Peter Immelmann
Mega Poster
Voltron:
I visited Europa Park last week's Friday for the first time in a couple of years. The weather was fabulous, and the crowd levels were actually lower than Queue Times predicted. I had a blast, enjoying the park's great atmosphere. I'm not sure if they've improved that much over the years or if my perception has changed, but I loved the place and could easily have spent another day there.
Now, let's talk about Voltron. I was super curious to find out how it rides, having heard mixed reviews. Some people said it tracked horribly, while others gave glowing reports. In particular, Canobie Coaster's positive review and its climb to #20 on Captain Coaster raised my expectations.
Regarding the appearance, Voltron looks fantastic in real life, even better than in pictures. The Wardenclyffe Tower above the entrance building and the upwards-launched trains are stunning to look at. Also, the queue line is very well done. In particular, I adore the smart setup of the queue lines, lockers, and the single rider/regular line merge point, which allows for such smooth operation. Together with the moving station, this is such a capacity monster despite just 16 riders per train. The only drawback is that you really can't choose your row. Well, later in the day, I actually spotted a few groups of people who did pick a row, ignoring the operator's instructions, which in turn led to some confusion and eventually to an e-stop of the moving platform.
Now let me talk about the ride experience. First, let's address the elephant in the room: the ride's smoothness, or better to say its lack of it. Yes, even though some weeks have passed since opening day and much has been talked about possible adjustments, I didn't get a single ride on it that was satisfactorily smooth. Well, the inner seat was kind of okay, but still not great. However, the wing seats were very rattly—not unbearably rough, but way too rough to call it a minor issue. The thing is, this coaster offers an action-packed, dense layout, keeping up a good level of dynamic changes of g-forces throughout the course. That's quite a bit to take in on its own, but if the g-forces are messed up by constant vibration or rattle, it just blurs your ride experience and makes everything feel like a big mess
At least that's what it felt like on my first ride, which was in the right wing seat of row two in the early afternoon (I forgot to look up the train number). After that ride, I was very disappointed. However, I immediately jumped on it again as I knew this ride could be very temperamental. Unfortunately, I got row two again, but I could at least get the right inner seat this time (train 5). This was definitely smoother but still underwhelming. That's very weird as, on paper, that ride should have been great, but it just didn't deliver as I'd hoped. Somehow, the ride didn't generate that wow-feeling I'd expected, and the elements felt poorly designed and unbalanced.
Fortunately, I came back later in the day before the park closed and got one more ride on it in row one, right wing seat (train 7). This ride was equally rough as my first, and that still bothered me. However, for some reason, this ride was significantly better than the previous ones and actually fun. Not sure if it is physically possible that row one and two can feel that differently, but the forces seemed to work out much better here. The hang-time in the first loop felt right, the one in the stall felt more sustained, and so did the following airtime hill. In fact, the top-hat and wave-turn really shined and displayed what the coaster could do. Maybe it's the unobstructed view that helps your senses to unravel the mess the roughness does to the g-forces you experience? I really don't know. Definitely, this coaster raises a couple of question marks for me.
Sadly, I didn't get a fourth ride on it as the ride broke down when we were on the final brake run, and we were stuck there for quite a while. When I got off and went back to the entrance, they had just closed the queue for the day... It would have been nice to experience the back of the train as well. However, I'm happy I finally got on this highly anticipated ride.
Now, how would I rank the ride? I really don't know, as I feel like I haven't gotten a good sense of it. My first two rides definitely wouldn't have supported a spot anywhere near my top 20, while the last one would have cracked my top 20 at least. If it were smooth, though, I think it could rank quite a bit higher (and I still have to try riding in the back of the train). However, since you cannot pick a seat and since queue times at Europa usually do not allow for a ton of re-rides, this is what you get, so yeah, I am a bit disappointed after all. Funnily, the one thing that I suspected could be an issue from watching the POV, namely the break of pacing due to the turntable in the middle of the ride, didn't bother me at all. Well, sure, they could have done a bit more with the theming there, and I'd be all for it, but honestly, it's over way quicker than it feels when watching the POV.
I visited Europa Park last week's Friday for the first time in a couple of years. The weather was fabulous, and the crowd levels were actually lower than Queue Times predicted. I had a blast, enjoying the park's great atmosphere. I'm not sure if they've improved that much over the years or if my perception has changed, but I loved the place and could easily have spent another day there.
Now, let's talk about Voltron. I was super curious to find out how it rides, having heard mixed reviews. Some people said it tracked horribly, while others gave glowing reports. In particular, Canobie Coaster's positive review and its climb to #20 on Captain Coaster raised my expectations.
Regarding the appearance, Voltron looks fantastic in real life, even better than in pictures. The Wardenclyffe Tower above the entrance building and the upwards-launched trains are stunning to look at. Also, the queue line is very well done. In particular, I adore the smart setup of the queue lines, lockers, and the single rider/regular line merge point, which allows for such smooth operation. Together with the moving station, this is such a capacity monster despite just 16 riders per train. The only drawback is that you really can't choose your row. Well, later in the day, I actually spotted a few groups of people who did pick a row, ignoring the operator's instructions, which in turn led to some confusion and eventually to an e-stop of the moving platform.
Now let me talk about the ride experience. First, let's address the elephant in the room: the ride's smoothness, or better to say its lack of it. Yes, even though some weeks have passed since opening day and much has been talked about possible adjustments, I didn't get a single ride on it that was satisfactorily smooth. Well, the inner seat was kind of okay, but still not great. However, the wing seats were very rattly—not unbearably rough, but way too rough to call it a minor issue. The thing is, this coaster offers an action-packed, dense layout, keeping up a good level of dynamic changes of g-forces throughout the course. That's quite a bit to take in on its own, but if the g-forces are messed up by constant vibration or rattle, it just blurs your ride experience and makes everything feel like a big mess
At least that's what it felt like on my first ride, which was in the right wing seat of row two in the early afternoon (I forgot to look up the train number). After that ride, I was very disappointed. However, I immediately jumped on it again as I knew this ride could be very temperamental. Unfortunately, I got row two again, but I could at least get the right inner seat this time (train 5). This was definitely smoother but still underwhelming. That's very weird as, on paper, that ride should have been great, but it just didn't deliver as I'd hoped. Somehow, the ride didn't generate that wow-feeling I'd expected, and the elements felt poorly designed and unbalanced.
Fortunately, I came back later in the day before the park closed and got one more ride on it in row one, right wing seat (train 7). This ride was equally rough as my first, and that still bothered me. However, for some reason, this ride was significantly better than the previous ones and actually fun. Not sure if it is physically possible that row one and two can feel that differently, but the forces seemed to work out much better here. The hang-time in the first loop felt right, the one in the stall felt more sustained, and so did the following airtime hill. In fact, the top-hat and wave-turn really shined and displayed what the coaster could do. Maybe it's the unobstructed view that helps your senses to unravel the mess the roughness does to the g-forces you experience? I really don't know. Definitely, this coaster raises a couple of question marks for me.
Sadly, I didn't get a fourth ride on it as the ride broke down when we were on the final brake run, and we were stuck there for quite a while. When I got off and went back to the entrance, they had just closed the queue for the day... It would have been nice to experience the back of the train as well. However, I'm happy I finally got on this highly anticipated ride.
Now, how would I rank the ride? I really don't know, as I feel like I haven't gotten a good sense of it. My first two rides definitely wouldn't have supported a spot anywhere near my top 20, while the last one would have cracked my top 20 at least. If it were smooth, though, I think it could rank quite a bit higher (and I still have to try riding in the back of the train). However, since you cannot pick a seat and since queue times at Europa usually do not allow for a ton of re-rides, this is what you get, so yeah, I am a bit disappointed after all. Funnily, the one thing that I suspected could be an issue from watching the POV, namely the break of pacing due to the turntable in the middle of the ride, didn't bother me at all. Well, sure, they could have done a bit more with the theming there, and I'd be all for it, but honestly, it's over way quicker than it feels when watching the POV.
). There is nothing clamping you in at your waist and your legs are freely dangling. Even as a theme-park veteran, relatively speaking, I had to concede to myself, for perhaps the first time in memory, that I was actually frightened to ride a rollercoaster. Oh it's moving... too late to back out now. Great.
) presented in spectacular ALPHABETICAL ORDER.
) was more like the 'curly loop' emoji (
). But... imagine a ride with a 'double curly loop' (
)! It would look a bit like glasses (
) from the right angle and distance. Yeah.
). If it's a long layout, fine, throw in a rolling launch halfway through (see Taron). If you insist on having a swing launch as a selling point, fine, just stick it at the start of the ride and cut out all of that pointless faff at the beginning (see Icebreaker).
