Rob Coasters
Hyper Poster
Been wanting to go to Phantasialand for four years, and for all of 2023 I had every opportunity in the world to go, but just for some reason had it nearer the bottom of the priority list. For every wacky worm I rode on my quest for United Kompletion, the louder the echos of "GO TO PHANTASIALAND" became. For the beginning of January 2024, I had a Netherlands trip planned where I had two days at Efteling and one day at Toverland planned out. In a coaster group chat I contemplated replacing one of the Efteling days with Duinrell, primarily to ride Waterspin, until I got yet another loud request to just god damn go to Phantasialand instead. Ten minutes later, tickets for Hotel Charles Lindbergh and flights to Cologne were booked. Now or never.
So I flew smoothly from Stansted to Köln Bonn Flughafen, before grabbing a (slightly delayed) Deutsche Bahn train to Brühl with a change at Köln. And just outside Brühl train station was the Brühl bus station coupled with about five hundred others all with the same destination in mind. We had a quick double-check on Google to see when the PHL Express would be running, Google said 10.23, we said ok. 8 minutes before its scheduled arrival one of us decided to cross the road and take photos of the nearby UNESCO building, where a loved-up couple passing by asked them to take photos of them in front of the building. At this exact moment, the bus arrived as a grey van hid the bus from their view. I ran across to alert them.
An absolute sea of people all trying to get on, zero regard for personal space or queuing (obviously, I did the same). Just like the Underground, fight for your life to get on. Seconds before boarding, our efforts were in vain, wait for the nächster Bus.
Next bus wasn't for either 30 or 60 minutes. Couple taxis were sitting outside. "How much for Phantasialand?" 22 euro. Got in.
Wasn't a good sign of things to come with crowds when we saw the ocean of heads at the bus stop, also wasn't a good sign when Mr. taxi driver started commenting on how many cars there were. It was a sign of extreme crowds, but we move into the Charles Lindbergh hotel.
Caught my first ever glimpse of FLY in real life walking through the entryway, made our presence known, come back at 3.30 and have some FLY fast tracks. Rides weren't open yet so walked up the stairs to get the ever-famous photos from those angles, and while this is nothing new, it feels good saying "I took this photo on MY camera".
Enough faffing, let's go #248 FLYing, the queue of which had already built up significantly.
The (Charles Lindbergh) fast track queue starts by walking down one of two staircases into a room where you get your wristband into a mandatory locker and put everything, absolutely everything, into it. Yeah. These fast tracks are powerful, but only had six (now five) - one provided per person for each day, all given to you when you make your presence known. The person I was with didn't want to ride due to the sheer length of the coaster, so the rest went to me.
Had so much in my pockets the whole damn jacket just went in the locker. And with my only possession now being a wristband, it was now time to embark on what the Airrail Company had to offer to me. The room goes from orange to blue, and off we go into a little dark ride section. You whizz past some scenes, adverts for Rookburgh aerial equipment, past some sort of aircraft docking place, then the seat rotates and off you go.
The whole thing is a super smooth if not very intense experience, and airtime on a flying coaster is a fantastic feeling but sadly it's difficult to get room between you and the restraint for that to be consistently effective. I really didn't have much to say about the ride experience after just one go, and almost refused to have a formed opinion on it because I just... did not know what to say about the ride. All I knew was "I'm on FLY", "Rookburgh is utterly beautiful" and "looking up still gives the same neck problem that I know Galactica for but unlike that ride looking down was perfectly fine".
Head empty, not sure what to think of it, I'll come back later.
Entering Klugheim now, for #249 Taron which I was so excited to ride. It had a stupid queue of over an hour, so I entered single rider queue (which also had a stupid queue of over an hour and in fact was slightly longer than the main queue's time). But else, I was on and oh it felt so good to finally hear that dispatch music in-person, and hear the "BRRRRT" of those ever-famous launch sounds, and being surrounded by rocks, in a trench, and being on some massive double-launch Intamin coaster, etc etc etc.
And yes, it's quite intense, but certainly has a couple moments of 'waiting for the next bit to happen' but for every one of those moments, there's about 10 other moments of insanity with beautiful lateral whips when you twist from left to right and vice versa. There's some very well-executed near miss moments that really did cause me to throw my hands down for a bit, and we're only in the first half.
The second half throws you harder and further as the train literally vibrates from the power of the LSM launch. After a couple twists you're tossed into a brutal overbanked turn that dives down into yet more chaos, into some twists and more twists. A notable trim signifies the ending of the ride, but thankfully it ends on a high as the hill after provides some good air with a positive-heavy ending.
At some point on the second half of the ride I had that "I'm on Taron" feeling like with FLY, but this time it was far more of a "Oh my Word I'm on TARON!!!" feeling, a feeling I've never really gotten on any other ride before. We hit the brakes, that ride was good. Wasn't sure if it was a Helix beater, I decided Helix was better. Taron and FLY sit nicely next to each other, and that was it for now.
For this visit I was going by "what do I want to ride the most first?" rather than "get all the creds!" and I think this was the way. For this reason, Chiapas - DIE Wasserbahn was next, a log flume in winter with practically zero queue (not a surprise). It was an awesome log flume, and predictably one of my new favourites. I'm still doubting myself on whether I enjoy it more than Flumeride, but I think Flumeride gets extra unfair points because I think I'm holding some sort of sentimental value towards it.
But something I noticed is that with Chiapas, the drop almost feels like a bit of an afterthought compared to other flumes that we're oh so used to back in the UK. In my home country you spend the whole water ride anticipating the big finale drop. It's constantly in view, it's the only thing you're ever allowed to look at, it's permanently in view all the time and there's nothing you can do about it. Tidal wave (Thorpe), Log flume (Great Yarmouth), Stormforce 10, Supersplash (Tusenfryd) just to name a few. But with Chiapas, the huge massive drop is something that you never see on-ride until you're going down it. The fun, playful theming with its upbeat tunes makes sure to distract you from its 3 big drops and I love it to bits. And it made me realise how I didn't realise how much theming adds to a water ride. You completely forget about the drops (I did), because you're just taking in the visually pleasing surroundings instead.
And the drops were great too. We're now 3 for 3 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a fourth with Talocan? Spoilers, yes.
I LOVE TOP SPINS!!!!!!!! That's it. That's what I'm going to say. Top spins are by far my favourite type of flat ride. Ever. I love them to bits. Talocan specifically has some utterly stupid intensity going on with its flips, combined with the backdrop, water effects and fire effects and simply banging soundtrack. It feels so, so complete as a ride just like literally everything else here. I still miss Rameses Revenge to bits even if its cycle was a little lacklustre compared to this, Avenger was great in the meantime but didn't have the raw power of genuine Huss, and skipping Blast at Walibi Holland due to going too hard with Untamed had me kicking myself, so this top spin fix was much-needed.
Big, big, big fan of Talocan and I still long for a more local top spin to pop back up as I stay excited for whatever my next one will be. We're now 4 for 4 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a fifth with #250 Black Mamba? Spoilers.... yes.
But before Black Mamba, we checked into our room to find out that the heating wasn't working. A call was made with a technician who came to our cabin and told us yeah, we've been having trouble with this room, here's a plug-in heater that'll get the job well done for you. This served its purpose pretty well, until a few minutes later another call was made. It was from the hotel check-in desk. They were saying about a last-second cancellation of a room whose heating works, do you want to move to that cabin and have better views of Rookburgh because we're extremely nice people who love everyone? Yes, yes, of course. We'll come back in a little. Now, back to Black.
I went into Black Mamba thinking it'd be a lower tier invert because apparently it rattles and has no forces and the corkscrews having no 'snap' to them takes away from them way too much for the ride to be properly fun? No, wrong, the entire ride goes hard the whole way through. After being oh so used to Nemesis Inferno not doing anything to me on my recent Thorpe visits, I was surprised to see this punch on every element the whole way through, with even the drop and the loop wowing me. The zero g roll was awesome too, and while you definitely really notice how the corkscrews don't have that snap to them, I'm able to look past it. Then the helices happen, and these have some real force to them which ends the ride out with a bang.
Black Mamba is a fantastic terrain invert, and has earned the top spot of my favourite roller coaster by B&M. We're now 5 for 5 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a sixth with #251 Colorado Adventure? Spoilers........ yes.
But before Colorado, this was our time to make the move into our new room where we were given the key to our new room and showed exactly where it was by extremely nice people who loved everyone. Just before we made the move, suddenly Puls von Rookburgh was happening and we had that epic high-level view of it... but after that was done, back to Colorado.
Seriously, yet another hit. Colorado Adventure doesn't even have any UK competition, and the best it has is some powered mine train. We were fooled into thinking this ride had assigned seating, but was the only coaster of the trip where we were able to pick our own rows (outside of separate queues for the very front on Taron & FLY). We just knew to go for the back, and this turned Colorado Adventure into from a silly mine train into something truly special. You get yanked over the lifts and over all of the hills, and with it now being much darker outside you truly had no idea where you were going. It was truly chaotic, and bundles of fun.
It was almost time for our dinner reservation, but there's always time for one more ride on FLY. I still think this is a remarkably difficult coaster to talk about, I still don't really have the words to say about it. Somebody said that you get used to FLY after about four rides on it, and multiple people shared that view, so I wasn't going to worry about it. However, I will say that this night ride was beautiful. I got that feeling of "true immersion" that I've only ever experienced on two other rides, where I genuinely questioned if I was even at a theme park. It's a feeling that simply captivates you, and it briefly becomes the only thought in your head. It's an unreal feeling every time it happens, and I always welcome it when it comes along.
After that, we had a stellar three-course meal, where we were invited to just... wander around Rookburgh freely after the area had closed to non-hotel guests. Obviously FLY was closed, but being able to simply walk around with the music going on in the background was a surreal feeling that I loved so much. At around 10pm the music cuts, leaving you to walk around in complete silence. Just you, a few others, and the huge structures of Rookburgh. I don't know who came up with the idea, but I thank them so much for it.
Then it was lights out back in the cabin, where we slept like an aeronaut. Impressed with what we got done for being on four hours of sleep, I guess we stayed alive based off pure adrenaline alone from the simple idea of being at Phantasialand. Be back tomorrow.
So I flew smoothly from Stansted to Köln Bonn Flughafen, before grabbing a (slightly delayed) Deutsche Bahn train to Brühl with a change at Köln. And just outside Brühl train station was the Brühl bus station coupled with about five hundred others all with the same destination in mind. We had a quick double-check on Google to see when the PHL Express would be running, Google said 10.23, we said ok. 8 minutes before its scheduled arrival one of us decided to cross the road and take photos of the nearby UNESCO building, where a loved-up couple passing by asked them to take photos of them in front of the building. At this exact moment, the bus arrived as a grey van hid the bus from their view. I ran across to alert them.
An absolute sea of people all trying to get on, zero regard for personal space or queuing (obviously, I did the same). Just like the Underground, fight for your life to get on. Seconds before boarding, our efforts were in vain, wait for the nächster Bus.
Next bus wasn't for either 30 or 60 minutes. Couple taxis were sitting outside. "How much for Phantasialand?" 22 euro. Got in.
Wasn't a good sign of things to come with crowds when we saw the ocean of heads at the bus stop, also wasn't a good sign when Mr. taxi driver started commenting on how many cars there were. It was a sign of extreme crowds, but we move into the Charles Lindbergh hotel.
Caught my first ever glimpse of FLY in real life walking through the entryway, made our presence known, come back at 3.30 and have some FLY fast tracks. Rides weren't open yet so walked up the stairs to get the ever-famous photos from those angles, and while this is nothing new, it feels good saying "I took this photo on MY camera".
Enough faffing, let's go #248 FLYing, the queue of which had already built up significantly.
The (Charles Lindbergh) fast track queue starts by walking down one of two staircases into a room where you get your wristband into a mandatory locker and put everything, absolutely everything, into it. Yeah. These fast tracks are powerful, but only had six (now five) - one provided per person for each day, all given to you when you make your presence known. The person I was with didn't want to ride due to the sheer length of the coaster, so the rest went to me.
Had so much in my pockets the whole damn jacket just went in the locker. And with my only possession now being a wristband, it was now time to embark on what the Airrail Company had to offer to me. The room goes from orange to blue, and off we go into a little dark ride section. You whizz past some scenes, adverts for Rookburgh aerial equipment, past some sort of aircraft docking place, then the seat rotates and off you go.
The whole thing is a super smooth if not very intense experience, and airtime on a flying coaster is a fantastic feeling but sadly it's difficult to get room between you and the restraint for that to be consistently effective. I really didn't have much to say about the ride experience after just one go, and almost refused to have a formed opinion on it because I just... did not know what to say about the ride. All I knew was "I'm on FLY", "Rookburgh is utterly beautiful" and "looking up still gives the same neck problem that I know Galactica for but unlike that ride looking down was perfectly fine".
Head empty, not sure what to think of it, I'll come back later.
Entering Klugheim now, for #249 Taron which I was so excited to ride. It had a stupid queue of over an hour, so I entered single rider queue (which also had a stupid queue of over an hour and in fact was slightly longer than the main queue's time). But else, I was on and oh it felt so good to finally hear that dispatch music in-person, and hear the "BRRRRT" of those ever-famous launch sounds, and being surrounded by rocks, in a trench, and being on some massive double-launch Intamin coaster, etc etc etc.
And yes, it's quite intense, but certainly has a couple moments of 'waiting for the next bit to happen' but for every one of those moments, there's about 10 other moments of insanity with beautiful lateral whips when you twist from left to right and vice versa. There's some very well-executed near miss moments that really did cause me to throw my hands down for a bit, and we're only in the first half.
The second half throws you harder and further as the train literally vibrates from the power of the LSM launch. After a couple twists you're tossed into a brutal overbanked turn that dives down into yet more chaos, into some twists and more twists. A notable trim signifies the ending of the ride, but thankfully it ends on a high as the hill after provides some good air with a positive-heavy ending.
At some point on the second half of the ride I had that "I'm on Taron" feeling like with FLY, but this time it was far more of a "Oh my Word I'm on TARON!!!" feeling, a feeling I've never really gotten on any other ride before. We hit the brakes, that ride was good. Wasn't sure if it was a Helix beater, I decided Helix was better. Taron and FLY sit nicely next to each other, and that was it for now.
For this visit I was going by "what do I want to ride the most first?" rather than "get all the creds!" and I think this was the way. For this reason, Chiapas - DIE Wasserbahn was next, a log flume in winter with practically zero queue (not a surprise). It was an awesome log flume, and predictably one of my new favourites. I'm still doubting myself on whether I enjoy it more than Flumeride, but I think Flumeride gets extra unfair points because I think I'm holding some sort of sentimental value towards it.
But something I noticed is that with Chiapas, the drop almost feels like a bit of an afterthought compared to other flumes that we're oh so used to back in the UK. In my home country you spend the whole water ride anticipating the big finale drop. It's constantly in view, it's the only thing you're ever allowed to look at, it's permanently in view all the time and there's nothing you can do about it. Tidal wave (Thorpe), Log flume (Great Yarmouth), Stormforce 10, Supersplash (Tusenfryd) just to name a few. But with Chiapas, the huge massive drop is something that you never see on-ride until you're going down it. The fun, playful theming with its upbeat tunes makes sure to distract you from its 3 big drops and I love it to bits. And it made me realise how I didn't realise how much theming adds to a water ride. You completely forget about the drops (I did), because you're just taking in the visually pleasing surroundings instead.
And the drops were great too. We're now 3 for 3 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a fourth with Talocan? Spoilers, yes.
I LOVE TOP SPINS!!!!!!!! That's it. That's what I'm going to say. Top spins are by far my favourite type of flat ride. Ever. I love them to bits. Talocan specifically has some utterly stupid intensity going on with its flips, combined with the backdrop, water effects and fire effects and simply banging soundtrack. It feels so, so complete as a ride just like literally everything else here. I still miss Rameses Revenge to bits even if its cycle was a little lacklustre compared to this, Avenger was great in the meantime but didn't have the raw power of genuine Huss, and skipping Blast at Walibi Holland due to going too hard with Untamed had me kicking myself, so this top spin fix was much-needed.
Big, big, big fan of Talocan and I still long for a more local top spin to pop back up as I stay excited for whatever my next one will be. We're now 4 for 4 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a fifth with #250 Black Mamba? Spoilers.... yes.
But before Black Mamba, we checked into our room to find out that the heating wasn't working. A call was made with a technician who came to our cabin and told us yeah, we've been having trouble with this room, here's a plug-in heater that'll get the job well done for you. This served its purpose pretty well, until a few minutes later another call was made. It was from the hotel check-in desk. They were saying about a last-second cancellation of a room whose heating works, do you want to move to that cabin and have better views of Rookburgh because we're extremely nice people who love everyone? Yes, yes, of course. We'll come back in a little. Now, back to Black.
I went into Black Mamba thinking it'd be a lower tier invert because apparently it rattles and has no forces and the corkscrews having no 'snap' to them takes away from them way too much for the ride to be properly fun? No, wrong, the entire ride goes hard the whole way through. After being oh so used to Nemesis Inferno not doing anything to me on my recent Thorpe visits, I was surprised to see this punch on every element the whole way through, with even the drop and the loop wowing me. The zero g roll was awesome too, and while you definitely really notice how the corkscrews don't have that snap to them, I'm able to look past it. Then the helices happen, and these have some real force to them which ends the ride out with a bang.
Black Mamba is a fantastic terrain invert, and has earned the top spot of my favourite roller coaster by B&M. We're now 5 for 5 on rides that have the UK sitting painfully embarrassed, can we make a sixth with #251 Colorado Adventure? Spoilers........ yes.
But before Colorado, this was our time to make the move into our new room where we were given the key to our new room and showed exactly where it was by extremely nice people who loved everyone. Just before we made the move, suddenly Puls von Rookburgh was happening and we had that epic high-level view of it... but after that was done, back to Colorado.
Seriously, yet another hit. Colorado Adventure doesn't even have any UK competition, and the best it has is some powered mine train. We were fooled into thinking this ride had assigned seating, but was the only coaster of the trip where we were able to pick our own rows (outside of separate queues for the very front on Taron & FLY). We just knew to go for the back, and this turned Colorado Adventure into from a silly mine train into something truly special. You get yanked over the lifts and over all of the hills, and with it now being much darker outside you truly had no idea where you were going. It was truly chaotic, and bundles of fun.
It was almost time for our dinner reservation, but there's always time for one more ride on FLY. I still think this is a remarkably difficult coaster to talk about, I still don't really have the words to say about it. Somebody said that you get used to FLY after about four rides on it, and multiple people shared that view, so I wasn't going to worry about it. However, I will say that this night ride was beautiful. I got that feeling of "true immersion" that I've only ever experienced on two other rides, where I genuinely questioned if I was even at a theme park. It's a feeling that simply captivates you, and it briefly becomes the only thought in your head. It's an unreal feeling every time it happens, and I always welcome it when it comes along.
After that, we had a stellar three-course meal, where we were invited to just... wander around Rookburgh freely after the area had closed to non-hotel guests. Obviously FLY was closed, but being able to simply walk around with the music going on in the background was a surreal feeling that I loved so much. At around 10pm the music cuts, leaving you to walk around in complete silence. Just you, a few others, and the huge structures of Rookburgh. I don't know who came up with the idea, but I thank them so much for it.
Then it was lights out back in the cabin, where we slept like an aeronaut. Impressed with what we got done for being on four hours of sleep, I guess we stayed alive based off pure adrenaline alone from the simple idea of being at Phantasialand. Be back tomorrow.
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