billund in May. The park feels very much like the poor relation in the Lego family; that's not to say it's a bad park; more that it feels like a generic theme park laid out with a checklist of rides from the other parks, rather than using any imagination. There is substantially less Lego here than the other parks; the rides are still good, but a little less concrete didn't hurt.
One of the main coasters at Legoland is Project X - Lego Test Strecke (#332). This is a standard Mack wild mouse, oddly enough only the second standard model we've encountered this week (the first being this one). Waiting half an hour for a wild mouse is never ideal, but it had to be done once.
Like the other Lego parks, there are two other coasters; a junior dragon coaster, and a larger dark ride and coaster combination. The junior model in this case is Drachenjagd (#333). Some of our larger members faced quite a challenge getting into this one without permanent damage to kneecaps, myself included, but once through the ordeal of boarding the ride itself was very good, especially when you consider it is aimed at younger ones.
The larger coaster and dark ride combination is Feuerdrache (#334). The dark ride section was quite good, but the coaster section must have had square wheels; neither Andrew or I enjoyed this one much.
With the coasters out of the way, it was time to ride my favourite ride from Legoland Billund, BIONICLE Power Builder. This is an indoor attraction featuring ten Kuka "Robo Coaster" arms with two seats on each. Riders can program the ride to do a series of inversions, transitions which would not be possible on either a Roller Coaster or a spin ride. Individual rides last approximately 45 seconds and are great fun. 45 seconds is, incidentally, about the right length; this is the sort of ride that too many rides would result in severe nausea!
We stopped at this point for some food, and both Andrew and I had a bowl of vegetables. The last few days have not had many options for healthy eating, so I put my foot down and insisted we take them here.
After dinner, George, Andrew, and I did the Dschungel X-pedition flume ride. The posted wait of thirty minutes turned out to be nearly an hour in reality, but we passed the time helping some of the Germans in the queue practice their English. Nobody could believe that we had hit so many parks in the last nine days, and to be completely honest it has become a blur to me too at this point; I'm glad I wrote diaries every night as I went along, as I honestly can't remember any of the earlier parks at the moment. Anyway, I digress; the flume itself was well worth the wait. This one featured two turntables and a backwards drop, which is completely hidden from the rest of the park so first time riders have no idea it is coming.
We left the park at 8pm for the drive back to Stuttgart. Tomorrow features the last park of the trip, Tripsdrill.