Walibi Holland, 29/09/12, Wabs: Fab or Drab?

[Ian]

On Saturday, myself, Pierre, Rach, Peter and Darren B headed to Walibi Holland. The park was a new one for all of us so we were quite excited to explore the park and, of course, grab six creds.

As we all live in the UK we flew to Schiphol airport, rented a car and drove to the park. although it is commonplace when writing these reports, I'll skip the photos of the plane, airport, car and roads because once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

I suppose the same could be said about theme parks and rollercoasters - especially as the coasters at Walibi Holland aren't exactly unique AND it's an ex-Six Flags park. Here we go then...

Wabs: Fab or Drab?

A massive plazza welcomes guests to the park. A grand entrance arch, flanked by ticket booths and polished off by a fountain.

Through the gates and the Six Flags/Warner legacy is evident. It all looks very American.

I have no idea if it looked like this before Six Flags took ownership, but it certainly has an Americana smell about it.

A sparsely decorated building (toilets, gift shop, snack bar) is the next stop. There's a coaster here (although you wouldn't know it!) and two exits, one straight ahead, one to the right, we went straight ahead.

Urgh, despite being bang in the centre of Europe (geographically...nearly), Peter and I noted how much it resembled a Six Flags park. There's a long walkway, trees, ornaments and a traditional ride at the end of it all. So far, so bland.

From a coaster enthusiast point of view, it's fair to say that there is one main attraction at Wannabi Six Flags, I mean Walibi Holland, so we stomped purposely towards it passing by a shot tower...

...an enterprise...

...a Go Kart track....

.....until we ended up at our destination!

Yes! It's Europe's 8th fastest and 8th steepest drop rollercoaster - Goliath! It's also 10 years old - the last coaster to be built at Walibi Holland.

It's really burdenous to get to. From the entrance, it's about a 10-15min arduous trek, even though the other rides are just a stones throw away. I suppose it makes the ride more purposeful. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, perhaps?

The queue was short - about a two trains wait, one train operation - so we quickly took our seats and were on the ride!

Goliath is brilliant. It's no Expedition GeForce (which I was blatantly going to compare it to after riding it earlier this year), but that's fine because it can hold it's own.

I didn't rate the first drop - I'd even say Blackpool's Big One is better - but when the train hit the first airtime hill and my fat arse left the seat, a massive smile stretched across my face. The train then powered down before quickly jumping up towards the renowned 121° Stengel Dive. The dive is fantastic if you sit on the right-hand side of the train (facing forwards); it felt like I was going to fall out. There's nothing like a bit of terror to get the adrenaline pumping! The two helices flew by, the one over water had several headchopping moments thanks to the supports. The trains felt really exposed at the point - fantastic! The ride is punctuated by several awesome airtime hills - the first one really took me by surprise - before it rests gently in the station.

Where EGF is relentless, Goliath isn't. On Goliath, I felt that I had time to anticipate every interesting section of the track. Usually such predictability makes a coaster lame, but the memorable moments are thrilling and spaced enough to love. What would I give it out of three? <3 of course

Feeling quite positive about Walibi Holland, although knowing that Goliath would probably be the highlight, we moved off to the next rollercoaster. The nearest one, although not as the crow flies, was found in a place that would make us Brits feel at home....

Here lies a Vekoma woodie - one of only three in Europe...in fact, the world. Having enjoyed Loup-Garou at Walibi Belgium and finding Thundercoaster at Tsenfryd mildly entertaining, I was secretly looking forward to riding Robin Hood.

The queue line splits into two, with one staircase heading towards the front half of the train, the other heads to the back. Pretty pointless because the station is a free-for-all popular in Europe. Although thankfully this isn't France and the Dutch know how to queue sensibly.

Quite liked the obvious queue line information.

After a 20min wait - which would be the longest of the day - we were sat in the back seats (me and Pierre right at the back) and off we went!

Sometimes when a coaster beats me up, it can be enjoyable - like The Ultimate for example. Robin Hood wasn't brutal, it was uncomfortable. The train seemed to judder itself around the track. It was like being in the lower back with a baseball ball. To make matters worse, I didn't feel any airtime. I'm not even sure if the coaster had any significant or endearing points. It seemed to thrash itself at a steady pace without really doing anything. It's not a bad ride, just forgettable.

We continued our walk around Walibi Holland in a clockwise fashion, passing by a lovely looking food establishment, a well themed looking castle which we guessed featured a madhouse (therefore skipped) and a Top Spin.

We found ourselves back at the Ferris Wheel where we had a choice to head right towards the Vekoma SLC or left towards the Vekoma Boomerang. It like deciding if you'd rather eat a dog or a cat ****.

We went right. The SLC would be the next cred. We stopped briefly to look at the rapids, they looked choppy. Before we knew it, we were in...

The archways acted as gateways to the differently theme areas. They felt like a hangover from the Six Flags era, giving everything an obvious definition. I didn't like the archways. A theme park offering itself as Holland's premier park should flow from area to area in a subtle way - Alton Towers does this best imo - but it felt too abrupt in places.

We walked through the pretty Mayor Plaza with it's health and safety void fountain and water pool...

...and the Sombrero ride...

...to El Condor.

Vekoma SLCs look gorgeous, albeit slightly retro. Usually an SLC track an inter-winding mess of inversions and thrill. They look impressive. I liked the area in which El Condor was contained. It filled the space perfectly making the coaster look like fun, almost inviting.

Even the queue line, which snaked underneath the coaster, offered a break from the usually sterile, predictable metal pipe cattle grid. It's no Van Goth, but it's artwork none the less!

Funnily enough, El Condor was like the steel version of Robin Hood. It had that baseball-bat-in-the-back feeling, albeit on a Ryanair plane landing in windy conditions on pebble beach. The train seemed to judder itself from the top of the impressive looking drop to the lengthy brake run. The term "square wheels" seems appropriate here. It's not rough as in it will leave you injured, it's just rough as in uncomfortable. With five inversions tightly packed together in a small footprint, El Condor should be great but I found it to be a chore. Despite the ride being walk-on, nobody - including "non-enthusiast guests" - entered the queue for a second ride. If they put a walkway through to Goliath here, the ride could possibly gain more love...although El Condor's plus and minus points depends on it's isolation.

Before lunch we hit the up the rapids.

The entrance to the rapids is not obvious. In fact, it feels quite lonely. What I've noticed about Walibi Holland is the way that it doesn't point guests towards certain rides. The Six Flags style welcome was soon forgotten. There is a sense of exploration; A few signposts in the central area point towards a rides general area. Getting to the ride entrance is up to the guest. We knew we were walking towards the rapids because we walked over a bridge overlooking the rapids. The entrance queue properly began when we walked through this archway...

Coming in part 2...
Rapids or Crapids?
"Wabs. Hahaha, boobs!"
Posh restaurant walkthru!
Salt bin theming!
Polishing a turd!

 

[Jake]

At least you hadn't been playing loads of RCT2 before you went, especially the Six Flags scenarios.

We thought there was a path under El Condor cutting the corner off to get to Goliath, but said path didn't exist IRL, so we ended up missing the first ride of the day </3.

Don't trust RCT, it lies!

Funny thing is, there's actually less at the park than there was back then. The only major thing they've done is SBNO a couple of Vekomas for entire seasons for a repaint.

 

[furie]

It's no Van Goth

Goth Van? :lol:

I wanted to go to Walibi Holland, I don't anymore

To be fair, I only wanted to go to ride Goliath, but I enjoy a little more to a park to fill the day as well. So far it looks like it's a one ride wonder. Can't wait to see if I'm wrong

 

[Pierre]

I think me and Darren at least were definitely in agreement that if you take Goliath out of that park its nothing (except the lovely food establishment in Sherwood Forest of course).

The park really is quite small and compact but they've designed the park so you can't walk straight from one ride to the next (despite them literally being next to each other) in order to drag your time out in the park in my opinion.

Goliath was fantastic, it was my first mega though having not rode GeForce before so it was a first time experience for me. Xpress was quite fun but after the launch and first inversion it just kind of meandered through the rest of it in a bland way. Speed of Sound was actually quite fun, its amazing what a soundtrack and on-ride music can do to a ride, after all its just a Boomerang! Robin Hood was dreadful, just uncomfortable pain with no pockets of airtime or fun to redeem itself whatsoever. El Condor was forgettable (so much so I had to check RCDB for the sixth cred as I could count five in my head and knew there was six).

Considering it is supposed to be Hollands 'premier' theme park it really disappointed. I've only ever experienced Six Flags on RCT before but even so the park just felt so pre-fab with no effort.

Other things of note were the Log Flume which was OK and that Donkey Kong (Darren B) beat Luigi (Peter) on Karting. Princess Peach (random stranger) also overtook Luigi however he did manage to hold off Yoshi (random strangers friend) to prevent himself finishing last. In fairness, his kart sounded like dog ****.

 

[Ian]

Part 2

We walked through the queue line - new fences if anybody is interested - and eventually we reached the back of the queue. Three or four boats later and we were on the ride.

Pierre noted that the boats were like four bumper cars glued together.

The boat was one of those bendy boats with a hole in the middle. It creates the illusion of that you're going to get wet, but you never actually do.

The rapids never got rapidy. The wettest bit was through the waterfall part. Meh.

We headed back to the entrance building and went out of the other door. It's quite pretty here, there's a long pathway lined with flags...

...and the vintage cars are on the right.

Through another archway, we were in "Wab World". Pierre informed us that "wabs" is a slang term for boobs. Those northerners, eh?!

Wab World is very open planned and is home to two rides, a restaurant and an arcade. One of those rides is chair swings.

The other ride and main attraction of the area is the boomerang - Speed of Sound!

It's possibly the best looking boomerang I've ever seen! It looks vibrant painted in that vivid orange. Not going to lie, it looks amazing. The bright orange stood out against the blue sky and green trees. Speed of Sound looks like an inviting and fun coaster. The queue line goes under the loop and leads towards a vile cattlepen, but the music blaring from the fabulous station made me smile.

The station is brilliant! The music is cheesy, the colour scheme is in-you-face vile, again, Speed of Sound is an incredibly sexy looking coaster! It's a boisterous attack on taste and style! It's fab.

The new trains are pretty good and I really like the onboard audio. It's the first time I've looked forward to riding a boomerang coaster. The onboard audio blared out as it reversed up the lift hill. The soundtrack was cheesy, fun and poppy. Have to admit, it sounded great when the train was inside the tube thing at the top of the lift hill.

I'd go as far to say that Speed of Sound is the best boomerang I've ever been on. I'd even go as far as saying that, due to the audio and colour scheme, it has a certain degree of rerideability. I didn't rereide because at the end of the day, it's a boomerang. The ride experience isn't to my taste, going through those inversions backwards is uncomfortable and painful. Darren was sick afterwards! Never before has "you can't polish a turd" been more appropriate.

We wanted a greasy burger for dinner. The restaurant in Wab World was too posh for us - we walked in and walked straight back out. We then hiked back to the Sherwood Forest area to dine in the "really nice looking" burger bar that Darren spotted earlier in the day. The burger was pretty crap thh, not sure what meat it was!

After dinner, we headed to the next themed area...

...where we (except Rach) rode the Log Flume.

The log flume has a double drop, a backwards drop and salt bin theming! I've never seen so many salt bins around a flume before. They must suffer from ice during winter. I quite liked the rough, overgrown theme to it, it's quite nice. The ride itself isn't really thrilling or wet. It's by the numbers as log flumes go.

The theming of the Wild West area is probably the best in the park. The new 5D cinema is in this area, but we didn't bother with it.

There's a cred here. It's a clone coaster of Stinger at Paultons Park and Ladybird at Lightwater Valley, albeit the ride is in reverse compared to those two (it leaves the station from the right, not the left). Seeing as we're in a wild west area, there's only one animal this could be themed too...

The theme inside the Rattlesnake's ride area was sparse. Apparently the area used to house a wild mouse coaster before Rattlesnake was moved there in 2011. Unlike Stinger and Ladybird, there was no vibrating bottomness to be had. Usually these Tivoli coasters are vibrating bottom gold...Walibi Holland can't even get that right! Oh well, +1 as they say!

Peter and Pierre did this spinning pendulum type ride next. Not my sort of thing. I think they both said it was pretty lame.

The area bang next door to Wild West is the young children world...

It's full of tame little rides suitable for the under 5's. Here are some photos without captions.

There's a water thing to walk under.

There's a Splash Battle here. It looked really good. We didn't ride it but it seemed tonnes more interactive than the Flamingoland one.

A cute little play area tops off this toddler area.

With one more cred left to get, we headed back to the main entrance building and went up the stairs towards...

Xpress is another Vekoma coaster. According to Peter, it's the track layout is similar to Rock n Rollercoaster at Disn*y. I quite liked RnR so I was interested to compare the two seeing as Xpress is outside and doesn't have onboard audio.

The launch was quite good. It wasn't forceful (I rode it twice, front row and towards the back) but it was fun. The inversions were quiet good, not as rough as one might expect from a Vekoma and the over-water parts were quite good. I'm getting a bit of boner for coasters over water. However, there seemed to be a lot of dead track where it didn't do anything, making it feel quite lame in places.

After Xpress, Darren and Peter rode the go-karts (costing them €7 each). Pierre and I remarked how attractive the Dutch are. Rach sat there. The go-karts looked crap. Peter's was misfiring. Meh. Glad I save myself €7!

That was it! We had ridden everything we wanted to and there was only one ride worth reriding...

On paper, Walibi Holland is excellent. Three water rides, traditional rides, an extensive kids area, six coasters all set in themed areas.

The reality is that Walibi Holland is boring for well travelled theme park enthusiasts. The water rides aren't extreme enough, the traditional rides don't hold any appeal, with the exception of Goliath and Robin Hood, the coasters are run of the mill (although a shout out to Speed of Sound's awesome theme). Take Goliath out of the park and there's nothing unique there. Goliath is excellent. Perhaps the reason they've not added anything new for 10 years is because it's difficult to top Goliath? I'd like to think that the owners (who also own Parc Asterix) will throw a B&M invert in there soon.

I'm glad that I've been to the park, grabbed the creds and experienced Goliath, but I'm in no hurry to return.

 

[CookieCoasters]

I thought the water rides were really good. I thought the rapids was was fun because of the strange boats and ridding the log flume backwards for the whole ride was really cool. Since when are water rides meant to be extreme. I agree with you about the coasters though, goliath is the parks gem and an amazing coaster, apart from that the coasters aren't that good.

 

[Martyn B]

Six Flags Holland has been a park that I've wanted to get to since before I became a proper enthusiast. I've always thought it looked amazing, and I have to say your pictures do make it look good.

But everyone does say the same as you, which saddens me really.

But never mind, this report has made me decided that I will go here next year!

 

[peep]

Interesting PTR Ian. I like your photos, very nice and clear.

I hated that park so much when I went a couple of years ago. It's weird they've moved and re-themed their Tivoli, looks awful in comparison. The boomerang does look fantastic though.

 

[Darren B]

Ok so here's my quick take on our day at Walibi, in a nutshell it's an awful park! apart from Goliath of course.

There's no arguing the trip was planned around Goliath and It really didnt disappoint, after riding Expedition GeForce earlier on in the year I was really looking forward to riding this, although not as good as EGF it's still a fantastic coaster and easily fits straight into my top 5.

As for the rest of the park, well as I've already stated it was awful. The other 5 coasters were pretty dire and none of them really even worth a re-ride, Robin Hood shows why there are only 3 Vekoma woodies in existence, dull and without a single thrill. The Boomerang although well tarted up was vile, the SLC matched the typical stereotypes. Express was nothing to write home about, although not quite as awful as the rest of Walibi's fleet of Vekoma's, and the kiddie cred, I won't waste the wear and tear on my keyboard on that.

As for the water rides, they must have been half decent right? they really weren't. the rapids were dull and uninspiring, and the log flume was just well, meh.

Now the food was a slighty different story, we all agreed on a decent, half expensive meal in the evening so all we wanted was a bit of grease to keep us going for the day, and funny enough we werent short on options. We settled on a fab looking fast food joint that would put your average McDonalds to shame, and it didnt taste half bad either, although the consensus of the group was that the meat in the burger probably wasn't cow it still did the job.

So all in all the park was dissapointing, however it certainly didnt detract from the day as a whole, It was the first time I had met Pierre, Rachel and Peter and It was a pleasure, you guys (and Ian of course) made it a fantastic day. So my advice for Walibi, by all means go, but make sure you go as part of a decent group or your going to end up dissapointed I'm afraid.

 

[Pierre]

I only took a few photos but Ian has pretty much covered everything anyway.

After waking up at 4.00am to catch a 6.10am flight I was the first to arrive at Schipol! Nobody was there when I arrived though so I graced Holland with my welcome in true British style... I went for a poo.

Rach & Peter arrived shortly after followed by an approx. 20 minute wait for Ian & Darren - we got the hire car, a Polo, which was quite cosy. Rach was a trooper and took the middle seat for each journey.

We arrived at Walibi and like the goons we were, all got our cameras/phones out in order to get the same shot as everyone else...

This photo would annoy Hoyer... a couple of steps back and I would have got the whole wheel in...

Don't let the sky deceive you, it actually turned out to be quite a nice day, although cold whenever the sun went behind the clouds.

We were all really only expecting something from the headline coaster Goliath, so we headed straight there. I say straight there, it was past the wheel, through a load of games, just passing Sherwood Forest and the Go Karts to reach its secluded location.

It was quite odd that such a headline coaster had a small surrounding area for non-riders... must have been four benches, an ORP booth and a little ice cream/drinks stand.

Anyway, as mentioned in my post above, I found the coaster itself to be fantastic.

We then headed to the SLC next, maybe because it looked right next to us, but it wasn't, we actually had to go all the way back around by the big wheel e.t.c again. Stupid park. I've had a look at RCT2 since Jake's comment and that pathway they have on there would have been ideal!

Before we rode, we had to get some goon shots. Here is a shot of three goons taking goon shots.

I tried the panorama thing on the iPhone for El Condor but didn't aim the camera high enough to get the main parts of the ride in... d'oh!

We headed to Sherwood Forest and rode Robin Hood. It didn't inspire me enough to take a photo. The ride was ****.

Afterwards we headed to Fatt & Son's Log Flume... forgettable. There is a boat under here somewhere though...

It appears I didn't take any more photos until we got back to Goliath, the park excited me THAT much. The kiddie cred was dull, the frisbee slowed down just as it picked up and Speed of Sound is the best boomerang I've been on purely for the cheesy soundtrack. Xpress was average, launch into first inversion was fun, rest of the ride you're just battering about. It also just looks like a steel mess.

Back to Goliath for another couple of rides then...

Darren ended up getting roped into a park survey while we were there.
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And that was that. Would recommend going for the 'experience' of a Six Flags/Walibi park if you haven't done them before but not for revisiting, unless of course they dramatically invest in something.

On the evening we checked into the hotel and they actually gave us a key for someone elses room!! We eventually got sorted and got the disabled persons room (lol).

We walked about 300 doors (600m) down the road to what turned out to be a pancake house. We each had a pancake. Darren had two, and a portion of chips. We also had some beers.