Richard Bannister

The timings for day twelve of our trip were configured around an evening flight from Moscow to Chelyabinsk. Our schedule had three hours of slack time in it to accommodate city traffic, and that was about the right amount; we lost around half of it to congestion on the MKAD, and much of the rest trying to find parking in the vicinity of Family Park Skazka. Those retracing our steps are advised to allow for the fact that all road journeys in the vicinity of the Russian capital will take longer than they should; we were not at all surprised to learn that the city was declared the world capital of traffic jams in 2018.

ChayLend Park is located in the northern suburbs of Moscow a little over a kilometre from the M8 Highway. The park is one of the few in the greater Moscow area that isn't accessible from the city metro; as of this writing the easiest way to get there by public transport is to take a suburban train from Moscow Yaroslavskaya (Ярославский вокзал) to Mystichi (Мытищи). The walk from the station is a little under two kilometres.

The park is focused primarily on younger visitors. The two attractions of interest to enthusiasts are a twenty car Ferris Wheel and Egypt Coaster (#2803), one of just two recorded examples of the two "loop" SBF Compact Spinning coaster in the Russian Federation. The ride has the same basic theming package as the identically named machine in Turkmenistan, though it has been supplemented with a few extra elements, including a bust of Tutankhamun and a number of fiberglass palm trees. Eight unusually lively laps of the figure eight track cost us ₽170 (~€2.30) per person plus an additional ₽30 (~€0.40) for the required smart card.

Readers may be interested to learn that the other known installation of the type in the country as of this writing is at a shopping mall in Nyagan, around nine hours drive from the next closest coaster (a Wacky Worm) and over five hundred kilometres from the nearest big city. That is a credit I'm unlikely to ever tick; while I'd consider driving that distance for a Pax machine I'm not quite crazy enough to do it for a cookie cutter SBF product!

The Pax Company manufactured fifteen different models of roller coaster over a twenty-five year period between 1988-2013. The longest by some margin is the nine hundred metre Golden Arrow, which features more than twice the track of the smaller Camel Trophy, Formula Pax, and Wild Train 15 designs. The first and only example premiered at Damanskiy Island Amusement Park in mid-2013, though its stay there was exceptionally short; after just four months in situ it was taken apart and placed into storage. Fortunately for enthusiasts around the world it has since rematerialised as the star attraction at Family Park Skazka in the western suburbs of Moscow.

I had high hopes for Lightning (#2804), given that it uses the same style of track as the late and very much lamented Jungle Storm. Unfortunately I'm sorry to report that these were misplaced; the ride was utterly anticlimactic. The first drop was respectable enough, but the rest of the course was a gentle blend of turns that generated sensations not radically different to those found on a typical Roller Skater. There were vague hints of airtime in places, but for the most part the experience was soporific, to the point that the alarm bell noise as the train passed through the station could almost be thought of as a wake up call. On the plus side, we only had to pay the weekday price of ₽300 (~€4.06); some friends of ours visiting on a weekend were stung for ₽400 (~€5.41).

The park's second coaster is Shrek (#2805), an energetic oval of indeterminate origin with a ₽200 (~€2.70) sticker price. The ride was running far faster than usual for the genre, resulting in a gloriously intense ten lap cycle that had us pinned into the side of our seats. As a fun aside, the official web site notes that such an attraction will amuse even the most sad visitors. They're not wrong with that!