Getting high in the Netherlands

[Mushy999]

No, not like that. ROLLERCOASTERS.

For me and the other half, Angie, this would be our first trip solely for going to theme parks and with the
short flight time from England to the Netherlands and how easy it is to travel across the country it
seemed like the perfect country to start with.

We went for five days with three fulls days to do three parks: Efteling, Toverland and Walibi Holland.

Day 0 - Arriving.

We decided to stay near to Efteling as we were flying into Eindhoven airport and thought we could do the parks
in order of distance from our hotel. The hotel was lovely and was based in the forests on the outskirts of Tilburg.
So picturesque.

We had a fairly expensive but excellent meal at the hotel and then hit the hay ready for the first day of the trip.

Day 1 - Efteling

We set off for the 20min drive to Efteling and got there just around 9:30. We had bought the ticket extra so we got
an extra 30mins in the park, which gave us a considerable amount of time to spend in the park (9:30am-8pm), although
we didn't actually get into the park until 10am as we're idiots and didn't realise you had to go to customer services
and upgrade the printed tickets.

The first thing that struck me about Efteling was how much of a Disney feel it had, the magic. I suppose that's why
Efteling were contacted during the construction of Disneyland Paris.

We decided to avoid Baron 1898 until later in the day, which was a good move as it was a 30min queue within the 30mins
of opening. So up first was Joris en de Draak, the park's dueling GCI woodie. This was one of my most anticipated
rides of the whole trip as I was looking forward to finally riding a woodie that was highly rated by most people.
My previous woodies only included the Grand National, Big Dipper, Nick Streak, Blue Streak, Antelope, Stampida and Gwazi
- most of which are known for being rough. Angie was, before this trip, very uneasy about woodies and I was keen to show
her that not all of them are as rough as nails.

We got to Joris and there was no queue. Excellent! So we waited a few cycles for a front row ride on the red side and
it was excellent. Plenty of quick pops of airtime and so smooth but still with the kind of force that you know you're
on a woodie. I loved the theming of the station and how the winners/losers of the race were cheered/jeered as they returned
to the station, with the flags of the winning team coming down too. We enjoyed the ride that much that we ran round and had
another go. No queue again! This time we tried the red side towards the back and the airtime was just as good, maybe better?
But the best was yet to come later on in the day.

We decided to move on as we had been told that Efteling was a difficult park to get done in one day and considering that
was all we had, we wanted to get a move on. So next up was Python, the park's first roller coaster.

Just a standard Vekoma Double Loop Corkscrew, which I was expecting to be rough but was pleasantly surprised at how smooth this 25 year old Vekoma was. The new trains with vest restraints definitely help though. One thing that struck me was how slow the lift hill was on this. Only 10-15 min queue so not bad. Enjoyable ride but that was our only ride of the day on it.

By now the park was getting fairly busy. Baron's queue was 60mins, 80 mins for the rapids, Piranha, so we knew it didn't really matter what we went on, we were going to queue. Bob was up next. The roller coaster, not a 50-odd-year old man from the north.

There was supposedly a 60min wait but we knew we had no choice really as other queues were longer.
Having tried the Mack offering of Avalanche at Blackpool I was looking forward to trying Intamin's model with their single car train as opposed to Mack's longer train.
Bob was good, felt a bit less controlled than the Mack equivalent. We only ended up waiting 45mins too.

We then decided to have a walk through Fairy Tale Forest, which had it's charms and made a nice break from the coasters.
Great place to bring a family. The Indian Water Lillies were...odd. I particularly liked The Fairy Tale Tree which was a
great animatronic.

We originally planned to try Droomvlucht, one of the park's dark rides, but we realised that Raveleijn had a show in about
30 mins, so we purchased one of the best creations ever, a waffle on a stick, and then watched Raveleijn. Pretty enjoyable.
What's not to like about mechanical 5 headed dragons?

We then tried to go to Vogel Rok but ended up taking a wrong turn and had to go the long way round, which did end up
taking us past the plot of land where Symbolica is being built, which seems to be coming on quite nicely, and then on past
the area with Gondoletta and Pagode, which is excellent.

Finally we make it to Vogel Rok, an enclosed Vekoma MK-900, which is like Temple of the Nighthawk at Phantasialand, except this has theming. I love the giant bird outside and the station quite cool looking too.

My only gripe would be it's a bit short. Only 20 mins queue though which was probably a good thing as
some guy behind us decided to push his girlfriend in her wheelchair into our ankles repeatedly and then when we
finally decided to ask if he could watch out he didn't seem to care. Okay.

We then acquired our free fries and mincemeat sausage that we got with our ticket extra and then went on Droomvlucht, which was wonderfully weird with it's suspended trains. I really like the spiral descent at the end, a lot faster than I was expecting.

We then had a lovely panoramic view of the resort on Pagode. Yet again another queue line incident where we were
made out to be in the wrong, as someone's child decided to repeatedly shove themselves into me in the queue whilst I got a death stare from their mother for daring to pay attention to it. GRR. At least I got this cool picture.

The fantastically named haunted house was up next, Spookslot. What even was this? It just seemed like a load of the undeadhaving a party. Weird but I enjoyed it.

Back to creds again in the form of Vliegende Hollander, the weird KumbaK log flume roller coaster contraption. The theming
of the station is incredible, one of my favourite station's.

The great theming carries on into the ride which starts out as a log flume. I loved the creepy vibe of the pitch black section with the foggy kind of theme, the only source of light being the lantern on the front of the boat. Then came a drop into the lift hill which kind of catches you from dropping backwards but does so with a bit of clunk. The ride then turns into a roller coaster and then comes the sweeping drop into a bunny hop, banked turn and then a drop into the water. I know some people think it doesn't really have much point but it's a really fun ride in my opinion and kills two birds with one stone with the log flume and coaster elements. I will say that the splashdown needs changing as it just doesn't get you wet as the underneath of the car is what makes the splash.

Last cred of the day up next in the form of the park's newest coaster, Baron 1898, the B&M Dive Coaster.

I must admit, I do have a fear of vertical drop rides after being forced on SheiKra when I was 14 and avoided them since.
However I decided that a lot can change in 10 years and so I forced myself on and surprisingly I enjoyed it.
We queued extra for front row as the queue had died down to 15-20mins now. I really like the theming of this ride,
from where you pick up a ticket for your row, the pre-show room with the Witte Wieven, waiting behind the doors to be let into the station, the giant gates replacing the standard gates on the B&M coasters, the levers to release the trains and eventually the show room after the station and excellently themed lift hill.

The drop was great and although I know it's one of the smallest Dive Coasters and most prefer the likes of SheiKra and Griffon, it was perfect for me to try and conquer my fear. The Immelmann had good force and the zero-G roll had great floater.
Although the ride didn't break my top 10 I still really enjoyed it.

Cool Baron 1898 goon memorabilia cup!

After we got a milkshake in the Baron 1898 goon memoribilia cup and then headed to the rapids, Pirana, which thoroughly soaked us and now it was time for re-rides. We decided to go back for a third ride on Joris which resulted in the best ride of the day. We chose to sit at the back of the blue side and it had now warmed up and felt relentlessly fast and provided plenty of airtime and force. This ride firmly placed Joris at number 2 in my Top 10. With that we again ran back round and did the redside at the front and got another great ride.

Time had now ran out and we decided to get our free cupcake and drink before heading to the merch shop to purchase a Baron 1898 baseball cap for my dad, get a burger and watch the fountain show, Aquanura, which was epic.

Efteling is great park and I definitely want to go back at some point as we didn't get everything done and obviously because of Joris <3.
We then left and went on a massive search to find an open supermarket for booze, which was an absolute mission, and thengot home and essentially keeled over and died. Well, most people call it sleeping.

Next up: Toverland where another coaster breaks into my Top 10!

(I hope these images work, first time I've uploaded images on here!)

EDIT: Images now work, I was an idiot and forgot to add .jpg to the end...

 

[Coaster Hipster]

Nice and well written report! Efteling is such a nice looking park, I hope they'll keep adding some thrill coasters like Baron and Joris.

And yeah, Joris really gets better when the day goes by. I had a night ride on the blue side and it was relentless!

 

[DelPiero]

Nice report, I'm still to visit Efteling (Ghosterforce in 2 months YAY!) so had to skip some of the spoiler parts. Shame about the queues but I'm sure you'll enjoy going back.
You seem to have excellent beard-age, I congratulate you.

 

[Ian]

By the sounds of it, I'm going to have to hundreds of Euro's to GhosterForce so I can buy Efteling tat!

Looking forward to the rest of the report!

 

[caffeine_demon]

We then had a lovely panoramic view of the resort on Pagode. Yet again another queue line incident where we were
made out to be in the wrong, as someone's child decided to repeatedly shove themselves into me in the queue whilst I got a death stare from their mother for daring to pay attention to it. GRR. At least I got this cool picture.

I love the way python looks like Nessie from the pagoda!

 

[Mushy999]

Nice and well written report! Efteling is such a nice looking park, I hope they'll keep adding some thrill coasters like Baron and Joris.

And yeah, Joris really gets better when the day goes by. I had a night ride on the blue side and it was relentless!

Thanks! I'm not sure if they have any spare space left now or whether they'd have to remove something first but I too would love more coasters there.

Nice report, I'm still to visit Efteling (Ghosterforce in 2 months YAY!) so had to skip some of the spoiler parts. Shame about the queues but I'm sure you'll enjoy going back.
You seem to have excellent beard-age, I congratulate you.

Why thank you! Took a while to grow but had it about three years now. :--D
Yeah, we definitely want to go back at some point. The queues weren't actually that bad, longest we had to wait was for Bob, it just seemed long because we went to Phantasialand in April and everything was walk-on haha. Thinking of going to Phantasialand again before the end of the season to try out Klugheim, we have free tickets too. I was thinking, is it possible to meet up in the park for Ghosterforce or can you only do that if you've signed up? It's my girlfriend's birthday in the October so if we can afford it we might go then for the Phantasialand date.

By the sounds of it, I'm going to have to hundreds of Euro's to GhosterForce so I can buy Efteling tat!

Looking forward to the rest of the report!

Surprisingly there wasn't that much merch, only really the Baron merch. They don't have any t-shirts for the rides (at least that I could see) which is a shame as I wanted a Joris t-shirt. It was mainly kids merch in the shop by the entrance which I think is the main merch shop.

The next part of the report should hopefully be up in the next few days too, glad you all enjoyed it so far!

 

[Ian]

^ You and Angie are more than welcome to meet up with everybody at GhosterForce. It's all very informal and the more, the merrier, I say! We're staying at the Phantasia Matamba hotel the night before and we'll probably head straight to Taron when the park opens (along with everybody else!).

 

[Mushy999]

^ You and Angie are more than welcome to meet up with everybody at GhosterForce. It's all very informal and the more, the merrier, I say! We're staying at the Phantasia Matamba hotel the night before and we'll probably head straight to Taron when the park opens (along with everybody else!).

Thanks! There's nothing set in stone yet as we'll have to see about money and getting time off etc. but hopefully we can. Would be great to meet some fellow goons. :--D

Now time for part 2 of the report!

Day 2 - Toverland

So after a long first day we decided to visit Toverland next which is the smallest of the three parks. We set off earlier
for the hour long journey there and arrived around 10 which would give us roughly 9 hours in the park. We arrived and the
first thing you encounter is a lovely view of the first drop on the park's biggest coaster - Troy.

Instantly hyped, especially as this was another coaster that I was looking forward to on the trip more than others. We headed into the queue with our pre-booked tickets (no stupidity from us over these tickets this time) and got given a German park map because apparently I still look German after all these years? I wasn't even wearing my Hamburg kit today either!

As soon as you go through the ticket gates you're inside the first of two warehouses which house the smaller kids areas,
including one of the park's creds, Boomerang, which surprisingly isn't a shuttle coaster, but in fact a Vekoma custom
Junior Coaster.

We decided to leave this and go for the park's worst throughput cred, Maximus' Blitz Bahn, a Wiegand
Bobkart. Now this is a dubious cred as it's not listed on RCDB but it is on Coaster Count, but I personally do count it
as even though it's powered I feel it's pretty similar to a Mack Powered Coaster which I also count. No sooner had we
walked into the queuline had the P.A system announced the ride was down due to technical difficulties. This turned out to work in our favour as the majority of the queue emptied and the ride was back up and runnning in 15 mins. The queueline is themed really well, they also have a live actor in the form of Maximus himself coming through the queueline and interacting with the surroundings and the queuing riders.

It was eventually our turn and we had only ended up waiting roughly half an hour, which is good for a ride with such a poor
capacity due to it's small cars fitting only two at most, with most people choosing to ride single.

Wow this ride is faster than I expected. You wait for the light to turn green and you are launched into a turn in a lit tunnel and then released into the outdoors onto a covered track.

You manually control how fast you go with the levers at either side of you and of course they were only going on one setting - FULL THROTTLE. No restraints to hold you in and a close to the ground seating position give you such a sense of speed. I really like the time trial aspect of the ride and how there is a leaderboard with the quickest riders of the day, full of DAMN KIDS and their LACK OF WEIGHT. GUH.

I should mention that we had been given permission to film POVs on the rides which I was doing so for my dad who can't ride at the moment due to his partially collapsed spine so I decided to film POVs for him. I avoided filming on Blitz Bahn to
start off with as I wasn't too sure how it would work out with the manual controls but I managed to get a POV later in the
day.

Next up was Booster Bike, a Vekoma Motorbike Coaster. Having never been to Flamingoland before, even though I only live a few hours away, this was my first try of this model. As far as I know the layout of this is pretty much the exact same as Velocity but with Booster Bike having an extra bunny hill. Booster Bike was not themed much, if at all, but that can be forgiven as it was the park's first ever coaster. The ride itself was pretty enjoyable, the restraints were a lot comfier
than I thought they would be as I had heard they can be uncomfortable depending on height etc. Good launch into an airtime hill and then some sweeping turns before a couple of bunny hops. Done.

Now it was time for Troy, the GCI woodie, which is regarded by a lot of people as one of the best woodies in Europe. Love the giant Trojan horse outside.

This had a big queue and it was moving pretty slowly despite decent enough operations but they were nice enough to put the second train on. The queue soon started moving and like we had done with Booster Bike, queued extra for front row so we could film a POV. We sat down aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddd... Technical difficulties. Staff were sent to get harnesses on and climbed onto the large sweeping turn just after the drop and did a track inspection whilst we were told to wait by the exit.

Eventually they found that, stupidly, one of the members of the various Scout groups there had lost their neckerchief and it was stuck on the track. No wonder there were signs up saying no neckerchiefs in Walibi the next day, seems to be a common problem. The ride was back up and after the really annoying kids we were queuing with had been
kicked out of the front row they tried to steal we were ready, Go Pro on wrist.

It had been an hour and 20 mins but it was worth it. This is another fantastic woodie, so fast with a great station fly-through and I love the sweeping first drop. I forgot to mention in the first part of the report how much I love the Millennium Flyer trains! So comfy and give a great feeling of exposure(?). We got off and realised the Go Pro had instead decided to not film. URGH. At least it gave us even more of a reason to re-ride later in the day. Troy easily entered my Top 10 although only at number 5, which I felt was lower than it deserved but I couldn't lower the rides above it so 5 would have to do. Joris was higher due to it feeling more out of control and almost as if it was like a bull trying to shake a rider off it's back.

We then tried the newest coaster at the park, Dwervelwind.

(Sorry about the finger in the corner)

This Mack Spinner had been themed pretty well and I do believe a ride like this would work really well at Paulton's. It did however deceive me into thinking it would be tame but this does pack a punch in places. The drop both times we went on forced us down backwards and the highly banked vertical turn, if you like, similar to the ones on the Maurer spinners even gave some negative G's.

We had some lunch in the form of a really good pizza and then went on the park's really weird log flume, Back Stroke, which starts inside one of the warehouses, goes outside and then back inside to finish. You ascend to the top of the first lift hill and are spun round to take the first drop backwards. You then travel a third of the way up the second lift hill and are spun back round to face forward. Quirky! The resulting drop gives us an enjoyable soaking in the hot weather. We then watch the comedy stuntman show, Bello Nock, and then leave slightly before the end to avoid the stampede towards Troy. Another great ride on Troy and we eventually have our POV and got our on ride photos and photopass to allow us to get 4 photos in total. Another photo on Troy for the 'rents, Dwervelwind and my ride on Blitz Bahn (I won in our mini fastest time wins a photo competition) are the photos.

We then tried the fairly relaxing rapids Djengu River before having another ride on Dwervelwind and Booster Bike, and getting the final +1 of the day, Boomerang, which is a decent coaster for the family and provided an amusing queueline fight between a man wearing a camo teeshirt and shorts combo and an old guy who decided to push the camo man's kid because he was pushing in.

We also bought a separate photo on this for €2 which would be emailed to you.

Beautiful.

More re-rides happened before we managed to squeeze in another go on Blitz Bahn after a 50min wait which secured our final POV. It was now the end of the day and we mooched around in the merch shop and I SOMEHOW forgot to get one of the great Troy tees. Sadness. We bought our car park tickets surprisingly quickly considering we left it till the end of the day and we set off back to the hotel with me staring like a really sad puppy as Troy got further and further away from me. </3

Toverland is a great family park and I do feel a lot of the British parks could learn a lot from here. I'd love to have a
Troy here, would work very well at the likes of Drayton Manor or Flamingoland but it's whether they would take the gamble. I honestly believe it would pay off even if the GP are a bit funny over woodies.

Next up: My 100th ride AND also a new number 1...On my worst ever coasters.

 

[mouse]

Really want to go to Efteling, such a beautiful park. Toverland also looks like a decent family park, the bobkart looks particularly fun! May I ask what were you filming POVs for, just personal use?

 

[Mushy999]

Really want to go to Efteling, such a beautiful park. Toverland also looks like a decent family park, the bobkart looks particularly fun! May I ask what were you filming POVs for, just personal use?

Well this past year my dad found out he has collapsed vertebrae in his spine and may not be able to ride coasters again, which understandably he's gutted about, so we decided to try and film on the rides and around the parks as he loves watching vlogs at parks. He ended up riding Black Mamba in April before he knew, painful but what a trooper haha.

If people want me to upload the POVs to Youtube then I can.

I will be uploading the final part of the trip review soon everyone!

 

[Ian]

Did you do the Rapids? They were building them when I went but I never bothered to look at photos/videos after they were done. Did they look good?

 

[Mushy999]

Did you do the Rapids? They were building them when I went but I never bothered to look at photos/videos after they were done. Did they look good?

Yeah, that's Djengu River. It's quite fast to start off with and there's minor splashing but towards the end it does get more like proper rapids and you can get quite wet - I was the only one to avoid getting wet on our raft. :lol: Efteling's rapids are deceptive, be prepared, we came off soaked!

 

[Mushy999]

Sorry for making everyone wait but here is the last part of the trip report!

Day 3 - Walibi Holland

The last park of the trip would also be the furthest away from base camp, Walibi Holland, with an hour and twenty-ish
minutes drive to conquer. The drive was actually really easy and went a lot quicker than we thought it would.

First impression of Walibi Holland is... Well, how it's set in such a cool place! It may feel like in the middle of
nowhere but some of the views you get as you drive down the N306 next to the Vuluwemeer are incredible.

When we eventually parked we... Well, I noticed a remnant of the Six Flags ownership days - six flag poles. Now I've never been to a Six Flags park myself but it seems like they can't grasps the concept of theming from many people's comments on here. The first thing you come across is what looks like a 50s(?) American high street. Now I'm not sure if this was installed by Six Flags but it would make sense, as it seems a bit unusual compared to the rest of the park which isn't at all themed like this. If it wasn't Six Flags then I apologise but they kind of bring it on themselves...

Anyway, first ride of the day would be Condor, because we couldn't wait to ride an SLC. Not. Basically we wanted to get what is widely regarded as the worst one of the lot out of the way. Walking up to it we already knew what we were getting ourselves into with a train coming down the drop filled with people joyfully screaming turned into people moaning. You could actually hear the change in tone as the pain set in. Luckily this was a walk on and we just had to wait for said moaning people to get off after seeing them arrive back in the station with the unhappiest faces I've seen coming off a coaster.

There's a reason why this ride is the worst ride I've ever been on. I think the term is jackhammering but basically it felt like we were being shunted back and forth in our seats going through... Well the entire thing. Angie too rates it as the
worst coaster she's ever been on and that's including a traveling cred that caused one of her friend's to bleed from the
face. I would quite happily destroy this ride myself.

Feeling in the mood for getting more **** out the way we decided to go to Robin Hood. Vekoma rides aren't the most appealing at the best of times but a Vekoma woodie just sounds terrifying. To get to it we took an accidental detour and ended up having to cross this small pond on what looked like a pallet with a fence around it. You had to pull yourself across using a rope. To be fair it was great fun. We then passed the HUSS Top Spin, Excalibur, which we avoided because I don't do flat rides and Angie doesn't like her crotch crushed (she feels bad for guys on these).

We then get to Robin Hood which was near enough another walk-on. This was only running one train and was taking ages to load people as it took ages for the train to stop in the station due to excessive amount of braking. We sat front row and then this ride too decided it would like access to my top 10 worst coasters list. Now I like the simple layout of it and you do get decent amounts of airtime on this but what ruins it is the restraints, which are determined to try and hack your legs off at the waist. I rode this twice during the day to see if I could have a decent ride on it and both times the restraints pinned me down, so unfortunately this would be the second ride at the park to make it's way into my top 10 worst coasters.

We headed back towards the entrance to ride Xpress: Platform 13. It's a cool fact that this is what Rock N' Rollercoaster looks like inside. This had one of the larger queues of the day so it was good that the queueline is really fun with it's horror walk-through to get to the ride. This is however one of those coasters where the queueline is better than the coaster itself. The launch is good but after that it's a lot of headbanging and without the cool Aerosmith soundtrack and disorientation of being in the dark it kind of makes the experience a bit meh. I did like the surprise train explosion at the end though.

I then had a tough decision to make. At this point I was now on 98 creds and had to choose between the highly regarded
Intamin airtime machine, Goliath, or the parks new for 2016 Mack creation, Lost Gravity. In the end Lost Gravity gained
the honour of becoming my 100th cred, but Goliath would still make it's way into my Top 10. Yet another ride that was running on just one train but the relatively short queue was going even slower than it should due to PAINFULLY slow ops. They were just standing there chatting instead of sending already checked trains. Eventually another train was put on but that still didn't really make much of a difference. What should have been a half an hour queue had taken an hour by the time we were finally on.

I was expecting a fast ascent to the top of the lift hill but for some reason the cable lift was only running about as fast as what a chain lift would operate at, anyone know why? Anyway, that was the only downside to what was an incredible ride. Before you know it you've descended down the first drop and you're making you're way up the first airtime hill for a great bit of ejector and after that comes the Stengel Dive. There really needs to be more Stengel Dives as it gives a great sensation. Two really big helices follow and then some bunny hops with more ejector airtime to finish. We then sat on the brake run forages because, again, poor ops. What a ride though.

We decided to ride the log flume, Crazy River, before Lost Gravity and it really is crazy! The first drop is taken backwards,
then a slightly bigger drop forwards before the biggest drop of the ride, a double down similar to Loggers Leap at Thorpe.
We would whore this later on in the day with me continuing my habit of nearly flying out of the logs on log flumes (kneed
Angie in the back on The Flume at AT).

Harnessing my inner Macaulay Culkin.

Now it was time for cred 100 <3
The queue line for Lost Gravity is amazing, the escalator staircase which vibrates, the upside-down lift-shafts, the upside-down clock faces, upside-down helicopter DJ booth, everything. The queue was also going quick despite the small capacity of the trains due to the surprisingly quick ops on this. I really like the four separate baggage holders that only open when your train arrives back.

Now to the ride. If you don't want to know about the ride experience then stop because spoilers.
Two rows of four on the trains with bucket-like seats and, from what I can tell, look kind of similar to those on Blue Fire.
The outer seats on each row are winged and I decided to let Angie ride the wing seat first time because I'm lovely.
With an incredibly fast lift hill we were at the top and what a first drop. It's fairly similar to the Dive Drop on
Swarm but with only lap bars holding you and without the inversion. It's even better in the outer wing seats which I got to
experience later on.

After the drop you then go over a tiny bunny hop which gives you a small pop of ejector and then into the top hat style element and then over a larger bunny hop, giving more sustained ejector, before going round a slightly outward banked curve and into the MCBR.

After this you then go into what is a Dive Drop, which gives plenty of hangtime, into a banked curve and then into a zero-G roll which gives more hangtime. Another banked curve follows before finishing off with a larger banked bunny hop and then another tiny bunny hop.

Yet again, what a ride. Another that goes straight into my top 10 best.

Drako, the park's Zierer Tivoli - Medium was next which wasn't as embarrassing as expected as there were more adults on it than kids!

It was time for the final +1 of the day, Speed of Sound, the refurbished Vekoma Boomerang.

I'd heard good things about this which was surprising for a Boomerang. There was a short wait for this and before long we were into the newly themed station. We then had a nice surprise of the new Vekoma vest restraints so no headbanging! The on-board soundtrack was good and built the tension as you're pulled up into the new tunnel. This was my first Vekoma Boomerang and I did find it quite enjoyable, although I know most are worse than this.

We then had lunch after this, a very enjoyable Teriyaki chicken noodle dish. We also got these tiny travel mugs which we could get free refills of hot drinks in all day! We did the rapids El Rio Grande after this which had the four way splitting rafts
which help get rid of a lot of the standing water in the bottom of the rafts.

The rest of the day was spent doing re-rides, eating Ben and Jerry's and putting Angie on Space Shot which she said was pretty boring and forceless for a drop tower. We then got one more ride in on Lost Gravity where I got to try the wing seat and then I bought a Lost Gravity tshirt. We then got our final refill in our travel mugs and headed to Amsterdam to the eat at the Hard Rock there. We like to try and visit a Hard Rock in each country we visit. On a side note, the cyclists here are so annoying, it's just too chaotic with the amount there.

Overall Walibi Holland was my least favourite park as a whole on the trip with two awful rides but it redeems itself with Goliath and Lost Gravity which are both excellent. If Walibi carry on improving the park with rides like LG and improvements to current rides like Speed of Sound then it will surely get better. The best park overall on the trip has to be Efteling due to the magic atmosphere that it has and it has the best ride of the trip, Joris en de Draak. We would definitely do this trip again but we would probably wait until some new additions in the parks before going again.

Thanks for reading, I hope you all enjoyed the report!

 

[Ian]

I think that's the first time I've seen a positive review of Lost Gravity. From discussions and other reviews I've read, most people say "it's ok". I'm now looking forward to riding it in October!

 

[Mushy999]

Well maybe I'm easily pleased. :lol:
It does have hangtime which I know a lot of people aren't really fussed on, whereas I quite like hangtime. It has most of my favourite elements on coaster within it - hangtime, inversions, comfy seats full of freedom to move. It's also my first large-scale Mack that I've ridden so that might also be why.

It's just really re-rideable for me but I fully understand how most people would probably prefer to whore Goliath instead.