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Germany PTR - Day 14-15: Leipzig + Plohn
- Thread starter Gavin
- Start date
I’d forgotten about this, but I’m back at work with plenty of free time now, so will try and get it knocked out.
Day 9 – Hamburg
I got a train in the morning from Dortmund to Hamburg – the longest stretch of the trip but still only a couple of hours – then went through a bit of confusion as I tried to check into the wrong hotel. For most of this trip, I’d been booking Ibis since they’re really well-located and decent enough. Not exactly high-end, obviously, but pretty good for the price. For Hamburg though, I’d accidentally booked the Ibis Budget next door, forgetting that Etap had rebranded. Ugh, I hate feeling poor.
I had a wander around for the afternoon, so you can have some pictures of that.
Some bombed-out church with the tower still accessible. Good for views across the city.
More wandering…
Hamburg Dungeon and Miniatur Wunderland were in this area. I wasn’t interested in the dungeon, but decided to do Miniatur Wunderland at some point later in the trip since it’s open late.
The weather was a bit miserable, but I liked Hamburg a lot. It was a nice place to just have a wander around, with quite different vibes in different areas, which were all relatively close together. Way more interesting than Cologne (and certainly crappy Dortmund) at any rate.
From there, I just walked to the Dom area. I was planning to go at some other point (and would revisit later), but just decided to have a look anyway.
Hamburger Dom
I did the Ferris wheel to get an overview of the place, which wasn’t really necessary since it’s laid out very simply with only one path to follow round.
Didn’t do this:
But obviously did Teststrekke.
It was only 3 euros, which I was surprised by. Apparently, Wednesday is “Family Day”, so everything is slightly cheaper. Full price was only a euro more though.
It was ok, and impressive for a traveling ride, but that’s about it. The lapbars were decent I suppose? Meh.
Other stuff.
This wasn’t open:
It’s brand new this year – apparently going to Winter Wonderland later – and is a VR ride using a very basic “ghost train” track/layout.
I’d already got the Wild Mouse cred, but gave it a go anyway since it was cheap.
Didn’t do the rapids.
Did the only other +1, basically a big apple.
Then did the drop tower on the way out, which I thought was pretty good. It’s massive for a travelling ride (tallest travelling tower?) and you get two drops on it.
I wanted to see it at night, but didn’t really want to hang around – it got dark pretty late – so decided to come back another time.
Day 9 – Hamburg
I got a train in the morning from Dortmund to Hamburg – the longest stretch of the trip but still only a couple of hours – then went through a bit of confusion as I tried to check into the wrong hotel. For most of this trip, I’d been booking Ibis since they’re really well-located and decent enough. Not exactly high-end, obviously, but pretty good for the price. For Hamburg though, I’d accidentally booked the Ibis Budget next door, forgetting that Etap had rebranded. Ugh, I hate feeling poor.
I had a wander around for the afternoon, so you can have some pictures of that.
Some bombed-out church with the tower still accessible. Good for views across the city.
More wandering…
Hamburg Dungeon and Miniatur Wunderland were in this area. I wasn’t interested in the dungeon, but decided to do Miniatur Wunderland at some point later in the trip since it’s open late.
The weather was a bit miserable, but I liked Hamburg a lot. It was a nice place to just have a wander around, with quite different vibes in different areas, which were all relatively close together. Way more interesting than Cologne (and certainly crappy Dortmund) at any rate.
From there, I just walked to the Dom area. I was planning to go at some other point (and would revisit later), but just decided to have a look anyway.
Hamburger Dom
I did the Ferris wheel to get an overview of the place, which wasn’t really necessary since it’s laid out very simply with only one path to follow round.
Didn’t do this:
But obviously did Teststrekke.
It was only 3 euros, which I was surprised by. Apparently, Wednesday is “Family Day”, so everything is slightly cheaper. Full price was only a euro more though.
It was ok, and impressive for a traveling ride, but that’s about it. The lapbars were decent I suppose? Meh.
Other stuff.
This wasn’t open:
It’s brand new this year – apparently going to Winter Wonderland later – and is a VR ride using a very basic “ghost train” track/layout.
I’d already got the Wild Mouse cred, but gave it a go anyway since it was cheap.
Didn’t do the rapids.
Did the only other +1, basically a big apple.
Then did the drop tower on the way out, which I thought was pretty good. It’s massive for a travelling ride (tallest travelling tower?) and you get two drops on it.
I wanted to see it at night, but didn’t really want to hang around – it got dark pretty late – so decided to come back another time.
HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
What a bargain.
I'm sure we've all paid so much more for so much less.
^ Yeah, I was expecting to pay at least double that. Even at full-price (a euro more for everything) it was still a bargain.
Day 10 – Hansa Park
I opted on a bus to get here since it was cheap, direct, dropped off/picked up right in the car park of Hansa and the bus station was a touch closer to the hotel than the train station and taking only slightly longer than the trains would have. Getting there was no problem, with the bus arriving around opening time.
There was a fair bit of cred anxiety on the way thanks to it raining as I was leaving Hamburg. It had stopped by the time I arrived though, and was probably a good thing since it kept the crowds away. It was still looking like it could rain again at any time though, so I headed straight over to Karnan.
Loved it. By far the best thing Gerstlauer have ever done. The throughput isn’t great, but since it was quiet, it never took more than 10 minutes to get to the bag-drop room, which kind of counts as the front of the queue since the whole thing starts there really.
The vertical lift, with lapbars, is actually quite terrifying since you kind of feel like you’re slipping out backwards, and you’re on the lift for a really long time. There’s no sense of height given that you’re in complete darkness, but it’s very unnerving when you remind yourself that you’re about 200ft up while feeling very exposed.
Didn’t bother with either of these:
Quickly polished off the second of three creds I needed here. You’ve got to admire the effort that went into a pretty insubstantial coaster.
I did the skyfly thing, or whatever this model’s called. I’m crap at these and couldn’t get it to do anything.
Back to more fabulous Karnan before moving on for a while.
The wild mouse was a walk-on otherwise I’d have probably skipped it. It could do with a retheme I think; it’s a bit out of place where it sits now.
But who cares about that when this is sitting right next to it?
I came back to these old things later in the day.
Onto Novgorod, which I’d really enjoyed first time around in its opening year.
I still really liked it. It was good to see it all finished, and the launch and following airtime hill are still fab. The rest of it didn’t seem as fun as before, but that’s just on me I think. It was also funny how tiny the tower looks now that Karnan is just around the corner; I remember it seeming really impressive before.
One annoying thing was the queue line though. They have a single rider queue, but you have to wait in the regular queue for quite a while before you can access it, meaning that what could be a walk-on ride was turning into 20-minutes each time. Still better than waiting through the whole queue line.
The final of the +3:
Shameful.
There’s more Novgorod in the upload, so I guess I must’ve redone it before moving on again.
The old “is it a cred” area.
On Howie’s recommendation, I had a burger at the “Western” style restaurant, which was excellent and decently priced considering it was park food and at a table-service restaurant. I can’t find the picture I took of it, so you’ll have to use your imagination. It consisted of a large amount of minced beef squashed into a disc shape, grilled, and presented with lettuce and tomato inside some bread. This was accompanied by a potato that had been cut into strips, which had also been fried.
I watched some lazer show thing in the same area, which was actually quite impressive and didn’t take up much time.
By now, the weather had totally cleared up. Karnan obviously had to be done again.
I went back and did the old Vekoma and Schwarzkopf things. Meh. Nessie has a decent pop of airtime in the back seat, but that’s the only standout.
The parade is laughably bad.
I did the observation tower.
A few more pics of Novgorod:
I had a really good day here. The s**ty weather in the morning had obviously put a lot of people off, making for a pretty quiet park considering it was the middle of summer. Novgorod is still the best Eurofighter I’ve done, and Karnan is easily a European top-ten coaster.
The bus back was s**te though. It had been great in the morning, but showed up for the return trip about 20 minutes late, and somehow managed to add another half an hour during the ride back, meaning it arrived in Hamburg around an hour late. I was going to the theatre that evening and managed to make it with about 10 minutes to spare before the show started.
I had, probably, the best seat I’ve ever had at any show. The theatre seemed brand new, and all the seats were on a steep rake. Often, stalls seats are on a pretty flat surface, so they’re not always great, despite being closer to the stage, depending on who ends up in front of you.
The show was amazing. It was in German, so obviously a few jokes were lost on me since I don’t speak a word, but it didn’t matter at all since I’m more than familiar with the source material and it’s mostly all just very visual anyway. Great stuff.
Next up: Heide Park
Day 10 – Hansa Park
I opted on a bus to get here since it was cheap, direct, dropped off/picked up right in the car park of Hansa and the bus station was a touch closer to the hotel than the train station and taking only slightly longer than the trains would have. Getting there was no problem, with the bus arriving around opening time.
There was a fair bit of cred anxiety on the way thanks to it raining as I was leaving Hamburg. It had stopped by the time I arrived though, and was probably a good thing since it kept the crowds away. It was still looking like it could rain again at any time though, so I headed straight over to Karnan.
Loved it. By far the best thing Gerstlauer have ever done. The throughput isn’t great, but since it was quiet, it never took more than 10 minutes to get to the bag-drop room, which kind of counts as the front of the queue since the whole thing starts there really.
The vertical lift, with lapbars, is actually quite terrifying since you kind of feel like you’re slipping out backwards, and you’re on the lift for a really long time. There’s no sense of height given that you’re in complete darkness, but it’s very unnerving when you remind yourself that you’re about 200ft up while feeling very exposed.
Didn’t bother with either of these:
Quickly polished off the second of three creds I needed here. You’ve got to admire the effort that went into a pretty insubstantial coaster.
I did the skyfly thing, or whatever this model’s called. I’m crap at these and couldn’t get it to do anything.
Back to more fabulous Karnan before moving on for a while.
The wild mouse was a walk-on otherwise I’d have probably skipped it. It could do with a retheme I think; it’s a bit out of place where it sits now.
But who cares about that when this is sitting right next to it?
I came back to these old things later in the day.
Onto Novgorod, which I’d really enjoyed first time around in its opening year.
I still really liked it. It was good to see it all finished, and the launch and following airtime hill are still fab. The rest of it didn’t seem as fun as before, but that’s just on me I think. It was also funny how tiny the tower looks now that Karnan is just around the corner; I remember it seeming really impressive before.
One annoying thing was the queue line though. They have a single rider queue, but you have to wait in the regular queue for quite a while before you can access it, meaning that what could be a walk-on ride was turning into 20-minutes each time. Still better than waiting through the whole queue line.
The final of the +3:
Shameful.
There’s more Novgorod in the upload, so I guess I must’ve redone it before moving on again.
The old “is it a cred” area.
On Howie’s recommendation, I had a burger at the “Western” style restaurant, which was excellent and decently priced considering it was park food and at a table-service restaurant. I can’t find the picture I took of it, so you’ll have to use your imagination. It consisted of a large amount of minced beef squashed into a disc shape, grilled, and presented with lettuce and tomato inside some bread. This was accompanied by a potato that had been cut into strips, which had also been fried.
I watched some lazer show thing in the same area, which was actually quite impressive and didn’t take up much time.
By now, the weather had totally cleared up. Karnan obviously had to be done again.
I went back and did the old Vekoma and Schwarzkopf things. Meh. Nessie has a decent pop of airtime in the back seat, but that’s the only standout.
The parade is laughably bad.
I did the observation tower.
A few more pics of Novgorod:
I had a really good day here. The s**ty weather in the morning had obviously put a lot of people off, making for a pretty quiet park considering it was the middle of summer. Novgorod is still the best Eurofighter I’ve done, and Karnan is easily a European top-ten coaster.
The bus back was s**te though. It had been great in the morning, but showed up for the return trip about 20 minutes late, and somehow managed to add another half an hour during the ride back, meaning it arrived in Hamburg around an hour late. I was going to the theatre that evening and managed to make it with about 10 minutes to spare before the show started.
I had, probably, the best seat I’ve ever had at any show. The theatre seemed brand new, and all the seats were on a steep rake. Often, stalls seats are on a pretty flat surface, so they’re not always great, despite being closer to the stage, depending on who ends up in front of you.
The show was amazing. It was in German, so obviously a few jokes were lost on me since I don’t speak a word, but it didn’t matter at all since I’m more than familiar with the source material and it’s mostly all just very visual anyway. Great stuff.
Next up: Heide Park
HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Did the laser show still include the Karnan theme (rave edition)?
Didn't get round to watching it again this year, but loved that previously.
Is it mostly the theming that makes Novgorod your best Eurofighter? The layout itself is so bad.
Didn't get round to watching it again this year, but loved that previously.
Is it mostly the theming that makes Novgorod your best Eurofighter? The layout itself is so bad.
HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Yes. Yes it is.
The not particularly good part is usually down to them riding a bit crap.
Stuff like Saw has a far better layout I think.
Also had Lynet in my head, though not technically listed as Eurofighter.
Better start a poll.
^Lynet? Great little coaster. Not a Eurofighter.
A big photo dump coming up with this one since I got a lot done.
Day 11 – Heide Park
As with Hansa, I got there and back by bus from the same station in Hamburg. This one is a specific park shuttle though – with a combination bus/entry ticket - so was better since there were no other drop offs. The bus back left quite early (5pm when the park closed a couple of hours later), but there was actually plenty of time.
It only really seemed about as busy as Hansa had been the day before. Realistically, there were probably a lot more people, but since the park is a lot bigger than Hansa, it felt about the same since everyone was spread out. As with Hansa, the longest queues I saw were at around the 30-minute mark, but most things were a lot less.
The priority here were the two B&Ms that have been added since my last visit.
They had a single rider queue for Krake, but weren’t using it. No problem really since the queue was only at about 10 minutes anyway. I really liked this. It doesn’t really seem to get much love, but I enjoyed it. I tend to rate dive machines more than most people though I think.
Flug der Damonen had the single rider line open for the whole day.
Hmmmmm, not really sure about this one. It didn’t really seem to do very much. I got a few rides in over the course of the day, and it was enjoyable enough, but all a bit bland really. Looking back at it objectively, I can see that it’s a good coaster. It’s very rerideable and I liked it enough to get a good few rides in, but it left me a bit flat.
The view over to this thing, which I’ll get back to.
My only previous visit to this park had been very rushed, and very busy, thanks to a late arrival and a packed park, so I hadn’t done Scream before, but there was no queue at all at that point in the morning, and only a couple of cycles long at most later in the day.
Loved it, but I knew I would since gyrodrops are my favourite tower rides.
The bobsled thing was as I remembered it: pretty fun with a much more substantial layout than most of these. It’s the best one after the one at Asterix for me.
Some more pictures:
I remember absolutely HATING Limit, but had a morbid curiosity to see whether is was as bad as I remembered it. There was only a minimal wait, otherwise I’d likely have not bothered.
Yep, total piece of f**king s**t. Awful, awful thing. I’d take any Chinese SLC over the bottom end of the Vekoma version, and this c**t of a coaster is right near the bottom.
The sign even warns you that it’s the “wurst”.
Whatever the looper’s called. Meh.
I remember thinking that this was at least a photogenic ride, but it desperately needs a bit of paint and looks like s**te these days.
The view across the lake is pretty fab to be fair.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I’ve got the cred, but only managed one ride on it since it was down for most of the day last time, opening for about 5 minutes at the end of the day.
Fabulous Krake:
Powered mine train. Meh.
Desert Rita had the longest queues of the day at around half an hour. Any longer and I wouldn’t have bothered, but I was making very good time since it was a quiet day.
S**te. I’ve never been a massive fan of this model, but something on this visit made me actively dislike it. I just found it uncomfortable when the seat was just punching me in the taint.
I don’t think I’d done the rapids before. I seem to remember half the group getting food, and half riding, and I can’t remember which I was in. Anyway, I did it this time. Pretty decent really.
The How to Train Your Dragon area was really, really f**king piss-poor, just so incredibly cheap looking. Obviously, it’s just a kiddy area, but I did the boat ride.
S**te.
Across the lake again:
Onto this year’s new ride:
Merlin have made excellent use of shipping containers here. They should consider using them more often.
I ended up waiting close to 40 minutes for it thanks to it breaking down. It probably would’ve only been about 20. The queue line had a few moving picture things, but they were poorly executed and just looked like the screens they were.
The ride’s a bit crap really. I liked the style of shooting. It’s 3D screens, but you can hold down the trigger and move your beam around the screen to catch the ghosts, which I thought was better than the usual shooter method of just twatting the trigger as quickly as possible and hoping for the best.
The theming in the inevitable gift shop was probably the highlight.
I’d circled the whole place by this point and still had a couple of hours before the bus was picking up. Single rider was now open on Krake, so I did a bit of whoring between that, Flug der Damonen and Scream.
Overall thoughts then. Not massively impressed to be honest. I’d really, really liked the place on my first visit, but something was just off this time. That’s weird really since the stuff I actually liked about the place on this visit was mostly new since my first time.
The corner with Krake, Flug, Scream and Bobbahn is actually quite fab. You’ve got the four best rides in the park all right next to each other, and the area itself is really nice. Maybe starting from there is the wrong way to go about things though because once you move away, you’re hit with disappointingly s**t ride after disappointingly s**t ride after disappointingly s**t ride until you get back to the starting point again. Going anticlockwise around the lake would mean you get all the s**te done first and end with the decent stuff.
So yeah, I’m in no rush to get back. It’ll be at least two new major coasters added before I’d bother, so f**k knows when that would be. I’ve seen this place referred to as turning into Germany’s Thorpe Park, and that’s fairly accurate. I’d rather go to Thorpe though.
After getting back to Hamburg, I got some food and went to Miniatur Wunderland. I’d booked a time slot online since apparently there can be long waiting times to get in, but showed up early and got in anyway.
Miniatur Wunderland
For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s basically a massive train set. Every 10 minutes or so, it switches from “day” to “night”, so it’s worth hanging around in each area to see the differences. I’m just going to dump photos in; there’s not really much else you can say about the place.
The most popular area was the airport, with planes taking off and landing.
Ugh, didn’t realise how many photos I’d uploaded.
I was there for a good couple of hours, but I can see how people could easily spend more, especially when you start to look at the smaller details, such as what the people, which are tiny, are doing in each scene.
I wanted to see what the Dom was like at night, and since this place wasn’t too far away, had a quick wander over for an hour.
Hamburger Dom Part 2
It goes without saying that the atmosphere at a place like this is massively elevated at night.
I rode Testrekke again. Still meh.
Dr. Archibald’s whatever it’s called looked especially impressive. It was open this time, but after standing in the exact same spot in the queue for almost half an hour, I ditched it.
Final few photos for the day……ugh.
That was the last of 3 nights in Hamburg. The next morning was a train to Berlin, so the next bit of the report won’t have creds.
A big photo dump coming up with this one since I got a lot done.
Day 11 – Heide Park
As with Hansa, I got there and back by bus from the same station in Hamburg. This one is a specific park shuttle though – with a combination bus/entry ticket - so was better since there were no other drop offs. The bus back left quite early (5pm when the park closed a couple of hours later), but there was actually plenty of time.
It only really seemed about as busy as Hansa had been the day before. Realistically, there were probably a lot more people, but since the park is a lot bigger than Hansa, it felt about the same since everyone was spread out. As with Hansa, the longest queues I saw were at around the 30-minute mark, but most things were a lot less.
The priority here were the two B&Ms that have been added since my last visit.
They had a single rider queue for Krake, but weren’t using it. No problem really since the queue was only at about 10 minutes anyway. I really liked this. It doesn’t really seem to get much love, but I enjoyed it. I tend to rate dive machines more than most people though I think.
Flug der Damonen had the single rider line open for the whole day.
Hmmmmm, not really sure about this one. It didn’t really seem to do very much. I got a few rides in over the course of the day, and it was enjoyable enough, but all a bit bland really. Looking back at it objectively, I can see that it’s a good coaster. It’s very rerideable and I liked it enough to get a good few rides in, but it left me a bit flat.
The view over to this thing, which I’ll get back to.
My only previous visit to this park had been very rushed, and very busy, thanks to a late arrival and a packed park, so I hadn’t done Scream before, but there was no queue at all at that point in the morning, and only a couple of cycles long at most later in the day.
Loved it, but I knew I would since gyrodrops are my favourite tower rides.
The bobsled thing was as I remembered it: pretty fun with a much more substantial layout than most of these. It’s the best one after the one at Asterix for me.
Some more pictures:
I remember absolutely HATING Limit, but had a morbid curiosity to see whether is was as bad as I remembered it. There was only a minimal wait, otherwise I’d likely have not bothered.
Yep, total piece of f**king s**t. Awful, awful thing. I’d take any Chinese SLC over the bottom end of the Vekoma version, and this c**t of a coaster is right near the bottom.
The sign even warns you that it’s the “wurst”.
Whatever the looper’s called. Meh.
I remember thinking that this was at least a photogenic ride, but it desperately needs a bit of paint and looks like s**te these days.
The view across the lake is pretty fab to be fair.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I’ve got the cred, but only managed one ride on it since it was down for most of the day last time, opening for about 5 minutes at the end of the day.
Fabulous Krake:
Powered mine train. Meh.
Desert Rita had the longest queues of the day at around half an hour. Any longer and I wouldn’t have bothered, but I was making very good time since it was a quiet day.
S**te. I’ve never been a massive fan of this model, but something on this visit made me actively dislike it. I just found it uncomfortable when the seat was just punching me in the taint.
I don’t think I’d done the rapids before. I seem to remember half the group getting food, and half riding, and I can’t remember which I was in. Anyway, I did it this time. Pretty decent really.
The How to Train Your Dragon area was really, really f**king piss-poor, just so incredibly cheap looking. Obviously, it’s just a kiddy area, but I did the boat ride.
S**te.
Across the lake again:
Onto this year’s new ride:
Merlin have made excellent use of shipping containers here. They should consider using them more often.
I ended up waiting close to 40 minutes for it thanks to it breaking down. It probably would’ve only been about 20. The queue line had a few moving picture things, but they were poorly executed and just looked like the screens they were.
The ride’s a bit crap really. I liked the style of shooting. It’s 3D screens, but you can hold down the trigger and move your beam around the screen to catch the ghosts, which I thought was better than the usual shooter method of just twatting the trigger as quickly as possible and hoping for the best.
The theming in the inevitable gift shop was probably the highlight.
I’d circled the whole place by this point and still had a couple of hours before the bus was picking up. Single rider was now open on Krake, so I did a bit of whoring between that, Flug der Damonen and Scream.
Overall thoughts then. Not massively impressed to be honest. I’d really, really liked the place on my first visit, but something was just off this time. That’s weird really since the stuff I actually liked about the place on this visit was mostly new since my first time.
The corner with Krake, Flug, Scream and Bobbahn is actually quite fab. You’ve got the four best rides in the park all right next to each other, and the area itself is really nice. Maybe starting from there is the wrong way to go about things though because once you move away, you’re hit with disappointingly s**t ride after disappointingly s**t ride after disappointingly s**t ride until you get back to the starting point again. Going anticlockwise around the lake would mean you get all the s**te done first and end with the decent stuff.
So yeah, I’m in no rush to get back. It’ll be at least two new major coasters added before I’d bother, so f**k knows when that would be. I’ve seen this place referred to as turning into Germany’s Thorpe Park, and that’s fairly accurate. I’d rather go to Thorpe though.
After getting back to Hamburg, I got some food and went to Miniatur Wunderland. I’d booked a time slot online since apparently there can be long waiting times to get in, but showed up early and got in anyway.
Miniatur Wunderland
For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s basically a massive train set. Every 10 minutes or so, it switches from “day” to “night”, so it’s worth hanging around in each area to see the differences. I’m just going to dump photos in; there’s not really much else you can say about the place.
The most popular area was the airport, with planes taking off and landing.
Ugh, didn’t realise how many photos I’d uploaded.
I was there for a good couple of hours, but I can see how people could easily spend more, especially when you start to look at the smaller details, such as what the people, which are tiny, are doing in each scene.
I wanted to see what the Dom was like at night, and since this place wasn’t too far away, had a quick wander over for an hour.
Hamburger Dom Part 2
It goes without saying that the atmosphere at a place like this is massively elevated at night.
I rode Testrekke again. Still meh.
Dr. Archibald’s whatever it’s called looked especially impressive. It was open this time, but after standing in the exact same spot in the queue for almost half an hour, I ditched it.
Final few photos for the day……ugh.
That was the last of 3 nights in Hamburg. The next morning was a train to Berlin, so the next bit of the report won’t have creds.
HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Miniatur Wonderland blew me away in that first room with the mountain. I expected big, but not that big.
You got all the miniatur cred pics like a pro.
When Colossos was alive, Heide could hold her head above Thorpe.
Now there's not much in it, but at least it's run better.
You got all the miniatur cred pics like a pro.
When Colossos was alive, Heide could hold her head above Thorpe.
Now there's not much in it, but at least it's run better.
Coaster Hipster
Giga Poster
I wish Heide would do a Liseberg and replace their somewhat underwhelming Intamin Accelerator with a great iSpeed/Helix/Firestorm one. Otherwise, their current coaster selection is large, but quite uneven. And the Colossos situation is </3
That Limit runs even worse than Chinese-manufactured SLCs is quite a statement. Even worse the really wonky ones with the disfigured Sidewinder?
That Limit runs even worse than Chinese-manufactured SLCs is quite a statement. Even worse the really wonky ones with the disfigured Sidewinder?
^Ok, so I might be exaggerating slightly, but there's honestly not to much in it when you're talking about the worst of the Vekoma SLCs. I'm not in any way saying that the Chinese SLCs are anything other than s**t, but they're pretty comparable to Vekoma's version.
In the interests of completeness, I’m going to throw Berlin pictures in even though there was nothing park-related here.
Day 12
I got a train from Hamburg to Berlin, arriving at around lunchtime, dumping bags in the hotel and going for a wander. I walked from the hotel (near the zoo for anyone who knows Berlin) to the Victory Monument and from there down to the Reichstag/Brandenburg Gate.
Holocaust Memorial thing then down to a museum next to a fairly long section of the Berlin Wall.
And from there to Checkpoint Charlie.
Can’t remember what this square was:
I’m obviously just chucking stuff in without any detail, but this was a whole afternoon of walking around. From there it was back to the area with my hotel, which also has this bombed church.
That evening, I went to see another show, Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. I’d seen a poster during my wander about that day and it turns out it was very close to the hotel.
Hunchback is easily the most underrated of the Disney films for me, especially musically, so I was excited to see this. It didn’t disappoint. It was closer to the original novel than the Disney version – being much, much darker, but using the Disney’s music. It was outstanding.
Walk back t the hotel via the church and zoo:
Day 13
This was another day in Berlin. I was meeting friends in the evening, so decided to spend the day around the Museum Island area, buying some combo ticket to get into all of them.
The weather was soooooooooo much better than the day before, so it was kind of a shame to spend a lot of the day inside looking at old s**t. The museums were very impressive though.
The first one had a load of Egyptian stuff.
I had no idea this was here, so was pretty stunned to see it. I’d assumed it was in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo since, along with Tutankhamun’s death mask, it’s easily the most iconic Egyptian relic. No cameras/photos in the room, so this a bit crap quality zooming in from another area.
Name the cred:
The next museum then, which included the Ishtar Gate from Babylon.
I also did some huge gallery, then another couple of museums.
All museumed-out by this point:
Again, I haven’t bothered going into any detail here, but the whole Museum Island area is fab with some absolutely amazing collections spread out between them all. Definitely recommended, but probably better to spread them over a couple of days to avoid the inevitable museum fatigue.
I met friends, had food and drinks next to the river, went to some rooftop club and left Berlin the next day. It’s a fab city, easily my favourite in Germany alongside Munich, but I wish I’d have given myself an extra couple of days really.
Back to creds in the final parts. Only two parks left.
In the interests of completeness, I’m going to throw Berlin pictures in even though there was nothing park-related here.
Day 12
I got a train from Hamburg to Berlin, arriving at around lunchtime, dumping bags in the hotel and going for a wander. I walked from the hotel (near the zoo for anyone who knows Berlin) to the Victory Monument and from there down to the Reichstag/Brandenburg Gate.
Holocaust Memorial thing then down to a museum next to a fairly long section of the Berlin Wall.
And from there to Checkpoint Charlie.
Can’t remember what this square was:
I’m obviously just chucking stuff in without any detail, but this was a whole afternoon of walking around. From there it was back to the area with my hotel, which also has this bombed church.
That evening, I went to see another show, Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. I’d seen a poster during my wander about that day and it turns out it was very close to the hotel.
Hunchback is easily the most underrated of the Disney films for me, especially musically, so I was excited to see this. It didn’t disappoint. It was closer to the original novel than the Disney version – being much, much darker, but using the Disney’s music. It was outstanding.
Walk back t the hotel via the church and zoo:
Day 13
This was another day in Berlin. I was meeting friends in the evening, so decided to spend the day around the Museum Island area, buying some combo ticket to get into all of them.
The weather was soooooooooo much better than the day before, so it was kind of a shame to spend a lot of the day inside looking at old s**t. The museums were very impressive though.
The first one had a load of Egyptian stuff.
I had no idea this was here, so was pretty stunned to see it. I’d assumed it was in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo since, along with Tutankhamun’s death mask, it’s easily the most iconic Egyptian relic. No cameras/photos in the room, so this a bit crap quality zooming in from another area.
Name the cred:
The next museum then, which included the Ishtar Gate from Babylon.
I also did some huge gallery, then another couple of museums.
All museumed-out by this point:
Again, I haven’t bothered going into any detail here, but the whole Museum Island area is fab with some absolutely amazing collections spread out between them all. Definitely recommended, but probably better to spread them over a couple of days to avoid the inevitable museum fatigue.
I met friends, had food and drinks next to the river, went to some rooftop club and left Berlin the next day. It’s a fab city, easily my favourite in Germany alongside Munich, but I wish I’d have given myself an extra couple of days really.
Back to creds in the final parts. Only two parks left.
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Wow, those structures in the Pergamon Museum are incredible. I'd always sort of known/heard about it, but never really realised it was in Berlin! Excellent!
Sounds like a pretty nice city, and a good couple of cred-free days (I'm starting to think these are equally as important to the cred-full days).
Sounds like a pretty nice city, and a good couple of cred-free days (I'm starting to think these are equally as important to the cred-full days).
Day 14 - Leipzig
The next day was spent waking up late, taking a quick train ride to the final city of the trip – Leipzig - and having a bit of a wander. I had no expectations about the place at all really since it was just being used as a base for the two final parks of the trip.
The hotel was just a 10-minute walk from the main station, and just a couple of minutes from the old-town area.
The main square had been set up for free evening concerts, with food/booze stalls around the outside of it.
There’s a big history with music apparently. Bach is buried in this church.
A little outside the old town – literally just a few minutes’ walk though – is the town hall and some other big old buildings.
Nature:
So yeah, it was all quite lovely really. The city itself is quite big, but, as a visitor, everything you’d be interested in is in a fairly compact little area. I didn’t really do anything here other than mooch around a bit, but it was definitely one of the nicer places I stayed during the trip.
Day 15 – Freizeitpark Plohn
The main reason for heading down to Leipzig was to get to this place, which I’d always fancied since reading very good things about their woodie. The park itself isn’t particularly close to Leipzig though, and was the most pain-in-the-arse park of the trip really.
It wasn’t really difficult, but there was an element of winging it since, for some reason, local bus companies in the area haven’t bothered to submit scheduling information to Google, so public transport options just don’t show up on Google maps. Even China can manage this, and Google is f**king banned there.
For anyone interested, the best way I found was taking a train to Zwickau (fairly regular from Leipzig – there’s a station right under the old town square) then bus V66 for about half an hour (not regular, so search for times and get the train from Leipzig accordingly – there’ll be a bit of a wait at Zwickau Station), followed by a short walk. In total, it took a couple of hours to get to the park. Driving from Leipzig would be an hour and a half minimum, so there really wasn’t much in it.
I’d booked and printed a ticket already, which was totally f**king pointless since you still had to wait in the queue to show the ticket at the window, rather than bypassing it. Stupid.
I came back to this on my way out of the park. Horrible thing which span way, way too much and made me feel sick.
Theming and the first cred:
This dark ride was a joke. It’s a tiny, flat oval that’s over in about 30 seconds.
The main reason for heading down here, El Toro:
The park was dead, so everything, including this, was walk-on, which was great news. Too bad it’s a bit s**t then. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but it just doesn’t do much. I remember reading rave reviews about it – can’t remember who from now – but it was actually just really dull.
The use of space is very good though since it interacts with the nearby log flume, which I’m assuming was there first.
This haunted walkthrough thing was gash:
This coaster was really, really piss poor:
I didn’t bother with the flat rides, not that there were many.
The park as whole was nice enough really, without having anything that looked particularly outstanding.
+1:
One of the better things here was Miniwah, a culturally-inappropriate, indoor, powered mine train which actually had some pretty decent theming.
There was quite a fab restaurant in the same building with an animatronic band.
More El Toro with the log flume, which was pretty decent. As with every park on this rip though, the water was f**king putrid. It seems that none of them use their own water systems; they just share water with stagnant ponds.
The funhouse looked quite fab. I didn’t do it though since I didn’t want to look like a paedo.
A fairly large section of the park is taken up with one of those “fairytale forest” things. You know, like the one in Efteling that people w**k over but is actually a bit s**t.
Dinosaur boat ride. Kind of.
Bridge to a dead end with a tiny drop tower.
There was a new coaster here, which has strangely been plonked in the absolute worst area of the park. It seemed like an old entrance area, but was just horribly run down.
Heading out, I popped into a show. Jokes.
I feel like I’ve been a bit unfair to the place really since for a small, local, out-of-the-way park, it’s actually really nice. It’s just that I was no attraction that went beyond “just ok” and I think I’d been expecting something a bit more major than it was. They’ve announced one of those Mack “Lost Gravity” things recently, so that’s f**king annoying.
I was ready to leave, but the next bus out was almost an hour away. Plus, the connection time with the train back to Leipzig was very, very tight. If the bus was even a couple of minutes late, I’d have missed the connection and have to wait around another hour.
Instead, I walked for about half an hour to a nearby town, Lengenfeld, which had tram/light rail connections back to Zwickau. Again, the whole trip took a couple of hours.
I’d seen posters in Leipzig about some local fair, so found out where that was and went for a look. It was about a half-hour walk out of the city itself, but was pleasant enough.
It was f**king s**t, though. I was hoping for a cred or two, but there was f**k all. I was in and out in less than ten minutes, just to walk for another half an hour to get back.
I could’ve got a tram – there’s a very extensive system - but, again, the system didn’t show up on Google maps, so I thought it would just be easier to walk than piss about trying to find the right one.
.
I got to see this sexual assault statue though, so it was all good.
It was getting dark by the time I got back into the city, so had a quick wander to see it at night.
I say “wander”, but I had to basically walk through it to get to the hotel anyway.
Yep, still all very nice.
One park left. Thank f**k.
The next day was spent waking up late, taking a quick train ride to the final city of the trip – Leipzig - and having a bit of a wander. I had no expectations about the place at all really since it was just being used as a base for the two final parks of the trip.
The hotel was just a 10-minute walk from the main station, and just a couple of minutes from the old-town area.
The main square had been set up for free evening concerts, with food/booze stalls around the outside of it.
There’s a big history with music apparently. Bach is buried in this church.
A little outside the old town – literally just a few minutes’ walk though – is the town hall and some other big old buildings.
Nature:
So yeah, it was all quite lovely really. The city itself is quite big, but, as a visitor, everything you’d be interested in is in a fairly compact little area. I didn’t really do anything here other than mooch around a bit, but it was definitely one of the nicer places I stayed during the trip.
Day 15 – Freizeitpark Plohn
The main reason for heading down to Leipzig was to get to this place, which I’d always fancied since reading very good things about their woodie. The park itself isn’t particularly close to Leipzig though, and was the most pain-in-the-arse park of the trip really.
It wasn’t really difficult, but there was an element of winging it since, for some reason, local bus companies in the area haven’t bothered to submit scheduling information to Google, so public transport options just don’t show up on Google maps. Even China can manage this, and Google is f**king banned there.
For anyone interested, the best way I found was taking a train to Zwickau (fairly regular from Leipzig – there’s a station right under the old town square) then bus V66 for about half an hour (not regular, so search for times and get the train from Leipzig accordingly – there’ll be a bit of a wait at Zwickau Station), followed by a short walk. In total, it took a couple of hours to get to the park. Driving from Leipzig would be an hour and a half minimum, so there really wasn’t much in it.
I’d booked and printed a ticket already, which was totally f**king pointless since you still had to wait in the queue to show the ticket at the window, rather than bypassing it. Stupid.
I came back to this on my way out of the park. Horrible thing which span way, way too much and made me feel sick.
Theming and the first cred:
This dark ride was a joke. It’s a tiny, flat oval that’s over in about 30 seconds.
The main reason for heading down here, El Toro:
The park was dead, so everything, including this, was walk-on, which was great news. Too bad it’s a bit s**t then. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but it just doesn’t do much. I remember reading rave reviews about it – can’t remember who from now – but it was actually just really dull.
The use of space is very good though since it interacts with the nearby log flume, which I’m assuming was there first.
This haunted walkthrough thing was gash:
This coaster was really, really piss poor:
I didn’t bother with the flat rides, not that there were many.
The park as whole was nice enough really, without having anything that looked particularly outstanding.
+1:
One of the better things here was Miniwah, a culturally-inappropriate, indoor, powered mine train which actually had some pretty decent theming.
There was quite a fab restaurant in the same building with an animatronic band.
More El Toro with the log flume, which was pretty decent. As with every park on this rip though, the water was f**king putrid. It seems that none of them use their own water systems; they just share water with stagnant ponds.
The funhouse looked quite fab. I didn’t do it though since I didn’t want to look like a paedo.
A fairly large section of the park is taken up with one of those “fairytale forest” things. You know, like the one in Efteling that people w**k over but is actually a bit s**t.
Dinosaur boat ride. Kind of.
Bridge to a dead end with a tiny drop tower.
There was a new coaster here, which has strangely been plonked in the absolute worst area of the park. It seemed like an old entrance area, but was just horribly run down.
Heading out, I popped into a show. Jokes.
I feel like I’ve been a bit unfair to the place really since for a small, local, out-of-the-way park, it’s actually really nice. It’s just that I was no attraction that went beyond “just ok” and I think I’d been expecting something a bit more major than it was. They’ve announced one of those Mack “Lost Gravity” things recently, so that’s f**king annoying.
I was ready to leave, but the next bus out was almost an hour away. Plus, the connection time with the train back to Leipzig was very, very tight. If the bus was even a couple of minutes late, I’d have missed the connection and have to wait around another hour.
Instead, I walked for about half an hour to a nearby town, Lengenfeld, which had tram/light rail connections back to Zwickau. Again, the whole trip took a couple of hours.
I’d seen posters in Leipzig about some local fair, so found out where that was and went for a look. It was about a half-hour walk out of the city itself, but was pleasant enough.
It was f**king s**t, though. I was hoping for a cred or two, but there was f**k all. I was in and out in less than ten minutes, just to walk for another half an hour to get back.
I could’ve got a tram – there’s a very extensive system - but, again, the system didn’t show up on Google maps, so I thought it would just be easier to walk than piss about trying to find the right one.
I got to see this sexual assault statue though, so it was all good.
It was getting dark by the time I got back into the city, so had a quick wander to see it at night.
I say “wander”, but I had to basically walk through it to get to the hotel anyway.
Yep, still all very nice.
One park left. Thank f**k.
HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Shame about the fair, could have been a nice little bonus.
Shame about El Toro disappointing as well. As much as I hated that place, I found it good enough to make things (sort of) worthwhile.
Shame about El Toro disappointing as well. As much as I hated that place, I found it good enough to make things (sort of) worthwhile.
You underestimate the power of a car in Germany.
Final day of this trip then.
Day 16 – Belantis
This place was much easier to get to than Plohn, being just outside the city to the south and with much more regular connections (train to Markleeburg and a bus from there). I hadn’t really expected much based on the coaster collection, but the park was actually really pleasant.
I headed for Huracan first and waited about 10 minutes. The park wasn’t busy, but they were still managing to run a few trains and getting them out consistently quite quickly.
I’ve never heard anything good about this, but I thought it was actually ok. The corkscrews at the end were quite vile, but everything leading up to those was actually pretty decent.
Next to it, as you've probably noticed in a couple of earlier pictures, is one of these spiteful little contraptions.
The next cred had engineers climbing all over it, which obviously isn’t a good look.
There’s a fab little Madhouse buried underneath it. Well, the madhouse itself is far from the best, but the fact that it’s hidden, seemingly, underground was fab.
Still nothing…
This thing has always intrigued me.
It’s literally rubber rafts with no wheels at all. You can feel everything moving underneath the boats. We need more of them; they’re fab. Yet more disgusting cholera water here though.
This is the first of this model I’ve done. The queue line had an ok, if cheap, attempt at theming:
It’s the same as the fairly new thing at Duinrell, which has been added since my visit, and they’re very good for what they are. They’re basically Gerstlauer’s version of a roller skater, but they’re definitely better. More of these too please.
I thought I’d uploaded more pictures of it. Have these instead:
I couldn’t get this f**ker to do anything. Out of 5-6 of these type of things I’ve done, I’ve only ever managed to get one of them spinning. I hate myself.
This was open by now though:
It was fab! Easily my favourite of this model from the 6 I’ve done.
Just going to finish by chucking in whatever photos are left in the upload. Ooooh, construction…
Not really much to say then apart from this place was a pleasant surprise, despite having no real massive draw to get me there in the first place. I’d expected for this place to be a bit of a cred run, with Plohn being the main reason for being in the area, but I found the opposite to be true really.
And thus, finally, concludes this trip report. It was quite a fab trip really. My first instincts with trips is to try new countries, but I figured that apart from Munich, and despite being in the country numerous times, I’d actually seen f**k all of Germany outside of a few parks, so it was great to get to see more of it while polishing off some new parks and revisiting a couple of older ones.
Day 16 – Belantis
This place was much easier to get to than Plohn, being just outside the city to the south and with much more regular connections (train to Markleeburg and a bus from there). I hadn’t really expected much based on the coaster collection, but the park was actually really pleasant.
I headed for Huracan first and waited about 10 minutes. The park wasn’t busy, but they were still managing to run a few trains and getting them out consistently quite quickly.
I’ve never heard anything good about this, but I thought it was actually ok. The corkscrews at the end were quite vile, but everything leading up to those was actually pretty decent.
Next to it, as you've probably noticed in a couple of earlier pictures, is one of these spiteful little contraptions.
The next cred had engineers climbing all over it, which obviously isn’t a good look.
There’s a fab little Madhouse buried underneath it. Well, the madhouse itself is far from the best, but the fact that it’s hidden, seemingly, underground was fab.
Still nothing…
This thing has always intrigued me.
It’s literally rubber rafts with no wheels at all. You can feel everything moving underneath the boats. We need more of them; they’re fab. Yet more disgusting cholera water here though.
This is the first of this model I’ve done. The queue line had an ok, if cheap, attempt at theming:
It’s the same as the fairly new thing at Duinrell, which has been added since my visit, and they’re very good for what they are. They’re basically Gerstlauer’s version of a roller skater, but they’re definitely better. More of these too please.
I thought I’d uploaded more pictures of it. Have these instead:
I couldn’t get this f**ker to do anything. Out of 5-6 of these type of things I’ve done, I’ve only ever managed to get one of them spinning. I hate myself.
This was open by now though:
It was fab! Easily my favourite of this model from the 6 I’ve done.
Just going to finish by chucking in whatever photos are left in the upload. Ooooh, construction…
Not really much to say then apart from this place was a pleasant surprise, despite having no real massive draw to get me there in the first place. I’d expected for this place to be a bit of a cred run, with Plohn being the main reason for being in the area, but I found the opposite to be true really.
And thus, finally, concludes this trip report. It was quite a fab trip really. My first instincts with trips is to try new countries, but I figured that apart from Munich, and despite being in the country numerous times, I’d actually seen f**k all of Germany outside of a few parks, so it was great to get to see more of it while polishing off some new parks and revisiting a couple of older ones.
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A good final installment. I'm intrigued by the raft ride/log flume/whatever is it - what kind of restraints does it have? Do you actually just float around (could the boats sink!)?
Sounds like a good trip, both cred-wise and culture-wise. Thanks for the write up!
Sounds like a good trip, both cred-wise and culture-wise. Thanks for the write up!
^ They have a lap bar, and yeah they just float around. They don't exactly feel inflated since they're rock solid - the sides have no give at all - but you can feel everything through the floor: rollers, movement of water, bend of the boat etc.
The water's not deep, so I don't think properly sinking would ever be an issue.
The water's not deep, so I don't think properly sinking would ever be an issue.