Jordanovichy
Credit Whore 2016
A couple of weeks back I went to Spain with my family. We were in a hotel in Pineda de Mar which is an hour's drive north of Barcelona. Given that this would mean Port Aventura was around 2.5 hours away I thought it unlikely I would get to go but luckily enough Thomson (the travel company we booked our holiday with) offer excursions to the theme park. It'd be rude not to go!
Port Aventura
We had booked on a day where the weather wasn't going to be great...why waste sunbathing time?
We got up at 6:30 and went down to breakfast to witness the impressive thunderstorm happening outside. This made walking to the bus stop really rather hard...
(Apparently storms later on in the day meant that the roads were flooded in 12 inches of rain and some houses had flooded).
We caught our coach and had to go round other local hotels before we were on the main road to Salou's most popular theme park. It took around 2 hours, on the way the rain fell very heavily, I couldn't get any decent pictures of the Spanish hills/mountains because the water torrented down the windows. Thankfully Port Aventura was dry!
First up was Woody with an impressive waterfall!
The park tries to be beautiful but this is just ivy and fern....
What's spanish for orgasm? SHAMBHALALLALLAAAAAAAAA
Baco track, the sky looked furious.
It does look nice but look, the grass is overgrown and noooo
We had to walk through the new for 2011 area, SésamoAventura
It actually looks really nice. I'd imagine a little sun would brighten it up, but it did look genuinely very nice
But I then decided to **** the generic pictures and focus on generic Shambhala pictures
Just a maze of coaster track. Beautiful.
Of course, it was the main thing I was here to ride. It had to be done first.
The coaster train just looks so beautiful and graceful
Beautiful
You feel so out in the open on this coaster, it's unreal.
So we joined the burdenous hour long queue. I was expecting longer I'm not going to lie but I think the storms had put some people off
We got closer and closer. This was one of my favourite pictures. Just look at how tall it is
My nephew, Cameron, couldn't wait!
The final airtime 'hill' well, bump and spare train.
I was genuinely surprised to see the orientation of the seats, the two in front next to each other, the back two spaced apart.
We went back row and I got a sweaty selfie before we boarded
So then, the coaster. First off, lap bars only ftw. The lift hill takes ages but it really builds the suspense. I looked down and my god is it a long way. Then the drop. Oh my F**KING GOD. It is so so good. Simply the best part of any roller coaster I've ever been on. You fly so far out of your seat how you don't fall out I'm not sure. I just let my body do what it wanted rather than holding on I let myself fly. It was beautiful. Then up over more airtime hills whilst being thrown up out of your seat. The & element was great too but I would have liked a little more force, hence why it hasn't overtaken Montu. Next comes the splashdown, you don't get wet just splashed. It's all great fun, there's then more airtime before you finish. I loved it. I loved it so much. I'm probably sounding more enthusiastic than I did in my Florida trip report for Montu but that's because Shambhala has always been number 2 on my 'I most want to ride' coasters so to get to ride it has filled me with such joy.
I had to get the ride photo. My face=joy. Cameron's face=probable terror.
Well once Shambhala was done we headed over to Dragon Khan.
It looked pretty rough but decent enough, it is after all a B&M sit down coaster and the two other I've ridden, Kumba and Hulk are both great coasters.
Have a couple of photos of Dragon Khan going round anyway
Cameron didn't seem to be looking forward to this one was much...
There was a great big dragon's head in the queue line. It wobbled if you touched it.
Whilst in the queue the ride ceased operation whilst the rain fell harder than ever. It was relentless.
I liked the yellow of the restraints. Yellow is nice. I like yellow.
So the cred. It is actually really really good. It's slightly rough but very enjoyable. There are 8 inversions which is perhaps too many but the coaster goes on for a decent amount of time. It is the best B&M sit down coaster I've ridden and has gone straight to number 10. We rode it front row, I wanted to ride back row later on but we didn't have the chance. I can't help but wonder if the back row would be a little too rough, hopefully one day I will find out. Another cool fact, 5 weeks before going to Port Aventura I'd never ridden a B&M sit down coaster. Now I've ridden 3 out of the 5 in operation.
Next was El Diablo, Tren de la Mina.
It looked **** ****.
I read somewhere that it is a hybrid, and I'm sure it is but RCDB lists it as steel. I'm so confused.
The queue time said 10 minutes. 45 minutes later we boarded. It was such a burdenous queue with so many cattle pens. Plus it was very hot and humid. Cameron and I weren't in the best moods...
Burdenous queue of whyyy
Some half decent theming
Hopefully the cred would cheers us up. Oh, here it come!
Errrrm no. It was rough and just awful. Crashing round the corners slamming as into each other. Crash, bang etc. The less said about this the better. At least I got a cred. We then headed over to Tomahawk.
Looks, well, ok I suppose...but rough...
There was a burdenous queue...and the spare train just sat there literally pleading to be used.
The ride broke down which cleared the queue considerably. Finally it was back up and running, we were about to get on the train when oh, it's broken down again. We did finally get on though.
Yeah, it's rough, as I was expecting. It isn't a 'bad' ride but it is a little too bone-shaking to be really enjoyable which was disappointing. Still, got the cred.
Stampida was next
This has two sides to it, a red and a blue
We went red first.
If you know what 'regla' means in English you'll understand why this is funny. It was one of the first spanish words I learnt.
We queued for around 30 minutes, which is what we were expecting. This was a good call for reasons that will become apparent. We sat in the middle of the train because time was getting tight and we needed to get the other side done.
It is rough but a comfortable rough, I suppose one could say it made me comfortably numb. Racing the blue was good fun, red won, but then red wins every time. I liked how one minute we're racing head to head then suddenly red and blue pass each other travelling in opposite directions. It was really good. It wasn't bone-shattering rough, a pleasurable rough if you like. It did, however, rub the writing on my NASA bag which I was pretty peeved about.
So we went back round to ride the blue side of Stampida
We queued for less than 10 minutes, the red queue was still very long. Excellent. In said ten minutes I took some photos of the coaster going round.
Blue train!
Blue wasn't as enjoyable. It was rougher which was making it just a little too uncomfortable, I didn't enjoy this side as much. We sat middle again so it was easy to compare the two sides.
I had to take a Stampida selfie.
It appears I have very few photos of what happened next and I can't really remember, we grabbed a hot dog as we'd eaten nothing all day.
Needs more cheese
I have a couple of generic Port Aventura pics in the Far West section
We watched a pirate show and I got a picture with them
We went to the shop where I some Shambhala merch. We checked out Furious Baco but sadly it was still closed. Something for next time.
To finish off I had my picture taken with the Port Aventura sign
It wasn't the best day at a theme park, given that we arrived late and had to leave at 18:00 for our coach and that the rain closed the rides on and off throughout the day but the coasters more than made up for that and I rode everything I wanted to. Annoyed I didn't get on Shambhala on the front but twice at the back is nothing to be sneezed at. I wasn't as impressed with Port Aventura as I was expecting, it just isn't a brilliant park but when you look at the weather I had that could be a factor.
As always thank you for reading.
Port Aventura
We had booked on a day where the weather wasn't going to be great...why waste sunbathing time?
We got up at 6:30 and went down to breakfast to witness the impressive thunderstorm happening outside. This made walking to the bus stop really rather hard...
(Apparently storms later on in the day meant that the roads were flooded in 12 inches of rain and some houses had flooded).
We caught our coach and had to go round other local hotels before we were on the main road to Salou's most popular theme park. It took around 2 hours, on the way the rain fell very heavily, I couldn't get any decent pictures of the Spanish hills/mountains because the water torrented down the windows. Thankfully Port Aventura was dry!
First up was Woody with an impressive waterfall!
The park tries to be beautiful but this is just ivy and fern....
What's spanish for orgasm? SHAMBHALALLALLAAAAAAAAA
Baco track, the sky looked furious.
It does look nice but look, the grass is overgrown and noooo
We had to walk through the new for 2011 area, SésamoAventura
It actually looks really nice. I'd imagine a little sun would brighten it up, but it did look genuinely very nice
But I then decided to **** the generic pictures and focus on generic Shambhala pictures
Just a maze of coaster track. Beautiful.
Of course, it was the main thing I was here to ride. It had to be done first.
The coaster train just looks so beautiful and graceful
Beautiful
You feel so out in the open on this coaster, it's unreal.
So we joined the burdenous hour long queue. I was expecting longer I'm not going to lie but I think the storms had put some people off
We got closer and closer. This was one of my favourite pictures. Just look at how tall it is
My nephew, Cameron, couldn't wait!
The final airtime 'hill' well, bump and spare train.
I was genuinely surprised to see the orientation of the seats, the two in front next to each other, the back two spaced apart.
We went back row and I got a sweaty selfie before we boarded
So then, the coaster. First off, lap bars only ftw. The lift hill takes ages but it really builds the suspense. I looked down and my god is it a long way. Then the drop. Oh my F**KING GOD. It is so so good. Simply the best part of any roller coaster I've ever been on. You fly so far out of your seat how you don't fall out I'm not sure. I just let my body do what it wanted rather than holding on I let myself fly. It was beautiful. Then up over more airtime hills whilst being thrown up out of your seat. The & element was great too but I would have liked a little more force, hence why it hasn't overtaken Montu. Next comes the splashdown, you don't get wet just splashed. It's all great fun, there's then more airtime before you finish. I loved it. I loved it so much. I'm probably sounding more enthusiastic than I did in my Florida trip report for Montu but that's because Shambhala has always been number 2 on my 'I most want to ride' coasters so to get to ride it has filled me with such joy.
I had to get the ride photo. My face=joy. Cameron's face=probable terror.
Well once Shambhala was done we headed over to Dragon Khan.
It looked pretty rough but decent enough, it is after all a B&M sit down coaster and the two other I've ridden, Kumba and Hulk are both great coasters.
Have a couple of photos of Dragon Khan going round anyway
Cameron didn't seem to be looking forward to this one was much...
There was a great big dragon's head in the queue line. It wobbled if you touched it.
Whilst in the queue the ride ceased operation whilst the rain fell harder than ever. It was relentless.
I liked the yellow of the restraints. Yellow is nice. I like yellow.
So the cred. It is actually really really good. It's slightly rough but very enjoyable. There are 8 inversions which is perhaps too many but the coaster goes on for a decent amount of time. It is the best B&M sit down coaster I've ridden and has gone straight to number 10. We rode it front row, I wanted to ride back row later on but we didn't have the chance. I can't help but wonder if the back row would be a little too rough, hopefully one day I will find out. Another cool fact, 5 weeks before going to Port Aventura I'd never ridden a B&M sit down coaster. Now I've ridden 3 out of the 5 in operation.
Next was El Diablo, Tren de la Mina.
It looked **** ****.
I read somewhere that it is a hybrid, and I'm sure it is but RCDB lists it as steel. I'm so confused.
The queue time said 10 minutes. 45 minutes later we boarded. It was such a burdenous queue with so many cattle pens. Plus it was very hot and humid. Cameron and I weren't in the best moods...
Burdenous queue of whyyy
Some half decent theming
Hopefully the cred would cheers us up. Oh, here it come!
Errrrm no. It was rough and just awful. Crashing round the corners slamming as into each other. Crash, bang etc. The less said about this the better. At least I got a cred. We then headed over to Tomahawk.
Looks, well, ok I suppose...but rough...
There was a burdenous queue...and the spare train just sat there literally pleading to be used.
The ride broke down which cleared the queue considerably. Finally it was back up and running, we were about to get on the train when oh, it's broken down again. We did finally get on though.
Yeah, it's rough, as I was expecting. It isn't a 'bad' ride but it is a little too bone-shaking to be really enjoyable which was disappointing. Still, got the cred.
Stampida was next
This has two sides to it, a red and a blue
We went red first.
If you know what 'regla' means in English you'll understand why this is funny. It was one of the first spanish words I learnt.
We queued for around 30 minutes, which is what we were expecting. This was a good call for reasons that will become apparent. We sat in the middle of the train because time was getting tight and we needed to get the other side done.
It is rough but a comfortable rough, I suppose one could say it made me comfortably numb. Racing the blue was good fun, red won, but then red wins every time. I liked how one minute we're racing head to head then suddenly red and blue pass each other travelling in opposite directions. It was really good. It wasn't bone-shattering rough, a pleasurable rough if you like. It did, however, rub the writing on my NASA bag which I was pretty peeved about.
So we went back round to ride the blue side of Stampida
We queued for less than 10 minutes, the red queue was still very long. Excellent. In said ten minutes I took some photos of the coaster going round.
Blue train!
Blue wasn't as enjoyable. It was rougher which was making it just a little too uncomfortable, I didn't enjoy this side as much. We sat middle again so it was easy to compare the two sides.
I had to take a Stampida selfie.
It appears I have very few photos of what happened next and I can't really remember, we grabbed a hot dog as we'd eaten nothing all day.
Needs more cheese
I have a couple of generic Port Aventura pics in the Far West section
We watched a pirate show and I got a picture with them
We went to the shop where I some Shambhala merch. We checked out Furious Baco but sadly it was still closed. Something for next time.
To finish off I had my picture taken with the Port Aventura sign
It wasn't the best day at a theme park, given that we arrived late and had to leave at 18:00 for our coach and that the rain closed the rides on and off throughout the day but the coasters more than made up for that and I rode everything I wanted to. Annoyed I didn't get on Shambhala on the front but twice at the back is nothing to be sneezed at. I wasn't as impressed with Port Aventura as I was expecting, it just isn't a brilliant park but when you look at the weather I had that could be a factor.
As always thank you for reading.
