4 days in Belgium - Day 4: No pigeons here

[Rob Coasters]

Day 1: Travel

Well my new biggest solo trip has been slightly overdue for a while, with the last one being that 2.5 day Denmark trip. I needed to go bigger, and I picked Spain. This originally was meant to be a 5 day trip that involved both Madrid parks & Barcelona parks, but something about it was... putting me off? I don't know. Perhaps jumping from 2.5 days solo and doubling that up to 5 days solo? So I cut it down to two separate trips, one for Madrid and the other for Barcelona, but what would that achieve? I shelved it, then looked at other options. Twenty minutes later, I was confident in booking a three park four day trip to Belgium. I've been dying to ride Revolution at Bobbejaanland anyway, so choice made. Had two main options of getting to my base in Brussels, either a seven hour coach from London Victoria for £20 or a British Airways flight from Heathrow for quadruple price. Latter.

Unfortunately first impressions of Heathrow weren't great, as going into security I was warned that the flight would be so full that I may have to check in my cabin bag which would be done free of charge. Not quite understanding what he meant, I told him I was allowed to bring both bags onto the plane with me as I was flying with BA. Breezed through security and had three hours to kill, before I went to the gate.
At the gate the BA guy said that the flight was indeed going to be so full that anyone with a wheeled suitcase needed to check in their bag. So a queue of people formed up to do this, including me who had a wheeled suitcase. So I checked in my bag for free, got a receipt, and got that little slip of paper wrapped around my case. I put the case where all the other checked bags were before boarding the plane, and flight was smooth and short.

The queue at Brussels Airport passport control took forever, but when it got to my turn, I got a man who said "one minute". Gave him my passport, a couple minutes of dead silent, until he stamped my passport and let me through without one second of conversation or wanting to know a single thing about my trip. Cool, I guess.
Had difficulty locating my flight's baggage reclaim conveyor belt before finally finding it, and after making several loops of the belt, came to the haunting realisation that my case was not there. It's gone. A similar but not identical case to mine was making loops, and I came to terms with the fact that my case must have been taken by accident. Oh s**t. Called parents, went to lost property, "wrong lost property stall mate", went to the other lost property which had nobody manning the desk. Called someone over, who asked for my receipt, which they scanned and said your case is still in London. A sigh of relief as it wasn't either stolen or taken by accident, but why the f**k is it still in London??? Filled out all the information on how to identify the bag on a self service kiosk, gave the address of my hotel for it to be delivered to, and a deadline date for when I'm leaving the hotel and going back home to my permanent address.

Two hours after landing, after they scanned my receipt barcode and I filled in the self service kiosk, they said alright, you've done your part, now it's time for us at BA to play ours. I was incredibly relieved to find that my other smaller carry-on bag had my charger & charger wire in it, but I was missing the adaptor, which was only 30 euros at the airport shop... I was also missing a change of clothes which was in the case, but for that I held hope in the suitcase arriving into my arms.

Checked into the hotel. Let them know about the situation. They said okay.

So hopefully it's here by the next morning before Bobbejaanland, I guess.

 

[Rob Coasters]

Day 2: Bobbejaanland

Revolution. I've wanted to ride Revolution for so long ever since finding out about it. Revolution. A truly one-of-a-kind coaster, an IRL 'joke coaster' you build in a coaster game. Except this one exists, and it's real, and at some point two of them existed. Why? But I'm not complaining. Revolution. This year they made a huge deal out of giving it a major renovation, and it's their big addition for 2024. Revolution. Can you tell this was by far the ride I was most excited for on this trip?


Got the train direct to Herentals from Bruxelles-Central, then caught a bus where I got my discounted bus ticket through prebooking on the park's website, then I was there. That easy. So got the most direct route possible to #256 Revolution, and off we went. First impressions were that the high-tech feel of the station was very cool, and the station soundtrack kind of gave off this "we know what we have and it's very special" vibe to it.


On dispatch, the whole station turns black as a flow of yellow travels through the absurdly long station (that used to be even longer). You enter the lift and are greeted by how the building is oddly hollow as you travel up against the walls in a spiral pattern. A huge projection is above, a crater (???) at the bottom, a bunch of green lights everywhere, as Bones On The Beach plays and builds up. I have to say at this point I was expecting a little more on the effects side, for a major renovation it kind of looks exactly the same as it did in videos I saw from its previous years, even lacking some projections. But you get to the top of the lift, and here comes the ride down!


It's a fun undulating pattern of up-down as you slowly make your way back down, with a few more effects, but it felt like the music could've been louder, and there still could've been a few more effects. Seems like most of the budget for the renovation went into revamping the station and the queue line, fair enough, I do like the station and the set pieces in the queue.

I got off my first ride on Revolution a little underwhelmed, but saw what else the park had (not much of value) and decided to lap it a couple more times. The further laps yielded some similar results, with "decent but not as good as I'd hoped" being the scary opinion I might leave this park with if things don't change. Spoilers, things changed. Anyway, whatever, we move.

#257 Naga Bay. Spinner that does NOTHING. Made about two rotations, if even? Had no forces, did nothing exciting, I was hanging over the edge of the lake and feeling nothing. The mid-courses grind you to a near halt that kill any and all speed you get, allowing the spin to dissipate a little.


Then you hit the brakes straight-faced, spinning just a little bit, but you can't enter the station while still spinning, so that spinning has to stop. The way they stop the spinning is an absolutely unceremonious car crash that feels like you slam into the side of a wall to finish you off, while being the only force that the ride ever provides. Garbage.


Next up on the agenda is #258 Fury, a triple-launch coaster that has a special gimmick: in the station, the queue splits off into two: on the right side, your train votes whether to go forwards or backwards, while on the left side, you only go forwards. I'll be blunt; I had zero interest in going backwards, so I went for forwards only.


An hour of queuing later due to this ride's awful capacity, I was on. The swing launch was fun, but the very short backwards section of the launch had me proving to myself that I really did not want to do the whole thing backwards and that forwards was a good decision. There's a great pop of air at the top into a fantastic roll dive loop thing that was by far the best part of the ride, another hill into a twisting drop, into a corkscrew, aww it's over. It's very short, but packs some fun elements. It does all of this with a very nice lap bar, but it also does all of this with a consistent rattle to it. For once, I actually held the restraints of a roller coaster. This is not like me, what is wrong with me? Snap out of it.


So yeah, it's a very fun ride, but feels like it's missing something (that's not a directional change). About as good as Saw, I'd say.


Next up on the agenda is #259 Typhoon. Can I just not talk about this ride and skip to the next ride instead? What an utterly baffling roller coaster. Originally designed to be a travelling ride, it was designed to express out trains at a million miles per hour which gives it its rectangular footprint and hundreds of mid-course brake runs. It never travelled by the way, to my knowledge...
Fun fact - these arses on the top of the station are on a crane that lower into the train to send out a test run at an elite speed so the ride could add vehicles while the ride was running. This thing was designed to process as many people as physically possible and it truly shows, but shame we never saw this in action at a travelling fair it was designed to exist in.


So, err, let's get to it. You go up the vertical lift, very slowly, down a fairly underwhelming drop, a very fast loop, then two consecutive barrel rolls oddly high up (why?). You then do a couple drops and turns for no reason, before an actually decently forceful upwards helix before a diagonal mid-course (why?) which transitions into a third roll into perhaps the stupidest helix I've ever done. During it, you randomly change banking (why?) & how much you're going down at least three or four times (why?) before hitting the brakes. Why?


A ride that leaves me genuinely perplexed. What the hell did I just ride?


Continuing my run of the park, I went past Revolution, walked back, then got into the Revolution queue just to give it another go. As expected, the ride's growing on me. I'm not sure if I'm adjusting to it and getting a better feel for it, or if it's standing out more due to the amount of questionable rides this park has, but it's growing on me. It makes me .


Unfortunately there's more rides on the to-do list, #260 Speedy Bob being one of them. It's a very normal wild mouse, but it used to not be normal as there used to be a mirrored clone directly next to it. That's gone to Spain now, so now you duel a shipping container on a sad empty concrete plot of nothing.


The hairpins of this one were the smoothest of any mouse I'd ever done, I thought I would enjoy this one until the valleys of the drops shook around and ruined it all.


Continuing my way across the park I came across Dreamcatcher, which was closed as it had scaffolding in the station and a train with open restraints at the bottom of the lift. I've heard that this is one of the worst coasters ever (mostly boring rather than rough) so not an awful loss. It's technically my biggest coaster spite, but not the worst in any sense.

Feel the scale of my disappointment. Miniscule.


#261 Oki Doki was standard junior coaster business, at least with a custom layout. It existed for sure, but had some funny supports to accommodate going over the lake (and the monorail).


I still had one more coaster to tick off but the dark rides were in view. After missing out on intriguing stuff like Thor's Hammer and The Dungeon at Tusenfryd, and Underlandet at Liseberg, I've made it my mission to put them a little higher up the priority list. Started with Terra Magma which was an indoor log flume, and rethemed from 'Indiana River' for the 2023 season.


It has a remarkably simple story being something along the lines of 'we never owned nature' and 'we will succumb to nature's force' and "the volcano always wins, after all, this is Terra Magma". It has a neat mix of screens and physical effects plus wind, and not one but two water walls that turn off right when you go through them. Travelling through thunderstorms and tornadoes, you're shown how you are truly at the mercy of nature's mercilessness and how you really are just a little toy to be played with by our planet's rages.

My favourite part of the ride ended up being a lift hill into a pitch black area which I thought was going to be a drop, but rather it flattened out and the room revealed itself to be the volcanic area with rocks lit up as lava flowed down them. The reveal was great and very memorable, and the drops were fun if a little small but I was happy to not get too wet from them. It felt like it lacked a proper ending and finished rather abruptly, but I guess it makes sense to end after the volcano bit. I also wasn't expecting the ride to be themed to general natural weathers - from the name alone I thought it would be all-out on volcanoes volcanoes volcanoes.

Still better than Valhalla.

Next up, the El Paso Special, a Mexican themed dark ride where you shoot up a cowboy village from the comfort of a bench. Recently I've started to enjoy shooting dark rides again, this one was decent but still on the lower end.


And the final new-to-me roller coaster of the park, #262 Bob Express. This was... my favourite powered coaster ever??? The funny, untraditional shaping with its unique transitions that reminded me of wooden coasters like Heidi & Wicker Man made this far more fun than I ever thought it would be. Was a blast!


The rest of the day was spent lapping Revolution. I would've liked to have tried Fury again to gain a second opinion on it, and perhaps even roll the dice to see how backwards is, but its hour queue had not gone down and I wasn't willing to wait in that while Revolution had no queue at all. The outdoor log flume looked like a thing, but I wasn't willing to just get wet for no reason as that looked like exactly what it did. By this point I'd wholly forgotten about Sledgehammer, a massive swinging frisbee style ride. I've said multiple times in the past that I'd like to try every flat ride type at least once, but the thought of it successfully escaped me as I put all of my energy into focusing on Revolution which I was enjoying more and more by the minute.

I like the mirrors in the station too.


Revolution had notably warmed up and had some random but awesome bursts of laterals nearer the end of the ride, and these seats have basically no lateral bracing, so if you're not holding onto the conveniently placed side bars, you can go flying! This more than makes up for the ride's zero airtime, and is so fun. On paper a ride like this has zero right placing so high in my rankings, but there's something (a lot) about it that makes me smile and happy. Sitting on Revolution for seven laps was a great way to end out my day at Bobbejaanland, with 11 laps total on Revolution and 1 on everything else.

All in all, Bobbejaanland has two excellent standout rides but really a shocking amount of pure nothingness after that. A worryingly large amount of the rides there felt outdated, past their prime, or simply in need of a refresh or a replacement. The park could seriously do with an update to their lineup, and while a refurbishment of their existing rides seems to be the direction that they're going in, I think that's a good start. Now demolish some of those coasters (or give lonely old Speedy Bob a friend) and then we're talking.

I get back to the room to no new news regarding my lost baggage, as expected. Maybe tomorrow it'll turn up, but that's wishful thinking.

Tomorrow - going backwards, for real this time

 

[Rob Coasters]

Day 3: Walibi Belgium

The next day, a train to Bierges-Walibi with a change at Ottignies found me a short walk over a bridge from the next park of the trip, Walibi Belgium. I was supremely excited to try out a new Top Spin, Kondaa and the other wacky unique things this place had to offer, so I'll get straight to it.

Started off by getting the first train of the day on #263 Tiki Waka, the second (or third) time I've started the day on a bobsled coaster. This one stays very high off the ground and doesn't gain a speed that really respects its height, but the manoeuvrability of these tiny cars allows for some funky transitions. Solid family coaster, I think.



Continued onto the second most anticipated ride of the trip, #264 Kondaa. Maybe should have warmed up a little more with the other rides in this park beforehand, but oh well. Either way it's a great thrill coaster with strikingly strong airtime hills combined with some other funny elements that don't quite hit as hard as the airtime, but still fun.


I wasn't so sure on the outerbank, it felt weird and not in the good way, but it's only one moment that didn't hit in a sea of hard hitting moments. I also didn't think that the first drop deserved its 'world-class' status, but maybe I need to come back later in the day.

Despite the ride having a couple bits that miss the mark a little, the ride has so many other sections to it such as the tiny bunny hills at the end that try their hardest to throw you out of your seat which is a quality way to end off the ride.


Kondaa is a fine addition to my top 10, placing a little lower than I would've liked, but I'm a fan for sure.

Up next - #265 Calamity Mine. After 21 years of no mine trains, I'm now coming across my third since June. This is without a doubt the weakest of the three but that's obvious when this is pretty much an off-the-shelf stock model while the other two are widely regarded to be by far the best of their kind. It felt like an extended variant of the classic junior coaster but better in most senses, and much longer. Right now I'm happy that loads of these exists, as this too was a joy to ride.


Following from that, I rode their drop tower Dalton Terror. I wish these still scared me like they used to, I felt not one inch of peril on this. The drop was good but far from the best, but the views from Kondaa were appreciable.


After Dalton Terror was Flashback, an outdoor log flume that I wanted to ride. This one was fairly standard as far as European log flumes go with a backwards drop and then a large double-down to end things off. I was a fan until the large drop bottomed out into an incredibly brief yet awful rattle which was the only moment of roughness on the ride but left a large impression on me.



#266 Psyké Underground is a very sought-after model by coaster enthusiasts, the fabled Shuttle Loop which is a truly retro backwards coaster experience. I thought it was alright, but ended after what felt like seconds. It was unfortunate to see nothing done in terms of effects with the loop or forwards spike (at least from what I can remember) but the launch sequence was cool and I hadn't really seen anything like that before.


I didn't think as highly of it as I thought I would, but it's nice to say I've finally done one of these.

#267 Fun Pilot, the kiddie coaster, was fun (pilot).


Right now I had zero interest in the boomerang or invert, so walked into Popcorn Revenge instead. This is a trackless shooting dark ride with a uniquely interesting theme where you shoot evil popcorn that's taken over a cinema (seriously). Honestly - this was awesome and one of the best dark rides I've done in a while. The theme & ideas are impressively creative - who else would a) come up with this idea and b) execute it this well. It's my second favourite shooting dark ride, lagging just one spot behind Kinetorium, but it's reinforcing that I'm becoming a bit of a sucker for shooters.


Top Spin! It always feels so good to get on one of these, and BuzzSaw was no exception but by the end of it I was sorely disappointed. The ride flipped - get this - once. It severely felt like the ride was not being run to its full potential as it spends a lot of time faffing around not really doing that much of note. It's for sure my least favourite top spin, I wish it ran a slightly more substantial cycle.
I was left wanting, so I went back around for a second lap on it. It did the same thing again.


Next - #268 Loup-Garou, the wooden one. This one gets generally mixed reviews with one half saying it's excellent, another half saying it's horrible, and a third half saying it's "just alright". Going up the lift a hardstyle remix of Call Me Maybe starts playing to my puzzled amazement and this is a huge reason as to why I've just had one of my best rides on any wooden coaster ever. Hilariously clunking through the layout, standing up on the airtime hills and funnying around the corners all to a high-speed remix of Carly Rae Jepsen with the whole train vibing to it cemented it as honestly one of my favourite memories of any wooden coaster.


I really thought it had onboard audio, but it turns out that the music was in fact coming from a speaker in the pocket of some guy in front of me. It elevated that experience so much for me, and made a great coaster even better. Yeah, I'm a fan of the ride itself.

#269 Pulsar had finally opened for the day, and when its standby line was 20 minutes the single rider line had nobody in it. So in we go. I've always loved this ride concept, so it felt nice to finally experience it for myself.


It does have a little bit of a rattle and the backwards airtime isn't as crazy as everyone makes it out to be, but it's still a super cool idea for a ride. Somehow despite sitting on the end of the row I avoided getting even a drop of wetness.


So I guess now it's time for the stuff I really would rather not ride. I entered the queue of #270 Vampire to what sounded like 80's bedroom music and walked straight on. It sucked, badly, but not as awful as I'd imagined.


Go ahead, enter the ride area. It's a bad ride, but not bad enough to make me consider that.


And #271 Cobra. These things also suck badly. Why are there so many of them? Admittedly this one wasn't as bad as Speed of Sound, but that's not something to be proud of considering that the bar to clear to be better than that is in a ditch that's been covered up. To think there are rides that still won't clear that bar scares me a little, but we'll get to that point sooner or later.


Monty Hammond's Blizzard has sat at the bottom of my list ever since I was seven or eight years old. I haven't ridden a new worst coaster for 14 years now, there's that cautionary curiosity that makes me wonder if I truly have ridden my forever-least favourite coaster or if there is some diabolical contraption out there that is somehow worse than everything else. Cyclone at Barry Island, a stupid ride I rode back in 2022, sits second from last, being the closest to 'the worst' there has ever been, for now.

The search continues, against my own will.

Madhouses have never clicked with me, Haunted House Monster Party at Legoland Windsor was fun but remarkably unimpressive on my second ride. Haunting at Drayton Manor was even worse. I was with a dad and his kid as the only three riders on Haunting, they'd never done anything like it. They asked me if I had, and I said "apparently this is really good, it's really convincing" then it proceeded to be terrible.
These two madhouse experiences kinda put me off them. I skipped Merlin's Magic Castle and Feng Ju Palace as a result, but after hearing rave reviews of Palais du Genie (and actually having the time to do it) I walked in. Then it became a madhouse that I actually kinda loved and made me realise these things can be really good.


The preshow does go on a bit, but it seemed like it could be decently entertaining if you knew French or Dutch, which I do not. Then the madhouse section starts, with very well-done rotation to seriously give off a remarkably convincing effect that neither Haunted House or Haunting did to me. I liked it, a lot.

Challenge of Tutankhamon was a fairly standard shooting dark ride for me, I didn't really get why people talk about it like it's world class, but the buzzing flying insect bit stood out to me quite the amount.


And from here, I did three more laps of Kondaa where I steadily liked the ride more and more. It didn't really install much sense of peril into me, it admittedly felt a little controlled as it didn't get me screaming and shouting at all which my top 5 does throughout the whole ride. One of my rides I rode in dead silence, kind of felt like it didn't deserve the top ten spot at all.
Lap 2 I got the very back seat where I could finally experience the first drop in the best seat ever, and while yeah it's good I still don't think that's "best in the world" potential at all. Big One still stands as by far my favourite one, perhaps due to the chaotic & janky nature of it.


I've made a recent discovery that I prefer airtime hills in the front rather than the back, like getting the air hitting the apex rather than getting the air from the top, and this could especially be said for Kondaa, as my ride on lap 3 further in the front proved this, and how I prefer the whole ride in the front as a result. The outerbank was slowly growing on me, and the non-inverting cobra roll isn't the ride-ruining dead spot that everyone says it is. The airtime hills at the end are punchy and powerful, but I was questioning if I was beginning to prefer large sustained hills over quick pops, but with Untamed as my #2, I don't think that's the case.

Lap 4, the final one, was closer to the back and this was the one where I declared it better than Piraten, as for some reason the airtime hills were just as good near the back as they were up front? This whole ride has been giving me an existential crisis, and it seems like something that seriously grows on you, as I like it more and more the more I ride it. I know this review of this ride has felt very strange and hard to follow, but that's how I felt with the ride. But ultimately I ended lap 4 with the ride confidently in my top 10, however still questioning if it's better than Piraten. It was my initial thought when lap 4 had finished, but I do prefer the stronger positive & lateral forces of Piraten while Kondaa is much more airtime-centric. For now, Kondaa will sit above.

I apologise for the roller coaster review (no pun intended) of Kondaa but it's yet another difficult ride for me to talk about, just like Helix, just like FLY. I'm beginning to wonder if these world-class rides actually failed to hit expectations, are being over-ranked, and I'm in denial about it and proving that by being as positive as I can about them while preferring to ignore the other bits. I sit here staring blankly into a screen with all these words trying to decide what the case is and where it actually ranks, or if I'm correct in these placements and I'm letting too many thoughts get to me. But the deal is that I finished lap 4 thinking "that's a pretty good ride". I guess I'll have to go back one day to ride it a few more times.

The day was ended with a final lap of Loup-Garou this time with no hardstyle, so the hardware was put up to the test to see if it could prove itself without any musical numbers. And it honestly could, I was standing on the few hills it had and the corners were hilarious.


But it was time to go home now, so got food and went back to the room.

I also did some sightseeing in Grand Place, which is the one bit of sightseeing I did in Brussels. I wasn't overly enamoured by the rest of the city, and was done with Grand Place pretty quickly anyway as crowds had gotten far too much for me.






I got food and returned to the hotel, without a suitcase which was still being "tracked" by BA. I washed my clothes in the sink, gave them a quick rundown with the hairdryer, then hung them up to dry overnight.

Tomorrow - not many pigeons

 

[Nitefly]

Thanks for the reports @Rob Coasters - always fun to read!

RE: world class rides, IIRC within the last year or so you’ve gone from a ‘UK focussed view’ to one bolstered by more European experiences and what a sweet change that’s been

But there’s always diminishing returns. If you’re never eaten an apple before, that first apple is going to blow your mind. Your second variety of apple is going to be a great. The third and fourth and fifth variety… well, you get it; soon enough, it’s just ‘an apple’, no matter how tasty. Then going in with a ‘ranking focus’ just muddies and diminishes the enjoyment further.

To try and maximise the ‘fun’: feel free to keep ‘tasting notes’ as you go, but also maybe think about the specific rankings at a later date, rather than in the park or immediately post-park.

Just an idea… with that said, I’m always thinking about ranking things in the moment as well

 

[Rob Coasters]

Thanks for the reports @Rob Coasters - always fun to read!

RE: world class rides, IIRC within the last year or so you’ve gone from a ‘UK focussed view’ to one bolstered by more European experiences and what a sweet change that’s been

But there’s always diminishing returns. If you’re never eaten an apple before, that first apple is going to blow your mind. Your second variety of apple is going to be a great. The third and fourth and fifth variety… well, you get it; soon enough, it’s just ‘an apple’, no matter how tasty. Then going in with a ‘ranking focus’ just muddies and diminishes the enjoyment further.

To try and maximise the ‘fun’: feel free to keep ‘tasting notes’ as you go, but also maybe think about the specific rankings at a later date, rather than in the park or immediately post-park.

Just an idea… with that said, I’m always thinking about ranking things in the moment as well

Nice comparison to the apples, I do agree with that. Yeah I probably shouldn't immediately open the spreadsheet after walking through the exit of a coaster I've just ridden. I justify doing that as a kind of a "in case I forget what the ride does" thing, but I do think it's not the wisest thing to do. I think I certainly should try visiting a new park and only doing rankings at least a few days after the visit is done and I'm back home, and see how that compares to what I currently do.
You know what they say - "always on that damn phone."

Plus - if I don't rank immediately, then if I do forget what a ride does, that's an easy excuse to ride that again but I do think I was taking the 'ranking' bit of this trip a little too seriously and should dial things down a little next time.

 

[FistedColossus]

I got on Kondaa a few weeks back and have similar feelings. It's very good but nowhere near my top 10. Despite all the airtime, it just feels a bit tame for some reason.

Then the following day I finally got on Toutatis which blew me away. Not as much traditional airtime as Kondaa but a much more forceful and powerful ride.

 

[Rob Coasters]

Day 4: Plopsa Coo

The final park of the trip was originally supposed to be the first, getting to Brussels at stupid o'clock in the morning then hitting it immediately out of the airport, and then using this time at the end of the trip to get to a different park which has now been put on hold. However, the faff involved in getting to Heathrow early enough to justify a visit in the same day wasn't worth it - somehow, getting to Stansted an hour further away from me is much easier.

Checking out of the hotel.
"Did a bag from British Airways arrive at all?"
"No"

At this point if they ever find it they now have to deliver it to my permanent address. Worries were put aside as I made the trek to Coo, with a stressfully short change at Liege-Guillemins before a ten minute plod down to the park. The walk felt oddly sad, as I was approaching the final destination of what's currently my biggest solo trip to date.

You enter the park through a gift shop with no ticket barriers, just a guy who runs both the shop and the park entrance (???). Before setting foot on any rides I had a look at the Cascades.





Beginning with #272 Schtroumpfeur, yet another single-file family coaster, this time it's outdoors. The lack of lateral support allows you to easily slide to the left/right in the seat, which is super fun, and the terrain puts it in a gorgeous setting, but in all honesty it's still a family coaster at the end of the day despite all its uniqueness. After two rides, one in the middle and another nearer the back, I was happy.





Vicky was closed, so onto the next thing, Bob-Luge. Having to pick up & transport your personal foldable bobkart vehicle onto and off the tracks was fun, and being pulled up the lift backwards was highly amusing too. It seemed to go on forever! The way down is a bucketload of fun and stomps on the one at Oakwood (maybe because it's quadruple height, length, and everything in between). There should be more of these.



Maya Splash was the park's log flume, a very basic one with two drops.




Vicky still had no signs of life, so went to Dino Splash, specifically the Jurassic side which is the one in blue that has a half pipe. Wetter than Maya Splash, somehow, and better too.


By the time I got off I parked myself on a bench under some shade complaining about the whole BA nonsense, with a cardboard Bobbejaanland shopping bag being the substitute. After thirty minutes of waiting Vicky showed signs of life, testing for around an hour, as a congregation of people formed around the entrance plus me. The trains entering the course became more and more frequent, teasing me, especially as I'd never done this type of spinning coaster before (the type that faces inwards rather than outwards). However, the worst-case scenario finally arrived when the coaster stopped testing and the station was vacated without a word. Spite.

I walked out, and headed towards the train station, but in a hurried fashion as it was arriving very soon, The hurried fashion turned to exhausted fashion as my breath caught up to me, and in my dying moments the 'B' logo for the trains were in view. Then I found out it wasn't coming for another fifteen minutes, but better safe than sorry. And that was it.

I was due to arrive at the airport almost two hours earlier than originally planned, so looked for things to do in Brussels. Nothing of interest. Went to the airport, sat in Starbucks for almost two hours, then did standard airport procedures.

At my gate, the announcers at BA told us that the flight was yet again full, and was not telling people to check in their wheeled suitcases, but rather asking for volunteers instead. Nobody wanted to volunteer, and with good reason, and I wasn't asked if I wanted to check in my bag because I didn't have a wheeled suitcase. Flew home.
At Heathrow, I asked yet again about the baggage situation.
"On Monday I flew to Brussels and I never got my bag back. Brussels airport said it was still in London. Here's my check-in receipt."
"I scanned this receipt and it says the bag was on your plane to Brussels and is currently in Brussels. We will need to locate the bag then fly it back to Heathrow and then you can collect it from there."
"Okay thank you."
"I would contact the actual baggage enquiries people but it is 10.48pm and they went home at 10.30pm. Here is their number"
"Alright thank you."

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Later I called them.
"As the bag is in Brussels you have to call the baggage people at Brussels Airport. Here is their number."
Called the baggage people at Brussels Airport. Number not recognised.

As part of my daily routine I've added on 'check the baggage tracking website' and it's now said "tracing continues, please check back later" for two weeks now. I shoot them an email demanding answers. I was told the bag was in London. Then I was told the bag was in Brussels. Then I was told actually we don't know where the bag is at all.
Ten minutes later I get a response.
"It turns out that the check-in tag we put on the bag was lost during transit. We found your bag and we are returning it to London. We will contact you when it is here"
"Awesome, thank you."
"We do not accept responses to this email, if you would like to speak further..."

Infuriatingly they've just had it this whole time, they've just been waiting for me to remind them that I still want my bag.

A day later, I was told to pick my bag up from the airport - it was ready for my arms. Two hours there.

Saw Hyperia.


Had a chat with the BA woman who led me through a special security room to retrieve my bag. Got my bag, reunited at last, with everything still in it.
"How long did it take you to get here to collect your bag, anyway?"
"Two hours"
"You know you could've just asked us to deliver it to your permanent address, right?"