Amsterdam, Efteling & Toverland!

[Mushroom]

This past weekend I went out to Holland for my birthday! So here is a photo trip report, though the weather was **** but didn't spoil the fun!

Day 1 - 25/2 - Amsterdam

Nice early start was required for my 6am flight out to Amsterdam, of course Ryanair don't fly there, easyJet do, but Manchester is too far. But wait a minute, KLM fly from Leeds! So I caught my flight out...

Its a Fokker 70, tiny plane with about 80 odd seats!

Slight delay out of Leeds, but managed to get in to Schipol on time

Once walking through the airport, got a text from Matt (saw_gameover) saying he hadn't even left Luton with easyJet! Well it was a bit foggy in Amsterdam. I ended up waiting about 2 hours there =[ Wasn't fun! But eventually Matt arrived, and we headed into Amsterdam. We had tickets booked for the Dungeons, so we headed there first. But we did bump into Alan on the way through

Just down the road we saw the Dungeon

The dungeon was really fun. Matt got picked on a couple of times, but all the scenes were done in both English and Dutch. Very fun =] HOWEVER! The coaster at the end was absolutely **** !!!!!! Worst piece of coaster ever really, heck, I will ride a mini apple instead of this any-day!

Rest of the day, we wondered around Amsterdam randomly

Was quite surprised how many bikes there was!

We were both tired out, so we decided to head to our Ibis for the night at the airport, which was quite a nice one as well. 3 different restaurants too. Though when I checked in, I said it was my birthday the next day, and the guy checking us in gave us 2 free drinks! Win =D

We then just relaxed, watched some TV, and got prepared for the next day...

Which I will post tomorrow!

 

[Lofty]

How easy is the Amsterdam Dungeons to find/get to? I'm going for my Birthday in May and was just wondering

 

[Mushroom]

Very Simple =]
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&sourc ... 5&t=h&z=15

 

[Mushroom]

Day 2 - 26/2 - Efteling

Day 2 was my birthday! Woo! So we had to head to the airport to pick up the mysterious one. Her flight was delayed, typical sleasy! Once she had arrived, we went to pick up the hire car I booked, the lovely Venga!

Not this Venga:

But a Kia Venga!

So off we went, got slightly lost to start, but managed to get back on track! After about 1 hour, we had arrived =D

Such an amazing entrance!

We walked into the park and spotted our first coaster, Bob, but we saw a entrance to something, it was very dark to enter. It was a random show and very surreal! This was the start of WTF! Got around to Bob

Was pretty decent, but quite unique being a Intamin Bobsled, but still can't beat a Mack!
All over the park there was random theming due to it being 'Winter Efteling', like cuckoo clocks in trees!

But what most impressed us was the open fire pits

We went past the water coaster, sadly it was randomly closed, so that was 2 coasters down the pan today (this and Python, which we knew about). But then I spotted in the distance something running on a white track.... OMFG! Python was OPEN!!! This was a shock to us, we had to get a closer look and we ended up riding it. It has the new Vekoma trains

Sue was looking forward to this Vekoma lol!

After riding, we just thought it was terrible! Spikes of roughness, and it hurt. Spike of roughness worse than any other vekoma corkscrew type coaster I had been on! After the ride I got a few pics

I finished taking some pictures, and was ready for Joris en de Draak! Though Sue wasn't paying attention, both me and Matt tried calling Sue, but she wasn't listening

Once we got her back, it was time for some racing =]

I will post a full review of this later in the post =]

We got this done and went to find our last coaster on the list, which was Vogel Rock! Eventually we found it with its impressive building

It was purely amazing, I don't know why, but a lot of indoor Vekoma coasters are awesome! As it was pissing it down with rain, we went for a second ride, and spotted a pure Vogel Rock enthusiast! He was big with glasses, holding a blackberry to his face writing something, with a Vogel Rock shirt on. We just laughed as he was just a pure geek! We got off our 2nd ride, and saw this bloke just filming people coming through the indoor entrance. We all just laughed at his ultimate geekiness! I know it wasw a bad thing to do, but we all like to have a laugh =]

At this point Matt was soaked belong belief, and needed a jumper, so we headed back to the car, and got lost :lol: We stumbled across a random fairy ride. We thought it would be absolute ****, but we were proved wrong. It was quite amazing, and well worth it in the end. Got to the car, after trying to find it lol! And headed back into the park. We saw a area on the map we hadn't explored, so that was a port of call. Lots of fairy tales etc. and was ok. So we headed off to the huge observation tower!

All 3 of us

OMFG! Construction of a new B&M Mega Hyper Coaster!*

*This is not true

View of Joris!

Up next was a random boat ride which lasted forever, however to start we had a black swan following us!

And some ducks!

While on this boat, we saw a elegant horse and carriage!

We warmed with a hot drink, and headed over to Joris!

We had done the Red (Fire) side earlier, so this time was going to be the Water (blue) side. The whole coaster was awesome! Probably my favorite racing coaster. I found that the Back of the Blue side was better than the red, however the front of the red better than blue.

We had a few more rides on Joris, 1 more painful ride on Python and a good ride on the Pirate Ship, though the last couple of rides on Joris were in the dark =]

This started the journey to our hotel for the night, about a 40min drive, and just outside Eindhoven. They were going to charge us more for having 3 in the room, but they didn't tell us via e-mail, and stayed adamant about the price they quoted. Went a found somewhere to eat, and it was a nice little cafe, dinner was had, and headed back to the hotel, and watched Family Guy in Dutch! And that was day end.

Toverland tomorrow!

 

[furie]

[/jealous]

That's all for now

 

[Ian]

How easy is the Amsterdam Dungeons to find/get to? I'm going for my Birthday in May and was just wondering

Head out of the train station, walk straight ahead to the Damrak, walk straight down it until you come to Dam Square. Look for Madame Tussuad's in the square (easy to spot) and walk down the road beside it - Rokin. It's down there on the right. About a 15min walk from Centraal Station. I ****ing love Amsterdam.

Back to the trip report, I agree about the coaster in the Dunge, Raybould. It doesn't do anything. It is poor.

And those open fire pits seem to be common place in that part of the world. I remember Bellewarde (or whatever its called) having them in October a few years ago.

 

[Martyn B]

Great pics Mushroom! Sounds like a fun little trip!

Anyone know what that construction site is for?

 

[Mushroom]

^ Its not for a coaster, think it is for some kind of show. Annoying as I can't remember when you had to pay €1.50 for maps

 

[gerstlauer]

Awesome report Mark... Good times <3

Any chance of day 3?? I know I was there, but it's nice to relive it

 

[andrus]

Day 2 - 26/2 - Efteling
We went past the water coaster, sadly it was randomly closed, so that was 2 coasters down the pan today (this and Python, which we knew about). But then I spotted in the distance something running on a white track.... OMFG! Python was OPEN!!! This was a shock to us, we had to get a closer look and we ended up riding it. It has the new Vekoma trains

These are not Vekoma trains, it's KumbaK trains. I know you didn't like the ride but what did you think of the trains? How did they compare to the standard Arrow/Vekoma trains? Nice trip review btw!

 

[davidm]

^^^ The construction is for the big ride for 2012, oops I mean 2013 :-(

Hartenhof; the Vekoma Pandora's box.

Translated on the webiste;

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate ... rmd%3Divns

 

[andrus]

When will we see the next update?? :wink: I'm very interested in Toverland and Troy in particular!

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Only just got round to reading your review Mushy. Can't wait to read the second half.

I can't stress enough how amazing Vogel Rok was. <3 Vekoma indoors anywhere other than Thorpe. The big swooshing noise of the giant bird in the queue was epic! :--D :--D

Python was very bumpy, but then hey, what do you expect. I loved the last corner though, that was very intense (it was what I was staring at for ages in your photo).

The 'fairy gnome' ride was, as Mark says, well worth a go. I was complaining about the amount of pink fairies at first, but the animatronics were hilarious.

In fact, animatronics were a theme in the park. Everywhere there were strange, and incredibly scary moving fairy tale scenes and creatures. No sugar-coated Disney here, it was totally Brother's Grim. In fact, I've re-named the park Errie-ling. The first thing we saw on arriving was a ten minute animatronic show of a man being hung, set to the Johnathon Creek music! Totally bewildering.

Also, fire pits <3 - Thorpe really needs to get some of those - if just to see the chavs burn!

 

[LiveForTheLaunch]

UH PLEASE TELL ME YOU SMOKED? UH HELLO, TANGERINE DREAM? WEED CAPITAL OF THE WORLD?

That is all.

 

[Lofty]

^ Ha Taylor.

Yeah, Kumbak destroy ANYTHING they get their hands on. I wouldn't worry about that, they're ****ing useless.

I really want to go to Efteling. I was going to go on the second day of my Amsterdam trip, but then decided to go to The Dungeons instead. Ah. After looking on that map, my hotel is on the same street as The Dungeons. Win for me!

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Forget the dungeons, go to Efteling!!!

 

[Lofty]

^ I'd like to. But by the time I get back to Amsterdam itself, it's going to be LATE. Me and my friend want a few hours roaming Amsterdam before our flight home so we may as well just do The Dungeons. PLUS, we're going on one of their biggest public holidays

 

[Mysterious Sue]

ohh well, Amsterdam's a lovely city - great place for a relaxed potter about