JoshC.'s Pursuit to 400 - Port Aventura World

[JoshC.]

Mirroring my Road to 300 TRs, I'm going to put in a bunch of TRs I've got for the rest of the year, as I aim to reach 400 creds by the end of the year.

After bagging #370 in the form of Hyperia, 30 in 7 months should be achievable, right? Let's see...

Emerald Park
A couple of weeks back, I visited some friends who recently moved to Belfast. Naturally this meant doing to 2 hour-ish drive towards Dublin for Emerald Park.

We arrived a little after park opening and the main thing was that there TONNES of school trips. Late-May seems to be school trip season, I guess.



A bee line was made to the park's new area, Tir na N'Og. The big headliner, Fianna Force, had seemingly just opened for the day, so I joined a short looking queue. Unfortunately, looks deceive, and inside the station building is a hidden cattlepen queue, which is noisy and smells of teenagers. And a good 20-30 minutes wait too. Bleurgh. Also, Irish school trips jump straight to the top of my ranking as the worst to queue with (taking the crown from Dutch school kids). Just noisy, rude and vaping.



There is a nice projection in the indoor queue though, with a bit of a story

Anyways, the coaster. I was sat near the back. It's good fun - smooth and forceful, and as with all new Vekomas, it is graceful in its transitions between elements. And again, like with new Vekoma, it can feel a bit over-engineered and a bit too controlled. The final third features a couple of pops of airtime, which are still a novelty for me on an invert. But it does also peter out a bit towards the end, and maybe could end a few seconds earlier.




Next up was The Quest, the interlinked Vekoma boomerang. Short queue, and almost identical to Saven at Farup, and Light Explorers at Energylandia. The 'stretched out' boomerangs have grown on me, and this is quite nice. The theming for this is very much unfinished though, and it is currently closing early on midweeks.

As well as Quest's theming being unfinished, the area around the ride is very much unfinished. A restaurant is still to be built. It is very sparse and dead. It's a real shame it's had to open like this, but I guess these things happen. Not a good look all the same, mind.



Not finished theming your ride? Just stick up advertising posters instead!


Now time for the pettiest complaint you'll ever hear from me. This tower theming for Quest's spike is cool. Really cool. But they couldn't have designed it so it encapsulates all the supports too? I don't know, it just really annoyed me.

With Tir na N'Og completed, it was time for the park's other headliner, Cú Chulainn, or CuChu, as I'll refer to it as. The queue for this is ugly - a huge outdoor cattlepen in the middle of the ride. Security were patrolling around and looking out for queue jumpers, and in fairness were effectively dealing with them. I queued 40 minutes, although it was reasonably quick-moving which was nice.



Now I'd heard some bad things about CuChu, and I'm not a big fan of Gravity Group woodies. However, I was really surprised with this. The ride was smooth, with some classic woodie charm to it. It had cool laterals, pops of airtime and was a really good length. It doesn't outstay its welcome, although could perhaps end a bit stronger. The only downside to the ride was the awkward overbank turn (which at one point was marketed as an inversion?). That was clunky and unnecessary, and did take away from the ride a bit.


Wood is good.

With the Big 3 out of the way, I sped through the 3 family creds (which fortunately had short queues) whilst my friends did the Zoo (they couldn't bring themselves to do kiddie rides). We then reconvened for the park's water ride: Viking Voyage. It's good fun, with some cool big pieces of theming. It lets itself down by being a bit rough around the edges, but for what was/is a small local park really, it is actually alright.

And that brings an end to a few hours at Emerald Park. It's a nice little park, perhaps a bit overpriced for what it offers (43 euros when booked online, 52 on the gate). I'm obviously not their target audience, and their selection of spinny flat rides does not appeal to me at all. But I guess if they can offer and build big investments like CuChu, Viking Voyage and Tir na N'Og, that's something at least?

---

Round Up
Cred Count before trip: 370
Cred Count after trip: 376
Favourite cred: CuChu
Least favourite cred: The family creds were all +1s tbh

 

[JoshC.]

It's been almost two weeks since I managed to go to Port Aventura World, so now seems like an appropriate time to start the trip report.

But before we get into it, I preface with some waffle, as per. My summer holidays were meant to be filled with theme park adventures, with new parks, plenty of rides on Hyperia on my doorstep, and more. The holidays kicked off with one of, if not, the, worst visit I've had to Alton Towers.I had to jaunt to PA, and as I write, I was meant to be in Gardaland, hitting up MovieLand Italy tomorrow. Sadly, the Italian Trip was cancelled as I had to have a minor surgical procedure on Sunday (waiting 7 hours at A&E for the privilege). Fortunately, I'm almost recovered, and will be fine for my trip to Walibi Rhone-Alpes on Friday, but will have to wait a bit longer to get my 400th now.

Anyways, sad waffle out the way. Port Aventura.

Goons were always shocked when I said I hadn't visited PA. The truth is, it simply never climbed high enough up my radar. I started travelling abroad in 2015. Naturally, all theme parks were new to me, but I also chased parks which were introducing new rides too, to time that well. Obviously, PAW added Ferrari Land in 2018, so it came up on the radar, but it just never worked out. And since then, it just never had the appeal for me. However, this year, it finally climbed high enough up the ladder to be booked.

I booked to stay on site for 1 night, using the Hotel Roulette to get the cheapest offer (ending up in Hotel El Paso), and bought Fastrack for 1 day. I flew in to Reus, which was simple enough, and my first day, I was there just after opening.

First ride of the day was Furius Baco. Baco was the last hydraulic launch coaster I needed in Europe, but one I'd heard such mixed things about. It very much seemed to be a love or hate ride. My first ride was on the 4th row, inside seat and it was...underwhelming. The launch didn't seem that powerful, and it certainly didn't seem that fast. The layout is uninspiring. The ride wasn't rough, but it wasn't comfortable. All in, it just...existed? I was very ambivalent to the whole experience.



On my second day, I didn't have Fastrack but used the single rider line. I bagged an outside seat on the penultimate row. And my god it was dreadful. Shakier than a...milkshake, that's being shook? I don't know of an analogy I'm going for. But it was far from pleasant, let's put it that way. The launch remained meh, and the uninspiring layout was just a pain to get through. So yeah, terrible. No thank you.

Operations were poor, and the lack of offload station really seems to harm the ride, since you're just sat waiting for the train to be sent for ages.



Now we'll go from one extreme to the other. Shambhala. I've ridden two B&M Hypers (Candymonium and Nitro). For context, on my first ride in each case, I found them 'good, but not great'. But on re-rides, I grew to love and appreciate them more. As such, for my first ride, I went in with muted expectations. I very much was saying to myself "I can't judge Shambhala on my first ride".



And yeah, my first ride was fine. Good. But it didn't really do much for me at the same time. I could tell I'd ridden a good ride, and one which I was very happy to re-ride, but yeah, it didn't leave me with a "woah" feeling or anything. I returned later in the day, however, and - as with Candymonium and Nitro - later rides helped me appreciate it more. It's a beast when it comes to floaty moments. It's got one awesome hill just before the splashdown filled with a decent amount of ejector. The whole ride flows so well, and is so easy to ride. I wasn't a fan of the ampersand element; it is just a really long turn at a comparatively sluggish speed.


Looks pretty all around the park

But, it is a ride you can sit on all day if you wanted, and enjoy it. And towards the end of my day, that's what I was doing. I ended up with two front row night rows, which were incredibly enjoyable. I didn't get a back row ride (side note: it did seem that one of the two trains they were running had the back row out of service), but I got close to the back and it was equally good.


Sploosh

Much like with my experiences of the other B&M Hypers, Shambhala is a great, easy-to-ride and re-ride coaster. It cracks into the lower end of my Top 10% (ranking at #32, one above Nitro, but well below Candymonium). But yeah, it doesn't hit the spot for me. I guess that's because I prefer the more intense / rough and ready ejector airtime, which B&M Hypers, including Shambhala, don't really offer.

The now-dwarfed Dragon Khan is an interesting ride. Definitely showing its age, being a bit rough and ready. Only slightly younger than the original Nemesis, but open longer - I wonder how long its shelf life is? But yeah, fun layout, good length, but just a bit uncomfortable. I found the entrance to the zero-g roll on the rough side which took away from my enjoyment.


Was I taking a photo of Shambhala or Dragon Khan? We'll never know for certain...

Pretty much the only ride which wasn't included on the Fastrack package I had was the new coaster, Uncharted. However, with an indoor queue line and advertised 60 minute queue, I didn't mind the idea of being out of the scorching 35 degree Celsius sun for a while.



The exterior is nice

The queue line was great. Interesting to look at and be in, extremely well themed, with story along the way. There's 6 'story scenes' within the queue, which are all exclusively in Spanish. I found this a bit odd considering most of the park offers English translations / subtitles. I found out towards the end of the queue that if you have the PA app, and turn Bluetooth on, you can get translations for each scene, although it is literally just in text form.



Anyways, the ride. I knew enough about the ride (Intamin multi-dimensional coaster), and I think I'd seen a visual of the layout during construction. But I went in ignorant to what the coaster would do. So here's my spoilery thoughts...

Starts off nicely with some theming, and also the car demonstrating that it can spin, which I thought was cool. However, after the first turn, that's where the theming ends, with just a couple of screens for the rest of the ride.

The ride starts with a little launch, whose only purpose is to take you to large screen. I really liked this feature of the ride; whilst you watch the screen, your car is on a turntable, which turns, but the car spins in unison, so you don't know the track has turned. This lends to a sideways launch to a spike, before spinning slightly to face forwards, and going into another launch.

You go through a layout which weaves in and out of itself. This would be so much better if it had some of that theming from the queue line. It also includes a couple more launches.

The ending it pretty cool, with the car stopped looking at screen, before it rotates you so you go backwards down a final, steep, drop whilst looking up at a screen. Really cool idea and a memorable ending tbf.

Non-spoilery thoughts:
-Where's the bloody theming in the ride?
-Cool use of technology
-I like the ending
-Not as good as Mission Ferrari

Tbf, I ended up riding this 3 times throughout my stay, and I did enjoy it. I think I perhaps enjoyed it more because of what it could be, rather than what it actually is. That is to say, the ride system and layout is fun, but the theming lets it down. At the same time, this is Port Aventura, a park not exactly known for highly themed indoor experiences.

Another note: the operations. Dire. There's 3 cars, each seating 12 people. On two of my goes, it wasn't uncommon for there to be all 3 cars in the station / finale scene. Even when operating well, this can't have the greatest throughput for the park.

In terms of coasters, the other major ones are of course Stampida. Now, in most instances, I effectively rank duelling/racing coasters together / side-by-side, as they end up being similar rides that ride very similarly Stampida is an exception, with the Red side being decent, and the Blue side being terrible, in terms of how they ride. It's a mystery as to why, but the Red side runs as you would expect a classic woodie to run, with that liveliness to it, but not affecting the quality. The Blue side feels like an 80 year old rickety structure on the brink of the collapse.

Stampida also highlighted a major thing which felt 'off' to me about the park, which I will talk about in a bit.

The other creds on park are little more than +1s. I was looking forward to Diablo, the Arrow Mine Train, but it half of its layout is lift hills. That did end up being my 350th though.



As for other rides on park...
Hurakan Condor is a large drop tower with small ride cars. This gives the unwanted side effect that towards the end of the drop, it becomes a bit rattly, as the small, light cars can't cope with the speed and duration. Shame, as I like drop towers.



The log flume and rapids are a fun duo. The log flume loses points due to me being in a partially flooded boat which wrecked my shoes. The big splash ride and the splash battle are also fun, giving a lovely water ride selection for the park.

Finally, the Seasame Street dark ride, Street Mission. I love a shooting dark ride. I never really grew up with Seasame Street, so don't have the connection others will have. But I enjoyed this. It's fun and quirky. Sure, it's a screen-based dark ride, but it has enough charm and feel around it that it doesn't matter. There's a big scene towards the end which is great fun. Being more child-orientated too, it was quirky to see a scoring system where the bigger targets (cookies) are worth more points, when usually smaller targets are worth more But at the same time, that made sense within the context of the story. Fab.
Also appreciated the multi-lingual-ness of the attraction.




But PA doesn't just offer rides, no. Shows are a big part of the offering too.

Templo del Fuego is one which I'll chuck in here, even though it's more of an interactive walkthrough experience to a degree. This seemed like a bit of a steal to get on, as friends who have visited the park more frequently say that this seems to be unavailable a lot? Anyways, this was fantastic. The opening scene is primarily spoken in Spanish by the actor, but you can follow along, especially with the odd bit of English sprinkled in. Although, awkwardly, there was an English-speaking group who didn't think so I walked out of a fire escape half way through this scene...

The next scene was all out fire, explosions and drama. The closeness and quality of it all was surprising, and just an utter joy to watch. Up there as one of my absolute favourite theme park fire shows.

There's also the park's end of day show, with loads of floats on the lake, along with fireworks, water effects and god knows what else. Really long show too. Perhaps a little too drawn out, but utterly fantastic to watch. And I think, in general, PA's shows are perhaps their greatest strength.

So, back to the aforementioned, and mystery, thing that felt 'off' with me about PA. It felt like I was in a Roller Coaster Tycoon park. Coaster stations way higher than pathways so they fit in. 1x1 spiral queues and long cattlepens squeezed right by ride stations in the least imaginative way possible. Pathways felt like route marches to certain things, rather than having rides/shops/things integrated in them. Don't get me wrong, the pathways were nice and themed well. But the design of them just felt like it was designed in RCT.
Heck, even Shambhala/Dragon Khan feels like something out of RCT, with one coaster going over another because you don't have space to spread out.

Now, on paper, this isn't an issue. But once I thought this, I couldn't shake it from my head. And I don't know why, but it just drained some enjoyment for me from the park. It made the park feel a bit more rigid and restrictive to me. Logically, it shouldn't. But it did.

I know this sounds silly, because it is. But it did just make things feel off.


As a park, PA looks lovely and has a solid selection of rides to be fair. But it does feel like it's resting on its laurels a bit. The newer additions (Street Mission and Uncharted) were totally needed and clearly missing pieces of the puzzle. Still, the park needs a bit of kick up the butt and a reset to just feel more complete. Oh, and sort out the bloody operations.



Ferrari World
I visited this on the first day. Beyond the creds, I wasn't interested in anything else here, so this was a cred run of a park.

And herein lies the first issue. Ferrari World is apparently a "park". But they have just stretched out what is a theme park area into a park. And really, they stretched out Red Force into an area in the first place. So this whole park is simply one ride which has been stretched out to be so much more.

So, I got to the park just before opening, and headed straight to Red Force. The ride hadn't even tested that day. But 2 test runs about 15 minutes later, and it was open.

It ran well for about 10 minutes, before then shutting down for about 45 minutes. No announcements or apology. Just stood waiting, fortunately under a canopy, but still in 35 degree heat. Another 20 minutes and I was on. I tried to get front row, but with no front row queue and a firm "No requests" policy, I was given the penultimate row.

And eurgh. The launch starts off good. It accelerates. And accelerates. It's fast. Then faster. But then, for the final third of the launch track, it is rattly and bouncy and horrible. The only way I can describe it as if you're driving a manual car and put the car in the wrong gear, except you're going 100mph. The top hat is fine.

Then the breaks. You're carrying such speed going into them and you slow down so much so quickly that it's a proper little gut punch. Painfully quick deceleration.

It's a shame as I like Stealth and love Kingda Ka. So I thought another launch/top hat combo ride would be a joy. But nope. This was just bad. Red Force? More like Red Farce.


The one redeeming feature: you can get very close to the top hat.

I picked up the +1 in Junior Red Force then left. Wasn't interested in the 1hr+ queue for the flying theatre, and I wanted to explore the main park more. Maybe if this wasn't a whole separate park, and just an area, I'd have gone back. Oh well.


Hotel El Paso and Back to Reus
Just some quick words here. Hotel El Paso is nice enough, nothing crazy but does the job. Breakfast was lovely.

The journey back to Reus airport was a bit more of a faff though. The main PA website recommends a couple of ways to travel between the airport and park. One was the Contigo bus service, in conjunction with JTG, where you could pre-book a shuttle bus which goes directly between the airport and hotels. You have to pre-book so the shuttle bus knows which hotels to go to. The timing worked out, so I booked it. I asked Hotel Reception where to wait, and waited for the bus.

Nothing came at the slated time. Website says allow 10 minutes, so I did. Still nothing. Tried calling the recommended number of the company, and it just rung out. Went to hotel reception to see if they could help; all they could do was provide the same number. Tried it a couple more times whilst waiting for about 20-30minutes longer, still nothing.

Ended up having to ask hotel reception to arrange me a taxi. Cost wasn't as extortionate as it could have been (just under 30 euros), but still not ideal.

Reus airport is small, and there was an annoying Spanish family not letting anyone into the queue for the security check for 5 minutes for...reasons. They were literally just stood/sat outside the entrance to the security check queue, not letting anyone go pass. Took a security guard having a small conversation with them before they entered the queue. But yeah, just annoying.


Anyways, Port Aventura World final thoughts.
It's a nice enough place, but not fully a "me" place. Happy to have ticked it off, but not in any way itching to return any time soon.

Round Up
Cred Count before trip: 376
Cred Count after trip: 387
Favourite cred: Shambhala
Least favourite cred: El Diablo
Biggest surprise: Templo del Fuego
Biggest disappointment: Red Farce
Fake Milestones:
-350th steel cred: El Diablo
-75th park: Port Aventura
Other fun things: I'm a teacher, and I've come to realise I will almost always bump into students I teach when I visit Thorpe, being my local park. I didn't expect to bump into one of my students in PA though, which I did...