PTR:(Alton) Denmark, Germany

[davidm]

As the observant of you may have gathered from the odd-recent post, I've been off
on a little trip recently. So here is my homework report (this might take a little
time)

--

Summer is here, booked a couple of weeks off work and had totally failed to get
myself sufficiently organised / motivated to do anything "long haul" I found
myself sitting at home with the said 2 weeks stretching out in front of me...

So a quick trip to Alton Towers to get me in the mood, then I book some flights,
hotels, hire cars and hot foot it off to the continent.

Alton doesn't really count as the "trip", but I'll dump some pics here just to
get us going... (click through the pics to get to larger ones)

Day -3 : Tuesday 24th May

Nip down to Alton, spend the morning on the rides (needed to get the Th13teen
credit), and the afternoon with the camera.

So in no particular order, just what I've played with so far (some repeats from the
Photo thread here too);


Nemesis


Loop-de-loop


Ritablur


Towers Chapel


Staircase


Towers HDR


Don't Look Down


The Gardens at Alton


Corkscrew - Rust In Peace


Nemesis


AIr


Toadstool


Hex


Up on the Roof


Inside a Tower


XSector


Ruined


On The Edge


Obilviblur


EnterObilvion


Ghost of the Sea


He Made The Desert Smile

Note that picture quality will vary as to whether I have my proper camera with me
(as above, or when I'm not wandering around a park) or just my compact (as with most
of the parks to come)


Day 1 : Friday 27th May

Easyjet from Manchester to Copenhagen, train from airport to the city, turns out
I can actually see Tivoli from my hotel window (that was not exactly planned), so
seeing that Friday nights are meant to be popular at the place off I trot to see
why.

Nice place - like a lot of the places in Denmark it seems to have evolved from
somewhere that people just used to go to to chill out / picnic / have a meal into
something a but more organised. Most of the people there were just there to be
there (if that makes sense) and the rides and stuff was incidental to all that.

The people there were there for the restaurants, the beer, the evening concert
show thing (which was seemingly confused when the main band didn't turn up and
the support band got promoted to the 10pm headline slot)

Anyway, the rides;

I'd be happy to say I just didn't fancy this (I didn't!) but there was a stupid
long queue and a capacity of peeps every 5 minutes (only running one side) was
enough to put me off anyway! It looked bonkers though - I've read the reviews
in the 2009 Euro-live topic, but I'm still sure it would have messed my brain up!


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Vertigo


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen

Star Flyers should scare me, they do a bit still. Didn't help by it starting to
rain when I was up there!


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Star Flyer


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen

Really liked the old wooden "roller coaster" (great name).


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Rutschebanen

And I thought that the mini-B&M floorless was good enough, impressively squeezed
into the park's limited space.


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Daemonen


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen - Daemonen

As it got dark, the place got all lit up nicely.


Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen

Day 2 : Saturday 28th May

No parks today - culture credit trip around Copenhagen!

Quite a pleasant city I thought. Mermaid statue is a real anti-climax (but I knew
this before I wandered up there).


Mermaid

Really liked the old Rundetårn in the city.


Rundetårn

Dumped myself in an Irish bar for the football match in the evening, loud cheers
when Barca scored (yay!), but in fairness much louder from the Irish expats when
Rooney equalised (boo). As an aside I saw a lot of Barca shirts around Denmark as a
whole - a fair few Utd and Liverpool ones as well, but mostly the kids were wearing
Barca.



(to be continued)

 

[Ian]

I really love the Oblivion photo with the young girl.

It looks so menacing.

I'd be tempted to get that knocked up into a CF poster, with your permission and promise of free one of course!

 

[davidm]

^ Yeah course whatever; you guys can do whatever you fancy with my pics (until I get that exclusive Getty images contract that is!)

 

[Martyn B]

Another great trip report, there's been some good ones lately of parks you dont see too often!

And obviously it goes without saying that your photo's are quite good

 

[davidm]

I realise I haven't posted many Copenhagen pics (2 so far!)


Copenhagen HDR

but unless I plough on with this I'll lose focus.... so...

Day 3 : Sunday 29th May

Done Copenhagen then (nice), Barca having successfully negotiated the football
to my satisfaction, light hangover caused by the former fading away I hit the
train and head up the coast a little bit;

To here.


Aquarium

I've mentioned before that I do like aquariums so when I'm somewhere random I do
try to get the aquarium-credit as well as the coaster-credits.

Denmark's (National) Aquarium was not much cop to be honest though, pretty small, very old looking.





("They" are going to build a super new "Blue Planet" aquarium in
the next couple of years down near the airport so I guess no one cares much about
this old one anymore;

(New aquarium pic - not mine!;

)

However a still had a good couple of hours there, looking at all the pretty fishes
but there wasn't anything much spectacular to report on and I am still failing
to take any devent pictures in these places :-(



These Stone Fish are great;



not so much if you tread on one though, that'll kill you.



Flat;



PIRANAH (and awful reflections in the glass :-( )



You are not a fish!



The big show tanks, the highlight of the place;



(not so great then)

--

The Aquarium is actually right by the coast,



so wandered down there and had some lunch in a cafe overlooking the sea and then
headed a little further up the coast to Bakken.

Quite liked the place, nothing spectacular though. Was pretty busy with the
Sunday afternoon family day trippers (fair enough) and was in a great location
bang in the middle of a forest (10 mins walk from the train).



I don't apprear to have taken many pics at this park, so you'll have
to do with these...

The very splashy log flume (which I passed on!)



New trains on Rutschebanen



I really liked their Rutschebanen (as well as Tivolis the other day). Thought the
automatic trains worked well (but I never experienced it with the brake man so
nothing to compare against really) but they were pretty comfortable, nice enough
restraints and if you didn't know there used to be a brakeman you wouldn't have
realised it was different.


Rutschebanen, Bakken

Racing, their Flitzer, I've ridden only one other of these (at Morey's a couple of
years ago) and wasn't wowed by either.



But this I really liked;



Was totally taken aback by the launch off the top of the lift hill and then you
are thrown around (and around) something rotten.



Great stuff, if a little short but you can hardly complain about that in a compact
park this size and this old!



The mine train was pretty good too (don't seem to have any pics of that) but it
did "go down" after my ride so I only got the one go on that - BOO.

 

[davidm]

Day 4 : Monday 30th May

Initially I thought today was going to be somewhat of a logistically complicted
day. In the end it was pretty easy.

Logistical step #1

Get to Hertz in Copenhagen, get hire car, negotiate Copenhagen traffic in car
with driving wheel on wrong side AND gear stick in the wrong place (pretty
familiar with being on the wrong side of the car/road, don't think I had done
the manual gears before though?)


Car

Logistical step #2

Drive to here;


BonBon Land

Wasn't quite sure what to expect from this place, looked really "tacky" to me
but it was in fact really nice. They definately have gone somewhat overboard
with the fibreglass cartoon character type things, but the whole place is like
that so it works!


Dog!

For some reason I had it in my head that the spinning coaster was just your
standard (annoying) spinning mouse, so I was quite happy to discover this was
not the case and it was much better;


Hankatten

(and I've only just realised that this is a clone of the ride at SFDK that I did
last year - clearly I'm not paying enough attention to these things. Enjoyed
this one more then!)


Hankatten

You can probably tell from the lack of peeps in these pics that the place was
empty - one ride-op I was talking to said that it was the first operating Monday
of the season and that was why.

So with no queues to cope with it was all a pretty leisurely experience at the
park for me. Next up was what I though was going to be a standard Zierer Tivoli
which I'd done a few of, but it was a lot more custom than that with trenches
dug into a lake and stuff like that, pretty good indeed then.


Viktor Vandorm

Onto the original Euro-fighter then;


Vild-Svinet

A bit rough I guess, but good fun anyway.


Vild-Svinet

And the final coaster is the infamous dog-fart ride. Which is just a little
kiddy ride really (albeit with a somewhat low-brow theme!)


Hundeprutte-rutsjebanen

The place had a lot of other rides too, a pretty good rapids;


Beaver Rafting

(how can you resist a ride called that!)

This is the entrance to their "new for 2011" attraction which was a "5D" shooter
which just means that you are watching a 3D movie, sat on a little saddle thing
that moves around (+1D) and trying to shoot stuff in the movie (+1D). Was OK,
nothing earth shattering - but the ride-op very nicely (since I was the only one
on the ride) ran it with the English soundtrack instead of Danish (or at least I
assume he did that rather than it only having an English soundtrack!)


Hestorado

The ride is western themed and located in their cowboy town, which was really
living up to the ghost town theme today.


Ghost Town

Have I mentioned the gaudy characters everywhere?


Fibreglass stuff

Job lot of firbeglass somewhere;


Fibreglass stuff

Turtle themed wave swinger - great stuff!


Turtle wave swinger

And a giant albatross disk-o - you just can't make this up!


Albatossen

Wacky themed (giant fish!) pirate ship thingy;


Themed pirate ship


More fibreglass stuff

And they also have one of those monster Huss frisbees which ran a few times
that day;


Svend Singram

But not for me :-( since when I tried after seeing it running, I sat there
talking to the ride-op for about 20 minutes waiting for more punters to turn up
(they will only run it with 10 passengers) and no-one came, so I went off for
some food instead.

Logistical step #3

Drive off the the end of the country onto a ferry.


Leaving Denmark

Logistical step #4

Negotiate stupid German traffic jams for a while and find silly little hotel in
the middle of noweheresville, Germany.

All logistical problems now sorted (with the exception of where to eat that night
which just ended up being some stuff I bought from the local supermarket!)

--

It turned out that noweheresville, Germany was quite a pleasant seaside
area with a nice beach and stuff;


Haffkrug beach

So I entertain myself for a while wandering the beach, taking some snaps


Haffkrug Huts


Haffkrug, boat


A shower


Hut


Rocks

and admiring the view...


Haffkrug/Hansa

Closer up on that view...


Hansa from a distance

and you can possibly even see the pier that I took those last 2 shots from
in one of the pictures in Benin&Nickys trip report (HERE) as I think they were
at Hansa that very day!


Haffkrug Pier

(No prizes for working out where I am tomorrow then)

 

[davidm]

Day 5 : Tuesday 31st May

So as expected I nip up the coast the couple of miles to Hansa Park.

Got there at park opening (9am) not realising they just open the park and don't
run anything 'till 10am - d'oh.


Hansa Park

(Like the fact all the maintenance workers were dressed as super Mario!)

REALLY liked the place - it was much bigger than I had imagined, although it does
seem to have a really well defined "park shape" and then suddenly there is this
expansion area creeping off seemingly at random in the adjacent field - quirky!

Headed up to the main ride first up then, past the scary queue line


Scared crow?

and off on the launched Eurofighter


Fluch von Novgorod

Which I really liked


Fluch von Novgorod

Enclosed lift hill is 2/3rds way round the ride and has lots of creepy stuff
going on inside


Fluch von Novgorod

Overview (from the sky tower)


Hansa Park, Fluch von Novgorod

So yeah, liked this - I hadn't really read up on it much apart from the general
impression that people thought it was good, so the way the elements worked
together all took me a bit by suprise and that was good!

The exit from the ride throws you out randomly in Mexico (very odd) next to this
ride (which the park seems to count as a coaster, when its clearly not, silly
people) but its fun anyway.


El Paso Express

A couple of the older coasters are at the front of the park, all entwined.


Nessie Superrollercoaster

I really liked the Nessie superrollercoaster (what!) which was a great old
Schwarzkopf that actually dives into the mouth of the monster it is named after;


Nessie Gets Eaten

(unlike Krake manages to do tomorrow!)

The other coaster in that lucky aerial shot above (lucky since both trains are in
shot) is Rasender Roland which I couldn't get out of my mind calling Roland Rat
all day in my head - it was a bit shaky to be honest but fun enough.

So off in the seemingly random expansion area is a bunch of other rides, pretty
worthy ones too. We have a spinny raft thing (which looked a lot better than this
years effort from Thorpe?)


Rio Dorado

and the bizarre (stupid low capacity) but fun "Ian From Coasterforce" ride;


Die Glocke

A nice Star Flyer (getting used to these things now)


Star Flyer

and tucked in a corner a pretty highly themed wild mouse, I do prefer these things
to their spinning relatives and this one had a load of themey stuff going on


Crazy Mine

Also in this area is this years new ride "Die Schlange von Midgard" (Snake of
Midgard), which isn't much more than a kiddy coaster over a little lake;


Die Schlange von Midgard

which they had not finished fitting out yet (queue line was incomplete, gift shop
was still being built) and it appeared there was a tunnel to be built mid-ride
which wasn't there yet;


Die Schlange von Midgard

but if you think I'm being critical about all of that, entirely the opposite is
true - despite still working on the themeing the fact they had the ride open I
was well impressed with! Heres the train in close up;


New trains

So yeah, really liked the place, suprisingly large and really nice.


Nessie

After saying goodbye to Hansa, headed down the motorway for a bit, got stuck in
many traffic jams circumnavigating Hamburg in the pouring rain, but ended up at
the hotel for the next 2 nights at Heide Park.


Port Royal

Which was nice.

 

[davidm]

Day 6 : Wednesday 1st June

Right then, deliberately planned to be a no-travel day so I could spend all day
in the park (last time I was here in 2006 I had left a bit earlier than I wanted
to in order to get somewhere else in the evening).

Anyway, same MO as Hansa; the park opens at 9am but they don't run the rides until
10am - except this time I realise that and wander into the park about 10to10 and
join the Krake queue (Krake being just about the first big thing you hit when
going into the park from the hotel).

Theres a fair few peeps ahead of me in the queue filling up the midway, but once
it starts testing and they open the queue proper its only 10 minutes or so until
I'm on.


About to Krake


Loading Krake

Quick second trip around and you can tell the queue is "light"


Krake Queue

They have a manned "bag storage" bit on the queue where you deposit your cr@p and
pick it up on the way out - nice, but you'd think Merlin would have got some pay-
lockers in on that deal pretty sharpish?

OK the ride; I liked it.

I've never really been an Oblivion fan-boy - its OK, one trick (its a good trick)
but after that good start... it just stops. I've been on Sheikra as well and that
was better, but felt a bit "lumbering" to me (if that makes sense) - Krake is
kinda halfway between the 2. The cars feel lighter, more agile than either
Oblivion or Sheikra (and they hold more than Oblivion).

So Krake does its "one big trick" too - great view from the front down into the
seas below (but not into the rather abandoned mouth of the Krake off to the side;
hmmmm) and then you drop, splash (only you don't see any of that splash on ride
until you hit the immelman and loop back over it when the water cloud is vanishing
away above you. Nice. Then you hit an airtime hill with plenty of airtime and
you are done. So short and sweet (much longer than Oblivion tho' ;-) ) but
really good. I approve.

(more pics later, only had the little camera with me in the morning)

Since my last visit Heide had very kindly built 3 new coasters, 1 down 2 to get.


Indy-Blitz

Nothing to write home about here, but is this whole (tiny) western section "new"
as well, I could not picture what was here before?

There was a huge queue for the last +1 for me Desert Race, so I went off to play
on one of my favourite coasters instead;


Colossos lift hill

Which had a 30 minute advertised wait - turned out to be a bit longer than that as
they only had 1 train running (which was starting to wind me up a bit) but then
added the second train and then the queue moved more swiftly (1 train opes were
the problem with Desert Race too, but they added the second train to that as well
about the same time... so why not start the day with 2 trains?)

Love this ride - sure I've taken this same picture before as well;


Colossos drop

Not so sure about the veracity of this though (its not just PBB that is liberal
with the interpretation of these things then!) - 6th steepest maybe?


ORLY?

Couple of goes on Colossos and the Desert Race queue moving much better now means
I can get my !Rita credit - not much to say about that ride, possibly a bit more
sensible a ride than Rita (which is just such an odd thing to have put into Alton
IMHO) but still a bit of a filler-ride to me.

Work my way around the rest of the park, skipped the SLC which inexplicably had
a large queue whilst Krake was about 10 minutes


Scream?

Drop tower is fun, their bobsleigh coaster is possibly one of the best of that
type, and you gotta think that Big Loop's days are numbered?

The Splash Battle is a bit rubbish too;


Not Splash Battle

(OK I don't actually come across the real Splash Battle until the end of the day!)

So half the day done, I nip back to the hotel and get the proper camera out for
some fun.

This is the entrance way from the hotel to the park (under a windmill)


Under the windmill

Krake's nicely done station building;


Krake (Station)

and Krake itself


Krake (4)

from various angles;


Krake (3)

and activities;


Krake (2)

from a distance (+zoom)


Krake, drop

this shot is probably the best though (and the first one I processed!)


Krake

Big Loop (corksrew bit thereof)


Big Loop

The big beauty that looms over the park in wide angle


Colossos wideangle

and closeup


Colossos drop


Colossos inbound

Airtime!


Colossos Hill

Heide is all around a big lake if you don't realise;


Heide Lake

Didn't ride these rapids (they didn't have an amusing name like BonBon Land's)


Rapids at Heide

Good timed shot with Krake and Big Loop both doing something (and there are 5
coasters in this shot)


Coaster Count

if only the bob had timed it right too, like in this one


Schweizer Bobbahn

Finish up with a few shots of the hotel, which wasn't a great hotel I thought, sure it
was good enough but not as good as I expected.

The bar, where I may have spent a while in the evening - they did put on a show
and stuff so thats a good effort considering the hotel was quite quiet.


Bar


Port Royal


Stairway to

So really nice day I thought. Great park, couple of great rides, nicely chilled
out by the all-you-can-eat (and drink) buffet; ate some German bean sprouts (which
in hindsight may not have been the wisest move, but I survived).

 

[Hixee]

Really nice report! Obviously the pictures are great, I'm really enjoying reading it and looking at the photos too. Even if you are updating it quicker than I can read!

Is there more to come?

 

[davidm]

^ yeah another couple of parks and some wandering around - be next weekend before I upload that though

Heres a taster though, a bit of a panorama of a panorama.


Your Rainbow Panorama

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Lol, stalking us much?

Shame didn't actually know you were there on the Wednesday, as we turned up that afternoon... But at least you appeared to avoid the annoying crowds that we encountered (must continue my report)...

Better photos than mine as well, though I was ill when taking them... That's my excuse

And Haffkrug seemed a nice little place... Hansa needs more love too... Glad you liked Fluch... It's AMAZING...

Ohhhhh and Bon-Bon Land... I need to go there because it just looks so epic...

 

[Nicky]

^^what Benin said

It's weird looking at your photos as I recognise it all.

 

[Martyn B]

and tucked in a corner a pretty highly themed wild mouse, I do prefer these things
to their spinning relatives and this one had a load of themey stuff going on

Totally agree with that. I hate the spinning mice, but love the 'normal' ones.

This report really is a great read, cant wait for some more!

 

[Hyde]

Amazing photography! Absolutely love the PTR, especially the shots of Alton.

 

[Inverse]

I really enjoyed that, thanks.

 

[spicy]

Excellent report, shame you werent that impressed with the Hotel Port Royal I stayed their the year it opened and thought it was excellent, maybe standards have dropped a little?

Also were the Mutiny bay splash battle boats at Heide Park or is that pic from Alton? :?

I couldn't work it out because that doesn't look like Alton themeing behind the boats..? :lol:

 

[davidm]

I'm just a hotel snob. Service wasn't great (was OK), room was good (but poor TV, no in room internet was bad), food was average. It was fine really though, I'd recommend it fully when going to the park, but not really for the sake of the hotel. (Last time I was at Heide I stayed at a cheapo motel about 5 miles away, it was a lot better than that, but a lot more £££)

The car-parked splash battle boats were at Heide, seen from the Q for Scream.

 

[davidm]

Day 7 : Thursday 2nd June

So after yesterday's "no travel" day, today was a "just travel" day. Drove
up from Heide Park to Aalborg at the top of Denmark.

Odd place; I got to Aalborg mid afternoon, so thought I'd have a wander around
the town centre (hotel was just on the edge of the centre by the river) so
I wandered up - and it was shut. Seriously, everything was shut. Mid afternoon
on a weekday, shut. We used to have 1/2 day closing in the UK, but that went
many years ago and our shops are open as much as they can be, but no, not in
Aalborg it seems. Shut.

Turns out the day before (the 1st) was some sort of late-night opening in the
city, and today is in fact a national holiday of some religious significance
I was unaware of (40 days after Easter) - (but I've only just worked that out
3 weeks later!)

Anyway Aaloborg city was quite pleasant, few nice old buildings such as this
one from 1624;


Jens Bang's House

In keeping with the "shut" theme with Aalborg, their town centre amusement
park shut at the end of last season, but I have a wander around the outside
of it to seem what I can see; which amounts to not much more than a boomer's
lift hill. Quite sad.

Heres the pics I posted in the 'Photos from abandoned theme parks' thread, I
guess the place doesn't quite meet the 'abandoned' criteria rather since it was
actively shut rather than being left to decay, but still...

--

The boomerang's lift is still standing...

but the rest of it is in bits on the floor;

Rather sad;

Bits of another coaster ("Looping" I guess);

NO WAY IN here;

Day 8 : Friday 3rd June

OK clearly I'm only in Aalborg so I can come here;


Fårup

What a nice day - nice park, nice weather, nice rides. Really nice.

Started out with a few trips on their nice launched Gerstlauer Lynet (Lightning)
which I really liked. (Nice touch with a construction video going on in the
queue line, staifying the geeky enthusiast interest while you wait!)

Heres the station;


Lynet Station

and heres the ride;


Lynet


Lynet, looping


Lynet


Lynet


Lynet launching

Good ride then, very similar to the eurofighters, but the train is smaller and
more comfortable I think.

The other coasters here are a nice (but unspectacular) wooden one that appeared
to have been built to celebrate the park's 50th anniversary (which must have
worked since a couple of years later they can put in Lynet - well done you!)


Falken way in


Falken Hill

(not may great places to photograph it from though)


Falken

They also have one of the ubiquitous spinning wild mice (of which more later)


Bat?

Which appears to be called "Bat" (Danish "Flagermusen"),


Flying Mouse

and their oldest (1992) coaster is a junior Vekoma minetrain deep in the trees,
which I seem to have failed to take any pics of. Nevermind.

The park itself is really nice (I think I mentioned that before), set amongst
lots of trees and its very pretty.


Boats


Falken

Pretty popular too, loads of folks out with their picnics;


People at Fårup

but the place did seem to have something of a trampoline obsession! Every spare
bit of space seemed to have a trampoline dumped it in, health&safety nightmare!


Trampolineworld


On a Fårup train


Fårup Swinger


Fårup Splash

So after my very nice time at the nice Farup, I say goodbye to Lynet (from the
car park) and head south again.


Lynet

------------------------------------

A little later then (and a bit further south).

Check into my hotel in downtown Århus and take the 25 or so minutes stroll out
of town to the local park, where lives Tivoli Friheden.


Tivoli Friheden

Home of Coasterforce's favorite freefall tower


Sky Tower

(which I did not ride, I blame a long queue, but I might well not have even if
it was walk on)


Sky Tower

They made the punters wear all manner of protection (to save breaking peoples
back I assume?) - did the CF tour in 2009 involve this palaver as well?


Sky Tower Safety Gear

New for this season was a fairly standard big wheel, from where I ca take a few
snaps


Orkanens Øje

All the rides are enclosed in these HUGE sound shields, to protact the locals
from the sounds of people enjoying themselves no doubt. Perhaps Alton could
invest in some?


Eye of the Hurricane

The main coaster is Cobra, a Sartori invert which has got to be a first for me.

This is a panoramic shot (3 shots stiched together)


Cobra at Tivoli Friheden

Really slow ops, >3 minutes to cycle a train meant and the busy Friday night
crowd meant that it was something like 40 minutes queue for this - not great
then


Cobra (Drop)


Cobra (Roll)

Unspectacular ride, not as painful as I anticipated but not very elegant

Nicely done trains though.


Cobra Flypast

Next door to this is ANOTHER (thats 2 for the day) annoying spinning mouse,


Tyfonen

this time its a Zamperla rather than Farup's Reverchon. Not that that makes it
any better of course.


Tyfonen

Much better is the old Pinfari looper Orkanens Øje seen in the shots from the
wheel above. At least this had some character about it.

There is also a kiddie credit. I may have been on this, but you can't prove
that.


Dragen

And a big evil looking spin and puke job (which I passed on!)


Pegasus

The park was really busy, mainly for a concert going on (much like Tivoli in
Copenhagen the week before), but that made for a nice enough atmosphere to
chill out with a few beers and some food.

Busy day then (nice though, although far too many spinning mice)

 

[davidm]

Day 9 : Saturday 4th June

After yesterdays Sommerland fun, its off to the other one near Aarhus. That is
Djurs Sommerland about 30 minutes drive away.

Get there bang on opening and I'm not ashamed to say I was quite excited about
the first ride of the day and I positvely rushed to get onto this thing straight
away.


Piraten

And its very good indeed - we'll come back to this later I think!

In the same area as the splendid Piraten is this year's new ride "Skatteøen"
(Treasure Island). This is a Mack water coaster, so like Poseidon at Europa
Park. Djurs advertise the ride as "europas-stoerste-water-coaster" which
translates as "largest" - I guess it depends on how you interpret largest, sure
this one is higher than Poseidon, but only half as long? Hmmm.

Anyway, being new and it being a rather warm Saturday, this has a bit of a queue
to it, so I take a few pics as I wait in line;


Skatteøen Boat


Skatteøen

They have done a really good job on the themeing all full of pirate boats and
giant skulls and the like


Skatteøen Boats


Skatteøen Skull

And it gives off a lovely big splash


Skatteøen from the queue

And despite the busy queue, it moves pretty rapidly, really good ops keeping the
line moving and they were consistanly dispatching so that one boat was hitting
the lift hill as the previous one just drops into the splash. Well done them.

The ride itself is good too, not as long (large) as Poseidon which it closely
resembles, this one just drops down after the lift hill in a big circle then
back up before the final drop into the splash zone. Short and sweet then, but
pretty effective. Don't get much wet on the splash which does soak the
bystanders though.


Skatteøen (Splash)

Right then, what else does this park hold... turns out it has a rather splendid
mouse-like Gerstlauer bobsled (another type new to me). So off to Thor's Hammer I
go with its rather ropey themeing (not ropey/bad, ropey/cheesy perhaps)?

Thor looks rather hammered to me?


Thor is hammered

Hmmmm


Scraggy goat!

so I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but it was really good.


Thors Hammer


Thors Hammer


Thors Hammer

So thats 3 good coasters in the place then. Great stuff!

I wander around the rest of the park for a while, and its all really nice too.
Lots of greenery, nice healthy trampoline obsession too (not quite as many as
at Farup, but still...)

I get to their topple tower "Ornen" and watch that for a while, never seen one
of these before so its a novelty.


Ornen

Looks fun?


Ornen

Wierd sensation riding it, rather like you are continually falling backwards as
it spins around and rocks back and forth. Quite cool then.

Added wetness - and they do move the ride into the fountains, didn't catch it
on camera but they soaked the next cycle.


Topple Tower Wet

Next to the topple tower was the flume, but didn't ride that (silly queue)


Splash

Had some lunch and eventually found myself in the wild-west area where they have
a wave swinger. I like wave swingers and usually have a go, but as I watch this
one it does 2 things I have never seen on a wave swinger... first up it has a
bunch of fountains that they use to soak the riders (and they do get soaked),
then it stops and cycles in reverse. I brave the soaking just for the sake of
the reverse experience and I don't think I've laughed as much on one of these
before!


Wet Wave Swinger

Their rapids ride had been down all day, but I notice it had just opened, so I
have a quick bash on that (and it must have literally only just opened since I
walked straight through the queue yet as I exit the queue line is completly full;
good timing there!)

OK so I've "done" the park (didn't lower myself to te kiddie coaster this time)
so I re-ride Skatteøen which prompty breaks down as my boat finishes the circuit.


Skatteøen broken

So after sitting on the exit ramp for a while, they evac the boats and I can
escape from this treasure island!


Skatteøen evac

Onto serious business now and I just reride Praten again and again for a while.
Interesting this too breaks down a couple of times so sometimes I have to wait
while they fix it (never quite sure what was broken but they had to manually
release people from a train a couple of times), otherwise its just a 5 minute
queue between rides. Nice. Very nice in fact.

Probably longest queue for it I saw, even this is only 10 minutes with no break
downs.


Piraten lift

Take a final shot up its lift hill after my last ride;


View up Piraten lift

and then I spend a while taking some pics of the nice toys.


Piraten Skulls


Piraten drop


Skatteøen


Skatteøen dropping


Skatteøen about to hit the water


Skatteøen (Splash closeup)

I leave you with a nice image of the rather brilliant pirate ride then.


Piraten

 

[davidm]

(apologies for shamless multi-posting, but...)

Day 9 : Sunday 5th June

Ok all coasters done now (but confusingly one more "theme park" to come).

I had decided that I liked Arhus quite a lot so I'd spend my last full day
in the city and have a looksee around.

Thats where I was staying...


Arhus, hotel

And next door was the rather posh town hall place...


Arhus

There were a couple of things I fancied seeing in the city, so off I went first
to the modern art museum place;


ARoS

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum http://www.aros.dk/

Which I rather enjoyed. I do like a bit of modern art, and this place had rather
a lot of the stuff since it was pretty big.


ARoS Inside

I particularily liked the "Get Lost" exhibition of Fredrik Raddum's stuff


Neon


Bag Head Boy


Bag Head Boy

http://www.fredrikraddum.no/

The museum has a couple of 'signature exhibits', firstly this Boy by Ron Mueck
(which wikipedia tells me was originally exhibited at the Millenium Dome)


Boy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck

and up on the roof of the place is a panoramic walkway that gives you views out
over the city all through various filtered coloured glass. Plays havoc with the
cameras white balance though!


Your Rainbow Panorama (Purple/Red)

Tried a bit of HDR in there, ughhhhh


Your Rainbow Panorama (Yellow/Green)

But panoramas worked (I posted another one from outside earlier in the thread)


Inside Your Rainbow Panorama Panorama

Its called Your Rainbow Panaorama and its by Olafur Eliasson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olafur_Eliasson
http://www.olafureliasson.net/

So I really liked ARoS - good work Arhus.


ARoS


Right then, this other "theme park" to which I referred earlier is called
Den Gamle By (The Old Town) and is a bit of one of the local park's set aside to
house all these (genuine) olde-worlde Deanish builings. The place itself is 100
odd years old (and some of the buildings a few hundred more) - they regularily
move buildings from all over Denmark to here to retain that history. Cool!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_Gamle_By

Anyway was a pleasant place to stroll around for a few hours looking at the
various buildings and failing to understans anything that the costumed characters
that populated the place were going on about.


Den Gamle By (1 of 9)


Den Gamle By (2 of 9)


Den Gamle By (3 of 9)


Den Gamle By (4 of 9)


Den Gamle By (5 of 9)


Den Gamle By (6 of 9)


Den Gamle By (7 of 9)


Den Gamle By (8 of 9)


Den Gamle By (9 of 9)


Day 10 : Monday 6th June

Nothing to see here. Drive back from Arhus to Copenhagen airport via the rather
spectacular Storebælt bridge (http://www.storebaelt.dk/english) with its rather
spectacularly steep toll charge 220 DKK = £26 ; ouch!

(Clearly since I was driving I don't have any pictures of this and when I stopped
on the far side there was not anywhere I could immediately see to get a good view
of the thing)

So thats it. Denmark (and a bit of Germany) done.

Back to the daily grind for a while.