Italian Culture Part 1: Slayed hits Mirabilandia!

[Slayed]

Right now I'm in the middle of my honeymoon, and having spent 6 days gorging ourselves with Italian high culture, it's only fair that we drop into a theme park or two on the way around, purely for balance .

So yesterday after leaving Florence we drove north and east for a bit, and despite my spastic satnav taking us the wrong way past Bologna (and subsequently getting lost in the middle of nowhere for a bit) we found our way to Mirabilandia!

We arrived at 1pm, which was 2 hours later than we'd planned, so by now it was hot and heaving! There's a water park attached and at least half the people were walking around practically naked, not always to good effect! We were happy to feel British and overdressed .

The park is nicely laid out with decent theming and nice scenery, and very much aimed at families - there's not a huge amount of thrill to be had, and it gets a little crowded in sections, but that's unavoidable when it's so busy, and it's generally a pleasant place to be.

Catherine's not much of a coaster fan, and we'd only been to Oakwood together before where I'm fairly relaxed. She was therefore rather taken aback when Slayed the CoasterGeek
suddenly emerged and took photos of everything in sight while marching straight in the direction of the nearest B&M like a man posessed! Well what else could I do? :lol:

Look, it's over there! Run!

It's OK, she hasn't divorced me yet .

Behold the glory that is Katun!

I got Cath a drink and a spot in the shade then made a beeline to the station:-

Having seen how busy the park was, I was expecting a fair queue. But they were running 3 trains with full B&M efficiency, and it was practically a walk-on! I went straight for the back .

WOW! Full-on airtime down that massive drop, on a B&M! Awesomeness! You get all the usual great force but with added airtime, I loved it . It's a teeny bit rough occasionally but who cares, it's pretty much the perfect balance for a B&M suspended. I want one!

The theming is great too, even the drop-away floor has been made to resemble tiling. I still think Mamba's overall theming is better but it's nice to see, although I'm not convinced about that Stargate!

Naturally with such a short queue I would normally have whored the beast to death, but we had limited time in the park and I knew there was an Intamin launch waiting that had apparently been down that morning, so we moved on.

I'll type up the rest later on today, we're off for a walk now around the shore of Lake Garda in the summer sun ^_^.

 

[Emmett]

Nice one Slayed, looking forward to seeing what you thought of iSpeed. Great to see hear Katun was impressive as I'm heading there soon and you don't really see too many reports from there and its hard to know what queue times will be like.

Well done on sneaking some parks into the honeymoon schedule.

 

[peep]

Haha, glad to hear you're having a great honeymoon Slayed (been following your tweets on Twitter anyways ). The park looks awesome, shame it was busy. I want to ride Katun now, looks and sounds amazing.

 

[Martyn H]

Looks like you're having fun

Glad to see you like Katun. Back-row first drop airtime on Katun is awesome <3 Also was the queue line full up because it looks like it was? And was the queue still only like 10 minutes (Well 10 minutes running 1 train)?

Looking forward to seeing the next bit, and seeing what you think of iSpeed.

 

[Slayed]

I hear it's raining back in the UK, so just to make you feel better, here's what I'm putting up with:-

^_^

On with the report!

Next to Katun is Ghostville - some kind of walk-through? It had a 30 minute queue so we left it.

Also nearby is Pakal, another boring Wild Mouse - these days if they don't have decent theming I'm not interested!

There were quite a few water rides around which were hugely popular with the natives, not surprising given the weather and their state of undress! They all had about an hour's queue so we bypassed them as well .

Next I spied another coaster - Family Adventure, a junior Vekoma. Not bad for it's type like, not much in the way of theming though.

I managed to talk Cath into getting on this one! It's about as adventurous with coasters as she's willing to get after Speed made her scream a lot (she likes woodies though ).

Explorer the powered Mack was boredom, and I failed with the kiddie coaster, Lepretto Express, as Cath refused to back me up and I wasn't doing it in lonely peado style :lol:.

We were gradually making our way over to the other side of the park, and look what we stumbled across!

It's nicely laid out in it's own area, although as it's near the edge of the park it's a little difficult to get good coverage of it, particularly the station.

Having seen it start up back up only recently, and knowing what Intamin launches are like, I expected a bit of a queue so Cath left me to it.

This building looks quite nice on the outside doesn't it?

Inside, this is what greets you when they're only running 1 sodding train!

Oh yes, joy! The other 2 trains were idle on the transfer track (they eventually had workmen on one of them), and since the trains are so short, and they were having about a 2.5 minute turnaround, the throughput was diabolical! Not good enough for 15 million euros with no theming IMHO.

And of course, it broke down for 30 minutes, needed a reset and launched the usual empty trains. There was relieved clapping from the weary cattlepen at that point!

Because the front row queue runs around the edge of the pen, it's a nightmare getting decent photos if you're in the normal queue; here's what I grabbed:-

Launch!

Whee! Down the Top Hat.

Into an inversion.

Over the top.

Eventually, after about 2 hours (I estimated they got through 300 riders, yes I was that bored), I got into the station! Or should I say engine block:-

I jumped in the back row, pulled down the restraints, watched the lights change and we were off! As Intamin launches go it's very middle of the road, a bit quicker than Speed Monster but that's it. We're definitely spoilt by Rita and Stealth in that regard in the UK.

Speed Monster is probably the best comparison for iSpeed, since they're both Intamin launches that actually try and do something other than a Top Hat. Speaking of which, up and over the Hat was boring, but down was great, felt like actual airtime! One of the best parts of the ride for me.

Into the rest of the track, and OH NOES herein starts the neck chopping marathon! The little airtime rise is nice but good grief the neck choppage is ridiculous! It makes Rita feel like a Swedish massage! Even Cath could see it.

I like the way it carries speed through the layout, it's very smooth otherwise and surpisingly quiet, but the neck abuse ruins it for me. Speed Monster may be too smooth for my tastes, but at least you won't need a chiropractor after it!

One more ride of note remained, and it's just around the corner from iSpeed. At first I thought the local graffiti artists had been at it again:-

Ah, it's actually the Yanks instead!

I would have thought they'd have tidied up after that Cloverfield monster by now though:-

OK, so Reset is really another dark laser shooty ride, but with the added bonus of a spinning car and some nice apocalyptic theming.

It may seem odd to have a destroyed New York in Italy, but the locals absolutely loved it! They were clambering all over the scenery to get photos. Eventually I got a clear head shot:-

There's a decidedly camp ORP to come, but you'll have to wait for that one!

It was time for us to make our exit, but we had to sample the merch first! While hunting for my customary cap, surprisingly for a family park I came across some fanny:-

In fact, there was tons of bear fanny to be had!

And with that we were on our way. Mirabilandia is a nice family park with plenty of family attractions, but definitely needed iSpeed to add to the thrill quotient - they seriously need to get that throughput sorted though ! If it were closer I'd be around to whore Katun .

Gardaland tomorrow, report hopefully on Thursday .

 

[peep]

That iSpeed queue does not look like a fun game. The theming for that laser shooting ride is awesome, was it like that inside too?

Really looking forward to your next report.

 

[Slayed]

That iSpeed queue does not look like a fun game. The theming for that laser shooting ride is awesome, was it like that inside too?

Pretty much, it wasn't the longest ride but it was well done. I couldn't take photos inside as I had a laser & a joystick to play with!

The hotel's wifi is about to go off now *cries*.

 

[rollermonkey]

WOW.

Is that the same Mirabilandia that I went to back in 2002?


Awesome stuff!

 

[Emmett]

Balls, looks like I will be taking the Q-Bot and hopefully the park won't be too packed when the schools are back.

Interesting to hear what you thought of iSpeed Slayed and I've heard its been getting mixed reviews. Nice too see some of the rest of the attractions too.

 

[marc]

Good reports Slayed.

Glad to see you are having a good time

Were you pushed a lot in the queue? I remember going skiing in Italy and they really hate queuing and peoples personal space.

 

[nadroJ]

Hehe bear fanny =]

 

[Tomatron]

Katun looks amazing!!

But iSpeed one train operation makes me sad. I don't envy you for having to queue through all of that.