One thing I forgot to mention about Mirabilandia; it was the day we invented cred songs. We didn't invent them as such, as several ride songs already exist (such as "Starflyers are meant to fly" by Nick Minaj). Two that stuck in my mind are "Where's your cred at?" by Basement Jaxx and the one Chris did to Mambo Number 5.
Anyway, on to our penultimate day -
Gardaland. We all knew that this would be the busiest day of the trip. I expected queues, burdenous loading and general faff. Sometimes expecting the worst makes the day a little more acceptable.
I woke up feeling quite good, despite my restless night's sleep with my bad back. The pain had travelled down to my foot so I decided that I wouldn't go over the top at Gardaland. I would only ride the B&Ms and gentle rides.
Peter's car arrived before Vadge's so we hung about in the ticket area looking at the new fountain. Once we had all arrived, we made a beeline for
Sequoia Adventure, or Martyn Hoyer Adventure, as me and Nic childishly called it.
I hated it in 2011 and, with the possibility of doing my back in, I sat out with Nic and peep. The faces on the others as they entered the queue line looked like they had stepped in dog poo, and then were bitten by the offending dog. Oh how I smirked to myself as the ride took it's victims. I've been to enough parks to know the difference between screams of scared delight and terrible pain. The noises I heard were definitely the latter. I tried to imagine myself selling this ride to a potential client. The only benefits I could think of were the exposed restraint system and it's small footprint. Imo, it's not a ride. It's a contraption.
(I did take some better photos using Peter's camera which I hope he'll post!)
With everybody now experiencing the bad feeling in my spine, we went to the
Elongated Apple Coaster. I sat out and played with an Abandoned Dog who was randomly walking around. Another abandoned dog was tied to a pushchair, which was in turn tied to the bench I was sat on. Pushchair Dog kept jumping towards me. It managed to do so and pulled over the pushchair. From underneath the pushchair appeared Another Dog! Hurrah! I uprighted the pushchair and Another Dog jumped back in the seat whilst I sat stroking Abandoned and Pushchair Dog. Evil Dog Woman came over after riding the coaster with her daughter, shouted something Italian at me, smacked both Abandoned and Pushchair Dog and walked off. I hope she understood the English word "bitch." Anyway, have a photo of Rachael, Dan, Chris and Vadge sitting on the arse end of a carrot looking caterpillar (or caterpillar looking carrot).
The next box to tick was
Magic Mountain. There was nothing magical or mountainish about it, so Nic and I sat out to eat ice cream in the nearby "relaxing area". We watched a toddler eat his lunch and then point at the coaster, to which Nic and I simultaneously said "Cred!". If that kid learns one English word in his lifetime and it's "cred", that will be our doing.
We did the
Tomb Blaster That's Not Tomb Blaster shooter afterwards. It's quite good but the guns are odd. You have to hold the light thing over the the target then press the trigger to score. It's really well themed. I enjoye sit and was glad to ride something.
Our next stop was
The Car Park of The Pirates of The Caribbean Rip-Off. This is one of those scenic boat rides with different pirate type scenes. The queue line is well themed and even features a grumpy Italian lady who reluctantly lets people back ahead of her after she has queue jumped
The ride is fairly unremarkable, the highlight being the escalator out of the ride area, hence its car park (that's a parking lot, Yanks!) tag.
With our little dark ride interlude over, we had to get back to the coasters to stop people getting cred anxiety. The nearest was
Raptor. I didn't want to stand in a vile queue for 40mins so we got front-seat fast passes and were on and off in 10mins.
I adore this ride. It is easily top 10, nay, top 3. It's almost perfect but there's something that I can't put my finger on that prevents it even featuring in my top 10. From the moment I'm in the station waiting to go until I'm sat on the brake run, I feel special. The ride experience is damn right gorgeous.
I love the swooping drop, the turn and dash down towards the ground before it lifts up of the cliff face. There's a quick inversion, which is almost hidden from view, before it heads under the first near miss.The second inversion of the queue area feels quite slow and, which gave me enough time to appreciate how compact and tight the footprint is.
Then there's the sexy helix that almost dips riders sitting on the left in the pool of water before methodically going through four well themed near misses, one after the other (note the opening date on the support - one for the goons, I love it!).
But why doesn't it make my Top 10? It's got everything I look for in a coaster. It has terrain (manmade and "natural") hugging, it has a fun-packed footprint that cleverly goes covers the entire ride area, including the queue and station. Riders can't really see what element of the coaster is happening next - it's full of surprises. BUT WHY IS IT NOT TOP 10? Maybe because I find it forceless. As an experience, it's awesome, but as something that can get my adrenaline pumping, it fails. To look at and to ride, Raptor is one of the best coasters in the world but it lacks soul. It's almost too perfect what with it's well positioned and clinical layout, near misses and theme. Something like Raptor needs a edge, a bit of grit. That's why I rate Swarm over Raptor. Swarm has good forces and a more exciting layout. Swarm might seem shorter than Raptor but Swarm is always doing something, whereas Raptor glides formulaically, as if it has been engineered
too well. Arrrgghhh, it's only my fickleness preventing Raptor from being Top 10.
Oh, Jordan's sister is still featured on the promo material. Nic, did you ever do the competition in the end?
Off we trotted to the next +1. The SLC,
Tornado. To think that this would have been the big coaster in it's day. Peep, Nic and I sat out. Back in 2011, Nic and I were sat on the brake run as Jordan exited the ride beneath us. In the space of 1 second, Jordan squatted, pointed at the coaster and screamed in her Essex accent "It's fakkin' ****". This became a thing. Nic and I recreated the moment.
...and outside of the ride, we noticed they had installed a figure statue doing the same pose.
Because it's a thing, a few of us did it to Tornado at Bakken last year, which is also **** ****.
The next coaster on the list was
Mammut. I rather enjoyed the coaster back in 2011, but didn't want to ride it in my dodgy physical state because I was saving myself for Oblivion: The Black Hole. I sat in the restaurant where everybody has to exit. There is a jet engine inside ether restaurant that fires every 20mins. The restaurant turns blue, a loud rumbling noise is heard and the jet glows orange. It's great. Why can't we have nice things like that in the UK?
For me, the reason for agreeing to an Italy Live was
Oblivion The Black Hole. Or Oblivion The Glory Hole, or Oblivion To Be Honest. She would be our next ride.
When I saw photos of it earlier this year, I wasn't convinced by the white track. In person it's different. Set against the blue sky and background, it looks monolithic. However, I still don't think it looks good in photos.
The themed van being sucked into the black hole is fab.
I know the person who designed the queue so I was keen to queue up despite the 40min queue. I had no idea what the queue contained but I wanted to experience it first hand. I'm glad I did. WARNING: SPOILERS, to avoid skip to the :arrow: below.
The inside area has coloured walkways, lit up by morphing lights and all sorts of special effects. Big television screens surround riders at one point.
The two highlights are the vibrating floor and fan floor. There is one section that has horizontal lights forming an archway. The lights light up from the ground and when the arch is complete, the floor vibrates. I was walking ahead of the group when the floor started to vibrate. I wasn't expecting it and I let out a yelp. A few CFers rushed around the corner to see if I was ok (at least that's what I'd like to think) but by then the floor has stopped moving. A few people didn't believe me and thought I was making it up. So we held up the queue and waited. BUZZZZZZZ!
We had worked out the fan floor by the time we go to the next section of abnormal flooring. It was ok, but the element of surprise was gone. It still made us giggle, though. Yes, the queue line is certainly part of the ride experience.
:arrow:
After the inside area, riders have to queue up a B&Q coloured staircase to get to the station. The stair section moves slowly and there is no theme - except the B&Q colouring. More annoyingly, people can easily queue jump past making it even more slower. As we were in a group of ten, we could create a barrier to prevent the cheeky Italians from getting past us. After what seemed like an age listening to - and singing - the amazing ride music, we were in the tiny loading station and on our way up!
OTBH was my first extended Dive Machine so I didn't know what to expect. I found that the drop ended just as it got going and I didn't get the same rush through the tunnel like I do on Oblivion. It was the following two elements that made me fall in love with it. The little airtime hill after the tunnel is beautiful, it has that sublime, lethargic floaty air that B&M monsters do so well. And that zero-g. Wow, I could feel my entire body enter what felt like a sustained period of weightlessness, as if I had been injected with aesthetic but being told I couldn't go to sleep. It was broth drowsy and energising in the same breath. Ok, so it didn't do much and the entire ride felt like it was over too soon, but that's because eI wants sit to go on and on. It doesn't need to keep going for the sake of it, what it does is good enough. Could it make my Top 10, no, of course not, it's lacking that rawness that I prefer from my coasters, but as quick thrill, it does it very well.
It's very Merliny. Typical type of theme, the world is danger, you might not return, something mysterious. Blah, blah, blah. It's all becoming a bit old hat now.
As it was a lovely day, we did the observation tower, which was renamed by us as
Island on a Stick. It offered us some good views of the park and Lake Garda so we could take the same photos as everybody else.
The last new ride of the day was the
Water "Coaster". Note the CFers in the front and back rows!
Nic and I I sat out (I still need the cred!) to rest up and admire the beautiful theming around the ride. I wish I took more photos because it's lovely. Whilst waiting for the goons, we spotted a fab lady opposite us who was judging everybody as they walked by. She eyeballed everybody up and down twice before pulling a dirty expression and continuing trolling people on her phone (at least that's what I like to think she was going). And yes, I did she her give filthy looks to everybody with CF when the goons left the ride. We called her "Green" (due to her top and shoe colour) and she was fab.
Before we left about 10pm, we managed to grab a few re-rides and supper. I can't believe that I mangled to a whole LOOOONG day a theme park without getting bored. Usually during late openings, I have my fill, it gets too busy, I'm tired and I want to go home. There's something about Gardaland that doesn't make me want to leave. I'm not sure if it's because it's so big and there's a variety of stuff to do, or because it feels like a chilled out place without a chavvy attitude. Out of all the Merlin parks I've been to, Gardaland is probably my favourite (closely followed by Alton Towers). Maybe because it feels reminiscent of the Tussaud era when a theme park was actually themed and there's no particular order to it. The whole park feels like a maze where you never really know where you're going but ultimately you find a reward a certain points. It's no wonder it's one of the most visited parks in Europe. It's also one of my faves.
We left the park and dove to our hotel which was the Ibis Verona. After nearly a week of rather plush hotels, it felt like we were slumming it a little. The bed wasn't wide enough to roll over on! But that didn't matter, it was nearing midnight and we were all pooped. There was only one day left and, if I can speak for the entire group, we all probably thought we had seen the best that Italy had to offer....