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Mexico PTR - Part 6: Bosque Magico and Monterrey
- Thread starter Gavin
- Start date
^Yeah, it was lovely. It all felt, unsurprisingly, very Spanish. The city as a whole is pretty huge - 2nd biggest in the country I think - but the old city area is very compact and easy to just hang out/walk around in.
Final bit then.
Following the same, predictable pattern of literally every other part of this trip, I arrived in Monterrey in the evening, went to the hotel and got up early the next day to do stuff.
Bosque Magico
On maps, it’s listed as “Bosque Magico Coca Cola”. I have no idea why.
Monterrey had a very different feel to Mexico City and Guadalajara, being closely surrounded by mountains and feeling a lot newer/more modern. Because of this, the park had quite an attractive setting.
Some stuff around the park, including a closed rapids.
First up for me to ride was a Vekoma whirlwind. I think I’d only done one before, in Russia, and hated it. This one was actually fine though. It was boring as s**t, but really, really smooth, at least in the front. I made the mistake of leaning up against some railings in a brand new, white t-shirt, which immediately got covered in rust and went straight in the bin once I got back to the hotel.
Ugh. Reverchon.
The newest thing here is Zombie Ride, a Premier Sky Rocket 2. There was a ride op out front who I thought was telling people it was closed, but through Google translate I worked out that he was just warning people that the restraints weren’t very forgiving and that if they didn’t close properly, they’d have to walk.
I can understand stipulating that on a busy day to save people queuing, but it was a bit weird to have that warning when it was dead. Anyway, I was more than fine fitting in the thing and got a train to myself on my first go.
It’s only the second of these I’ve done, so I’m not sick of them yet and actually quite like them. For the footprint they offer a decent attraction for smaller parks. Busch and Six Flags have no business buying them, though.
I was done after a couple of hours, including rerides and forcing myself onto a couple of flats just to fill a bit more time. Potentially, I could have been in and out in half an hour if I just wanted the creds.
It’s a nice little park really, but the emphasis is on the “little”. Zombie Ride is obviously a big investment for them, so hopefully that translates into decent visitor numbers and further expansions.
I got a taxi to the next place.
Parque Plaza Sesamo
Sesame Street must be f**king huge here since it had a whole area and a parade at Selva Magica, and an entire park here. “Entire park” makes it sound a bit grander than it is; it was tiny.
There’s a small water park attached, which I guess is the main draw. The only creds were a small kiddy thing and a powered thing. There was a corner with some fairly major flat rides (booster, chaos, shot tower), but they were all f**ked. The location was lovely though. I’m just going to throw the pictures in and move on.
I was out of there in about 20 minutes, so in terms of value for money it was by far the crappest of the trip.
Plaza Sesamo is at one end of a huge park called Parque Fundidora, which has been built around an old steelworks and has a couple of museums, an arena and other stuff dotted around. Roughly in the middle of the park is one end of a recently-opened canal. The other end was at a huge public square where my hotel was, so I decided to just walk back there from Plaza Sesamo, through the park and along the canal.
On the way, I saw a ferris wheel off to one side, so took a detour. There was whole fair, including THREE CREDS, in the process of being dismantled. The last night had been the night before. Even if I’d have known, I’d arrived in Monterrey too late the night before to have caught it, so it’s not like I’d really missed it.
If this whole trip had started a day earlier, one of these glorious creds would’ve been my 1,500th since I was two off after Plaza Sesamo, which was the last park of the trip.
Further into the park was another small place, which I thought might be hiding a secret +1, but it was just a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs and some caged birds and monkeys.
This was right next to the start of the canal, which was deep enough to drown myself in after the cred spite, but there were too many people around to rescue me, so I just followed it all the way back to the city centre instead.
It was all quite lovely really with, as I said before, a totally different atmosphere to the more Spanish-colonial Mexico City and Guadalajara.
The public square at the end of the canal is huge. Well, I guess it feels more like a bunch of squares in a row since areas are separated on different levels and there are roads through bits of it.
At the complete other end (around a 1.5km walk), you get a decent view over the houses climbing up the surrounding hills. I’d seen a few areas like this from the car while driving between Mexico City and Teotihuacan, but didn’t get a chance to have a proper look.
That was pretty much the end of that day. There’s not much left, so I’ll squeeze it in at the end here.
I had a few hours free the next day. I’d seen way more than I’d planned to already thanks to walking back to the hotel from Plaza Sesamo via the huge park, canal and square, which between them pretty much contain everything there is to see, so killed some time around the square again, popping into a couple of museums/art galleries that surround it.
And that was the end of the trip. I had a massive faff getting back to the UK since I had a flight back via Atlanta, having to clear American immigration just to transfer, which is, frankly, just f**king ridiculous. I had two hours to transfer, and the flights were on time, but I was still waiting in an immigration queue as my flight to Manchester was taking off.
I honestly don’t get it. When I’d arrived in Atlanta, and actually entered the USA, I’d pretty much walked straight out and into a taxi, but the transfer area was ridiculous. I would have been better off booking the Monterrey-Atlanta and Atlanta-Manchester flights separately, clearing US customs, collecting luggage, actually entering the country, and then checking in again completely separately since the number of people actually leaving the airport and going into Atlanta was massively smaller than those just trying to transit. C**ts.
LOADS of people were missing their connections because of this abject bulls**t, so I waited another 2 hours to get seen by someone at the airline desk to get rebooked on a flight the next day. This pissed me off as well since, if they’d have had more people on the desks, which they should have had since this was obviously a very regular problem, I could’ve got back that night via connections in Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt or London, but they were all taking off as I was still standing in a huge queue because airlines and airports in the USA f**king suck.
Anyway, rant over. To be fair, I’ve never had a problem with US airports before when I’ve actually been entering and leaving the country, but the transit situation was stupid. Up until the last-minute f**k up, this had been an amazing trip. There were loads of creds to be had between Georgia and Texas, and Mexico turned out to be really fab and loads better than I’d been expecting it to be.
One of the things I really liked was that the vast majority of tourists in all three Mexican cities were locals, from other areas of the country, which made it feel a bit more exclusive. I’m assuming most Americans who visit stick with the beach resorts, as do any Europeans who have started heading over – there are direct flights from Manchester to Cancun for example: no thanks!
The Asian tour groups haven’t latched onto it yet either, probably because of the ridiculous distances involved combined with the “dangerous” labels the country seems to have, so there also wasn’t that constant annoyance of hapless tourists and shouting tour guides to deal with, unlike from the moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow when I was heading back.
Mexico. Go. It’s fantastic.
Final bit then.
Following the same, predictable pattern of literally every other part of this trip, I arrived in Monterrey in the evening, went to the hotel and got up early the next day to do stuff.
Bosque Magico
On maps, it’s listed as “Bosque Magico Coca Cola”. I have no idea why.
Monterrey had a very different feel to Mexico City and Guadalajara, being closely surrounded by mountains and feeling a lot newer/more modern. Because of this, the park had quite an attractive setting.
Some stuff around the park, including a closed rapids.
First up for me to ride was a Vekoma whirlwind. I think I’d only done one before, in Russia, and hated it. This one was actually fine though. It was boring as s**t, but really, really smooth, at least in the front. I made the mistake of leaning up against some railings in a brand new, white t-shirt, which immediately got covered in rust and went straight in the bin once I got back to the hotel.
Ugh. Reverchon.
The newest thing here is Zombie Ride, a Premier Sky Rocket 2. There was a ride op out front who I thought was telling people it was closed, but through Google translate I worked out that he was just warning people that the restraints weren’t very forgiving and that if they didn’t close properly, they’d have to walk.
I can understand stipulating that on a busy day to save people queuing, but it was a bit weird to have that warning when it was dead. Anyway, I was more than fine fitting in the thing and got a train to myself on my first go.
It’s only the second of these I’ve done, so I’m not sick of them yet and actually quite like them. For the footprint they offer a decent attraction for smaller parks. Busch and Six Flags have no business buying them, though.
I was done after a couple of hours, including rerides and forcing myself onto a couple of flats just to fill a bit more time. Potentially, I could have been in and out in half an hour if I just wanted the creds.
It’s a nice little park really, but the emphasis is on the “little”. Zombie Ride is obviously a big investment for them, so hopefully that translates into decent visitor numbers and further expansions.
I got a taxi to the next place.
Parque Plaza Sesamo
Sesame Street must be f**king huge here since it had a whole area and a parade at Selva Magica, and an entire park here. “Entire park” makes it sound a bit grander than it is; it was tiny.
There’s a small water park attached, which I guess is the main draw. The only creds were a small kiddy thing and a powered thing. There was a corner with some fairly major flat rides (booster, chaos, shot tower), but they were all f**ked. The location was lovely though. I’m just going to throw the pictures in and move on.
I was out of there in about 20 minutes, so in terms of value for money it was by far the crappest of the trip.
Plaza Sesamo is at one end of a huge park called Parque Fundidora, which has been built around an old steelworks and has a couple of museums, an arena and other stuff dotted around. Roughly in the middle of the park is one end of a recently-opened canal. The other end was at a huge public square where my hotel was, so I decided to just walk back there from Plaza Sesamo, through the park and along the canal.
On the way, I saw a ferris wheel off to one side, so took a detour. There was whole fair, including THREE CREDS, in the process of being dismantled. The last night had been the night before. Even if I’d have known, I’d arrived in Monterrey too late the night before to have caught it, so it’s not like I’d really missed it.
If this whole trip had started a day earlier, one of these glorious creds would’ve been my 1,500th since I was two off after Plaza Sesamo, which was the last park of the trip.
Further into the park was another small place, which I thought might be hiding a secret +1, but it was just a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs and some caged birds and monkeys.
This was right next to the start of the canal, which was deep enough to drown myself in after the cred spite, but there were too many people around to rescue me, so I just followed it all the way back to the city centre instead.
It was all quite lovely really with, as I said before, a totally different atmosphere to the more Spanish-colonial Mexico City and Guadalajara.
The public square at the end of the canal is huge. Well, I guess it feels more like a bunch of squares in a row since areas are separated on different levels and there are roads through bits of it.
At the complete other end (around a 1.5km walk), you get a decent view over the houses climbing up the surrounding hills. I’d seen a few areas like this from the car while driving between Mexico City and Teotihuacan, but didn’t get a chance to have a proper look.
That was pretty much the end of that day. There’s not much left, so I’ll squeeze it in at the end here.
I had a few hours free the next day. I’d seen way more than I’d planned to already thanks to walking back to the hotel from Plaza Sesamo via the huge park, canal and square, which between them pretty much contain everything there is to see, so killed some time around the square again, popping into a couple of museums/art galleries that surround it.
And that was the end of the trip. I had a massive faff getting back to the UK since I had a flight back via Atlanta, having to clear American immigration just to transfer, which is, frankly, just f**king ridiculous. I had two hours to transfer, and the flights were on time, but I was still waiting in an immigration queue as my flight to Manchester was taking off.
I honestly don’t get it. When I’d arrived in Atlanta, and actually entered the USA, I’d pretty much walked straight out and into a taxi, but the transfer area was ridiculous. I would have been better off booking the Monterrey-Atlanta and Atlanta-Manchester flights separately, clearing US customs, collecting luggage, actually entering the country, and then checking in again completely separately since the number of people actually leaving the airport and going into Atlanta was massively smaller than those just trying to transit. C**ts.
LOADS of people were missing their connections because of this abject bulls**t, so I waited another 2 hours to get seen by someone at the airline desk to get rebooked on a flight the next day. This pissed me off as well since, if they’d have had more people on the desks, which they should have had since this was obviously a very regular problem, I could’ve got back that night via connections in Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt or London, but they were all taking off as I was still standing in a huge queue because airlines and airports in the USA f**king suck.
Anyway, rant over. To be fair, I’ve never had a problem with US airports before when I’ve actually been entering and leaving the country, but the transit situation was stupid. Up until the last-minute f**k up, this had been an amazing trip. There were loads of creds to be had between Georgia and Texas, and Mexico turned out to be really fab and loads better than I’d been expecting it to be.
One of the things I really liked was that the vast majority of tourists in all three Mexican cities were locals, from other areas of the country, which made it feel a bit more exclusive. I’m assuming most Americans who visit stick with the beach resorts, as do any Europeans who have started heading over – there are direct flights from Manchester to Cancun for example: no thanks!
The Asian tour groups haven’t latched onto it yet either, probably because of the ridiculous distances involved combined with the “dangerous” labels the country seems to have, so there also wasn’t that constant annoyance of hapless tourists and shouting tour guides to deal with, unlike from the moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow when I was heading back.
Mexico. Go. It’s fantastic.
Quoting just to acknowledge this wonderful sentence.
Just to second the comment on the US transit system. Thankfully didn't miss any connections (just), but the whole thing is just so stupid. We were going to South America only, so why on earth I needed an ESTA and to clear immigration just to sit in an airport for a couple of hours is beyond me. Why can't they do it like [almost] every other country?
But yes, a wonderful looking trip and an enjoyable report. It's been good to hear more from these lesser visit parks (and the culture, I have to admit I've enjoyed that a lot too). Mexico City - you may just crept up the list.
Because, obviously, every single person getting on a plane going anywhere near the US wants to blow s**t up. Everyone.
Or, because they're paranoid as all f**k and don't mind their citizens living in a constant state of enforced fear since it stops them thinking about people dying when they can't afford basic medical care and police killing unarmed black people.
They're also pretty much the only country still doing that bulls**t removing shoes thing as well. The only other place in recent memory that also still does that is the bloody Philippines.
Actually that's reminded me - something I was going to touch on in my trip report when I get to it. At Schipol they've recently re-done a section of their security areas, and they've got these brand new machines. Mark (@Lofty) and I were told to leave everything in our bags. "Water of any volume is fine, and toiletries less than 100ml, just leave it all in the suitcase. You only need to take your jackets off. The new machines do the rest". The technology is clearly catching up, so hopefully we'll soon see the end of the stupid policy of having to ditch all your water, then sell it back to you at an extortionate price as there are no fountains.
[/digression]
The technology and the policies rarely match up though when you're dealing with arrogance and paranoia.
At Hong Kong airport, you can leave all your electronics in your bag and although there are signs for liquids, they never bother fannying about with it; I leave stuff all the time now.
Then you've got Mainland China who make you take out every electronic item regardless of size and put them in a separate tray. Plus they pat down literally everyone regardless of whether you set off the metal detector or not. There's no way they're not using the best technology, but they'll never break that habit.
No American airport is ever going to top any league tables, so they don't give a s**t if you're waiting ages and the whole experience is negative whereas the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong etc. pride themselves on constantly being ranked the best in the world, so they're far more focused on customer experience.