Denmark (well, half of it) and Eurovision

[Jake]

If you have me or Vadge on Facebook you might be aware that we have been in Copenhagen for the last week or so. You may not have noticed, as we haven't really been posting anything at all .

I know these creds aren't exactly the most exclusive of them all, but I'll bore you with them anyway. We did Tivoli, Bakken and BonBon-Land. Normally in a week there would be time to go over to the other parks, but with it being Eurovision week we were quite busy with that too.

It was quite a messy trip in the sense that we only spent a few hours in each park, then did other stuff in the morning before / afternoon after (they have really weird opening times); so to keep it simple I'll just split it into parts, one for each park, one for culture, and one for Eurovision.

The weather was pretty gross. Cloudy and dark most of the time, with the odd bit of rain and an even smaller tiny amount of sun. So, excuse the photos looking vile.

Part 1 - Tivoli Gardens

We did Tivoli on Tuesday, after arriving and having a casual mince on Monday (spiteful early morning flight meant we were pretty much zombies all day).

I'd heard it was a pretty park, and, well, it was.

This is the only photo I have of the entrance... sorry Nic

These were odd, but fab:

Hello!

We found the Woodie first:

Fab fab fab. One of the better Side Frictions for sure. We got back row and there was loads of airtime, loads.

We somehow managed to get lost finding the entrance to the B&M, but evench ended up in the staysh...

Here, have some coaster porn.

It was pretty much what I expected, if not a bit rougher. Pretty dull, but I admire them for managing to squeeze an actual, physical B&M into such a small park - especially when they easily could have got away with shoving a Pinfari looper or even worse, a Eurofighter or something in. It does look pretty too.

Not sure if it was because of the Bacardi Breezers I'd had for breakfast or being beaten up by the B&M, but the next hour or so is a blur - I think we did the Mack powered cred.

I didn't bother taking any photos, here's one from RCDB:

It was better than the likes of Fish and Runaway Train (the last corner is quite vicious), but that's all there is to say.

We then got lost trying to find the entrance to the Star Flyer, ending up underneath it, then realised we had walked right past the entrance immediately after exiting the powered cred. Duh!

I secretly love Star Flyers, even though they're a bit gross. This is particularly fab as it's in the middle of a city.

We then went on a mission to find the fourth cred, the Tivoli in Tivoli. More pretty stuff to follow.

They had a new tropical species of tree - the dykefairylight willow.

There is the odd reminder you're in an amusement park:

... then there's the downright hideous - what the hell is that?!

.


It's like this...

...and this...

...had a baby in Chernobyl in the late 80s. No thanks!

The Tivoli was directly opposite it. You can just about see it on the far left of this accidental photo:

Once we had the creds we did the (decent) S&S tower, the fun house, the dodgems and a badly animated dark ride with way too many different stories shoved in. The only things we re-rode were Daemonen and the woodie.

It might sound like I didn't like it but I really, really did. It's not really about the rides (although some of them are quite fab), but everything else that makes it quite a special little park. I would love to see it at night, but it didn't really work with what else we had planned - and they charge you for re-entry <///3.

Bakken next!

 

[rtotheizzo17]

Great pics. Beautiful park.

 

[Jake]

Part 2 - Bakken

We did Bakken on Thursday, but couldn't stay too long because it didn't open till 14:00 and we had the second semi final to watch in the evening - luckily, it's quite a small park and there was nobody there.

Bakken is situated in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen, at the end of one of S Train lines (the city's urban rail system).

The park is a sort of circle shape, with the woodie in the middle. We went clockwise around it with the Tivoli being the first cred - it's quite cute for a Tivoli.

The ride-op kept trying to convince us to ride the kiddie ferris wheel, to which we were like "gurl, it's not a cred" and scuttled off.

Next stop was for a wee in their toilet, with this making us laugh. I have just google translated it and it actually means 'urinal'. Hehe.

The (new) Wild Mouse, Vilde Mus, or Vile Mouse, happened next. Again, I'm the worst and forgot to take a photo of it, so he's one from RCDB:

It was OK - definitely not the worst. +1.

Next up was the Flitzer - I secretly love these. No restraints and surprisingly smooth for their age. Really remind me of a Schwarz. It had just rained so my jeans absorbed a nice puddle of water from the seat.

On the way to the next cred we walked past a few other rides - to be honest, the park was a bit dumpier than I was expecting.

Vadge was scared of the ghost train so the only dark ride we did was the shooting ride, which involved each rider sitting on a moving rodeo bull shooting at people on a big cinema screen. It was really weird, but amazing, apart from me losing by a couple of lousy points <///3. I still came second as we were the only two riding <3.

The Mine Train is right next to it, so we jumped on that next. It's actually an Intamin (the only other one is at Happy Valley Shanghai, so I have the whole collection <3).

Again, no photos, so RCDB it is:

It really took us by surprise - after the lift hill there is a huge drop we weren't prepared for, exaggerated by being in the back row.

Next up was the Intamin Spinner, Tornado.

I hadn't heard the best things about it, but was NOT expecting what was in store for us.

It basically launches you up the lift hill at what feels like 50mph, into a series of tight corners and helices. The first turn caught me completely off guard and it really, really hurt. I spent the remainder of the ordeal cringing and wishing for it to be over. It might sound a bit dramatic, but it really is one of the worst coasters I've ever done. Grotesque!

The final cred of the day was the Woodie, Rutschebanen.

Until 2010 this old classic had brakeman trains, but they decided to spite them and get Kumbak involved (why, why, why?!). In order to keep it as a side friction coaster they had to control the speed somehow, so have installed brakes on every, single corner.

It was so bad. Like, awful. When there is a brakeman they gently and constantly apply the brakes, so it isn't really noticeable - but on this you literally slow down to a halt on all the corners, and on these, there are a lot of corners. I wish I had done it before they butchered it as it looks like a bigger and better version of the one at Tivoli, which is ferocious.

Once the creds were out the way we moved onto the flat rides, only two of which were worth doing - the small S&S tower and this thing:

I had never seen one before so was really excited to ride it. I haven't been as active on the forums in the last couple of years and haven't been keeping up with everything, so humour me if these are actually everywhere and everyone has ridden one .

You control the movement of your own plane by moving the flap things, with the goal of flipping over.

It was really good fun <3.

We then left the park, but I was tempted to stay for a 'gay special'.

BonBon next.

 

[marc]

Great report

Tbh when we done the woodie at Bakken before the change I still thought the one at Tivoli was better.

For some reason I liked the Intamin spinner laughed all the way round. The drop on the mine train took us by shock as well.

 

[caffeine_demon]

Tornado was awesome, and I loved the flitzer too!

 

[Smithy]

Those flap things have spawned two ridiculous videos of ECG and UC spinning a surreal amount (think like 90+ times in a single ride cycle?), sure someone will know where to find them.

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Yay someone else who has sense and despises Tornado!

Bakken is awful...

 

[Tomatron]

Tornado is great. You're just wrong

Can't say I'm surprised that Kumbak ruined the woodie. As they ruin almost everything they do. A little bit of me will die inside when I ride it this summer and remember how amazing it used to be.

 

[Jake]

Didn't realise how many people like Tornado <////3. Weirdos.

Part 3 - BonBon-Land

Getting here involved 2 stops on the metro, 50 minutes on the S train and then another 30 minutes on a 'national rail service'. Fairly simple, but it felt really burdenous after the ease of getting to the other parks.

You are greeted by a Toys R Us version of Thorpe's entrance:

This is a common trend accross the whole park - they have made the effort, but it's all very fiberglass and cheap looking. This stuff does not age well at all (Ug Land 2005 anyone?).

We went to the Dog Fart cred first, but it was spiting, so we headed for the Eurofighter.

I was expecting death on a stick as it was the first ever Eurofighter, but it's the smoothest one I've done. Probably because it doesn't have any tight transitions and generally doesn't do much, but still, it was almost enjoyable.

By this point it was apparent that a lot of school groups were in the park (it wasn't busy by any means, but 80% of the guests were kids) and they were really getting on our tits. Running around, screaming, queue jumping, just, the worst. What posesses people to have them is beyond me - if it was up to me the human race would slowly die out. What really got to us, was that they had the audacity to go to a kids/family park - how very dare they.

So, we entered the queue for the Spinning coaster, but ended up leaving after about 5 minutes as it had spited. The big Tivoli coaster would have been our plan B, but it wasn't open either so we headed over to the flat rides.

I was happy to see one of these here <3

It was fab, obv.

They also had one of these - I would have ridden it, but they were making everyone wait until it was half full, and vadge wasn't feeling it. So it got a big fat CBA.

We then wandered back over to the Dog Fart coaster, which had reopened.

So had the spinner...

Pretty standard - better than a Reverchon, but not quite as good as a Maurer. I don't like how you have to look at randomers if you're only in a group of 2... bit awks.

The Tivoli had also opened, so we acquired the last credit of the day (and the trip).

It's HUGE for a Tivoli, but really dull. It's more like a monorail. The long trains on these are just ridiculous... they destroy any possible momentum and just crawl their way around the layout.

The station is elevated, so your last memory of the ride is a lift hill.

The last ride of the day (well, 2 hours) was this... creation:

It's like a giant frog hopper that violently tilts you forward at the top. The fact you can see it happen from the queue makes it completely pointless, but I thought I was going to die. Does anyone know how old it is and who made it? It looks, feels and sounds about 20 years old but I have a feeling it isn't.

Random pic with multiple rides in it:

The trains were only every hour, so we grabbed some lunch to kill a bit of time. We went for the 'BonBon Pizza' which is billed as pizza with salad. We were looking forward to a couple of token rocket leaves, or some veg, but it was literally, lettuce and mayo dumped on a pizza.

That concludes BonBon-Land, a fiberglass filled dump full of vile children and iceberg pizza. Oh, and terrible operations. 1 car on a Eurofighter, who does that? Apart from Oakwood.

Culture next!

 

[Nic]

Just so mine isn't a complete carbon copy of Jake's, I'm going chronological.

We arrived in Copez and were quickly reminded of our main reason for being there.

We got the metro to our fab apartment. We grabbed some lunch from a nearby supermarket, and got ready for a week of Eurovision fabulousness.

Our main objective for the day was to make it to the "Eurovision Village" in time to see some of the contestants perform live, particularly one Miss Conchita Wurst. To get there, we sashayed from the middle of the fan mile and arrived in the square

To get everyone in the mood, people were in the crowd handing out beards on sticks <3

Then Conchita came on and she was AMAZING <3

After her, we also saw Belarus...

... Greece...

... and some woman.

We drank beer and got gays to take our photo

Then Ruth turned up

She's scary

We got fed up with her, so buggered off back to the apartment where Jake played with our remote-controlled adjustable bed

So yeah, that was Monday.

 

[ATTACKHAMMER]

Fab reports! The Dog Fart Coaster is pretty high on my coaster bucket list!

 

[Jake]

Completely forgot about the bed, haha <3.

 

[Nic]

Tuesday

We went to Tivoli Gardens

It's very pretty

Oh, I do love a good patterned theme park floor <3

We went on their woodie, which is FAB! It has so much airtime, that I flew up in the air, stuck my hand out to grab the seat in front, and actually ended up smacking the child in front round the back of the head.

I think we did the powered cred next. It was long. I didn't take any photos of it.

After that, we did this VILE contraption. I thought we were going to die.

As if there's an ACTUAL B&M just mincing in the city centre?!

It was OK. Not particularly smooth, and rather forceless. There's some reasonably pretty theming though.

We wandered round to the other side of the park and found this...

Clearly used to be some kind of round ride. I highly doubt it'll be anything exciting.

Just... WTF?

CRED <3 10 **** circuits </3

Not in a million **** years would you get me on this

This was our favourite garden area

Even the kiddie area was getting in the big gay spirit of Eurovision

The park also has loads of restaurants, LOADS, some of which are really interestingly designed

At some point we went in the fun house thing which is pretty epic. We also did the ridiculous dark ride thing. Neither of which I took photos of.

We then rode these. It is essentially the last round of Takeshi's Castle. Right down to the fact that nobody wins.

There's enough fountains to keep Amanda's knickers dripping

We also kept bumping into some bloke who it later transpired was the Norwegian Eurovision entry.

Anyway, Tivs might not have the world's best rides, but it is one of the world's prettiest so is definitely well worth a visit.

Later that evening was the first semi-final. We decided to head back to the "village" to watch it on the big screen.

*Insert your favourite Merlin joke here*

We drank lots of Rekorderlig

All in all, it was a fab day.

 

[Nic]

Wednesday

We started the day with a trip to the Carlsberg museum. It was alright, very museumy.

We didn't hang about too long because we wanted to get back into town to see more Eurovision acts grace the big stage.

First up was Iceland. OMG, I love them <3

Then Sweden came on. She was actually really impressive. At that point, my money was on her to win.

Iceland then reappeared to do a signing. Obviously we got in there.

We had a bit of a mince round the block and a quick drink, then came back for the next lot. This woman was quite fab, despite having actually been knocked out of the competition the night before

Then France came on. They were awesome. OH YEAH!

No idea what happened after that, but food and booze were both involved. Actually, that may well have been the night we found a copy of Mommy Dearest in the apartment. NO. WIRE. HANGERS!!!

 

[Nic]

Thursday

We got to Bakken for opening at 2pm. Yes. 2. PM.

It's a really weird park. The surroundings are all lovely and leafy, but the rides are (mostly) all old and dumpy.

First cred was the Ladybird Tivoli. It was rather pretty for such a generic cred. The ride op was fab, if a little creepy.

Next cred was the Vile Mouse. It seemed really new, and had really odd indoor sections. The cars were huge and had separate seats, which made it more comfortable, but somehow less fun.

Then it was onto the Flitzer. I'd never done one of these before, and it was so fab. No restraints is definitely the way forward. As is wiping the rainwater off your seat with a tissue before sitting down

At some point we did the bucking bronco shooty thing. It was weird and fab. Plus, I won

WTF?!

Ewwww

lol!

At some point we did the mine train. The first drop was really fast and properly caught us out. It elicited genuine shouts/screams from us both.

This thing was disGUStan! Although, staring at the look on Jake's face all the way round made it worth the pain

The woody was so dull I clearly couldn't even be arsed to take any photos of it. It basically stopped at every corner for no reason. It was like a granny driving a Nissan Micra down a country lane.

The S&S tower was so fab we did it twice. It did make me feel a bit sick though. Which wasn't good considering this was next...

I've been looking forward to riding one of these for ages now as I've always thought they looked fab. It's a same I wasn't feeling my best. Even so, I did get it to invert a couple of times just to say I had. It's actually a lot harder than it looks! It was still fab though, more parks need to get them ASAP!

In the evening, it was time for Semi Final 2. Even the weather was showing its support for Conchita

We watched it in some gay bar which promised "half-naked waiters and drag queens". I was amused by the queens rearranging the furniture (including carrying several 3-seater sofas about) in 6-inch heels.

Have another awkward selfie, because clearly I've not posted enough of them yet.

We drank quite a bit of beer, Conchita got through, I chatted to a local gay then we staggered home via 7 Eleven where I apparently bought this

Tasty.

 

[Jake]

Part 4 - Culture

We staggered around the city most days, but Friday was the main culture day as we didn't have anything in particular planned (actually, we were going to have a big night out on Thursday and spend the day hanging, but we ended up being a bit more productive).

Our apartment was right next to a big church with a tower you can pay to climb, so once we'd faffed in the morning we headed there at about 12:00.

A close up of the stairs:

The view <3

Spot the B&M

Our apartment block

The other side, looking towards the airport, is a bit greener

Just down the road is Freetown Christiania, which is basically an area of the city occupied by a load of wreck heads, and the only area of Denmark where the sale and use of soft drugs is allowed. Well, it's more ignored than allowed.

The residents do not allow you to take photos inside. There is nothing stopping you doing so, but you will probably be beaten up. If you want more information, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

We went in and had a walk around for bit, it's a bit of a dump really. Pretty interesting though, and is worth a visit just because it's so odd.

After Christiania we walked back into town. This is basically the same walk we did on a daily basis to get to and from the Eurovision village.

Would totes have had a drink here if it wasn't freezing...

After forking out £6 for a sandwich we carried on walking (there was a tourist walk thing on the city map Nic found, so we followed that).

There were some other cities involved in Eurovision somehow - in the city centre there were Beijing and Hamburg stands, then randomly, quite far down the road, was Malmo.

There was also this quite cool wall. I think it was just there to cover up the fence for the construction site though.

Around the corner there is a cute string of bars and restaurants, with 'boats in the middle of the street'.

15 minutes later we were at another fountain

Which on one side (on the other side of the water) had views of the Opera house

...and some pretty, old, important buildings on the other side

Even further along the route, more fountain action happened

Don't really know why I took this, it's fab though...

Couldn't resist...

Wait... what's that behind them?

Eurovision venue!

The big finale of the tour was the... not so big mermaid.

She has legs, and saggy tits.

People were such burdens, basically mounting her to get a photo with her, ruining everyone else's pics.

One of them fell in though, which was amazing <3.


By this point we had walked a few miles and it was starting to rain, so we jumped on the waterbus to get home.

For some reason (could have been because of Eurovision, or maintenance works), the route had changed and we ended up getting spited by going back on ourselves a bit. Luckily we didn't bother validating our tickets, so it didn't cost anything. We did however end up on the right side of the water, so ended up walking back to the apartment via a Netto supermarket <3.

 

[TheCoasterCruiser]

Great reports!

Bakken is pretty much a permanent traveling fair and as those, it only truly comes alive at night.
I pretty much agree with your opinion on BonBon-Land.
Btw, the drop-tilt-tower-thing is made by Swiss Rides and opened in 2006 as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Fab reports! The Dog Fart Coaster is pretty high on my coaster bucket list!

Yeah, it's actually ****... In that it's just a little Zierer coaster that has about the same level of puerile humour the rest of that park has...

Shame you didn't do Fantasy World at Bon Bon, as that was one of the few redeeming features there...

 

[Nic]

Shame you didn't do Fantasy World at Bon Bon, as that was one of the few redeeming features there...

I believe it was closed the whole time we were there. There was some sign outside that suggested it may have opened in the afternoon after we left.

 

[Jake]

Btw, the drop-tilt-tower-thing is made by Swiss Rides and opened in 2006 as far as I'm concerned.

Never heard of them! Thanks for the information though .

OK, so I actually have a very, very little amount of Eurovision photos. Nic kinda had it covered, and I couldn't be bothered to take my camera to the final.

I'll pad it out with photos of the apartment, as I forgot to include them on the previous part.

Part 5 - Random crap and Eurovision

The apartment was really cool. Very different...

Conchita <a

Must have been raining or something

Or maybe she just needed one of these:

Iceland!

France <3

At the final...

At our seats

That's about it. It was an amazing week - really, really sucks to be back at work again now.