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A Series of Unfortunate Delays - Europa Park/Tripsdrill September 2018

Sandman

Giga Poster
Well, it’s been a busy few months for me but I’ve finally managed to sit down with a cuppa and make some progress on this report. Only 4 months delayed, but hopefully that will give it some maturity, much like a fine wine.

In case you missed the rather obvious title, this trip took place in late September and was planned in a way that allowed for a mixture of creds and culture. #pretentious

The trip was a bit of a get together for me and a couple of mates from back home, since I don’t see them very often after moving away. I wanted to make sure that I managed to tick off a couple of new parks that could also appeal to a semi-goon as well as a total newbie. Europa is one of the last big European parks I had yet to visit at this point, thus we decided 2 days there was very reasonable. Initially we had wanted to squeeze in Holiday Park too, but that wasn’t open on the weekdays we were there so we opted for Tripsdrill instead.

Airport faff at Manchester was minimal this time around; we were pretty much through security and on the plane to Basel within the hour.


SUNDAY

We arrived at EuroAirport in Basel at around 2pm on the Sunday. Weather was fab, much better than that swelteringly long heatwave that preceded it. It was still warm, but the transition into autumn was beginning so we got less humidity and a much needed occasional breeze with some golden light. Lovely.

Had a bit of faff with Avis car rental services trying to obtain the car we’d paid for. Since there was an “administrative error” on their part (guy hadn’t rocked up yet with our vehicle), we were upgraded to a much nicer BMW tourer. Off we went.


BASEL

Our evening was spent with a walk around the vorstadt and across to the famous Munster where we trailed past the Rhine on a fairly short lived sightseeing tour. I’ll be honest, Basel doesn’t offer much in the way of sights, but we weren’t really that bothered by that. We had actually made the decision to avoid the larger cities across our trip and focus on the smaller places that we may not opt to visit if it wasn’t packaged together on a mini road-trip.

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We decided to hole up in some local pub tucked away from the main centre of Basel. Very odd pub, looks a bit grotty; like a real life version of that establishment in Harry Potter*. Full of dark corners, taxidermy and strange looking people. But hey, there’s several pinball machines, a smoking room and, of course, alcohol! Ended up staying there until closing time just playing pinball and chatting to a few locals who were all very friendly and interesting enough.

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*The Leaky Cauldron is apparently the place I’m referring to. Imagine that but with muggles.



MONDAY

After a fairly heavy night, we were back on the road. I forgot to mention actually, our residence in Basel was at the Stay@Basel apartments which is about 10 minutes walk from the city centre. Fairly standard en-suite apartments with a very large, modern shared dining area in the connecting building. Nothing to write home about but if you are in the area looking for accommodation then this one is a perfect budget stop-over.


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Me (right) and friend posing for a frankly adequate photo.

Our next destination was to be Strasbourg in France, just under 2 hours away. Instead of going directly there, we thought it would be wise to spend the morning in Colmar which is roughly half way into the journey. We arrived at 10am and the weather once again was beautiful, quite fitting for Colmar really.


COLMAR

The place is gorgeous. It’s fairly void of your standard chain stores which genuinely makes a change from some of the more popular European destinations. Maybe I’m just a twatty hipster or something but I utterly loved the ‘vibe’ I got from the place. Cobbled streets, minimal traffic, colourful buildings with rich, vibrant architecture. Plenty of enticing smells and sounds around every corner. It’s basically an over the top theme park area… but real.

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We stayed for breakfast at some artisan sandwich place which was lovely but somewhat pricey; got to be expected at a place like Colmar, I guess. After that it was time to roam the various nooks and crannies of this pleasant little town.

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I wasn't alone in my admiration for the place...

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She's enjoying herself too...

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By mid-afternoon we were back on the road up to…



STRASBOURG

Our first stop was the next hotel, which was very close to the centre of the city. After checking in and whatnot we agreed to head over to the Old Town which was probably a 15 minute walk for us. Strasbourg is a bit bigger and busier than I actually expected, particularly in the area we were staying, due to the lovely weather and abundance of tourists.

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Us outside the hotel in question

Once again we got comfy outside one of the locals and had a few drinks in the sun before going for another quick wander to get a feel for the place. The areas surrounding the canals are reminiscent of some of Amsterdam’s central walkways, you’ll find lots of activity and bustling establishments to enjoy if you’re an avid people watcher like myself.

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After bumbling about for a while we found ourselves at the cathedral, which is one of the better ones I’ve seen in person. It actually looks huge. Dunno if it’s just me but whenever I see a relatively tall building or structure, I always like to guess the height of it. Always thought that stemmed from my goonish love of big coasters, maybe somebody can vouch for me there. I was a bit off with my guess this time though, I was sure it was about 500 ft or taller, but according to Wiki it’s actually 466 ft. I’m the worst.

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The rest of our time in Strasbourg was spent somewhere around Kleber Square at one of the restaurants there. Had a few more beers and rounded it all off with some sweet, sweet schnitzel. Since we had a fairly late one the night before, we wrapped it up at about 9pm in order to kick off nice and early the next day.


TUESDAY


Tuesday was the first park day which meant that I was in “serious business” mode. No ****ing about now, creds were on the table. I was up bright and early to kick my mates into shape. We got prepared and once again hit the road. First park of the trip was Tripsdrill. I needed to get the other 2 warmed up for Europa, so this was basically just foreplay.

The drive from Strasbourg up to the park was about 90 mins and the roads were strangely quiet the closer we got until eventually we were basically the only car driving up the winding roads towards the entrance. That drive up is actually really nice too; a bit like driving up to Alton Towers on acid. The landscape was just as rural and hilly, except this one was much more colourful and ambient.

The rear end of Lady Liberty, as seen on a roundabout exiting Strasbourg

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Getting closer...

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We parked up and noticed about 7-8 other cars there. Distant screams indicated that most rides were probably operating already. I was actually really excited to see this place, it’s not one I had done much research on to be honest.

The entrance and surrounding areas are very underplayed yet charming and pleasant. Nothing is too brash; I’d say it’s fairly comparable to Toverland in that regard. As soon as you enter the park you can tell that a lot of love and care has been put into the place. I know most people probably aren’t interested in what the weather was like, but with parks like this it can make all the difference to ambience and general guest experience, particularly at the time of year we were there. It’s like the place was made for autumn, there’s such an array of foliage and traditional timber-framed architecture; it all fits together so well.

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I spy a cred...

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As predicted, the park was incredibly quiet. Everything seemed to be operating, so we strolled over to the Zierer Tivoli and started with the park’s smallest cred. Not much to say on this one except that this is one of those larger Zierer models so marginally better than the smaller alternative. The landscape and foliage did give it a bit of charm but we weren’t quite satisfied just yet.

Filth...

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Up next, Gerstlauer’s first ever coaster - G’sengte Sau. It’s unique design and location towards the back end of the park is great, that castle/tower has some Disney-esque optical illusion about it - appearing much bigger at a distance than it actually is up close.

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One particularly fab element for me was the way both the flume and coaster were designed to interact within this structure and of course with each other. G’sengte was rather fun actually, one of the better family Gerstlauer rides I’ve been on. I found the first drop and succeeding helixes to be the best bits, especially that fairly tight helix just before hitting the brakes. The wild mouse corners were alright although not unlike plenty of other similar coasters. Perhaps one day Paulton’s Park could tart up Cobra with a bit of theming like this. It’d certainly give it some additional charm.

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Had a few more re-rides since nobody else in the park was riding (and 4 trains were in operation), after which we popped next door to the flume which was another unsuspecting little gem. Quite an odd ride, in that baffling “wtf was that” kind of way, but it definitely made good use of it’s environment and the final drop was actually quite a soaker. There’s a fair few dodgy topless figures hidden in that indoor section though, which made me chuckle. It’s up there in the top half of my fave log flumes for sure, hard to beat a decent log flume for me.

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Next we made our way over to Mammut, once again completely walk on, this time however there was actually 1 other person on the train. Managed 3 re-rides in different seats on the front, back and middle to get a good feel for it before moving on. I’d heard previously that this thing is really smooth and forceless. Well, for me, it was fairly forceless but not exactly as smooth as I was expecting, damn my expectations. I can’t say Mammut was that rough either, but it was a bit bumpy and bouncy on a number of the turns. It is quite slow and ponderous too. To simplify it:

Pro’s:
-Not painful
-First drop on back row is alright
-The bit of theming it has is quite good as is the soundtrack
-Misty tunnel

Con’s:
-Slow
-Bounces around on the corners like the train is trying to break apart
-No particularly great elements or transitions

At least she looks better than she rides

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Since the park was still ridiculously dead, we thought we’d hold off on Karacho and have some ice cream and pretzels whilst sitting in the sun for a bit. Did a bit more wandering as well, in an attempt to discover a few more of the wonderfully old and obscure animatronics dotted around (technically they weren’t animatronics, but can’t think of a better term right now).

Not often will you find a Gerstlauer in an area of natural beauty

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After a bit of casual mincing, it was about time to tick off the final cred. As we approached Karacho, we noticed a massive queue spilling out of the entrance.

Joking, of course it was ****ing dead. The queue is pretty fab and once again, I was impressed with the moderate level of theming and funky soundtrack. Thumbs up for Tripsdrill, let’s see what the ride is all about then. The nearest comparison I had at this point was Anubis at Plopsa which is good but not particularly stand out, in my opinion. The first thing Karacho gets right that Anubis doesn’t is restraints. The relief of seeing a lapbar upon my first glance of the train was real.

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Karacho then. Firstly, the small indoor section is fab. Drop in the dark followed up by a surprisingly comfortable barrel roll. Basically Saw without Jigsaw. And then a little dip into a rolling launch, pow! Decent bit of speed. The launch is fairly short and a wee bit punchy, not unlike Anubis really. Again, the lapbars make all the difference here. My initial thoughts after 4-5 re-rides were as followed:

Pros:
- Comfortable enough
- Fun indoor section and launch
- Tophat has a nice pop of airtime
- The dive loop into a tunnel has a good bit of intensity

Cons:
- Some of the turns are a bit long and drawn out
- MCBR saps the flow
- Theming seems to start and end at the station, nothing of note outside

Overall I thought Karacho was decent, particularly for a park of Tripsdrill’s size. It won’t be making any top lists anytime soon, but it’s definitely better than Anubis for me (although Anubis’s station/theme is more impressive).

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With all creds done and dusted we spent the rest of our time in Tripsdrill wandering aimlessly, nipping on the occasional flat ride (a good number of notable flats suited to families) and finished off with a bit of wine tasting. For a couple of euros, it’s probably worth doing. That basically pays for your tasting glass which you then take down to the wine cellar. At this point you can either chuck a couple of loose euros into any of the available barrels and pour your own glass. Alternatively, you could ring a bell and a little old man will begrudgingly rise from his stool and pour you a sample of your choosing.

We did sample a good number of the available wines down there, including some mysterious green product (also known as Slurm, for any Futurama fans). It is a fairly peculiar aspect to the place but hey-ho, nice to see Germany’s oldest theme park celebrating its history.

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Oh look, more Gerstlauer...

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As our day at Tripsdrill drew to a close we thought a ride on the strange tree themed tower ride would be good. Yeah, it wasn’t that good. It’s pretty bumpy and ****ing odd. The only good thing to come out of that is we noticed a nearby goat pen after exiting, so we dashed over and gave them a bit of attention. Any park with goats is always a winner in my eyes.

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And that was it. We headed out of Tripsdrill after a pretty lovely day. So, final thoughts on the park. A surprisingly gorgeous little place with lots of charm and cuteness. I’d never usually use that term, but Tripsdrill is definitely a bit cute. Not somewhere I’d recommend if you just want decent coasters or a big thrill, but the rides aren’t terrible. It definitely belongs in the same bracket as your Toverland, Plopsalands etc. It’s probably the most consistently themed/visually pleasing of that current crop of European family parks that I’ve visited. Well worth a trip if you enjoy laid back park visits.

As the evening drew closer, we had to make the 100 mile journey back south towards Rust.

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Once we arrived at our apartment, we met the owner who gave us a brief introduction before we dropped off our bags and went on a hunt for some food. Once we got into the heart of Rust (a 10 min walk from our apartment) we actually struggled to find a table at any of the restaurants in the area, to our surprise. The place was very lively, which was not expected at all considering we were eating late. Thankfully we found a place that could fit us in, I jumped straight back onto the schnitzel bandwagon and we extended our stay for a couple more beers after food.

WEDNESDAY

The Wednesday started fairly early once again, and thankfully we were treated to more crisp blue skies for our second day of gooning. Our first move was to nip the car up the road to the Colosseo car park since we’d be staying there the night.

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EUROPA PARK: DAY 1
Check in/ticket collection at the Colosseo was efficient and the staff were notably chirpy, perhaps too much for the average Brit to handle at 8 in the morning.

Colosseo was predictably impressive, but more on that later. We dumped our bags in the storage room and beelined out of the building and into the tunnel towards the hotel guest entrance. It really doesn’t take very long to notice that this park is a level above most in terms of detail and immersion. Once we entered the park boundary at the Spanish area, it was quite apparent that this park was meticulous. Almost disgustingly pretty.

The Spanish area is a nice place to start as well, because you enter onto the cobbled paths and are ambushed by vivid colours and authentic sounds. I’m fairly certain that at any area of the park you can hear the gushing of water fountains, which for some reason gives me the nostalgic holiday feels.

We started out with Alpenexpressen since it was one of the closer creds in the neighbouring Austrian themed area. We didn’t do the VR version, and it seemed that the first few trains that ran were all non-VR so that worked in our favour. Good little ride, well for a Mack powered mine train anyway. This one is all about the environment more than the coaster itself, the highlight being the dark indoor sections that share space with the park’s log flume. I find it hard to differentiate between many of these Mack powered coasters but if my memory serves me well then I’d place this one in the same bracket at RMT at Towers. RMT probably has a better layout but this one takes the crown for location/theme.

Log Flume was also good fun, although I never really dislike a good old loggie as you may have noticed from the Tripsdrill report. We made our way over to Iceland after our stint in Austria, which took us a bit of time since the park has so many damn pathways that all seem to lead the correct way but end up taking you on an unexpected detour to a completely different place. It didn’t help that the top section of Scandinavia was closed which meant that we had to navigate our way right around the perimeter of that area.

After clearing that up we finally found ourselves entering the queue for Blue Fire, which at this point was on a 5 min wait, not bad at all. Can’t say I was particularly fond of the queue line or theme for this one, Gazprom’s sponsorship feels a bit tacky for a park of this stature and the initial queue building felt like my old university campus building. I enjoyed the actual station though, that was decent enough and actually fit into the area well.

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The ride itself is good fun, especially if you aren’t looking to compare it to rides of a similar variety. The launch ‘control’ room is well themed and presents a good build up to the ride. The launch is obviously nothing amazing - but it’s definitely not as bad as a lot of people would have you think. I’d say that the launch would probably be better if it was just a bit shorter, I don’t think the speed is particularly bad considering it is obviously designed to accommodate both family & thrill guests. I reckon the large overbank is a waste of energy though, especially so early on into the ride. Before I end up writing an essay I’ll just go straight in with pro’s/cons.

Pro’s:
-The surrounding area looks good with some interesting rockwork and foliage
-Soundtrack and build-up to the ride got me pumped
-Launch isn’t as bad as I’d expected
-The inversions are all fun

Con’s:
-Loses too much speed too early in, the back row is notably slow
-Not really any stand out ‘moment’ in the layout
-Looks better off-ride than it rides (if I was GP I’d certainly have higher expectations)
-Gazprom sponsorship is crud

And that was Blue Fire. Again, nothing to break into my top coasters yet, but our next ride had the potential to change that.

I’m a huge fan of the GCI’s I have experienced so far on my travels, so the thought of riding a huge monster of a GCI was probably the biggest selling point of Europa Park for me - in terms of coasters anyway. Wodan does look the dogs bollocks from off ride, it dominates the back end of the Iceland area with it’s hefty structure and rowdy volume. I practically dragged my mates into the queue as a steady number of people spilled into the main entrance around us.

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Fantastic soundtrack and entrance on this one. Once you delve into the indoor queue section, that’s when **** hits the fan. Utterly brilliant stuff, one of the best queue lines I’ve walked through before. It’s not themed to the eyeballs as such, like it’s not as though there’s a ton to look at, but it is completely immersive when it comes to creating the right ambience in the build-up to the ride. Great use of lighting, soundtrack and theming in all the right places.

The queue was around 30 mins long, which wasn’t bad at all really but at this point it was the longest we’d queued for a ride on the trip so far. Once we were on, we were assigned seats somewhere towards the back of the train and then we rolled out of the station…

The initial turnaround at the crest of the lift was actually not as forceful as I found on Joris, which seems to really pull you around laterally. But it gives enough momentum to set-up that brilliant first drop. During both of my rides on Wodan on the first day on park, I found myself being pulled right out of my seat on that drop, especially towards the back of the train. It’s a fantastic start to the coaster. I suppose the small tunnel at the bottom of the drop really emphasises the impact it has too. Again, I’ll move on to pro’s and cons…

Pro’s:
-First drop is fantastic, exactly what I want from a woodie
-One of the best paced coasters I’ve been on
-Good headchopper moments throughout
-Backrow is good if you like being ragdolled
-2 or 3 particularly good airtime moments

Cons:
-Not actually that keen on the layout despite a great pace
-Few moments where nothing much happens, i.e, the section after first drop
-Although there is some good airtime, there aren’t as many airtime moments as I’d like
-For a big woodie, it doesn’t last all that long

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So it doesn’t beat Troy or Joris for me, although overall it is a fantastic woodie. It’s still probably lurking somewhere in my Top 20 though, but I think, for example, a woodie like Troy beats it because of consistency. Wodan is more chaotic, which on paper (for me, anyway) makes it more appealing. But that sense of chaos just doesn’t seem to translate as well into an excellent coaster on the level of Troy. I should say though that on my late afternoon re-ride the next day, it was considerably better. Perhaps I just needed to warm to it a bit more, but still. Troy > Joris > Wodan. And to anyone who said that Wodan’s station fly through was better than Troy’s, I’ve got to disagree with that.

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Next up we trawled over to the nearby Portuguese area for a crack on Atlantica Supersplash. The Portugal section is one of my fave areas of Europa. I love how Supersplash is the focal point of this section and really ties everything together. The queue for this was no more than 5 mins and again I was very impressed by the level of detail involved in the station/queue design. The ambient sounds playing around the area were also very creative. Rather than just plastering every ride with loud, melodramatic Hans Zimmer-esque music, Europa decided that the sounds of the sea, birds and wind were enough to portray the kind of setting we were in. Maybe there is usually some sort of additional soundtrack playing, but not while we were there anyway.

The ride itself is very unsurprising since it’s essentially just a lift hill, obscure backwards dip and then drop. The drop is probably the best of the Supersplashes I’ve done though. Not actually a very wet ride, but nevertheless I enjoyed it.

Took the route back through the top end of Iceland so we could get some delicious looking roasted salmon sandwich to eat (deliciousness confirmed ✓) after which we went to Greece to mop up the 2 creds in that area. Starting with Pegasus, which I actually forgot about.

Not much to report with this one. I’d done the other Mack Youngstar at Parque Warner a few years ago and thought it was a decent little family coaster albeit a bit short. Same thing here, except the theming was more impressive of course.

We followed up that silky smooth family coaster with it’s more ominous looking neighbour, Poseidon. The ride itself does appear very nice off ride, a statement I’ve probably made about every goddamn ride at this park, but yeah, it’s true. Only thing about these Mack water coasters is that the track design is a bit ugly, but I’m just being picky now.

The ride experience is pretty meh. It’s a bit of a hip basher, probably the roughest coaster at the park thinking back. Not much pay-off either, again it doesn’t really get you very wet at all. The station is probably the best bit due to some more elaborate theming. I mean, the coaster is nowhere near the worst I’ve been on but it’s just not worthy of its place in the park anymore. This one could and should be replaced at some point in the near future. Perhaps by a better water ride, because I love how the Greek area is complemented by the inclusion of a major water ride. I will say though, Greece is one of the best areas of the park to sit and relax, lots of nice seating areas overlooking Poseidon and the water, which is where everyone gets this popular angle from:

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Continuing with the water ride theme it was time for Fjord Rafting. As the park started filling up in the mid afternoon, the queues began to bulk up a bit more as we noticed at this point on the rapids. We waited about 20 minutes until we finally got on, but the pace of the queue was decent, we barely stopped moving, so props to the legendary Europa Park operations there. Our ride was fun, there were plenty of rapid moments, excuse the pun. Been on a few boring versions now, and although this one wasn’t quite up there with the likes of Acme at Madrid or PA’s, it is one of the better examples. Shame about the section that was ravaged by last year’s fire, I bet that was a lovely little area to glide past when all the lovely Scandi architecture was still standing.

Across we went to Switzerland and as the afternoon ticked away we set our sights on the last of the creds. Just a bit of a side note - Basically we’d been using the Europa queue app to check times and we eventually decided to leave Eurosat until tomorrow due to the queue being over 70 mins throughout most of the day. The rest of the creds seemed to be alright so we didn’t worry about sweeping up those in the remainder of day 1.

Back on to Switzerland then. You probably know what I’m going to say by now.

Theming = fantastic
Detail = fantastic
Etc. Etc.

Every area is lovely, alright. Foliage, architecture, good level of authenticity. I should’ve just copied and pasted that statement for each area.

Schweizer Bobbahn first. As the ride goes, it’s probably my least favourite bobsled with Trace Du Hourra and Avalanche pipping it slightly. The layout is just so abrupt, the weird coaster drops don’t achieve much and by the time you’re free from the wrath of the MCBR’s, it’s all over. But as is standard for Europa now, it easily trumps it’s competitors with immaculate theming.

Matterhorn Blitz is much more interesting from the get-go. The elevator lift section is efficient and I enjoyed the mixture of conventional wild mouse elements and fairly large (for it’s type) drops. A fun +1 to tick off the list.

Onwards to Russia for some space age action.

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Euro-Mir isn’t that bad to be honest. The soundtrack is probably one of my favourites, it’s just super cheesy but fun and energetic. Everything about it reeks of the 90’s, which somehow works really well?

It is a bit of a bumpy experience to say the least and on both of my rides I ended up taking the brunt of the worst sections whilst facing backwards, which felt a bit awkward. I imagine if you got to face forwards you could anticipate it a bit more to ease the discomfort, but overall for what it was, it was fairly fun. If it didn’t take about a lightyear to reach the top of the lift or if the dawdling section straight after was a bit more eventful, then it’d probably be way more interesting. But whatever, it’s old and I expected worse so I’ll cut it some slack.

Finally it was about time for a few laps on the park’s tallest coaster, Silver Star. Probably the 2nd most anticipated coaster of the trip, and I’d read not long before the trip that this was running quite well as of late. First we had to conquer the ever growing queue. Of course, this would be no trouble for Europa, who managed to soak up quite a hefty crowd like a sponge.

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We gave it 3 rides, in various seats mainly between the back and middle. It was good. Great in fact. But I felt a noticeable difference between this and the likes of Shambhala and Nitro. I’ll simplify it as always.

Pros:
-Throughput. Easily the best I’d seen on a hypercoaster, and one of the best overall.
-Some great airtime moments on the return section of hills
-The bit after the MCBR is actually decent, best post-MCBR section of the 3 B&M hypers I’ve done
-Comfortable and relatively smooth for it’s age

Cons:
-The drop doesn’t feel huge, the pull out starts really early compared to Shambhala/Nitro
-Not as intense as the other 2 can be
-Very little airtime pre-MCBR, to my surprise

So, was I disappointed? Not really. Silver Star is a fab ride in it’s own right, regardless of comparisons. Yeah, it’s not a top coaster like many of these creds at Europa but I don’t expect everything to be consistently world-class, otherwise I’d be rather pedantic in this hobby. Considering I’ve not got a huge coaster count it’ll still make it into my Top 20-30 at this point, because I did enjoy it plenty enough to rate it pretty high, I just think Nitro & Shambhala have that extra intent behind them.

After a tiring day of riding, we opted for another meal before heading back to Colosseo for some downtime. We stopped off at some restaurant in one of the ambiguous middle areas of the park (no idea what the theme was) called Spices Restaurant, which was relatively quiet. I chose some lamb kofta and we ventured to the rear outdoor seating area overlooking Fjord Rafting to eat.

The food tasted really good, which leads me onto another point about Europa Park. It really is a full sensory experience, the food here is all a level above your average theme park prison mush. The meal itself cost about $7 and included mexican rice and a drink. Reasonably priced considering where we were and it was a sizeable portion too.

It was also fun watching some obsessive guy spend every last coin he had on one of those interactive guns to soak passing guests on the rapids. I kind of wish I recorded it to be honest. He was there so long he’d become rather methodical in his approach and seemed to get a good number of direct headshots.

After finishing our food and drinks we left the park. And that was essentially the end of my first day at Europa Park. What a place!

Perhaps some may consider it ‘overhyped’ due to the lack of truly world class coasters, but no, it’s still obviously one of the best parks out there and it only takes a day to notice that. The level of quality here is exceptional, the rides are only one aspect of the whole experience, this is a full fledged resort in it’s own right. Besides, the rides are a million miles away from bad or even adequate; there’s plenty of high quality rides there in my opinion… just no coasters that venture into the ‘mind blowing’ territory. But that could be said for most parks really.

Once we’d returned to Colosseo and had a quick clean up, we popped up to Bar Colosseo for some cocktails to wind down with. I could easily write up a drawn out paragraph about how excellent Colosseo is, but I’ll save the unnecessary rambling, I’ve done enough of that already. What I will say though is that we visited a few of the hotel bars during our and they were all fab!

View from our window:

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If you want to get drunk then Europa Park will fully accommodate that with some excellent facilities to do so.

THURSDAY


Woke up with a slightly heavy head after doing a bit of hotel bar hopping the previous night. We ended up going full circle, finishing off back at Bar Colosseo where we stayed until kick out time. Ugh.

EUROPA PARK: DAY 2

First thing we noticed is that the park was considerably busier on the second day. Started off by getting EuroSat done and dusted. Waited around 50 minutes for this and I was looking forward to it to be honest. I am a bit of a sucker for indoor coasters, and this one was brand spanking new, so no reason for it to be terrible.

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The theming… yes, of course, it was excellent. But what about the ride?

Well, let me tell you… firstly no ****ing audio or lights. At all. Proper disappointing. What’s more, nobody forewarned of this… there were plenty of staff stood around at sections of the queue and also in the station. Not one person told us suckers that we’d queued an hour for a pitch black disappointment. And apparently it was like this for a few days as well. All I can tell you folks is that it was smooth. Honestly, I’m not even going to bother trying to rate it, it still annoys me a bit.

We did that new dinosaur dark ride next door too, which was walk on. Honestly not really much to say on it, if you want an elaborate opinion on a dark ride themed to dinosaurs and cake then a child would do better than me.

The rest of our day was a bit more laid back to be honest, we just re-rode a load of the coasters whilst filling in the gaps with any of the flats we didn’t get round to doing the day before. I’ll sum up a couple:

Eurotower: Decent views but those perspex windows need a good clean, can’t get any good photos due to this.
Geisterschloss - A traditional ghost train that I enjoyed more than I probably should have. It’s a little bit fab and the queue/pre-show bits are cool.

Arthur - Probably deserves way more than a one line summary, but I’d completely forgotten to mention this until now. It’s so good! I have difficulty rating it as a coaster alongside Wodan, Silver Star etc because it’s fundamentals are all based on a dark ride experience. But the fact it has a great soundtrack, pace and narrative direction makes it undoubtedly one of the best rides in the park and one of my favourite dark ride/coasters. This is one of Mack’s finest creations and I sincerely hope we get a few more of these across Europe. Both my friends absolutely loved it too, which shows it’s accessibility, even to adults.

So to summarise, Europa Park is easily one of the best parks in the world if you consider the full variety of experiences on offer. It’s probably not quite pipped Phantasialand for me personally, but it’s very very close which to me is quite a feat considering it’s coasters and flats are nowhere close in my opinion. Europa just has everything else completely nailed down, it’s a full package in a way other parks cannot compete. I really enjoyed my 2 days on park and would love to go back sometime in the near future, once I’ve got a few more new places ticked off. Nothing would excite me more now than if Europa went and got a world-class coaster. It would literally be a game changer. Families should be all over this place though, this will be first on my recommendations for any families or friends looking for a place to visit in the future.

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With all of our theme park fun over, we still had a couple of days to enjoy a few other destinations before flying back. As the sun begin to set we said farewell to Europa and got back on the road. The next stop wasn’t too far away.

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FREIBURG: DAY 1

Our initial evening in Freiburg was spent munching mahoosive burritos at a Mexican restaurant not far from one of the university parks. We just sat and ate and talked about the parks which was fun. I picked my friend’s brains to get an idea of what they thought about their experiences.

Here’s a quick rundown of my top 10 coasters of the trip then:
  1. Wodan
  2. Arthur
  3. Silver Star
  4. Karacho
  5. Blue Fire
  6. G’sengte Sau
  7. Matterhorn Blitz
  8. Atlantica Supersplash
  9. Euro Mir
  10. Pegasus

*I imagine EuroSat would probably fit somewhere in there but I don’t feel like rating it as I was a moody little **** on-ride due to the circumstances.

After our food we went back to the outskirts of town to our hotel and slept like babies.


FRIDAY


After a much needed rest, we had a quick gander at Google to see if there was anything nearby to do for an hour or so. Turns out we were a few minutes drive away from a botanical garden, so we decided to start the day there.

Freiburg hotel...

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FREIBURG DAY 2

The gardens were fairly average, probably less exotic than your average botanical garden even. We have one not that far from my flat back home and it’s a good way to kill a few hours, I occasionally nip over to take the camera into the big greenhouse building and finding some nice light and angles, but this one was just an outdoor garden with no indoor facilities. We sat and talked for a bit before meandering over to the centre of Freiburg where we dropped by the markets for some food and drink.

Honestly not got much to report on Freiburg really, we didn’t stay for that long, but it did look lovely and traditional as expected. A few photos:

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The next and final destination of the trip was coming up, this time we were journeying back across the Swiss border to the city of Lucerne.

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LUCERNE: DAY 1

Our initial afternoon in Lucerne consisted of visiting some massive cheese festival down on the waterfront, which was rammed with locals stockpiling the stuff. It was a very elaborate affair actually, I’ve never seen such a large procurement of cheese before. There was quite a pungent stench emanating from the place too, I mean I do love me some cheese but Christ, it was tough on the nostrils.

We spent a few hours admiring the surroundings as was typical for us, after which we found some cosy Swiss bar, where we stayed for some beers and watched a local band with their cowbells and horns. It was actually rather fun to be honest. Pics from the day...

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SATURDAY




LUCERNE: DAY 2

The final day of the trip had arrived and we decided to spent it on a mountain. Lucerne, as you may be aware, is at the foot of Mount Pilatus which has an elevation of around 2000m or thereabouts. I wasn’t quite sure how far we’d be getting up this thing, but for the first time on this trip the weather wasn’t promising.

We drove the car 15 minutes down the road to the base of Pilatus where we took our first cable car up to about 4500ft up. The first car took around 15-20 minutes to reach that elevation, and the journey was not unlike something from Stephen King’s The Mist. It was tremendously foggy, at one point you could not see an entire thing out of the windows, without doubt it was the thickest fog I’d ever seen. What was quite amusing though was that we could still hear the cattle in the fields below and the occasional ‘ding’ of their bells. So weird haha.

Pre-fog view:

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Now, we’d done a bit of research prior to this day and found that Pilatus is home to a toboggan, which was located somewhere within our first stop. There was a sneaking suspicion it was closed once we noticed the weather obviously, and that suspicion was confirmed to be true when we got to the following sign:

“Due to adverse weather conditions, the toboggan will NOT be operating today”.

Gutted. The views were meant to be really fab on this one too.

We grabbed some lunch at the restaurant and tried to work out what to do now. See, it was another 30 francs to take the next cable car up to the top of Pilatus, but with the weather as ****e as it was, would it be worth it?

Well, we took the plunge anyway. The next cable car was much bigger and had a capacity of like 30 or 40 people, so we didn’t have our own this time around. It also travelled at a much quicker speed, which meant getting to the peak took about 5-8 minutes, no time at all really.

The experience on this cable car was really fab though, because we ploughed right through the layers and layers of thick fog, at one point my ears popped and like some cathartic experience, the fog started to appear brighter and brighter, until I could barely keep my eyes open. And then finally, we broke through the clouds and continued to rise above them, eventually being greeted by crystal clear blue skies and a glowing sun. What a moment that was!

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Wow, the views up Pilatus were incredible. I mean, you couldn’t really see much downwards as it was pure cloud cover… practically blanketing the entire view below. But it felt like a totally different world because of us passing through the moody weather at ground level to reach this gorgeous day 7000ft above sea level.

Think we stayed up there for around 4ish hours, just taking in all the vantage points, looking at different peaks and mountain views in the distance whilst enjoying a drink and whatnot. It’s hard to elaborate on that really, because it’s all in the views. Unfortunately my camera (being fixed lens, 21mm) doesn’t capture the mountains quite as eloquently as a longer lens would, but nevertheless I hope you can appreciate the experience a bit more from some of the below images.

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And essentially that was it. Should I conclude? Nah, I think I’ve said more than enough already. Hopefully I will have more long winded, delayed reports in future.

Hope you’ve enjoyed/survived. Ta ta!
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Cor, some bloody good pictures in there mate! Good work. That cloud inversion at the end is magnificent!

Sounds like a great trip, with a good balance of creds and culture. Good to get some non-goons to come along too. You reckon you've hooked them in enough for future trips? :p
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
Those last few pictures make me really want to go back and do Lucerne properly. Great job. Pilatus was a little snow-capped when I visited.
 

Hutch

Strata Poster
Sounds like a fun trip, enjoyed reading it. I seem to have underestimated the effort put into the theming at Trips and Europa. They seem like lovely parks.

Great photos too! And what a great way to end it off with those views from Pilatus.
 

peep

CF Legend
Wow, fantastic write up and incredible photos. Sounds like you all had a great time, making me wish we visited the Europa hotel bars when we stayed on site the other year. I'm sure we'll be back though.
 

Sandman

Giga Poster
Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback!

Good to get some non-goons to come along too. You reckon you've hooked them in enough for future trips? :p

Already planning another, I want them to try Taron next. Hopefully the Dutch will have an RMC for us too ;) I do need to get a few goon-inclusive trips in at some point this year too so hopefully the CF Lives will come in a treat.
 

zazobo

Hyper Poster
I always enjoy reading about someone else's experience of Europa Park for the first time, its such a special place and that initial reaction is priceless. Lovely photography too.
 

Sandman

Giga Poster
I always enjoy reading about someone else's experience of Europa Park for the first time, its such a special place and that initial reaction is priceless. Lovely photography too.

Thanks :)

It is a gorgeous park, not one I anticipated to be quite as lovely. I am excited to see what the next major coaster will be, considering their last 'big' coaster was 7 years ago. This park could do something special with a great coaster type/layout.
 

zazobo

Hyper Poster
Thanks :)

It is a gorgeous park, not one I anticipated to be quite as lovely. I am excited to see what the next major coaster will be, considering their last 'big' coaster was 7 years ago. This park could do something special with a great coaster type/layout.
Absolutely. Fingers crossed it’s more of a thrill ride than a family coaster...!
 
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