The mediocre creds of Munich-ish - Part 4: Plohn and Belantis

[HeartlineCoaster]

I got addicted to Germany at some point last year. There’s something very satisfying about doing road trips over there.
Hired a car in Frankfurt and had 1 night near there, 1 night near Leipzig and did everything else out of Munich, totalling about 2500 miles. For a lengthy hire in which I had gone out of my way to ensure an unlimited mileage option, they decided to provide me with a 'hot hatch'. This left me torn, as it was fun while on the road, but I spent as much time in petrol stations as I did making progress. Bastards.

Day 0 – Holiday Park

Decided to hit the ground running by taking advantage of a late opening day and trying some night rides on Big FM. I imagine most parks would think there was something wrong with you for showing up and paying full price at 9pm, but from previous experience this place seems to have somewhat of a cult following even with the locals, so no eyelids were batted.

Still a great ride when measured in moments, but I find it a little too much of a one trick pony these days compared to the more recent world beaters. The trims and uneventful corners take me out of it a bit.

Day 1 – Legoland Deutschland

54 Legolands in and I’ve almost decided they’re not worthwhile now. It’s a shame the creative and unique side of their respective Minilands can’t be reflected in the ride line-ups.

Started off with that bad boy. Gerts are really good at this stuff and luckily there’s plenty more of that around here.

Their dragon was unusually rough compared to clones 10 years its junior, which isn’t a good sign. At least it was running thirty trains in true German style.

Can’t make the same excuse for the Maus, which behaved considerably worse than others of the same age.
I imagine you know what they look like. My camera didn’t.
Also spent too long in the sun waiting for a 4D thing. Can’t remember which film I saw at which Legoland anymore, which shows how much of an impact they make.

Surprise hit of the park was the water ride. Bit of an indoor section and a backwards drop. Quality.

Having Valhalla boats only added to it.

Train offered some rare shade and little else.

The highlight of Miniland.

One of those spite fairs with the face of a worm on the poster, but nothing when you get there.

They’ve outdone Space World by freezing people in a pool.

Juvelen.

Foreshadowing.

And that was that.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Day 2 – Skyline Park

Arrived bright and early for the park with the worst capacity rides ever.

Nothing opened for the first half hour or so, but a queue began to form outside Sky Something and we joined in. It seemed like a fun idea, but wasn’t particularly interesting. I know you can spin it yourself, but it looked like too much effort.

Was dreading Sky Something as I particularly hate long periods of upside-downness, but grabbing the first train of the day meant it was over with quickly. Quite surprised by how much this didn’t offend me, it was actually a bit of fun and just on the limit of upside-down bearableness.

Sky something. Quite surprised by how much this did offend me. Off the shelf Maurer spinners are terrible.

Sky something. A more structurally sound Zyklon Galaxi at best.

Having planned the entire trip around the most offensive construction of all time, I was suitably disappointed.

Probably should have queued for the Bobkart earlier. Took about an hour for every child in Europe to board. Love them though, didn’t disappoint.
Did my first and last butterfly and Bayern curve. They don’t count.
Nothing was worth queuing for again, so headed out for something that wasn’t a theme park.

The village itself seems to be about 50% car park, but finding a space was painful. From the village, a bus takes you up top if you’re on a tight schedule/not an avid mountaineer.

Pleasant.


Day 3 – Fantasiana

The park website having bold claims of the best dark rides in Europe had my sights set on this place. While they may not be true, it definitely is a little gem of a park and probably had the nicest atmosphere of the trip. The entrance to the park is an indoor walkthrough section with fairy tales in display cabinets. Lots of that stuff in this part of the world.

Sinbad was somewhat more ‘scary’ than adventurey compared to how I had imagined and was a rather loveable and quirky ghost train type experience.

The queue had this bloke waffling on about something while water gushed from his mouth and that was the first of many delights.

My first experience with a Pax and visually there’s something off about it. The hideous shaping makes for a great ride though.

He’s not ducking at all.

Knightsride Tower was running on a time slot basis. This thing was really good as well.

Queue had smoky animatronic dragon and spiders and was followed by an interesting drop ride sequence compared to other rides of this ilk, with good theming, music and bonus effects.

Mami Wata was yet another hit, packing a good amount of fun into a tiny space with the use of turntables and elevators, crazy Hafema style. Also comes with its own ImaScore CD, which was instantly purchased.

Train with some dinosaurs, all the rage these days.

They even booked a band for the day.

Killed some time with re-rides until after lunch, when Castle Dracula opened. This was a scare attraction that started out with a solo trip through a mirror maze and then became many animatronic and effect based scenes. It acted as though it was quite intense for a very family orientated park, with a couple of groups leaving the queue prematurely during warning announcements. This seemed a little unnecessary, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Freizeitpark Ruhpolding

Satisfied, raced back over the border for this jolly fellow.

This place is hidden away in the woods somewhere, filled with lots of play equipment, plus more dinosaurs and fairy tales.

It's home to a Gerts junior boomerang thing, which is somewhat of a rare breed. Gipfelstürmer is good fun for its size, the flat top starting hill and a snappy moment means there’s a few more forces going on compared to the Vekoma equivalents.
Also has a great name.

No, that's a crane in the background, not another cred unfortunately. Building a water slide or something.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Day 4 – Bayern Park

The lack of crowds for the time of year surprised me on this trip. I had expected to struggle a little on the more medium sized family parks, but it was never really an issue at all.

Terrifying.

This was particularly apparent here, with Freischutz being a walk on all morning. Perhaps everyone got lost in the queue, as it is an actual maze at some points. Or perhaps it is true that this ride doesn’t meet the target audience of the rest of the park. Gave it several goes throughout the visit, but wasn’t overly impressed.

The inverted top hat was a nice element, but the rest of the layout seemed a bit shakey and trivial rather than fun.

I find X-cars can be quite hit or miss.

Ticked off the Tivoli large.

And the Tivoli small. I believe their next investment will be a Tivoli medium.

Had a nice walk through the woods and found a quaint little boat ride (with 'dark ride' section!).

Rapids? had a good, out of control, tubey drop section where it came close to clearing the side and exploding in a fireball.

Was a little disappointed to find the hardware inside what I had written down as another ‘dark ride drop tower’ was a tad on the small side.
http://www.zierer.com/en/products/fun-rides/family-freefall-tower.html with elves and sparkly lights. Could have been worse.

Voglsam

Didn’t feel the need for anything else, so headed off to a local farm for some Bobkart action. Great fun as always.

Grass is always greener.

Please let me have a ride.

No.

Rodel- und Freizeitparadies St. Englmar

Final stop of the day was Rodel- und Freizeitparadies St. Englmar, bit of a mouthful.

Neat little place, making sure all the gravity on this hill doesn’t go to waste.

Zierer with the many consecutive lifts was up first. Solid family fun with an interesting layout.

Alpine coasters have their good and bad points. Can go full speed with a lot more conviction, but there’s a little something lacking when you haven’t got ‘I’m gonna crash this’ in the back of your mind.
The non-alpine one brought that feeling straight back. Love these ones with the big upright seats, the backless ones are crippling on a long lift hill.

Day 5 – Mountains

Would be good to say the entire day was dedicated to a park of such fine calibre, but it was mostly mountains and stuff.

Marchenwald

Hidden in this forest next to a bottle bank is another Gerts family cred.

Had several fun laps of the nutty squirrel, narrowly avoiding trees.

Followed by a wander around many more fairytale forest things.
That’s enough of that.

 

[peep]

Ah looks like you mopped up all the places we ended up skipping when we did Munich. They look really odd and unique though. Fantasiana looks interesting, a little sad we skipped that one.

Such a beautiful part of Germany though, I wouldn't mind checking out more of the mountainous areas in the future.

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Didn't previously know much about a lot of these parks before so I loved reading this. Fantasiana is on my bucket list for the crazy looking Pax coaster but I didn't realise it was packed with cool dark rides too!

 

[Coaster Hipster]

Love those reports on obscure parks! Fantasiana's Wild Train looks insane awesome, like the messy transitions actually make the coaster more fun.

Great pictures of the mountainous landscape as well!

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Day 6 – Plohn & Belantis

Incoming rant:
Broke the land speed record on the early morning weekend autobahn to get to Plohn for opening and later wished I hadn’t bothered. This place was a joke and a stain on Germany. The queue for entrance tickets was already about 45 minutes with just 2 windows open. This seems to be the 'new entrance' as there are another set of fancy gates not in use. It was the final cash dealing of the trip, cos they're a backwards bunch of ****s and I had verified that I had enough the night before. Just.
1 place away from paying, started to dig my money out and dropped a 2 euro coin which rolled to the family in front. A child picked it up and pocketed it in plain sight of the parents, who then just stared at/through me before entering the park as though nothing had happened. Still had enough for tickets, but it would now involve some smaller change. Dire old woman refused to accept a couple of 5 cent coins and I was denied entry to the park.
I hadn’t driven all this way for nothing, so had to physically force my way back through the massive crowd of people waiting for tickets – looking to be at least an hour long by now. Kicking up some serious gravel on the way out, I raced off to the nearest town to find a cashpoint. Sucked up the stupid foreign withdrawal fee and took out some crisp notes to slap in their face. Made it into the park about 2 hours after opening and now had little to no time to enjoy myself, not that I think I would have.

Straight to El Toro to try and remind myself why I had put up with all that. Mercifully it was suffering from Freischutz syndrome and was almost walk on. One train and some questionable methods again turned that into a painful experience. 1 bloke in an umbro hoody and tracksuit was running everything himself: Check those seatbelts. Checked his phone. Check those bars. Checked his phone. Brandished a tatty A4 piece of paper with some rules printed on it and started lecturing for a couple of minutes, also pointing at a pub chalkboard which had height restrictions written on it, in chalk of course. Bit late for height restrictions now we’re strapped in. Checked his phone. Dispatch. What sort of hell have I entered.

Ride was good, as I would have expected, but not nearly good enough to justify the current situation. Sad thing is, it was probably the best of the trip as well.
Seems I didn’t even get a good pic of it. Have another goat instead:

Straight to the next one. Eh.

Park ungracefully turned from themed Wild West area to a field with a carnival wacky worm on it.

The powered coaster was pretty damn sweet for being completely indoors and very well themed. Don’t see many of these getting built any more, but this was a worthy one and a very pleasant surprise.

Plopseidon. Eh.

Having blitzed all that, decided there was time for a couple more laps on El Toro before turning my back on this place forever (until Mack spited me by threatening something good here).

More gravel displaced, it was off to Belantis.

No issues getting past the friendly staff. Cards accepted and a cashpoint right next to the counters just in case. Shouldn’t have to take any notice of this stuff.

Got Huracan out of the way first. Not a fan of Eurofighters generally, this one is particularly unpleasant, but not enough to stop me taking a second go just to make sure.
Skipped the kiddy racer, too intense.

Cobra des Amun Ra was another satisfying Gerts family ride. Station was billowing a lot of nice smelling smoke effect.

Caught Drachenritt on a good day. Ridden some of these things when they’re being a bit underwhelming, but this one was picking up some decent speed.

There are far more mad houses in the world than I ever would have expected. Today’s one was themed to castles and wizards or something, like most of them. Found it to be one of the better ones for putting up with lack of understanding what’s happening.

This thing looked mental to begin with, but still managed to exceed my expectations on that front. Getting into the boat is struggle as it’s just like a big inflatable dinghy. The floor is so thin you feel everything going on beneath your feet – the conveyor, rollers and sloshing of the water, elevators, then you start to feel rather vulnerable.

Quite a brutal braking effect as it hits the water after the drop, then it starts crashing into concrete walls. Fantastic.

Love that pun.

That was about it for the park, it has quite a lot of space and some good old fashioned themed lands which would imply it has good potential to expand, if the world was like RCT, but it isn’t.
Upon leaving, found out the parking barrier was supposed to issue me a token, but hadn’t. The member of staff I went to was very understanding and helpful and gave me a free token to get out.
Odd day overall. I had expected Belantis to be a bit crap and Plohn to be nice. Ended up with the complete opposite.

Final day was a painful 5 hour crawl back to airport through several hundred miles of constant traffic, along with about 5 petrol stops.
Successful trip with no particularly standout creds, but I knew that going in. Shame I’m running out of German parks way too fast.

 

[Hixee]

As frustrating and crap as Plohn sounds, at least you've been able to write an amusing trip report about it!

 

[gavin]

I'm doing both those parks in a few weeks and, like you, was under the assumption that Belantis was a bit crap and Plohn was decent. Ah well, it's good to get some prior warning at least.

I've already bought all my park tickets online, so hopefully that will save faff.

 

[Coaster Hipster]

Quite astonishing to see such unprofessional ride ops. Really kills the mood for coasters
That story about the child picking up your coin isn't something I would have expected in Germany.


Good read about no so good parks though

 

[davidm]

Find it hard to blame a park for you turning up with not quite enough money to get in (OK, with only just enough money to get in and then losing €2). And then 5 stops for petrol in a 5 hour drive, not sure you've completely understood the idea of planning a trip in a car let alone a trip to an East German park!
(Can blame a park for poor ops and stupid Qs to get in though, so thats fair enough.)

Plohn is nice enough out in the woods but feels a bit cheaply done (despite the lovely woody which must have cost a bit), Belantis feels like it was done with a lot more money but lacks any charm (or notable coasters).

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

^ I still had enough, just they refused to accept 5 cent coins.
It isn't blame so much as an unfortunate situation handled poorly.

Petrol was an exaggeration following my initial story about the type of car vs distance travelled. It was all perfectly planned.
Not sure what you mean about the East German bit.

 

[davidm]

Just teasing ; just meant that it you couldn't fathom how to manage a 5-hour car journey without stopping to buy fuel 5 times, what hope had you entering deepest darkest communist eastern Europe* in the search of roller coasters!
Point still stands about cash though!
(* - former)