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"Finnish Me Off" - Finland 2013 Trip Reports.

Tomatron

Giga Poster
Very sad to be back, but had an amazing 4 days with everyone. Lots of great laughs, from Stone Cold's epic water bomb fail right through to the perma-smile man. Thunderbird was the best ride, but it was the unique and random stuff that I'll remember Finland for, and from the giggles of course.

Thanks to Ian for organising to whole shabang, and everybody for the great times and memories.
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
hooray number 1 - The flight was on time, and I got back before midnight!

Yippee number 2 - I saw a piece of litter on the floor in the toilets at gatwick, looked at it before throwing it away, and saw it was someones boarding card, for a flight in 40 minutes - I returned it to the check in desk

woohoo number 3 - On my first alton trip this year, before smiler opened (when I bumped into rach and mushroom), on spinball I had to do the crossing my legs trick to get the required 4 clicks on spinball - needed a good squeeze without to get upto 3) - I managed 5 clicks on salama at linanmaki (and part b - several years ago, I had to do the walk of shame on abismo, but fitted on ukko - although I may have prefered the walk of shame to that POS)
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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ciallkennett said:
19 (20 disputed) roller coasters ridden

The manufacturer of the ride call it a coaster and most people count powered mine trains as creds. Pilotti is an inverted mine train coaster imo.

http://www.technicalpark.com/baby_aviat ... active.htm

The counter argument is that Zamperla call their Disko rides "coasters", but I'm counting Pilotti anyway.

Peter said:
Best ride goes to Thunderbird (front of train) at PowerPark
I agree but the back seats were better!

My surprise coaster of the trip was Half-Pipe. Lovely floaty airtime without ville spinning. The Linnanmaki ghost train was fab. Most hilarious moment was Stone Cold slipping up whilst running with water balloons. Most ville coaster was Ukko.

Photos and comments from me over the next week. Thanks once again to the drivers, everybody who embraced the stupid Goon Star Badges and those who made me laugh...which was all of you!

"Kiitos! It's the only word I know. Kiitos"
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Back from another great trip. It amazes me how each one manages to make me laugh harder and feel more exhausted than the last! I fell right out of Richard's car and straight into my bed and had a glorious sleep for most of yesterday afternoon...only to wake up and find I had no electricity!

Thunderbird was an amazingly fun romp and was by far the most outstanding coaster of the trip. Shout out to the old woodie at Linnanmaki as well, which was the silkiest, smooth woodie I've even been on and had some lovely pops of airtime. Very happy to have that as my 400th! Congrats to everyone else who got milestones as well - there seemed to be loads!

As for the inevitable in-jokes, there were loads, but I think my favorite was Richard being the epic burden for once and loosing the room key in his bed - which led to endless rounds of 'I've not got the key, or the secret, or for some reason the cheese...'.

Thanks to Ian for so much organisation and getting the parks on board with some great ERT and free stuff - special thanks to the fab lady at SarkyMarky (yes, that's what I'm calling it) who loved getting on the half pipe with us. Less love from me to the half pipe itself though *shudders*. Also, thanks Ian for all the ridiculous games and faff which really made the Live - the stars, the name tags, the swearword wordsearch, the bingo...

Most memorable moments:

Ian falling over during the hopping race
The hour long water balloon BATTLE
JayJay's face when he got hit by a water balloon
Richard epiclly sliding over on his arse and spiting himself with balloons
The communal groaning at the vileness of the Sky Loop
The Volare (Vile Air) being disgusting yet actually amazing at the same time
The glorious woodies of the trip
The fantastic spinning flat of death at Linnanmaki
Getting very, very wet on the Premier water coaster
Finding the house with a slide that came out through the fireplace!!!
Absolutely whoring the kiddi cred at FunPark for a total of 45 laps
Whoring the new land at SarkyMarky for Goon Points while everyone else watched the burdenous dolphin show
Not being the most burdenous for once
The simultaneous joy of me and Jordan at finding the 'ghost train'
Ian farting in the packed lift
Jerry and Darren convincing all the goon pointers that we missed a fair cred in Tampere
Everyone hoping, going down stairs backwards and Richard rolling down the hill to earn Ian's stars
CF charades and CF top trumps
The Fail Ferry that led to everyone getting soaked in a homage to Titanic

I'm sure there's much more and a proper report is to come...
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Mysterious Sue said:
Everyone hoping, going down stairs backwards and Richard rolling down the hill to earn Ian's stars.
You forgot the epic mince between the Cred-that's-not-a-cred-but-I'm-counting-it-as-a-cred-cred and the Circus ride!

I believe Sue's words during the mince were, "It's really hard work and tiring to mince for a long time. It's no wonder the gays are so thin."

Dan's mincing had me in hysterics.

Brilliant!

Oh, and the Chinese Whispers were fab, too. "Vile Connecticut jizzed his pants when Serena touched his knee" and "Lord Morton has a castle full of bitches" were two of my faves.
 

Serena

Miss CoasterForce 2016
Staff member
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Wow. What a brilliant four days that was! This was my first Euro Live, so I was a little bit nervous at first; but it ended up being my favourite CF Live so far :--D

Day One:

After meeting at the airport and receiving our fab 'Goon Packs' full of word-searchy car-stickery name-badgery goodness; the fun began at the aptly named 'Fun Park.' First there was a quick tour of the indoor and outdoor park, then we let loose on the many quirky little attractions they had to offer - a spin-tastic spinning mini Disc-oh., a Dragon coaster of seemingly infinite circuits, and plenty of Asda Smart Price simulators - all of which were ace.

This was followed by outdoor water-balloon/"B.O. Boot Camp" shenanigans, where Stone Colds slapstick fall-whilst-throwing-water-balloons was hilarious; as was watching MouseAT's face changing when he realised that the big blue wave slide he was currently sliding down had a big pool of water at the bottom - who would have guessed?! But what else would you expect for CFs number one 'water magnet' ;)

Heading back into the indoor section all slightly soggier, it was time to play sumo-suit wrestling and hockey in our socks, or 'Sockey' as I hear it's known in the sporting world. These games got the oh-so-sexy sweat was flowing, but Fun Parks intensive exercise program didn't end there. Simulator golf, tilty climbing walls, 'Just Dance' mats (on which I got the highest score, yay!) pedal karts, and a laser maze that made me feel as flexible as a whale all followed.

Then we found some sofas <3 something you don't expect to find in an amusement park, but they made a very welcome addition! After a much needed rest, we had a big foam-ball shoot out, then finished up any of the other rides/ activities we hadn't done. I was surprised at the amount of attractions in Fun Park, it was a lot bigger than I expected and had a really good mix of rides, games and activities. I wish I could go back in time and have all my single-figure birthdays there!

The long drive up to the hotel turned out to be very enjoyable thanks to Mysterious Sues' great mix cds and stopping for a tasty steak. Once we arrived, I couldn't believe how much nicer it was to stay in a proper hotel, as opposed to the cheap hostels or camping I use when on my own trips. Having a nice shower and a comfy bed with a 'pillow menu' :lol: really makes a difference! My fave moment in this hotel was entering our room in the dark, seeing a person moving in there and screaming - then realising it was my own reflection in the mirror :roll:

Day Two:

The next day was all about the most-northerly creds of Power Land in Power Park, where we had another interesting tour of the park in the morning and ERT on the fab GCI woodie 'Thunderbird' - which is fantastic in the back row, with some nice bits of airtime and a fun first drop.

Then we headed over to the Go Karting track, which - for a completely inexperienced driver like myself, was a bit terrifying. I couldn't seem to control my kart very well and kept accidentally driving into the coned-off areas! Whilst the wheely good drivers (sorry, I couldn't resist a crappy pun) of CF managed at least 10 laps, I managed to clock up just 3 laps, with a fastest lap time of 4 minutes 40. Pathetic!

All karted out, we headed back into the park to mop up the rest of the creds; which included my first Vekoma BOOmerang. I was told that this boomerang wasn't 'as bad' as the others due to having snazzier newer trains - but it was still pretty disgusting, jerking its' way through the inversions and rattling your head around into the restraints. Not in a hurry to ride another one of these!

There was also a Fabbri 'Spinning Madness' which invoked many groans of pain as it relentlessly slammed us around the track, an average L&T family coaster, and a kiddie cred. The log flume was nice and unique, plus it offered some lovely views of Thunderbird. We attempted to ride the quirky little Crazy House flat ride twice, and both times it refused to perform under the weight of all 16 CFers :lol: so we split into two groups and finally managed to ride what turned out to be a rather pointless ride with effects that failed to function.

At lunch time I tried to find the horses which were pictured in the park guide (which was more like a program that you get at the theater than a map); only to discover that the horses were actually made of plastic. D'oh! Then we hit up the flat rides, including the worlds most silent and relaxing "ghost train" and the "dodge-thems;" before grabbing a few more final re-rides of Thunderbird.
Once it had warmed up and had a full train, Thunderbird was absolutely flying - I'd say it's even better than Megafobia. Power Land was a great, my second favourite park of the trip, and featured my favourite coaster of the trip - Thunderbird. There's plenty of attractions to keep everyone amused for the whole day; and if it adds a couple more quality coasters in the future it could become something special.

The long drive back down to the south of Finland was lovely, with a fun game of 'Wonky Donky' (anyone else remember it from SMTV?) where you have to find an adjective that rhymes with an animal. This led to the all important question: does 'pussy' rhyme with 'fussy'? The general consensus was: no. It was nice to talk with Ian about the golden era of Nintendo, (which lead to us devising a brilliant plan for a Nintendo theme park) and to discover that we both love all the same, important things - dogs, BBC comedy, garlic mayo...to name a few. :)

Day Three

The next day we visited Sarkanniemi in Tampere, where we had ERT on 'Tornado' - an Intamin Invert (or 'Intavert' for short :wink: ) plus the Intamin Half-Pipe coaster, imaginatively named 'Half Pipe.'
Tornado was a bit sluggish and felt like it was going to stall in places. The cobra roll was very square, and the trains shook around quite a lot. The inversion through the station was a nice touch, and the first drop in the back row was cool; but over all I was a little disappointed with Tornado.

I was quite reluctant to ride the Half Pipe at first as it looked to be quite spinny, I'm not a huge fan of rides that spin a lot. But I gave it a go and it was actually fab. There was some really nice floater air at the top, I loved it when the seats span so you were facing straight down before dropping. Half Pipe turned out to be my second favourite coaster of the trip.

We then got taken into a cute banquet style hall and given an interesting talk by the parks' manager, who seemed to have a fair bit of goony coaster knowledge herself! Then grabbed all the other creds - a kiddie coaster in the heavily themed but slightly off-the-shelf-feeling Angry Birds Land, the family launch coaster 'Motogee' - which was both mine and Rachs' respective milestone cred and 'Trombi' - the Volare. This was my first ride on a Volare and I felt like I was going to fall out of it for the entire ride. I didn't like the fact that I had to spend the entire duration of the coaster bracing my entire body for its' rough inversions and jolty corners. After riding, it seemed apt that when Ciall tried to type 'Volare' into his phone, it auto-corrected the word to 'violate'!

Rode some Dodge Thems in the well-themed Top Gear-esque area, then ordered a childs steak for lunch which turned out to be the size of my entire plate. It was delicious and cost significantly less that everyone else's meals; I would recommend ordering children's' food if you want value for money in this park!

We then rode the parks old school log flume, which is fab and unique; and watched a dolphin show that was themed to the music of Nightwish and Elton John <3 only in rock-central Finland would you get that!

It was then time for the part of the park I had been looking forward to most - the newly created 'Doghill' area, which had a farm featuring puppies! The cute little mutts melted me into one soppy dog-broody girl for a good while :) the farm also had pygmy goats, micro pigs, ponies, a baby cow and alpacas. I love it when there's more to a park than just rides, so this was a really nice addition.

'Doghill' also had a rope raft, which we tried to fit as many CFers on as possible. The result: one soaking wet Darren B, one soaking wet Ciall, and one excuse for me to buy some new trainers as they got so wet they changed colour!

We all dried off in the planetarium, where they were showing a documentary about stars narrated by none other than Patrick Stewart! My inner-Trekkie was delighted by this; but it didn't stop the majority of CFers falling asleep...it was so relaxing, they could prescribe that film as a sedative.

In terms of it's layout, atmosphere and varied attractions, Sarkanniemi was my favourite park in Finland. It was spacious, easy to navigate and offered some lovely views of the surrounding lakes. Coaster-wise it was more 'quirky' than 'quality', but it was still nice to ride some types of coasters that I've not ridden before.

After mopping up the last of the flat rides and activities, it was time to drive back down to Helsinki. Had a great time in the car doing collective iPod DJ sets with Tomatron, MouseAT and JayJay - there was so much cheese! Changing the words of Blurs' 'Parklife' to 'Finland' was a stroke of genius; and it was also good to discover another person who likes both Husker Du and the film 'Adventureland.' :)

Seen as no one had to drive the next day, we went out for the night in Helsinki. After initial faff trying to find somewhere that served food; me, Sue and Mike reluctantly grabbed a McDonalds then found the others - who were now slightly ahead of us in terms of alcohol consumption! We ended up in a sports bar, talking Neil Young "live fast Neil Young" :lol: and Carol Vorderman, of course. It was a really lovely, fun night, one of the best I've had in a while.

Day Four

After failing to sleep on a wonky sofa-bed, I got awoken by Ciall, Rach and Peter discussing the new Kings Island coaster at 8.00 in the morning, as you do. Then it was off to the last park of the trip: Linnanmaki. I was feeling too wiped out to bother with the Maurer SkyLoop, but was lucky enough to sit next to 'Ian from Coasterforce' on his 500th milestone cred :wink: which was the fab little space themed coaster 'Linnunrata'.

Next up came the Intamin ZacSpin - another coaster type I had not yet tried. Decided on ride to time the lift hill against the ride; the lift hill is 26 seconds long, and the ride is only 20 seconds long - which is a shame because it's quite a fun coaster.

Then there was a wooden coaster avec brakeman, which was enjoyable at the front but nowhere near as good as the brakeman woodie at Tivoli Gardens.
After doing various silly tasks for gold stars: walking down the stairs backwards, mincing across the park, hopping from one coaster to another (like literal Park Hoppers), rolling down hills, we got all the creds; and had loads of fun playing Chinese Whispers in the queues for them. Witnessed MouseAT get soaked for the millionth time on the "long and thin" rapids, and cooked up as many terrible egg puns as possible on Egg: The Ride.

Then, in what has felt like the quickest four days of my life, the Live was drawn to an end with a game of CF Bingo. I had such an amazing time, and have come home with lots of fab memories.

Thanks to everyone on this trip for making me smile so much that my face actually ached; thanks to Sue, Tomatron, Lord Morton and Richard for driving; and a huge thank you to Ian for organising such a wonderful trip. Already can't wait for the next one :)
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Seeing as most people are nicely describing the antics and highlights, I'll post about the rides and parks.

Our first stop was Fun Park. It's inside a shopping mall south of Tampere. The park opened in 2012. Everything is purple and green. They've used the Paultons Park logo.
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The park manager met us, gave us half-price wristbands, three tokens each for the game machines and a little tour. Although the tour was interesting, most of us were more preoccupied with his Fun Park socks. Sue and Dan bought a pair each, I'm sure they'll post photos.

The park is a perfect CF-Live park. Nothing exceptional but loads of different, interactive stuff for the immature ones amongst us to to get involved with. Gavin would have hated it.

After our tour, we headed straight for the double-disko spinning ride.
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It was ville (pronounced "vill", meaning "vile"). The ride cycle went on for about three minutes. Should have probably left it well alone.
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Fun Park has one cred.
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It's a SBF figure-of-eight with an unpronounceable name. Regardless, we went on it. Those doing this "Goon Points" thing loved it because it did 10 - sometimes more - circuits per go.
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Round bumber cars. Again, it had a loooong duration. And they weren't very fast. Family park and all that.
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There's also a 6D cinema. I don't get what the other D's above 4 are.
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Eventually we moved to the amazing outside area. It's full of inflatable play things, water balloons and more inflatable things. The weather was nice, we were delirious, we had the place to ourselves...it was a perfect combination for the CFers who attended to release their inner child.

First up was the Gladiators style swinging ball thing. It looks quiet now...
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...but soon it wasn't!
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It was really difficult to stand on the platforms. I wanted to arrange a competition on it, but everybody else just wanted to throw the ball at somebody else as hard as possible. Fair enough.

Then there was Boot Camp, the inflatable assault course.
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An ideal photo for a "Wat ya finkin'?"
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Erm, it was like that when we arrived...
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In the meanwhile, Stone Cold found the water balloons so the entire group was being terrorised. Not that it mattered anyway, as most of the slides were wet. MouseAT found out the hard way half way down this slide. That didn't put Sue off though...
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Seconds after that photo was taken, Stone Cold came running towards Sun with water balloons. He slipped up like a cartoon character slipping on a banana skin. It was hilarious. :lol:

After an hour or so, we headed back in for more laps on the cred.
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After 20 or so more circuits, we tried out the non-supervised, help yourself attractions.

The Sumo Suits were first up.
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They were extremely sweaty and it was difficult to stand back up if you were knocked down.
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More worryingly than passing out in the suits, if you couldn't get up within 10 seconds, you received a bumming from Darren.
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Twizzle ladder things.
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Climbing wall thing. I set Mikeon the hardest difficulty.
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"Galf" driving range simulator.
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There were two press-the-lit-button games, first one we tried was Time Freak. It didn't seem to work properly.
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The other was a a massive wall which seemed to work better.
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A few of us did the fab yet terrifying horror walk through. (To the tune of Chucklevision theme tune) Terror Vision, terror-terror-vision.
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A woman with a beard. Amazing. I've never seen one before.
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Not suitable for coulrophobics.
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Suspended swinging eyeballs.
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Suspended bodies.
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Pedal Go-Karts.
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We spent a good 30min in the foam ball shooting arena <3 To say it it got competitive and mildly violent is an understatement!
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There's a brilliant laze maze at Fun Park. You can set the difficulty level; the harder the difficulty, the more lasers. It's all about agility.
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You could play solo or with another person. The idea was to avoid the lasers and touch a lit panel then get back to the entrance and touch another panel to win the game. If you touched a laser, you got a time penalty. The idea was to complete it as quickly as possible.
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I think the quickest solo person was Mike, the best team were Tom and ECG.
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We did the shooting 3D ride before ending with another run on the coaster.
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I had originally planned that we would spend about an hour at the park...we ended up there for about six hours! It's a fab little park full of fun, interactive stuff. It's like the Milky Way in Devon mixed with an IAAPA trade show. It's great!

After six hours, the vast majority of us were dripping with sweat and stank of BO. I don't think I've ever been to such a hands-on park before. I loved it.
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
funpark was ace - My highlights were

The spinny bumper cars
The dark walk through - despite the fact you could see where there should have been live actors
SUMO!!!
the shooty simulator
The ball shooting arena!! laughed so much, and had the pleasure of shooting one ball that went right down the gun opposite!!

Lowlights:
Spinni - bleugh!
the 6d simulator - the "coaster" in it felt like something a 10 year old would do in RCT3 and post on youtube with the title "OMG AMAZING RCT3 ROLLAR COASTAR - MUST SEE, SO COOL"
The "pasta bolognese" with about a teaspoon of sauce!
 

peep

CF Legend
Sounds like Fun park was perfect for a Live, looks like you all had an epic time, can't wait to hear more.

Btw Sue's face in the horror thing is priceless.
 

furie

SBOPD
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OMG. FunPark [/gutted]

Looks better than fab. So jealous.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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The second day we went to Power Park. It's the worlds most northerly park with coasters and can be found in Alaharma.

We arrived at 9am for some ERT. Whilst we waited for the ride manager, I took the only group photo of the trip.
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Teemu (or "Te-emu" as Stone Cold called him) arrived and escorted us to Thunderbird. It's a GCI twister coaster and the most northern coaster in the world.
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Te-emu explained that they usually can't start the coasters early because it upsets their neighbours. There are Ropers everywhere. Anyway, as there were only 16 of us, ERT was a pleasure meaning we could choose our seat and ride many, many times. That's Te-emu in the background in the first photo.
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Jerry and I filmed a 3D POV so expect that on the CF YT channel soon. I dropped one of the mounts which was a burden but on the plus side, I got covered in GCI coaster grease trying to retrieve it. Sexual.
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After ERT, we headed back to the entrance and Go Kart faff commenced. The faff was increased because Lord Morton's bland clothing camouflaged him against a rock.

The go-kart tracks were epic. Everybody apart from me, Darren and Lord Morton rode them.
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There was plenty of spinning out to be had.
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Jayjay won, Peter came second.
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Rach crashed and hurt her shin. I was slightly annoyed by the lack of first aid and attention she recived, but I did what I could to make her comfortable. The crash meant everybody coudl have a refund, so more go-kart faff occurred. In the meantime, I did my Steve Irwin impression near the hotel pool. Did you know Steve Irwin died on my 26th birthday?
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Peter and Rach stayed by the go-karts until she felt better. The rest of us went cred hunting. First stop was the kiddy coaster, Mine Train.
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Then we walked to Cobra, the boomerang.
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It had different trains compared to regular BOO-meh-rangs. They were slightly less headbashy than the regular trains. I rode next to Serena who was deflowering her boomerang virginity.
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Then we did Joyride, a Stengal designed coaster. It was quite good tbh although it did overshoot the station twice in a row.
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Most of the rides are concentrated around the centre of the park. Some of us rode them. I'll quickly mention them now.

Gyro swing.
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Octopus PolyP ride.
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Music Express, a Himalaya ride (I think).
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Some ville spin & spew.
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LOOK HOW VILLE IT IS!
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A booster.
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A carousel. pretty.
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A big wheel.
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Anyway, back to the creds. A half-decently themed Fabbri spinning wild mouse called Neo's Twister was next.
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I didn't like it. I hate anything that spins and has mouse turns. I loved the orange colour though.
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Best thing about Neo's Twister was the fact it was completely open! If I was feeling brave I could have walked to the middle of the ride area and take some sexy photos. In any other country, the ride would probably be fenced off!
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Half of the group did the Jetski ride.
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The other half sat here in the shade. It was proper hot.
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We did the log-flume-cum-shoot-the-shoot next. It's called Kwai River.
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This photo was taken on the bridge above the River Kwai.
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We then split for some food. I went to the Thai restaurant across the bridge over the River Kwai. It's a buffet style affair and you pay by weight! The more food on your plate, the more expensive it is.

On our way back to the meet up point, we stumbled across a Viking style village. Apparently a Finnish programme was filmed there.
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lol
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LOL
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LOL!
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We met back up at the ghost train shooting ride. You earn points by shooting the targets. However, unlike similar rides, riders had limited ammo (about 300 shots, which was plenty).
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Riders can compare scores afterwards.
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The CF Top trumps came into play for the ghost trains queue line. They were epic. I'm sure somebody else will explain them.

After trying to ride the Crazy House first thing after ERT, we tried again.
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However, it broke for a second time. We soon realised that we were making it too heavy so we tried a third time by splitting the group and it worked! However, NONE of the effects were working so it was really crap. There should have been air, mist and sound effects. Pants. It looks great though.
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Some of us did the rotating drop tower called Dragon Tower.
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It's 75 metres tall, that's 246 feet in English. It was quite fab.
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Some of the group did the Zamperla Rocking Tug.
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Dodge-thems were next up. The woman tried to explain that we were not allowed to bump head on, although her translation made it sound like we weren't allowed to bash anywhere except head on. We ignored the instructions and bashed away however we felt.
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The park was closing at 11pm that day, but it was now about 6pm and with a 3 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to have a few goes on Thunderbird (now it was warmed up). It was amazing. Easily one of my top ten wooden coasters.
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But that wasn't it! Whilst others were whoring Thunderbird, Darren rode River Kwai again...on his own. Goon.
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Jerry and I rode the Fiesta Mexicana star fyer. It's 30 metres/98 feet tall. It was probably the lamest Star Flyer I've been on. Then again, I've been recently spoilt by riding the two tallest in the world at SF Over Texas and Grona Lund.
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Caffeine_demon then burdened the group by riding it on his own after we were ready to go. However, Sue lost a button or something so it gave her time to look for it.
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I'm not sure if she found it or not.
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I think if I visited Power Park in a bad mood, I would have probably had a bad day there. The rides are fairly average, with the exception of Thunderbird. However, the sun was shining and I was somewhere new so I really enjoyed the day there. The theme is bit of a mismatch and there's no real cohesion between the rides. It's certainly a park to watch though. The owner is a ride enthusiast and owns the surrounding land so he can expand if he wants to. Power Park blurred the line between the cheap thrills we had the day before at Fun Park and the high thrills I expected at Sarkanniemi the following day. Well worth the long journey out of our way for Thunderbird alone.

Due to Rach's injury and the fun we were having at Power Park, we skipped Wassilandia after taking a group vote.
 

gavin

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Fun Park would have literally made me go all Brenda Spencer.
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
"Caffeine_demon then burdened the group by riding it on his own after we were ready to go. "

I figured I might as well sneak on, whilst you were faffing!

Enjoyed powerpark, Those karts where scary (I spun several times on that hairpin bend!)

Highlights: The final few goes on thunderbird - still not quite as good as wodan (imo)
The pendulum ride (actually a very similar feeling to half pipe the next day)
The shooty dark ride (I love my dark rides!!)
Joyride was actually pretty nice!
The fabbri spinner was a bit brutal, but awesome!
The drop tower

Lowlights:
The boomerang - those new restraints just squashed my chest - and I still got a bit of head bashing
The spinning house of no effects (Parc st pauls ftw)
 

Mike

Giga Poster
Thunderbird was excellent, but I thought the rest of the park was pretty awful to be honest.

The Go Karts were the definite low-light of the entire trip, with Rach getting injured, and the operator's appalling handling of the whole situation. I'm very glad we got some of our money back really.
 

ciallkennett

Strata Poster
I may be alone in this, but I found Power Park to be my favourite park of the whole trip. To me, it felt like Flamingoland if Flamingoland looked after itself (and got a woodie). The park was exceptionally clean, had a decent selection of rides to last the day, had friendly staff and semi-decent food.

I also really enjoyed the go-karts until I heard about Rach. That was disgraceful. I saw the aftermath of the crash and expected a red flag but there wasn't even a yellow flag shown and the aftercare was abysmal. A real shame. But thankfully Rach was fine, a bit shocked, but not seriously injured.

Thunderbird at the start of the day was on par with my enjoyment of Megafobia and just got better with each ride. The end of the day with a warmed up track and full train was amazing and it's certainly up there in my top 5 woodies I think.
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
Now you mention it - I was really surprised by the lack of staff on the track - I've been to an indoor track in birmingham, and they have about 8 marshalls spread out throughout the track, and the moment there's a minor bump into the tyres there's a yellow flag whilst it's sorted out.
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
Re: "Finnish Me Off" - Finland 2013 Trip Reports.

It's perplexing really. In every track in the uk I've been to, there's been without exception a ten minute video or briefing session and manned marshal posts with flags. Even Caxton, a place our uni society is desperately trying to avoid next year, had marshals out on track for incidents. Unfortunately accidents happen and it's usually very unfortunate if they result in any sort of injury, but even so, it was handled very badly.

What makes it weird is that by the standard of facilities, I'd expect staffing to be first rate. Mika Salo is a fantastic circuit with decent karts and nice buildings but it's like they forgot karting can be dangerous. I actually missed the part in the rules about no overtaking on the bridge because I naïvely assumed they'd be the same rules as every other track in the world. A briefing session, even two minutes, would have solved this.

Anyway, with that rant over, I did sort of enjoy it. Power park was a fantastic place for its size and I think one to look out for in the coming years especially with the talk of expansion room around the park.
 

Mike

Giga Poster
Report time!

So, I had been looking forward to this trip since the day I handed in the deposit and booked my flights. After having a great time in Belgium a few weeks before Finland, I was buzzing and raring to go.

I booked myself an afternoon flight with Finnair, and it turned out that Rachel and Serena were on the same flight. However, upon checking in online and choosing a seat, I tried to be clever and give myself a bit more legroom by giving myself an exit row seat, but it turned out that there was ample legroom in the normal seats anyway, so I massively spited myself really and didn’t have anyone to talk to on the flight as a result.  At least the flight was pretty much on time though, as news was coming through that everyone on the morning flights were burdened by the storms around the country that day.

After arriving in Finland and having a fairly decent night’s sleep despite Finland’s weird thin and spongy mattresses, everyone met in the airport, and after faffing around waiting for the car rental place to clean a car for us to use, we were on our way to the first park of the trip… Fun Park

I didn’t look up any information about any of the parks before the trip, so didn’t really know what to expect. Fun Park is located in a shopping mall a couple hours away from Helsinki near Tampere.

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The park started off with this manager bloke giving us a tour around the park, and the excitement was really growing around the group as we saw a ton of stuff perfect for our mental age group; bouncy slides, inflatable assault courses, sumo suits, water balloons and more! What I thought would be an easy and relaxing day actually turned into a day of running around in bare feet (as my socks got wet…blegh) and going down slides.

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We started with one of the few actual rides in the park, this vile spinning monstrosity. It was disgusting yet hilarious as it just kept going on for seemingly ever.

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They also have a kiddy coaster which went around NINE time. Plenty of Goon Points to be had!

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The park had quite a few simulators, all of which were pretty horrible. They had an inverting one a bit like Cyber Space Mountain of some awful No Limits creation someone made.

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The entry price came with 5 games tokens, so plenty of arcade fun was to be had by all!

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We soon made our way outside as it was getting pretty warm, and had a go on the Gladiator ball game thing, which was pretty much impossible to stand on as it was all wet from the nearby water balloon area.

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Talking about water balloons…

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I tried to stay out of the hour long battle they were having, but I still managed to get my socks wet which is pretty much the one thing I want to stay dry in a theme park…

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Although Sue had the right idea!

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Andy turned out to be a water magnet for the entire trip. Every time I saw him he seemed to look like this!

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They also had these water cannon things which didn’t seem to work properly. Actually, for such a new park, not many of their attractions or games seemed to work properly.

After a good hour or so outside, we made our way back indoors were we headed straight towards the sumo suits…

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I decided to watch and play hockey rather than partake. :p

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Impossible wobbly ladders, for FREE! Everything at this park was free with admission price, which was great!

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Anybody remember that craze in the late 90s were Pedal Go Karts were THE thing to have?

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We also had an epic half hour long soft ball cannon war!

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With a cannon this big, I can tell what Rach sees in him! ;)

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We ended the day with this laser maze game thing. I ended up getting the fastest time just as everyone was walking away by finding the secret path along the sides with just a couple low lasers blocking your path.

Fun Park turned out to be a perfect park for a CF Live, and I wasn’t the only one waking up the next morning with a few scrapes and bruises on my body!

After Fun Park, we had a burdenous 2.5 hour drive to the next location, which could easily have been cut in half if you were allowed to go more than 60mph along the dead-straight Finnish roads! On the drive, we quickly noticed that Finland is a country made up of nothing but trees, lakes and bus stops. Random house on the road? You can be sure there’s a bus stop outside of it!

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Finland in a nutshell. This place would probably be my version of hell during winter time!

After eating at a crappy Hesburger and finding our hotel, the day was over.

Next up: PowerLand.
When will I write it: Pass.
 

MouseAT

Hyper Poster
It's great to see all the photos and trip reports from everyone. I'm afraid it's taken me a while to get mine sorted out. Since I got home on Thursday, I've probably spent more time sleeping than awake. I've been absolutely knackered!

I should probably start by saying a big thank you to everyone involved. Organisers, drivers, park staff, goons, random drunken Finns... literally everyone involved played an essential part in making this Live awesome. I honestly think this is the best CF Euro Live we've had yet, and that's primarily down to the antics and the people. You're all amazing and I miss all you crazy people already.

Finland as a whole was interesting. As Mike so aptly put it:
Mike said:
Finland is a country made up of nothing but trees, lakes and bus stops. Random house on the road? You can be sure there’s a bus stop outside of it!
It's a lovely looking country, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety. Helsinki seemed to have a bit of an eastern European look to it. Food and drink was pretty expensive though.

So, on to the parks:

Funpark

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 5ad317781b

I have to say that my first impressions of the park were not positive. A pretty lame looking kiddy cred, a lack of actual rides and a bunch of dodgy looking simulator attractions had me thinking that we'd have a bit of a laugh and a mess around for a couple of hours at most, and then get bored and move on. I couldn't have been more wrong. The first day of the Live was a long and hilarious day.

After getting the important rides (the cred, the horribly spinning flat ride and one of the simulators) out of the way, we headed outside, and that's when the silliness started. Water fights, obstacle courses, slides - hilarity ensued.

I made the mistake of racing Mysterious Sue down one of the wave slides, which resulted in me getting absolutely soaked, more or less setting the tone for the rest of the Live. I could see a "puddle" of water at the bottom of the slide, and was initially thinking "Oh bugger, I'm going to get a wet arse from this... oh well, it'll be funny, how bad can it be?". On the way down I quickly realised that it was more of a pool than a puddle, and pretty much disappeared under the water. Oh well, at least the weather was warm.

Afterwards came the joys of the Sumo suits, pedal carts that didn't have enough leg room for us to both pedal and turn corners, the huge foam ball arena and the laser maze, all of which were excellent.

Funpark was definitely all about the group, and took what at first appeared to be a fairly meh kids attraction into one of the most memorable days I've ever had with CF. If you've got a good group with a mental age averaging in the single digits, it's an amazing place to spend an afternoon. Just don't take the place too seriously.

Powerpark

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 2dbb36aaf6

Powerpark was another fantastic day out. It's a fairly small, compact park with very little in the way of outstanding attractions, but managed to keep us all entertained for the day. For some reason it reminded me of Blackpool in places. It's apparently a fairly new park, and they seem to have a fairly solid foundation for future expansion.

The karting track was really good, and I really enjoyed the session we had on the track. The karts had plenty of speed, the track had a good variety of challenging corners, and there were a good number of us participating. I knew someone had gone off the track just after the bridge, but I didn't realise quite how nasty a crash it had been until the race was over and I was back inside the building. I'm glad Rach was more or less OK, and I'm still disappointed by how badly the staff handled the incident. There really should have been yellow flags out on the track in the aftermath of the crash, as those of us who were still racing had no idea what was going on.

As for the rides, there's a real mixture of stuff. Thunderbird, the park's GCI woodie is amazing, especially later in the day when it's fully warmed up and running with full trains. After riding a fair few bland GCI coasters I'm really glad to have found a good one so that I can understand what all the fuss is about. It's not quite top 10 material, but it did make my top 15, alongside the likes of The Ultimate and Blue Fire.

The trains on the Boomerang made it more tolerable than usual, even if I did manage to bounce my head off the restraint at one point. The spinning coaster was hilarious for all the wrong reasons, with the entire train groaning in unison as the train slammed painfully into the turns. The park had a decent flume ride and wave swinger, but the spinning frisbee ride was a bit poor for the same reason as Thorpe Park's Vortex - automated restraints that locked all the way down and killed any airtime.

All in all, it was a solid (if not outstanding) park with a great flagship ride and enough to keep us entertained without us ever being pressured for time. It gets a big thumbs up from me.

More trip report stuff to follow when I get around to writing it.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Last photo report from me. I was too hungover at Linnanmaki to take photos but I'll cobble together something soon.

Anyway, on day three we went to Sarkanniemi (sar-kan-e-m, from now on known as Sarki), which is on the outskirts of Tampere next to a lake.

Outside the main gate we met Tommi (THX on the forums) and then we met the fab Kirsi, the parks operation manager <3

She escorted us to Tornado, the Intamin inverted coaster, where we had ERT. Interesting layout, it has a loop-flythrough <3
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Here's Jordan forever alone.
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Tornado was my first Intamin SLC. It's a bit like a Vekoma SLC, just slightly better imo. Mike (I think it was Mike) who summed it up the best by describing it as "sluggish". The first drop was too long but I found it moved well through the inversions. The station fly-through was the highlight imo.

I really loved the orange trains.
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The yellow train was quite sexy, too.
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After 35mins on Tornado ("Bore-nado), Kirsi escorted us to Half-Pipe. For the vast majority of us, it was our first half-pipe.
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Kirsi told us some stats and then we took our seats. I was slightly apprehensive due to the spinniness but it's a cred and a whole new experience. Serena sat out.

It was FAB! I really enjoyed the floaty airtime and the gentle spin to it. Half of the group got bored.sick (delete as appropriate) after two rides, but Jordan and I really lessthanthreed it.
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After our ERT, Kirsi took us to their new conference room in the new Dogpoo land (or something like that) where she told us a bit about the park. The park is owned by the City of Tampere so development isn't as easy as a privately owned park. there are plans to keep theming areas though.

We said our goodbyes to Kirsi and had the rest of the day to enjoy and despise the attractions.

Sarki is a strange park. In some places it's really gorgeous.
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It has pretty surroundings.
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But it also has a lot of soulless concrete.
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Anyway, first things first - creds. First stop was the new for 2012 Angry Birds land, where the birds on the trip angrily posed for me. Staged photos <3
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There are a lot of angry birds dotted around. Themed bins, too.
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It's fairly big.
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Usual collection of child friendly rides.
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But yes, there's also a CRED called Vauhtimato. It's a Tivoli Oval and is the oldest coaster at the park.
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It's cute.
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"+1 and Done", we moved on towards the Volare. We skipped the Trokia en-route.
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We spotted a vile spin & spew on the way.
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Half of the group did the spin & spew, the other half sat where the old Jetstar coaster once sat. I went for a watery poo. With that image in mind, here's something that'll make you sick.
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We passed by the Magic Carpet...
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...on the way to the Volare, Trombi.
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I rode it with two other Volare virgins. I thought it was ville but some people enjoyed it.
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After the Trombi, we did the Disko. It had a dolphin on topic, which made Darren very happen.
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We trundled over to the next cred, MotoGee. We stopped on the way to do the Mondial Super Nova, Hurricane.
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Moving swifty past the Pile o'Ship...
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...we approached MotoGee, the Zampera launch coaster.
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I was marginaly impressed with the theming. It looked like a basic race track.
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The ride itself was ok. Nothing special, nothing terrible. One and done.
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Before we split for lunch, we did the dodge-themes, which were themed to my second favourite German car manufacturer.
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They were pretty crap. There's an island in the middle making it less of a free-for-all. Also, before each ride, the one ride op had to point the cars the correct way before letting people board. This was burdenous.
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After lunch, we did the log flume. I enjoyed the flume, It's like a rapids. It has a chippy channel of water with several small drops. I was part of the fat boat. The only way we could fit in was if Darren knelt down at the front.
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Sticking to the water ride theme, we did the rapids. They were ok, nothing to wrote home about.
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All of us except fro Sue and Richard went to watch the dolphin show. It was fab.
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By now we were running out of "big" attractions and there was no enthusiasm for re-riding the coasters, so we mopped up some of the filler attractions.

The new farmyard area was shiny.
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Dawww, puppies. I wanted to jump in with them and roll around like an idiot talking on doggy voice.
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Darren got to pose in front of something again.
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Stone Cold got the water balloons out again, which caused Jerry to blast off in a stress when he was hit. Nobdoy is immune! Still slightly wet, some embers took on the rope ferry.
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Going...
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...going...
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...GONE!
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There was a demand for the observation tower (where I took the aerial shots in this report). We passed by the Planetarium en-route. Patrick Steward narrated the English language version, complete with Star Trek puns.

The Planetarium was dark, warm and relaxing. At one point, I bolted upright after dropping off to sleep only to see the CFers either side of me were also asleep. I think we needed the rest.

Anyway, I liked the lift button for the elevator.
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Darren got to pose behind something.
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We quickly walked through the aquarium.
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One of the last rides we did was Bench The Ride. It's like carousel that raised up. It's made by Schwarzkopf so it's automatically one of the best rides ever created.
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I felt like Sarki was like Flamingoland in the UK. Odd bursts of theme. Mediocre but relatively unique attractions. Concrete areas. Fried food. I felt that it was the least best of the four days we had in Finland. I'm not sure if it's because we were feeling a little burnt out or if we were just underwhelmed by everything. There were the few moments of merriment and a couple of surprises - the dolphin show, Half Pipe and log flume - so I still walked away with a smile on my face.

I regret not taking any photos at Linannmaki, as it was the best day for faff, chessines, banter, silliness and antics. Haha, once I see some pics, I'll fill in the gaps.
 
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