Hello.
I flew into Germany today via a Greek Island to commence a coaster quest. It was very exciting because this was the plane, which was very unexpected:
Upon seeing the plane I did a backflip to celebrate and promptly boarded. When I arrived in Germany everything was minimalistic and industrial as expected. I got into my hire car and blasted Europe Endless by Kraftwerk for the whole 3 hour journey to Holiday Park, stop one of my exciting trip.
Holiday Park is... yeah, it's pretty terrible isn't it? There were several oddities and I may as well go through them before getting to the meat of the post (the EGF review).
First, there really aren't many rides for adults and the rides that are there (with one obvious exception) aren't that exciting.
Secondly, worst ops ever - it was taking 5-10 minutes for each EGF dispatch and similar for SkyScream. The park was pretty busy and the queues were very long for even some of the smaller rides. With the pandemic, I was sort of surprised that they were running express passes, but I jumped at the chance. They have quite a curious system - you get 9 queue skips for 30 Euros... but front rows of coasters cost '2' of your skips. We spent our tokens doing 3x front rows on EGF, one back row on EGF, the log flume and sky scream (which were therefore all more or less walk-ons).
Third, what is with the merchandise or the lack thereof?! There was a whole load of Nintendo shirts (including Mario Kart and Zelda shirts)... some marvel t-shirts... some ****ing Jurassic Park shirts... and then two Expedition Everest t-shirts (one of which is knowingly titled "I only came here for Expedition GeForce"). Neither were very attractive. I was nearly having a mental breakdown deciding to whether to buy one before my wife declared "don't be FOMO-ed into getting a **** t-shirt" - ooff. We then looked for a fridge magnet and they didn't even have one of those! What the heck!!
SkyScream was my first Skyrocket 2. It was alright, but I don't think I need to go on one again. It was very intense in the final section and really whipped me quite hard. My overall feeling was that it felt quite 'fairground-y'.
The log flume looked to have quite promising theming but was actually quite barren on the inside sections which was disappointing. The surrounding area was being redeveloped for an extended viking area. I would have been a bit gutted to queue for any length of time for the log flume. It did have a backwards drop that at least made it a little interesting.
The theming of the rear sections of the park (a beach and a flight show) seemed a little desperate. The beach bar was obliterated by wasps.
Another notable mention must go to the 'castle dark-ride' - perhaps the worst ride I've ever been on. It's so bad I'd rather play the Dark Castle video game on Philips CDI. Not only was it extremely dated it was also.. well, unnecessarily 'dark' and unsuitable for children? Hooray for scenes of miserable prisoners... and I'm pretty sure one of the animatronics (sort of being behind a barred window as the buggy ascends, half-hidden) was of a woman from an earlier scene being sexually assaulted?! Yikes!
On a rosier note, although we skipped the rapids ride, there was a pretty cool animatronic t-rex you could see from the walkways. Maybe that 'explains' the Jurassic Park merchandise.
Main course time - EGF. As per the t-shirt, this was why we were here. Holy poop this is one intense, speedy and all-round excellent ride. In fact, just watch (or rather listen to) my POV below. As a minor note, I appreciate that perhaps I do need to STFU a bit on rides, but all my cheers and whoops were of childish joy, so please forgive me. The point being though, my ass is flying so far out of my seat, particularly on that penultimate hill, you can hear how much my ass is out of my seat. As I claim at the end... awesome!
I did also film my ride on the back, which was a bit of an error-ride due to my inexperience with filming and inexperience with riding. The back row ride was before the above POV and my chest harness for my GoPro was less tight, so although it was secured it was still a little anxiety inducing so I naturally ended up holding onto the camera, which took away from the ride. Note to other novices: strap that harness on tight! Also, I tried to do the super hardcore roller coaster enthusiast thing of just letting the ride-op loosely put the bar on me, so I had relatively loads of room. When I went down the first drop with no hands, my right thigh took all of my weight and got absolutely crushed and I'm expecting a big bruise tomorrow. In hindsight, that was boneheaded and I would suggest that with a ride this intense, you really don't need to try to get a 'looser' restraint. Doing that might make less intense rides more fun but it's really not needed on a ride like this. I guess that's all you need to know about how the ride is... I don't think it benefits from additional intensity in the back (even though I did goof my ride in the back row). You live and learn! I do wonder whether the Skyrush complaints in part come from people trying to do the same thing / trying to get the benefit of additional leg space (when doing so actually detracted from the experience as it does here)......?
I did really enjoy how long EGF is and it ends on a massive high with those epic ejector hills.
With all of that said, is it worth going out of your way to visit the park just for this ride? Hmm, honestly I don't know. If you are an enthusiast and are driving passed the park as part of a wider trip, sure. I don't think the rest of the park warrants going out of your way just for that one supreme ride. You can have a much more balanced experience at any other park I've visited. Also, I did this in a few hours with the benefit of the express passes. It would have been a little miserable without them with how slow the operations were.
Last park comment... coronavirus stuff. Not many people were paying attention to wearing masks or social distancing in areas where it wasn't enforced which annoyed me a little at first but then I started to understand why. It was a very hot, humid day and wearing a mask for extended periods was borderline unbearable - it was really making me feel quite ill and with my dehydration, I was struggling on my final EGF rides. So make sure you stay hydrated to avoid 'coaster sickness' which I think is exacerbated by the unpleasant combo of hot weather + masks.
Satisfied with our EGF rides, we left the park and hit a god-tier McDonalds - the food was ultra-fresh and actually looked like the photos. it was 10x nicer than a UK Maccy Ds. But then a wasp came along and ruined everything. It was terrible. I kept on having to abort eating my McFlurry to go into defence mode. ****ing wasp!!!
Tomorrow... Europa Park (for the first time). Very exciting.
I flew into Germany today via a Greek Island to commence a coaster quest. It was very exciting because this was the plane, which was very unexpected:
Upon seeing the plane I did a backflip to celebrate and promptly boarded. When I arrived in Germany everything was minimalistic and industrial as expected. I got into my hire car and blasted Europe Endless by Kraftwerk for the whole 3 hour journey to Holiday Park, stop one of my exciting trip.
Holiday Park is... yeah, it's pretty terrible isn't it? There were several oddities and I may as well go through them before getting to the meat of the post (the EGF review).
First, there really aren't many rides for adults and the rides that are there (with one obvious exception) aren't that exciting.
Secondly, worst ops ever - it was taking 5-10 minutes for each EGF dispatch and similar for SkyScream. The park was pretty busy and the queues were very long for even some of the smaller rides. With the pandemic, I was sort of surprised that they were running express passes, but I jumped at the chance. They have quite a curious system - you get 9 queue skips for 30 Euros... but front rows of coasters cost '2' of your skips. We spent our tokens doing 3x front rows on EGF, one back row on EGF, the log flume and sky scream (which were therefore all more or less walk-ons).
Third, what is with the merchandise or the lack thereof?! There was a whole load of Nintendo shirts (including Mario Kart and Zelda shirts)... some marvel t-shirts... some ****ing Jurassic Park shirts... and then two Expedition Everest t-shirts (one of which is knowingly titled "I only came here for Expedition GeForce"). Neither were very attractive. I was nearly having a mental breakdown deciding to whether to buy one before my wife declared "don't be FOMO-ed into getting a **** t-shirt" - ooff. We then looked for a fridge magnet and they didn't even have one of those! What the heck!!
SkyScream was my first Skyrocket 2. It was alright, but I don't think I need to go on one again. It was very intense in the final section and really whipped me quite hard. My overall feeling was that it felt quite 'fairground-y'.
The log flume looked to have quite promising theming but was actually quite barren on the inside sections which was disappointing. The surrounding area was being redeveloped for an extended viking area. I would have been a bit gutted to queue for any length of time for the log flume. It did have a backwards drop that at least made it a little interesting.
The theming of the rear sections of the park (a beach and a flight show) seemed a little desperate. The beach bar was obliterated by wasps.
Another notable mention must go to the 'castle dark-ride' - perhaps the worst ride I've ever been on. It's so bad I'd rather play the Dark Castle video game on Philips CDI. Not only was it extremely dated it was also.. well, unnecessarily 'dark' and unsuitable for children? Hooray for scenes of miserable prisoners... and I'm pretty sure one of the animatronics (sort of being behind a barred window as the buggy ascends, half-hidden) was of a woman from an earlier scene being sexually assaulted?! Yikes!
On a rosier note, although we skipped the rapids ride, there was a pretty cool animatronic t-rex you could see from the walkways. Maybe that 'explains' the Jurassic Park merchandise.
Main course time - EGF. As per the t-shirt, this was why we were here. Holy poop this is one intense, speedy and all-round excellent ride. In fact, just watch (or rather listen to) my POV below. As a minor note, I appreciate that perhaps I do need to STFU a bit on rides, but all my cheers and whoops were of childish joy, so please forgive me. The point being though, my ass is flying so far out of my seat, particularly on that penultimate hill, you can hear how much my ass is out of my seat. As I claim at the end... awesome!
I did also film my ride on the back, which was a bit of an error-ride due to my inexperience with filming and inexperience with riding. The back row ride was before the above POV and my chest harness for my GoPro was less tight, so although it was secured it was still a little anxiety inducing so I naturally ended up holding onto the camera, which took away from the ride. Note to other novices: strap that harness on tight! Also, I tried to do the super hardcore roller coaster enthusiast thing of just letting the ride-op loosely put the bar on me, so I had relatively loads of room. When I went down the first drop with no hands, my right thigh took all of my weight and got absolutely crushed and I'm expecting a big bruise tomorrow. In hindsight, that was boneheaded and I would suggest that with a ride this intense, you really don't need to try to get a 'looser' restraint. Doing that might make less intense rides more fun but it's really not needed on a ride like this. I guess that's all you need to know about how the ride is... I don't think it benefits from additional intensity in the back (even though I did goof my ride in the back row). You live and learn! I do wonder whether the Skyrush complaints in part come from people trying to do the same thing / trying to get the benefit of additional leg space (when doing so actually detracted from the experience as it does here)......?
I did really enjoy how long EGF is and it ends on a massive high with those epic ejector hills.
With all of that said, is it worth going out of your way to visit the park just for this ride? Hmm, honestly I don't know. If you are an enthusiast and are driving passed the park as part of a wider trip, sure. I don't think the rest of the park warrants going out of your way just for that one supreme ride. You can have a much more balanced experience at any other park I've visited. Also, I did this in a few hours with the benefit of the express passes. It would have been a little miserable without them with how slow the operations were.
Last park comment... coronavirus stuff. Not many people were paying attention to wearing masks or social distancing in areas where it wasn't enforced which annoyed me a little at first but then I started to understand why. It was a very hot, humid day and wearing a mask for extended periods was borderline unbearable - it was really making me feel quite ill and with my dehydration, I was struggling on my final EGF rides. So make sure you stay hydrated to avoid 'coaster sickness' which I think is exacerbated by the unpleasant combo of hot weather + masks.
Satisfied with our EGF rides, we left the park and hit a god-tier McDonalds - the food was ultra-fresh and actually looked like the photos. it was 10x nicer than a UK Maccy Ds. But then a wasp came along and ruined everything. It was terrible. I kept on having to abort eating my McFlurry to go into defence mode. ****ing wasp!!!
Tomorrow... Europa Park (for the first time). Very exciting.
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