Feel like the last person in the world to head out to these parks, but here we go…
Day 0 – Travelling
Train was the obvious choice here – as you’ll see in the summary the longest drive of the trip was from Bristol to Folkstone, so flying and renting a car and all the other faff that comes with that (getting to/from airport, sitting around for hours, liquid volume restrictions, car hire pick-up/drop-off faff, cost, etc) was ruled out pretty quickly.
Drive from Bristol, dinner and meeting the guys was a doddle, and when we rolled into the DESERTED Folkstone terminal at 9pm, they were quick to usher us onto the train that’d be leaving next. Jackpot – another hour or so chopped off the journey. Train is pretty easy – other than a bit of grief following a big SUV into the train and them struggling to fit (surprised they weren’t pushed into the “large vehicles” lane, to be honest).
35mins later, arrived in “le France”, and in no time we were at the cheap and basic hotel as a place to crash for the night. Great stuff, creds tomorrow, let’s go.
Day 1 – Plopsaland De Panne
On the road, and shortly in the park. A slightly rude employee in the parking lot (I left a sizable gap between my car and the adjacent one as there were children running about and they had both doors wide open, and the parking attendant got awfully pissy), and wander past the “big door” and we were immediately heading for the main event – Ride To Happiness.
You get a good view (possibly the best?) of Heidi from the car park.
Ride To Happiness was struggling with a bit of downtime first thing – was sending a lot of trains round empty – but it looked increasingly like they were making progress, so we stuck it out and let everyone else pass up the wait, and ended up within the first few trains of the day.
Good opportunity to watch it cycle and build the excitement.
Some good, albeit slow spinning happening with the empty trains.
After a couple of cycles with a ride-op, the queue was opened and we quickly climbed the stairs into the station. Overall, aesthetic of the queue and station and the overall quality is very good. Onto the ride then – well… very ‘not Plopsaland’, I would say. The roll out of the station is disgusting, but once that is over and done with, the first launch packs a solid kick and the climb into the top hat thing provides a solid pop of ejector. Drop off the top hat thing is neutered by the trims, as expected, but the banana roll works really well with the spinning cars, as does the zero-g roll after the loop (loop can be a bit of a non-event if the spinning isn’t in your favour). It’s brilliant, but it’s such a left turn from them that I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit wasted – especially when you see how dead the ride is later in the day while everything else holds a decent queue.
It’s also a bit awkward being turned over above someone’s head standing below – feel like some sort of grotesque exhibition piece.
Second launch is good too, with a decent push and enhanced with the airtime hill. The flying snake dive thing is everything I wanted it to be – chaos – and the following airtime hills are also brilliant. Ride was basically a walk on, so grabbed a front row lap second time and this was much better than the back. The push up into the first hill and into the flying snake dive were really quite powerful moments in the front with the full momentum of the train.
Boooooost!
Great stuff. Let’s tick off the rest of the bits we need, then come back for more.
Next we rode Heidi – a new coaster for me – and it was expectedly good. These are great all round family fun attractions, and are great stepping stone coasters. The theme was cute too, so bravo there.
We mooched round the rest of the park, grabbed a coffee, got some photos, that sort of thing. Here’s a little bit of a dump.
Huh, Drayton Manor De Panne, much?
Up into the high turn.
It’s fantastic over the lake.
The loop frames the banana roll quite well too.
How about a blurry one?
And another arty one.
We made our way round to Anubis, the only coaster of interest to us in the park, and I have to say that façade really does stand out. The coaster itself? Trains are gross, launch is fab, top hat is decent, pull out of the top hat is terrible, rest of the coaster from there is actually much better than I remembered. Still holds up pretty well, I think.
Up and over they go.
Yeah, really excellent façade – inside the station itself, not so much.
After that, we rode the log flume which has recently been rethemed (not made much effort to find our how recently, mind). Water was filthy and stinky, which was a shame, and the flume itself is fairly unexciting, but it does have a fantastic double drop which always makes these things worth a ride!
Had a ‘snack’ of fries from the food place next to Ride To Happiness, which was… interesting, to say the least. What seemed on the picture like a simple €5 snack, turned out to be a sizable portion. Verging on a meal for one, perhaps a snack for two or three.
Finally, it was back round to lap Ride to Happiness to close out the day.
Wowza.
I found this second launch to be very photogenic too, especially with the sun shining later in the day.
So, to round out the day – Ride To Happiness.
I wrote a fair bit (more than I planned) in the Last Cred Review thread, so I will lift most of the text from there in the first instance.
We left the park impressed with Ride To Happiness, but I think unanimously not feeling quite as blown away as we maybe expected to feel. Expectations too high, perhaps? Too dependent on a good spin, I think so. For our preferences, anyway.
Goodbye!
We’d decided to base ourselves in Leuven (home of Stella – don’t you know? Neither did we, until we saw the brewery which is rather hard to miss), which was right in the middle of the parks for the next few days, and had opted this time to stay centrally. What a success, it was a lovely town with a great atmosphere, good food and lively scene and our apartment in the city centre was a dream. Happy, happy goons.
Next park coming soon…
Day 0 – Travelling
Train was the obvious choice here – as you’ll see in the summary the longest drive of the trip was from Bristol to Folkstone, so flying and renting a car and all the other faff that comes with that (getting to/from airport, sitting around for hours, liquid volume restrictions, car hire pick-up/drop-off faff, cost, etc) was ruled out pretty quickly.
Drive from Bristol, dinner and meeting the guys was a doddle, and when we rolled into the DESERTED Folkstone terminal at 9pm, they were quick to usher us onto the train that’d be leaving next. Jackpot – another hour or so chopped off the journey. Train is pretty easy – other than a bit of grief following a big SUV into the train and them struggling to fit (surprised they weren’t pushed into the “large vehicles” lane, to be honest).
35mins later, arrived in “le France”, and in no time we were at the cheap and basic hotel as a place to crash for the night. Great stuff, creds tomorrow, let’s go.
Day 1 – Plopsaland De Panne
On the road, and shortly in the park. A slightly rude employee in the parking lot (I left a sizable gap between my car and the adjacent one as there were children running about and they had both doors wide open, and the parking attendant got awfully pissy), and wander past the “big door” and we were immediately heading for the main event – Ride To Happiness.
You get a good view (possibly the best?) of Heidi from the car park.
Ride To Happiness was struggling with a bit of downtime first thing – was sending a lot of trains round empty – but it looked increasingly like they were making progress, so we stuck it out and let everyone else pass up the wait, and ended up within the first few trains of the day.
Good opportunity to watch it cycle and build the excitement.
Some good, albeit slow spinning happening with the empty trains.
After a couple of cycles with a ride-op, the queue was opened and we quickly climbed the stairs into the station. Overall, aesthetic of the queue and station and the overall quality is very good. Onto the ride then – well… very ‘not Plopsaland’, I would say. The roll out of the station is disgusting, but once that is over and done with, the first launch packs a solid kick and the climb into the top hat thing provides a solid pop of ejector. Drop off the top hat thing is neutered by the trims, as expected, but the banana roll works really well with the spinning cars, as does the zero-g roll after the loop (loop can be a bit of a non-event if the spinning isn’t in your favour). It’s brilliant, but it’s such a left turn from them that I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit wasted – especially when you see how dead the ride is later in the day while everything else holds a decent queue.
It’s also a bit awkward being turned over above someone’s head standing below – feel like some sort of grotesque exhibition piece.
Second launch is good too, with a decent push and enhanced with the airtime hill. The flying snake dive thing is everything I wanted it to be – chaos – and the following airtime hills are also brilliant. Ride was basically a walk on, so grabbed a front row lap second time and this was much better than the back. The push up into the first hill and into the flying snake dive were really quite powerful moments in the front with the full momentum of the train.
Boooooost!
Great stuff. Let’s tick off the rest of the bits we need, then come back for more.
Next we rode Heidi – a new coaster for me – and it was expectedly good. These are great all round family fun attractions, and are great stepping stone coasters. The theme was cute too, so bravo there.
We mooched round the rest of the park, grabbed a coffee, got some photos, that sort of thing. Here’s a little bit of a dump.
Huh, Drayton Manor De Panne, much?
Up into the high turn.
It’s fantastic over the lake.
The loop frames the banana roll quite well too.
How about a blurry one?
And another arty one.
We made our way round to Anubis, the only coaster of interest to us in the park, and I have to say that façade really does stand out. The coaster itself? Trains are gross, launch is fab, top hat is decent, pull out of the top hat is terrible, rest of the coaster from there is actually much better than I remembered. Still holds up pretty well, I think.
Up and over they go.
Yeah, really excellent façade – inside the station itself, not so much.
After that, we rode the log flume which has recently been rethemed (not made much effort to find our how recently, mind). Water was filthy and stinky, which was a shame, and the flume itself is fairly unexciting, but it does have a fantastic double drop which always makes these things worth a ride!
Had a ‘snack’ of fries from the food place next to Ride To Happiness, which was… interesting, to say the least. What seemed on the picture like a simple €5 snack, turned out to be a sizable portion. Verging on a meal for one, perhaps a snack for two or three.
Finally, it was back round to lap Ride to Happiness to close out the day.
Wowza.
I found this second launch to be very photogenic too, especially with the sun shining later in the day.
So, to round out the day – Ride To Happiness.
I wrote a fair bit (more than I planned) in the Last Cred Review thread, so I will lift most of the text from there in the first instance.
We left the park impressed with Ride To Happiness, but I think unanimously not feeling quite as blown away as we maybe expected to feel. Expectations too high, perhaps? Too dependent on a good spin, I think so. For our preferences, anyway.
Goodbye!
We’d decided to base ourselves in Leuven (home of Stella – don’t you know? Neither did we, until we saw the brewery which is rather hard to miss), which was right in the middle of the parks for the next few days, and had opted this time to stay centrally. What a success, it was a lovely town with a great atmosphere, good food and lively scene and our apartment in the city centre was a dream. Happy, happy goons.
Next park coming soon…
(I really need to invest in a new tin foil hat haha.)
(raises that question again, is good balance or uneven weight best?)
(English subtitles available)
