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European Spooktacular - Trip report

Nicky Borrill

Strata Poster
Thank you 😄 Glad you liked the writeup! Can't wait to head out for pt 2 next week

Oh you are going to have a blast. Kondaa is right up your street too, straight up ejector machine
Kondaa will have to wait for the road trip next year!!!


Driving to Wintertraum for the 21st 22nd of November, just so happens plopsa is fully open for the drive back on the Wednesday!!!!
 

Satanspropaganda

Mega Poster
Trip part two: Day One
Like all the best laid plans, this trip was beset with problems on all sides. Not only did our original sitter for Lucifer cancel, our replacement sitter caught Covid last week and left us scrambling for a sitter to allow the trip to go ahead. Thankfully a good friend took Lucifer in as they have been dying to look after him, so after dropping him off on Halloween, we packed up and got an early night

4:30am Monday morning our alarms rudely interrupted our sleep, we grabbed our bags, slammed some monsters and headed to Manchester Airport for our 7:30am flight to Copenhagen. Thankfully the journey was smooth and before we knew it, we were on our way to our hotel.

First up was lunch, we grabbed a fairly decent vegan burger from a spot near the hotel. Then headed out to walk around town and see as much of the city as we could before we went Tivoli.

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In short, Copenhagen is extremely pretty! We had a good two and a bit hour walk, all the way down to Christiania, though the older areas of town, by the castle and even popped the lego store. It was a bit whistle-stop (when isn't a quick city walk before a theme park?), but a nice way to get a feel for the place and see some beautiful architecture.

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Christiania is worth a separate mention, I only took one photo as the actual town is very private, however it felt like a lived in art installation almost. I love the ethos of the Christianians and I can only imagine how wonderful and bustling areas of the town would be in better weather

After our wander, we headed over to Tivoli. We didn't do much research as a point, preferring to just go in a bit blind and see what takes our fancy, this was 100% the right way to approach such a magical little park.

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First impressions of the park were a bit mixed, primarily because the woman on the door set our visit off on an odd note, warning us that we'd likely not be allowed into the horror mazes due to our appearance. However the actual park was intricately themed for Halloween and felt wonderfully autumnal, especially the area behind the entrance plaza, it was filled with food stalls and all the scents of fall just made it that extra bit special.

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After a pitstop for a drink, we decided to dive straight in with Daemonen, the parks B&M floorless coaster. It looms over the park quite strikingly and is obviously a point of pride for Tivoli considering how much they use the motif of the vertical loop everywhere, so we mistakenly over hyped the ride in our heads. What followed was a perfectly fine, smooth and relatively fun coaster, but it ultimately left little impression on us both!

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The ride delivered everything that I'm guessing the park wanted it to, it's perfect for a family park and a very smooth ride! However for us, it was just fine, little forces in any way bar a bit of airtime approaching the brake run. It was fun enough though and is being well maintained.

It became quickly apparent that the coasters were not where Tivoli was going to wow us, as we wandered we saw so many unique flat rides that we quickly forgot about coasters and ended up with a list of flats that we needed to do! Of which the first was Fatamorgana, their highly unique 3-in-1 tower ride.

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Off the bat, the ride sequences here are hearty. They don't give you 30s then back down, from the five laps on the kiddie coaster, to the good four or so minutes we spent spinning up on Fatamorgana, you at least got to properly enjoy everything they offered. As for the ride experience, it was good fun! Not a tonne of force, but almost quite relaxing, like a more hypnotising chair swing, looking out over Copenhagen while spinning in two directions. A unique ride indeed!

We also had to try the Star Flyer, a 260ft Chair Swing. As Khloe gleefully pointed out as we took our seats, it still only utilised thin steel chains to affix our little two person seat to the spinning arms. I'm not a nervous person, nor do I have any worries of danger, but it was not a comforting fact to be alerted to as you strap yourself in.

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For Halloween they'd affixed a broomstick to each seat, so we slowly arose to lofty heights atop our broomsticks as the sun set over Copenhagen. It was fantastic! Such a beautiful view over the city, a great sensation to be whizzing round above it all in the cold winter air. I'm glad we chose when we did to ride though, if it'd gotten much colder I'm not sure we would have enjoyed it half as much.

We then headed up to the mountain to ride one of the worlds oldest roller coasters, Rutschebanen. As it stands, it's the oldest roller coaster we've had the pleasure (& pain) of riding by a whole nine years and holds a very unique spot in our cred histories as the first coaster we've ridden with manual brakes aboard the train!

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The train's lap bars only descend three clicks, so we took our back row seats with enough space to almost call worrisome between our thighs and the lap bar. We set off with a rather enthusiastic ride op aboard, who made us all put our arms up and wave goodbye to the station op, we ascended the steel cable lift hill and then started our descent down the mountain. It was so much fun! The wooden bench seats were unforgiving on us as we slammed from lap bar to seat on each drop, but the actual coaster was smooth and raced through the layout at a fair pace. The caves full of Teddy bears brought us endless joy too! A very fun coaster that the few rides we got were nowhere near enough.

Around about now it'd fully transitioned to nighttime, the projections were on the mountain and the horror mazes had opened for business. So we hopped in the queue for "The Haunting" and got ready to not declare Halloween over yet! Thankfully the warning we were given at the park entrance did not come to fruition, we were told they had been misinformed, it was SFX makeup and whatnot that is banned as it may confuse the actors, our day to day spookiness was fine and encouraged!
The Haunting seems to be a permenant installation at the park that just opens at Halloween and is very well themed, with plenty of automatic doors and automatic spooks and scares dotted around. However we were sent through with a group of three teenage boys, who shoved us, screamed loudly, nearly tossed Khloe down the stairs and ultimately ruined the whole experience for us. From what we could tell the maze was well done, if a little threadbare on the actor front, but it's hard to tell when you're primarily just making sure a jumped up 13 year old doesn't rake you over cobblestones. Sadly the mazes were a one and done with our ultimate ride pass so we couldn't even get a redo.

So to cheer ourselves up we headed to Tik Tak (photo from earlier in the day)
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Tik Tak just looked a bit like a riff on a Huss Breakdance at first sight, but as it sprang to life and we saw the little cars begin to rotate on every axis, our eyes lit up.

Let me tell you now, this is easily the most fun flat ride we've ever been on. Khloe and I were chanting a rhythm to try and swing the gondola into tumbling and managed to get some seriously vertical spinning going quickly, which when combined with all the other spinning, had us pulling a great deal of geforce in every possible direction. It wasn't even that dizzying or disorientating, just an absolute blast in every way!

We then did a few rerides before heading to the other maze to end the day. Villa Vendetta is another heavily themed indoor maze that we presume must also be a permenant structure. This one was a whole lot more fun for us, we went in as a group of six and had to hands on shoulders it through the whole maze. It started a bit slow, with few actors and just more spooky noises and setpieces, but over the ten or so minutes it ramped up nicely till the actors were getting us all quite badly in the last few rooms. Khloe got pretty heavily spooked by a creepy maid playing with their hair, a butler grabbed my shoulder from the dark and over the course of the maze, every one of us got our own personal scares alongside the general jumpscares. It was a great end to the day and more than made up for our bad experience in the haunting!

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We sadly called it a day there as it was late and we needed dinner, so we grabbed some delicious vegan burritos from the Tivoli food court and retired to the hotel to rest up in anticipation of our 6:30am to Gothenburg.

A great first day overall!
 

zazobo

Hyper Poster
Thoroughly enjoying this trip report!

Also wanted to reiterate what others have said about the knob on the plane on your way out to Barcelona... What a total twat, hope it didn't impact your trip too much! Some people are awful.
 

Satanspropaganda

Mega Poster
Trip part two: Day Two - Goths in Gothenburg

5am rolled around and our alarms signalled that our six hours kip were over. Thankfully we had picked up train breakfast supplies already, so we just got ready and then rolled out the hotel for our train to Gothenburg. I have a deep love of long train journeys stemming from my early teenage years of getting the train to London from Liverpool for comic con, so I was genuinely quite excited to sit with some good music on and take in the views (while writing Mondays trip report). The train was comfortable and our Netto feast was in full swing by the time the border force popped onboard to check our paperwork/flight details. After that we just sat back and took in the stunning views while travelling through the smaller towns on the west coast of Sweden

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We arrived into Gothenburg around 10:30am and took a rather scenic walk to our hotel, checked in and were allowed early access to our room! This worked nicely as it meant we could freshen up before the five minute hike up to Liseberg. Before we knew it, we were stood at the gates of a park I had been dying to revisit! In 2017 I followed a band in Sweden and saw them at Grona Lund and Liseberg, however due to a rather controlling partner at the time, was not allowed to ride anything and was heavily berated for the mere suggestion that I grab a lap on Helix while we wait...

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Halloween is still in full swing at Liseberg and we loved it. Liseberg was our big social day as one of our close friends lives nearby and another travelled from a bit further inland to spend the afternoon with us, so we wanted to pack the first few hours before they arrived. We made a beeline for Helix, I was excited to finally ride such a hotly anticipated coaster, plus the crowds were thickening quick and we figured it may not be easy to get it later on in the day.

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Even typing this out feels dirty, but it was just okay. Our first ride, it just didn't wow us. It was perfectly fun and well paced, but the overall experience felt a bit flat? I have to say, having heard so many incredible things for many years we felt a bit deflated, especially when Balder was looming in the distance, out of action, that the parks biggest open coaster let us down. However we shall revisit this passage soon...

Rutschenbanen followed next and thankfully was a bunch of fun, a surprisingly hugely smooth jaunt down the mountain in a lovely train themed car! The track was a weird shape, with a huge middle spine sandwiched between two smaller side rails, all sat in perfect parallel, but it was running very well and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

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Valkyria though thankfully was tonnes of fun. We've done a few dive machines now and other than Baron, we've found them to really be quite standard, all about the drop and not much else. Thankfully Valkyria uses the speed from the drop to actually have some fun and the multiple inversions were great! It didn't deliver huge forces, but I do love the excitement and fear the drop creates in people, so it always adds to the atmosphere. We had a few rides through the day, the night ride was especially fun as the parks lighting package looks incredible from the top of the drop!

As per, Khloe and I quickly did the two kiddie creds because we're filthy cred hunters, then somehow both our friends arrived at the same time! So we headed into the mid afternoon ready for rerides, horror mazes and whatever else took our fancy.

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We went to ride Loke (photo from later in the day), the giant rotating pendulum ride (I'm sure there's a model name but I'm writing on a train with dodgy Internet). We had a blast, the weightlessness at the top of the swing was great and the views across the park/wider gothenburg were lovely. The only sad part was swinging out looking over Balder and wondering what could have been...

We then headed back up Helix way to tackle our first maze, The Experiment! Sadly there was little in the way of good photo ops nearby, so a wall of text is the best you'll get. Although this was by far the weakest of the mazes we'd do in the day, it was still, especially by UK standards, top notch. The themeing and atmosphere inside was brilliantly done and the use of circus performers to create truly unsettling body horror scenes was creepy as hell. They did a great circular saw through a living person bit too which made us grin from ear to ear. The maze was lacking in actual scares though, more of a very uneasy gory walkthrough than anything truly nasty

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It was time to give Helix another shot, we figured it may have just needed time to warm up. We were completely correct, the stars seemed to align and the whole layout felt a lot quicker and plenty more forceful. It's definitely a great coaster and I'm glad we got chance to really enjoy it throughout the day, including a few stunning night rides. It's not a top ten for us, whereas for plenty of friends it is, however it's a stellar coaster and the setting of it is wonderful. We loved the fact you nosedive off a cliff to start the coaster before you even touch the first launch and it never feels like it meanders even though it lasts a good while.

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We then rode the ferris wheel as it just looked like a nice experience, the view was beautiful and it was nice to take a beat and admire Gothenburg.

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Gothia Towers looked amazing all lit up!

We then decided we'd tackle the attic maze. Which involved heading into the spooky clown/circus themed area after not visiting there all day. This was an absolute treat to leave till the nighttime!
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Upon crossing the clown bridge, we were greeted by a good fifteen roaming clown actors, a zombie magician and many circus performers!
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The actual attic maze was located in the attic above the Ghost Bar, so we entered the queue up the stairs to the maze and watched the interesting scenes below while we waited. When we arrived for batching, we were allowed to go in just as our group of five and given the intro spiel, which I assume is quite intricate in Swedish, but in English boiled down to "welcome to the attic, where the lost children... Have been found". Off we went into our second maze of the day!

The Attic was by far one of the most well crafted mazes I have ever experienced, it incorporated all sorts of very tactile elements and some of my favourite jumpscares I've ever experienced. The actors were fantastic at targeting different members of our party to really screw with us individually, alongside the whole group scares. The sets were of an insanely high quality too, upon getting through the first room it immediately felt like we were actually in a delapidated old attic navigating creepier and creepier rooms. We all left laughing hysterically, well and truly spooked.

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We then took a nice bit of time at the Ghost Bar to have a group catch up and a pint or two. We sadly didn't take any nice photos in there as it was so much fun to catch up, but the atmosphere inside was really like a Victorian speakeasy, it definitely didn't feel like a theme park bar.

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We then wandered back through via the Valkyria area and were accosted by a tonne of zombies and smoke! Which of course only served to goad us straight into the "ZOMBIES" maze. Upon stepping through the doors we were faced with an office block! Cubicles, printers, IKEA furniture and all the mundane flyers as possible. It didn't take long for zombies to begin crawling out of every nook and cranny, not one object was safe. Somehow one particular scare actor got us lot 3 times in quick succession, the set design was incredible and allowed them to quickly slip between hideaways in each room undetected. It wasn't as scary as the Attic, but we had a few good scares and loved how immersive the office sets were.

We then took the chance to hop back on Valkyria for a night ride, which is easily now my favourite dive machine for a night ride! The view over the lit up park before plunging into the drop was such a treat

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After a few night rides on Helix, we then headed over to Kordhuset for what turned out to be the most intricately, over the top and beautifully themed maze we've ever seen. From room to room we were floored by the incredible scenes and set pieces, including incredible homages to Alice in Wonderland and old school magic imagery, tunnels, bridges over bubbling lagoons and many many fantastic scares. We weren't quite as terrified as in the attic, but the overall experience was beyond any expectations, the entire maze easily lasted over ten minutes and got more and more complicated as it went on. Once again each actor had multiple outlets, meaning we got absolutely harassed by each actor many times over. The batching was slower than the other mazes, which allowed the actors to stalk and really take their time with each group

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We had a nice little wander then over to the final maze of the night. The themeing was even better at night, especially this little Pumpkin shrine that we loved

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We then finally did Skogen on our way out the park, it's the only outdoor maze and thus was going to be most fun in the pitch black. The atmosphere in the forest was perfect for a haunting ending to the evening. The actual scares within were nicely varied and the "tree creatures" were very effective at sneaking out the shadows to terrify us. Sadly although Khloe was first, most the scare actors managed to miss them and target the middle of the group. However for me I ended up pretty damn scared, especially when I realised I couldn't trust anything to not move! A very fitting ending to a great day

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We then finally ended our almost twelve hour long day tired, spooked and very very happy with our time at Liseberg. It is sad that Balder wasn't available, but that happens and we shall definitely be back!

Next up, a wooden roller-coaster in a forest by a little known manufacturer...
 

Satanspropaganda

Mega Poster
Trip part two: Day Three

Our third early start rolled around as our alarms began to blare at 6am, somehow though our energy levels were well up to the task of getting down to the hotel breakfast for 6:20. We wolfed down a fairly hearty breakfast then set off to catch our 7:20am first leg of our journey to Kolmården.

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The journey went pretty smoothly up until Norrköping, when we discovered the morning buses lined up just 3 minutes before our train made it in and were once an hour. We decided to do the dicey thing and try to race the bus, grabbing the train to Kolmården Station and sadly missing the bus by a grand total of one minute on that end...
Sadly the taxi companies were quoting 500-600SEK to do the ten minute drive to Kolmården, so we just sat and waited for the bus in the rain. Thankfully we enjoy each others company and just chatted for the forty minute wait

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It was a little surreal to be seeing the entrance, I have read plenty a trip report and wondered how the hell I would make it there when we can't drive. Thankfully, with our utterly questionable dedication, the nearly five hour journey landed us at these gates and we were finally facing the last European RMC.

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The beast loomed over us in the mist...
It was also a station wait. We stepped right on and headed up the extensive lift hill into what turned out to be a VERY painful experience. The rain was fairly unrelenting and meant we got obliterated by what felt like pellets throughout the fast paced layout!

We had to wait out the rain. We sat and ate some very tasty vegan burgers watching group after group tackle Wildfire while we awaited the break in the rain.
We decided to tackle the Clown maze while the last of the drizzle died off and it was fairly fun, it was definitely more family friendly than Liseberg's offerings, but still got us a few times. It was also fun to watch families cope with jumpscares!

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The long awaited break in the rain arrived and we headed straight on. My god it was night and day, all that RMC brilliance at a blistering 71mph, it was stunning. The zero G stall was possibly even more fun than Zadra's and the pacing of the whole layout is basically perfect. I know it's almost clichéd to sing RMC's praises in the community, but once again this showed exactly why we do, it was very hard to fault. We couldn't stop riding for a while, taking in each element properly took a while and it kept getting better and better over the day

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We then finally peeled ourselves away from Wildfire to go try out Zonen, the zombie scare maze up in the woods. The approach to the maze created a nice buildup and the use of actors in the queue meant you had to stay on your toes at all times. The actual maze was fun, but very much a fences and tarps sort of affair, a few good scares here and there, but still fairly family friendly, we giggled more than we jumped.

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I'd like to take a moment here to say Kolmården is beautiful. Absolutely a unique park. The views from areas of the park are better than I have ever experienced in any other and the fairytale in a forest feeling was definitely utilised for their Halloween themeing, leaning into autumnal feelings and pagan style decorations.

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We headed the final maze before the sun set, this was Barnhemmet, set in a lot cabin in a remote area of the park. This maze was a whole lot more professionally done and really wowed us. The use of peppers ghost and other illusions, alongside some seriously creative jumpscares was very fun. We actually ended up moving at quite a pace by the end as we were fuelled by a fair bit of adrenaline! It was by no means terrifying, but our guard was down after the previous two mazes. So it was very much a nice surprise

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We had, in our original trip plan, intended to head Stockholm for Grona Lund's evening event, however we changed the trip up as my health has been a bit worse than usual lately and the fallout from over extending myself is a lot more severe. So as sun set over the park we headed back over to Wildfire to enjoy some night rides (or rather very dark 4:30pm rides).

I'm not sure I can sing Wildfire's praises enough, but does it help to say I bought my first ever coaster tee today? I'm not sure where I place it in my rankings as my top ten is already a bit hotly contested, but I really cannot fault it. Whipping through a forest at night, gliding through inversions and banked turns at blistering speeds, it made my heart happy. A really wonderful experience and one I'm so glad we could stay to have. The front and the back were nicely different too, at the front the train felt like it slowed at points then raced on as the rest of the train crested an element, whereas the back the feeling of being yanked through was more violent
We couldn't really pick a favourite spot!

So there we have it, we slowly headed out the park after yet another wonderful day in Scandinavia enjoying the final days of Halloween!

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Being a dumb metalhead I joked to Khloe that since we're in a forest in Sweden it's perfect to do a black metal photo... So I present to you my hastily edited homage to the edgiest genre that I dearly love.

We're now on our way to Stockholm to grab some food and beers before a leisurely 8am start for our final park of the trip. Bring on a monster lurking in Stockholm...
 

Satanspropaganda

Mega Poster
Trip part two: Day Four

First off, apologies for this being delayed! Turns out doing a trip of this intensity causes some serious exhaustion 😅

Our lovely night in the Radisson Blu left us as out as refreshed as anything could this deep into an exhausting trip. We got up around 7:30 and got ready for the final park day. Gröna Lund is dead easy to get to via public transport and we wound up at the gates just after opening.

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I had been Gröna Lund before and knew what to expect, sadly this was the other park I was forbidden from riding coasters at, so it was great to come back for a redo!

We started the day with Twister, the parks wooden coaster. The restraints are really strange on this, they come in from the side and as such, it's hard to get much in the way of leeway. The actual coaster was great fun though, as with every (non insane) coaster in the park, it's a very unique layout and racing through the twists and turns was great. It was pretty smooth overall and nicely forceful in some of the valleys

We then headed to the Wild Mouse, which was good fun! The cars were quite bobsled like and the tight twists had us slamming side to side in the best kind of manner. The actual coaster lasted a good while too, affording us a lovely view over the park every time we hit a brake section.

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Marching onwards, we rode Kvasten the suspended family coaster that sprawls across a good portion of the park. It was smooth and quite fun, however didn't offer much in the way of forces. The views of the park were wonderful though and it offered a vantage point where we could really see how the mass of coaster track all fits together.

Sadly we were facing a spite with Jetline, it'd been down for days and the friendly staff member explained that it wouldn't open for the rest of the season.

Thankfully there was a monster lurking in the park and we were very excited...

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Thanks to jetpass, we walked straight on, through the the intricately themed subway station station and straight onto the train.
Monster is fantastic! It's truly a marvel of design, how they managed to fit it into the park. Flying over the beer garden and the terrace restaurant, swooping through sprawling track and generally taking a high speed tour of the most compact park I've ever had the pleasure of visiting.

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Just a beautiful coaster in every way, however a little difficult to photograph due to the nature of the park. B&M doing what they do best and a fantastic addition to the park.

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Our time came to try our first ever zac spin, insane. I feel personally victimised by Intamin, that was God damn awful in every way. None of the forces were pleasant, we both hated it. The sensation of being lobbed backwards is usually fun, but somehow they absolutely butchered it. I don't think I'll ever be doing another of these

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First stop on our final Halloween horror day was the "Unpleasant House", the repurposed fun house. Let me say that this was one of the eeriest and genuinely a bit unsafe, mazes we've ever done. A funhouse with the lights out, with creepy clowns roaming + some truly unsettling props made for a very entertaining experience. There was a truly unsettling giant clown face that got every single member of the group. The whole experience ended with a slide to exit, which brought a bit of pleasantness to what turned out to be a very fun and quite scary house.

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Zombie Zone did what it said on the tin. It was a bit more of a fences and tarp affair at points, but utilised closed bars and was themed to a zombie biker gang hideout, so there was plenty of fun props and setpieces. At the end there was a truly incredible scare that left me completely coarsing with adrenaline and swearing to myself in a fit of combined panic and joy.

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This brings us to Skeppet. I'm not sure what to say about this house other than that I have never been that terrified. The mostly dark house uses so many fun tricks to absolutely terrify guests, nowhere was safe, I leant on a wall cod all of a second to catch my breath and a pirate opened the wall and screamed at me. Absolutely terrifying from start to finish, our whole group were shaken upon leaving. I actually had to take a little non horror maze break to catch my breath.

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We grabbed vegan milkshakes and took a nice stroll around the park while I regained my composure in prep for the next two houses.

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The House of Even Worse nightmares followed and was a upgraded version of their standard year round walk through horror house. Overall it was one of the weaker mazes, the sets were incredible, but the use of actors in some spots, then the animatronics elsewhere just drew attention to the animatronics and left those rooms feeling a bit empty. The "doctor" actor was fantastic though and once I'd signalled we were English he switched language mid patter without missing a beat! The torture scenes had some truly lifelike animatronics though and did have me fooled for a while

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Sekten was our final horror house of the trip and was constructed on the main stage of Gröna Lund. Just as a music nerd who'd been here for a gig before, it was very exciting to step on stage into the house. The house was themed around a cult and was more very creepy, than actually scary. There was a lot of robed cult members stood around, yelling at us for intruding and sometimes just standing ominously. The actual scares were fun when they landed, but overall we were just astounded at the quality of the sets that had been constructed for this house, it was thoroughly thought through and really felt real.

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Our final ride was Ikarus, by far the most interesting of the three drop towers. We're such lovers of drop towers, so a new style where you actually get tilted to face downwards before the drop was very exciting. It was quite nerve wracking being tilted forwards before the drop, but it was great fun and the little swaying as we hit the bottom of the drop was a nice touch

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One thing for certain, the park had an electric atmosphere. There was no less than thirty roaming actors, a horror stunt show, a parade, a band and many other little fun bits and pieces. The spooky pirate at the entrance of the ship maze was an amazing actor and made the scariest house even more fun!

We then sadly had to bail to go get our flight back to London. It felt awful to leave a bit before the end of the day, but we had a gig to catch in London! We landed at 6:30pm, by 9:30pm we were bouncing around a moshpit having the time of our lives watching Kid Kapichi.

It was an incredible end to the chaotic and brilliant few days.

To follow - trip postmortem with tips, things we'd do differently and general thoughts
 
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Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
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Man, I'm so jealous you got to ride Monster! It looks, and sounds, fantastic.

Glad to see some Ikaros love too - better than Falcon's Fury I reckon. :D
 

Satanspropaganda

Mega Poster
Trip Postmortem

So I've had just over a week to digest the trip (plus I'm back on the road following a band's whole UK tour), so here's some of the takeaway points for us both

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Highlights
  1. Ride to Happiness. Absolutely every other coaster on these two trips is behind RTH for us. It's just the most elegant, consistently forceful and ultimately unique coaster we had the good fortune to ride. We're already planning a trip back out for a day at plopsa to just lap it all day
  2. Lapping Shambhala, taking a 20 minute beer break, then stepping straight back on, all in 25° weather, absolutely a highlight of my entire coaster riding life. Especially when the trims were eased up... We were quite literally flying!
  3. Wildfire is the best wooden coaster we may ever get to ride, I am very excited for El Toro when it finally happens for us, but Wildfire, especially at night is too god damn good.
  4. La Isla Maldita is possibly the most extra any park has gone for a horror maze to my knowledge and I hope it returns for years to come.
  5. Monster absolutely is a feat of design and engineering, B&M blew it out the park and its really elevated Gröna Lund into a thrill park for me.
Lowlights
  1. Balder being down absolutely sucked, we were so excited for it and it just wasn't meant to be this time around.
  2. Coaster trips with fibromyalgia is a new experience for me and one I still need to adapt to. My pain levels got unmanageable quite regularly and even with disability access at some parks, I struggled heavily. I need to plan with this in mind going forwards
  3. Werewolf/Loup Garoup, where we truly learned the definition of being stapled. Khloe's hips and my stomach were quite badly bruised for days following it.
  4. Kolmården, although an incredible park, has very uneven shuttle bus timings, especially in the morning and was one of the major annoyances for us in our travel schedule, it sucked an hour out our day very quickly.
  5. Sometimes the best part about theme parks is sharing the joy of rides with lots of other people, however the rudeness and disgust we were treated with by people in some parks was truly a dampener on some great days.
Random points
  • Candyfloss is by far the superior theme park snack, nothing but pure sugar to fuel running around, without filling your stomach up.
  • Being vegan and doing theme parks went from touch and go to generally easy over the course of 2020-2021. So much great food and options that actually left us full, Sweden we ate so damn well in every park, such a nice change from a few years ago
  • Halloween is definitely my favourite season for theme parks and nearly every park we visited knocked it out the park with themeing
  • I am 100% an intense coaster kind of person and this trip really has solidified exactly what I love in coasters
  • Khloe has gone from 0 creds to just over 150 in the span of 14 months and only a few of them have been kiddy creds! A pretty good effort considering the state of the world
  • We have finally on this trip made the decision that we cannot do another SLC. As much as it's nice to complete a park, as a person with chronic pain it's just not wise to ride them and get 0 enjoyment

Final thoughts
These trips would be made sooo much easier if we could drive and if you're planning anything of the ilk, I wholly recommend driving a fair amount of it. Copenhagen - Gothenburg would have been a waste to drive, but gothenburg through kolmården would have been so much easier with a car.

Also we need more nice quality coaster merch! How I got to nearly 200 creds before I bought my first ever coaster shirt is beyond me

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All that said we did buy some nice little bits, a Kondaa glass, ride to happiness pin badge, this wildfire shirt and a few fantastic on ride photos. The on ride photos were very well priced at Kolmården and all included at Tivoli, so we have a good ten or so from the two legs of the trip.

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For those who've done Red Force, I'm sure you understand how many goes it took for us to get this shot 😅

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The season is now over and bar possibly a +1 or so at Winter Wonderland, I end the year with 188 creds. It looks like flamingoland may be what takes me to my 200, but we shall see!

Thank you so much to anyone who read even one post in this thread. Its actually been such a joy to write up each day of these trips and makes me wish I'd done it for the three trips last year!
 
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