JoshC.
Strata Poster
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Madrid to celebrate my 30th birthday.
Madrid had been a bit of a cursed trip for me, with me having planned it a couple of times but it never coming to fruition. I booked a trip out there last October, and 2 days before I was due to fly out I ended up breaking my ankle.
Fortunately, no such bad luck this time. I stayed healthy prior to the trip, and managed to fly out from Stansted to Madrid with no issues. I picked up my hire car without a hitch, and 30 minutes later I was at my first of two parks of the trip: Parque Warner Madrid.
I knew that the park was on the outskirts of Madrid, but I was surprised at just how secluded the park seemed to be from...anything else. The way my flights worked out meant that I arrived just after 12, the park's opening. Annoyingly, this meant there was a long queue to get into the park's car park. The park charge for car parking, and you have to pay before entering (or pay online and scan your ticket to get into the car park). Despite several barriers open, it took a real long time to get through...it was just very slow.
It meant that it was 12.30 by the time I got into the park. I decided to tick off Stunt Fall first, the park's Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang. The one train, low throughput ride had a 20 minute queue, which seemed reasonable enough. Unfortunately, as I neared the front, the ride shutdown, and after waiting it out a bit longer, they cleared the queue line; was clearly going to be a while.
Upon leaving the queue, I looked at queue times around the park and they were all long. Major rides were 60-90 minutes long, and even the filler rides were quiet long. Given the park's reputation, and the reputation I'd heard of Spanish guests liking to queue jump, I decided to look into Fastrack. I opted for a cheaper option, which meant you had to virtually wait 50% for a ride before getting on the ride basically immediately. This was for all rides expect major attraction Batman GCE.
I chose Superman as my first coaster to Fastrack, and whilst virtually queueing, I waited for the park's Vekoma Madhouse, Hotel Embrujado. Madhouses are cool rides, but they are all the same basic system, and it really comes down to their presentation. Whilst the pre show was cool, the ride itself was a bit meh. This definitely ranks near the bottom of my Madhouse list.
By the time that was said and done, it was time to ride Superman / la Atracción de Acero, the park's B&M floorless coaster. Like me, it was celebrating its birthday this day (well, actually, the whole park was...though I'm a few years older). The Fastrack queue takes past a good chunk of the main queue, which I always find a tad awkward. The batching for most of the park's Fastrack queue is to let Fastrack users in the station before anyone else, giving them free choice of row. I went for the front row for my ride, which I find makes the most of the floorless gimmick.
The ride itself was decent. There's a certain level of vibrations throughout the ride, especially towards the end, which detracted from the experience a bit. However, the ride itself is a fantastic mix of speed, inversions, pops of airtime whilst also being an excellent length. Maybe towards the end it peters on and it could have finished a little bit earlier, but that's not too big an issue. In general though, a solid, super ride.
My next stop was going to be Shadows of Arkham, the B&M invert / Batman clone, but it was down for the day. Seemingly there's some work going on on the lift...
Instead, I decided to grab some lunch and then brave the queue for Batman Gotham City Escape. It was displayed as a 70 minute queue, and didn't seem like it would die down given the busy-ness of the park. It also meant I could virtually queue for another ride and get on that straight away still.
The queue line for the ride is painfully boring, a very packed-in, cattle pen like queue, with minimal views of the ride, or indeed anything. There were a couple of benches though; how exciting!
Sure enough, after about 70 minute, I was entering the building and the pre-show area. The ride's story is that the public has been invited to tour Bruce Wayne's mansion, but when you start your tour, Joker interrupts and Batman comes to the rescue (good thing he's close ey?). The pre show is the mansion, and where Joker makes his appearance. Batman then appears and you go through the Bat Cave. The pre show looked lovely, but went on for a bit and didn't really do anything. I'm all for immersion and story telling, but it has to be worthwhile, not just for the sake of it. Maybe I'm just a bit spoiled having done quite a few, and have high expectations, but yeah, I'm tiring of pre shows which add little to a ride.
If only I wasn't able to stop smiling during the pre-show
There's still a bit more queueing after the pre-show, but quickly enough, I was on the back row.
The station is beautifully themed though
Following a short on-ride pre show, the ride launches you outside. This initial launch is very punchy, and took me by surprise. This quickly leads you up to the second launch, which takes you up the top hat and into the anticipation stall. I really like these on top hats, but I think they have to utilised carefully. The reason it works here (and on Toutatis) is because the rest of the ride is intense; this gentler moment is a needed piece of respite.
As alluded to, this leads into an intense ride experience. The airtime hill after the top hat has some insane ejector. There's suitably fun inversions, lateral turns and is generally a good, fun experience. This then leads into the third launch, which feels like it solely exists to get you to the end of the ride. It meanders a bit, before taking you into an incredible stall which goes over the pathway of Gotham. This, and the earlier airtime hill mentioned, are the stand out moments of the ride.
The ride then abruptly ends, hitting a set of breaks before going up a vertical spike, and then slowly rolling back. You then spin on a turntable and roll back in the station (with Joker caught...how'd you manage that then, Batman?).
BGCE ticks a lot of boxes and is a great ride experience. But the ride's throughput (2 trains of 12 people + a long ride time = ouch) is a killer. The ending is a damp squid on the ride too, sadly. For me, this isn't up there with the elite Intamin multi launchers. And whilst this ride inserts itself into my Top 10%, it is at the lower end. That's not a critique on the ride itself per se, my Top 10% is chock-full of many top tier experiences, but I don't seem to rate it quite as highly as others do.
Next up was Coaster Express, the park's RCCA woodie. My only experience with RCCA is Bandit at Movie Park Germany, which is...rubbish, to say the least. So expectations were low. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The ride is very long, comfortable, but also has some nice moments of laterals, pops of airtime and some cool helices. It's just a solid, fun ride.
Nearby was the park's year-round horror maze, themed around the Conjuring universe. How the Conjuring universe fits into the Wild West I'm unsure, but oh well. With a 6 euro upcharge, it had a steady flow of people, but it meant we were able to go in small groups. And this maze was bloody good. Very well themed, great length, no unnecessary dead spots. Perfect number of actors. It set up a fantastic, spooky / eerie atmosphere, but always had suitable pay-offs too. Strongly recommend.
On that note too, this made me slightly more gutted that I ended up missing the park's Halloween event last year. If this is their year-round maze, I felt like it was a great sign for the rest of park's scare maze line-up.
Next up was ticking off some of the smaller / calmer rides on park, including the log flume / rapids and the family / kiddie creds. I was pleasantly surprised by Correcaminos Bip, Bip, the park's Mack Youngstar coaster. Nice family coaster which had a cute little theme. Included in this family ride tick-off was their Scooby Doo shooter dark ride:
Being the sucker for interactive dark rides that I am, I quite enjoyed this. Like with the Scooby Doo ride at Warner Bros Abu Dhabi, the theming felt a little on the cheap side, but the interactivity makes up for it a bit.
It was time to get back to thrill rides, with Stunt Fall calling my name. Not being a fan of most Vekoma Boomerangs I've done, and having hated the one Inverted Vekoma Boomerang I've done, I was a little apprehensive of riding. This just seemed like a recipe for disaster.
I ended up being allocated to the back row. Being dragged up backwards vertical is certainly an experience, but not as uncomfortable as I expected. And then you're released. And the ride, shockingly, doesn't bash your head in. It's intense, but it's...smooth?! Going through the cobra roll is great fun. The vertical loop again is great. And then you hit the second vertical lift. Rise up, and release.
The backwards vertical loop was beautiful. The backwards cobra roll, usually the worst part of these Vekoma Boomerangs, was slow and filled with hang-time, but not in any way painful. I was just left...shocked by how good the experience was.
Vekoma, I like the cut of your GIB.
Even with Fastrack, the day was getting away from me, and the early start and surprising heat (nearly 30 degrees) meant I was beginning to tire. The park was still busy. I'd have liked another ride on BGCE, and it was advertised at 50mins, but the queue was longer than my earlier 70 minute queue. So I decided to call it a day there.
Final Parque Warner Thoughts
Parque Warner is a park that really struggled with the crowds. I think my expectations for the park were raised after I really enjoyed Warner Bros Abu Dhabi, perhaps unfairly so. With no Shadows of Arkham, no main show and slow operations, it was a difficult day to enjoy. It did really end up just being a smash and grab cred run with a bit more. BGCE is a great headline ride for the park, but perhaps they forgot to include throughput as something to think about.
Up next: Parque de Atracciones de Madrid, featuring an unexpected twist...
Madrid had been a bit of a cursed trip for me, with me having planned it a couple of times but it never coming to fruition. I booked a trip out there last October, and 2 days before I was due to fly out I ended up breaking my ankle.
Fortunately, no such bad luck this time. I stayed healthy prior to the trip, and managed to fly out from Stansted to Madrid with no issues. I picked up my hire car without a hitch, and 30 minutes later I was at my first of two parks of the trip: Parque Warner Madrid.
I knew that the park was on the outskirts of Madrid, but I was surprised at just how secluded the park seemed to be from...anything else. The way my flights worked out meant that I arrived just after 12, the park's opening. Annoyingly, this meant there was a long queue to get into the park's car park. The park charge for car parking, and you have to pay before entering (or pay online and scan your ticket to get into the car park). Despite several barriers open, it took a real long time to get through...it was just very slow.
It meant that it was 12.30 by the time I got into the park. I decided to tick off Stunt Fall first, the park's Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang. The one train, low throughput ride had a 20 minute queue, which seemed reasonable enough. Unfortunately, as I neared the front, the ride shutdown, and after waiting it out a bit longer, they cleared the queue line; was clearly going to be a while.
Upon leaving the queue, I looked at queue times around the park and they were all long. Major rides were 60-90 minutes long, and even the filler rides were quiet long. Given the park's reputation, and the reputation I'd heard of Spanish guests liking to queue jump, I decided to look into Fastrack. I opted for a cheaper option, which meant you had to virtually wait 50% for a ride before getting on the ride basically immediately. This was for all rides expect major attraction Batman GCE.
I chose Superman as my first coaster to Fastrack, and whilst virtually queueing, I waited for the park's Vekoma Madhouse, Hotel Embrujado. Madhouses are cool rides, but they are all the same basic system, and it really comes down to their presentation. Whilst the pre show was cool, the ride itself was a bit meh. This definitely ranks near the bottom of my Madhouse list.
By the time that was said and done, it was time to ride Superman / la Atracción de Acero, the park's B&M floorless coaster. Like me, it was celebrating its birthday this day (well, actually, the whole park was...though I'm a few years older). The Fastrack queue takes past a good chunk of the main queue, which I always find a tad awkward. The batching for most of the park's Fastrack queue is to let Fastrack users in the station before anyone else, giving them free choice of row. I went for the front row for my ride, which I find makes the most of the floorless gimmick.
The ride itself was decent. There's a certain level of vibrations throughout the ride, especially towards the end, which detracted from the experience a bit. However, the ride itself is a fantastic mix of speed, inversions, pops of airtime whilst also being an excellent length. Maybe towards the end it peters on and it could have finished a little bit earlier, but that's not too big an issue. In general though, a solid, super ride.
My next stop was going to be Shadows of Arkham, the B&M invert / Batman clone, but it was down for the day. Seemingly there's some work going on on the lift...
Instead, I decided to grab some lunch and then brave the queue for Batman Gotham City Escape. It was displayed as a 70 minute queue, and didn't seem like it would die down given the busy-ness of the park. It also meant I could virtually queue for another ride and get on that straight away still.
The queue line for the ride is painfully boring, a very packed-in, cattle pen like queue, with minimal views of the ride, or indeed anything. There were a couple of benches though; how exciting!
Sure enough, after about 70 minute, I was entering the building and the pre-show area. The ride's story is that the public has been invited to tour Bruce Wayne's mansion, but when you start your tour, Joker interrupts and Batman comes to the rescue (good thing he's close ey?). The pre show is the mansion, and where Joker makes his appearance. Batman then appears and you go through the Bat Cave. The pre show looked lovely, but went on for a bit and didn't really do anything. I'm all for immersion and story telling, but it has to be worthwhile, not just for the sake of it. Maybe I'm just a bit spoiled having done quite a few, and have high expectations, but yeah, I'm tiring of pre shows which add little to a ride.
If only I wasn't able to stop smiling during the pre-show
There's still a bit more queueing after the pre-show, but quickly enough, I was on the back row.
The station is beautifully themed though
Following a short on-ride pre show, the ride launches you outside. This initial launch is very punchy, and took me by surprise. This quickly leads you up to the second launch, which takes you up the top hat and into the anticipation stall. I really like these on top hats, but I think they have to utilised carefully. The reason it works here (and on Toutatis) is because the rest of the ride is intense; this gentler moment is a needed piece of respite.
As alluded to, this leads into an intense ride experience. The airtime hill after the top hat has some insane ejector. There's suitably fun inversions, lateral turns and is generally a good, fun experience. This then leads into the third launch, which feels like it solely exists to get you to the end of the ride. It meanders a bit, before taking you into an incredible stall which goes over the pathway of Gotham. This, and the earlier airtime hill mentioned, are the stand out moments of the ride.
The ride then abruptly ends, hitting a set of breaks before going up a vertical spike, and then slowly rolling back. You then spin on a turntable and roll back in the station (with Joker caught...how'd you manage that then, Batman?).
BGCE ticks a lot of boxes and is a great ride experience. But the ride's throughput (2 trains of 12 people + a long ride time = ouch) is a killer. The ending is a damp squid on the ride too, sadly. For me, this isn't up there with the elite Intamin multi launchers. And whilst this ride inserts itself into my Top 10%, it is at the lower end. That's not a critique on the ride itself per se, my Top 10% is chock-full of many top tier experiences, but I don't seem to rate it quite as highly as others do.
Next up was Coaster Express, the park's RCCA woodie. My only experience with RCCA is Bandit at Movie Park Germany, which is...rubbish, to say the least. So expectations were low. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The ride is very long, comfortable, but also has some nice moments of laterals, pops of airtime and some cool helices. It's just a solid, fun ride.
Nearby was the park's year-round horror maze, themed around the Conjuring universe. How the Conjuring universe fits into the Wild West I'm unsure, but oh well. With a 6 euro upcharge, it had a steady flow of people, but it meant we were able to go in small groups. And this maze was bloody good. Very well themed, great length, no unnecessary dead spots. Perfect number of actors. It set up a fantastic, spooky / eerie atmosphere, but always had suitable pay-offs too. Strongly recommend.
On that note too, this made me slightly more gutted that I ended up missing the park's Halloween event last year. If this is their year-round maze, I felt like it was a great sign for the rest of park's scare maze line-up.
Next up was ticking off some of the smaller / calmer rides on park, including the log flume / rapids and the family / kiddie creds. I was pleasantly surprised by Correcaminos Bip, Bip, the park's Mack Youngstar coaster. Nice family coaster which had a cute little theme. Included in this family ride tick-off was their Scooby Doo shooter dark ride:
Being the sucker for interactive dark rides that I am, I quite enjoyed this. Like with the Scooby Doo ride at Warner Bros Abu Dhabi, the theming felt a little on the cheap side, but the interactivity makes up for it a bit.
It was time to get back to thrill rides, with Stunt Fall calling my name. Not being a fan of most Vekoma Boomerangs I've done, and having hated the one Inverted Vekoma Boomerang I've done, I was a little apprehensive of riding. This just seemed like a recipe for disaster.
I ended up being allocated to the back row. Being dragged up backwards vertical is certainly an experience, but not as uncomfortable as I expected. And then you're released. And the ride, shockingly, doesn't bash your head in. It's intense, but it's...smooth?! Going through the cobra roll is great fun. The vertical loop again is great. And then you hit the second vertical lift. Rise up, and release.
The backwards vertical loop was beautiful. The backwards cobra roll, usually the worst part of these Vekoma Boomerangs, was slow and filled with hang-time, but not in any way painful. I was just left...shocked by how good the experience was.
Vekoma, I like the cut of your GIB.
Even with Fastrack, the day was getting away from me, and the early start and surprising heat (nearly 30 degrees) meant I was beginning to tire. The park was still busy. I'd have liked another ride on BGCE, and it was advertised at 50mins, but the queue was longer than my earlier 70 minute queue. So I decided to call it a day there.
Final Parque Warner Thoughts
Parque Warner is a park that really struggled with the crowds. I think my expectations for the park were raised after I really enjoyed Warner Bros Abu Dhabi, perhaps unfairly so. With no Shadows of Arkham, no main show and slow operations, it was a difficult day to enjoy. It did really end up just being a smash and grab cred run with a bit more. BGCE is a great headline ride for the park, but perhaps they forgot to include throughput as something to think about.
Up next: Parque de Atracciones de Madrid, featuring an unexpected twist...
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