nadroJ
CF Legend
Every year around my birthday I do a little trip in Europe somewhere to get some creds and to see some other parks outside of the UK all dressed up for Halloween. The past three years I have ended up in Germany, and there are only a few small parks left for me to get, yay! This year however I decided it was time to ride ‘Europe’s best steel coaster’ so I built a trip around heading to Holiday Park to ride the legendary Expedition GeForce whilst mopping up all the other creds in the area before heading north to Heide Park for some b&M realness.
Thursday morning we arrived at Baden Baden airport (so good they named it twice!). The camp air steward asked if we would be going to the beer festival in town (more on that later) and we nodded yes to hide our shame that we were only in the country for creds. The lobby of the airport was plastered with ads for Europa Park and was complete with unknown UK goons heading there for their horror nights event. We jumped in the hire car and sashayed down the road towards Tripsdrill.
I had a little bit of cred anxiety, as I knew we had a lot to do and not a massive amount of time to do it in. However, arriving at Tripsdrill mellowed me out as there were only about 20 cars in the car park and by this point it was already midday. Winner.
Tripsdrill
From what I’d seen, this park was gorgeous and was full of the silly little things that make the great European parks unique. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time faffing about doing the silly stuff as well as getting substantial rides on all of the creds. I was wrong. The park was gorgeous and actually was a hell of a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Very very pretty, especially on a gorgeous autumn day such as this one. The buildings were all very picturesque and German looking (why do all the big German parks have areas themed to Germany?). My one big complaint was a lack of landscaping towards the back area of the park where all the rides are. It seems to have suffered a bit of that Toverland syndrome of doing things RCT style and just plonking rides down on a flat piece of field. The rides still individually look stunning but there is no flow between them and it all feels very deliberate, which I didn’t like.
Karacho was a fab little ride, Infinity coaster my arse, it’s Anubis’s younger, sexier sister. Can’t wait to see what this little bitch will be like once the theming is complete. We all loved it, however we did not love the one train operations, especially when the other 3 of the potential 4 trains were just sat on the transfer track, mocking us.
Mammut was the shocker for a few reasons. Firstly, *spoiler alert* PRE SHOW!!! I had no idea and adore little touches like that so this was very much approved of. Secondly, I have no idea how they’ve managed to build such a dull and characterless woody. It is silent and forceless; it’s actually impressive that they’ve managed to build something like this! But yh, totally bland and pointless. It looks nice but other than that, meh.
G’sengte Sau is just a lovely little picturesque thing. I love the way it frolics through the gardens and intertwines with the fab massive log flume. Very fun little plus one. Also, the ride op sparked up a fag whilst dispatching the train which was bizarre and one of those ‘only in Europe’ moments.
The ‘amazing’ drop tower thing was a bit gimmicky and crap, but again it looked very pretty so I’ll let it off. Once we’d mopped up the rest of the creds and had a bit of a faff with the non-ride stuff and a mooch in the tat shop we zipped off in the direction of Schawben Park.
Schwaben Park
As a self pronounced cred-whore, I have been to some **** holes in my time, and Schwaben Park is up there with the best of them. Inside this tatty little hillside shambles of a place three creds were waiting for us.
First up was Force One, which actually turned out to be a really swift little ride. Plenty of speed, excellent pacing, little pops of airtime and some good, sustained forces. We re-rode a few times as we were literally 4 of about 20 people in the park.
Meandering down towards the other two creds we came across a big chimp enclosure. The boys decided to try and connect with their ancestors by farting and grunting at them. This attempt at communication was repaid with one of them flinging **** at Darren B. It was **** hilarious.
Next up was the kiddie cred, which we had to drag another ride-op away from which I’m sure was one of many smoke breaks for that day to operate the thing for us. The train looks like the little Disneyland girl meme.
Finally another ride-op crawled out of the woodwork to switch on the vile Schwarzkopf thing for us. He had to jump in front of the train at the end to activate the breaks, yay!
We had arrived at the park for last entry that was at 4.30pm, however the park didn’t close until 6pm, so we did some exploring. We found non-upcharged go-karts and bobsleds, which were fun for passing a few minutes then ended our day on the fab Nautic Jets. Personally I find these terrifying but they turned out to be probably the best attraction at the park, so gutted Wicksteed spited theirs.
Ever since the air steward had mentioned the fair in Stuttgart we had been scouring the internet trying to find out what was there, and from what we could gather Testtrecke, one of the ‘big’ travelling coasters, was just a 40 minute drive away. Turns out this fair is pretty busy. After a bit of a nightmare with parking we finally settled and headed for the cred, alongside many people in traditional German get up. It was about 8pm and a lot of people were completely twatted, many people laying on the floor and puking in bins. Culture <3
Only 4euros for the privilege, Testtrecke was wonderful. It’s so smooth with some lovely transitions and the right level of forcefulness without being vile. Loved it. The rest of the fair consisted of massive ghost trains, travelling wild mouse creds and pretzels before heading back to our stylish Ibis lodgings for the night.
Holiday Park
Holiday Park has always eluded me because on paper there’s actually not much going on. Expedition Ge Force yes, but not much else. I was right. The park wasn’t exactly dead being a bank holiday Friday for ze Germans and yet we were done by 1.30pm, including re rides. The park is a bit crap, nothing of note other than the aforementioned and Sky Screamer, the new Premier thing that replaced their classic looper. I’m not a fan of the Plopsa characters so wasn’t all that impressed with that stuff and just felt quite let down by the place (even taking into consideration I wasn’t expecting much in the first place!). I wouldn’t rush back, that’s for sure.
Expedition Ge Force was the reason for our visit so we bee lined straight over and joined the queue for the front row. First thing in the morning it doesn’t exactly run like **** off a shovel, more like **** off of a piece of corrugated iron. Good pacing, good turn arounds, nice gentle floater airtime. Fun fun fun, but definitely not top ten material. Rerides later in the day proved to provide more speed which pushed it more into **** off a shovel territory, but still not there in terms of say, Skyrush.
Sky Screamer was the Nu42014 offering and the area looks quite cool. It all felt quite Merlin-esque, and the building looks quite cool, but it feels quite plonked and there’s a lot of bare concrete and fences around. The park have also done an Alton and kept the corkscrew from their corkscrew, only they haven’t cleaned or spruced it up in any way. It’s ugly. I was looking forward to sky Screamer as Premier make awesome coasters. The first half of the launch provided lots of fun willy lift and seemed promising, however the rest of the ride was completely gross. Overly forceful, disgusting hangtime, random TRIMS at the top (wtf?!) and just a massive anti-climax. It was poo.
The rest of the park is very generic ‘theme park’ stuff, a rapids, log flume (that was quite epic), handful of flats and a wild mouse. The plan at this point had been to head up to Fort Fun Abenteuerland, but German roadwerks were not on our side (see Benin’s trip report) so we sacked that off in favour of an Alpine Coaster at a much more convenient location.
Unfortunately due to a disgusting drive north to follow our cred stop, we had very little time in this park. It is a gorgeous forresty affair in the heart of the German mountains. The attraction is much more country park than theme park with slides, swan boats, climbing frames and trains making up the vast majority of the park’s offerings, however the star attraction of course was the alpine coaster, denoted in this case by a massive queue. Poo. Bank holidays are so spiteful! Oh well, we joined the back and waited probably about 45 minutes. It was a good little ride but unfortunately some stupid girls wanted to do 5mph down the entire thing so our ride was a bit spoiled in the end. I would have loved to have spent more time exploring this place, it’s a perfect CF playground.
Heide Park
On my previous visit in 2009 we had totally cred dashed this park, so my memory of it was vague. Since then they had acquired two new B&Ms so a revisit was on the cards. Overall I don’t have much love for the place, it all feels too deliberate and I feel the Merlin ownership is gradually starting to overshadow the European charm of the place. The area over by Grottenblitz, for example, is very pretty and lovely with the rides interacting with one another and has a very organic feel to it, whereas the newer side where Krake and Flug sit is very purpose built and Merlin branded. I know that the Vekoma & Huss corner is equally diabolical but I feel like Merlin should know better. It irritates me when parks do not landscape and add trees in around newer themed areas to help them flow together with the rest of the park more elegantly rather than just having the ‘ride area’ in its own stand alone territory. As a park it doesn’t have a very good atmosphere in my opinion and is saved by its few stand out coasters alone, which is such a shame because it has such charm potential.
First and foremost, soundtrack <3 I am a massive fan of IMAScore and their Krake soundtrack is another hit in my books. I wish it was louder and was also present on board. Something we noticed as a group over the weekend was a distinct lack of music in all of the parks, and the difference in ambience and atmosphere is massively noticeable. The station building is fab, I love a good pirate theme and Merlin definitely know what they’re doing in this territory, they really hit the nail on the head. And the Krake mouth is amazing! So daunting, the only difference I would make to it is I’d love it if parts of it were animatronic. In the back row the drop is really disappointing, however the front row gives a kick of Oblivion calibre. We rode this 4 or 5 times over the weekend, I really enjoyed it and it really benefits from the extended layout to compliment the intensity of the drop. Great attraction.
The layout of Flug der Damonen had me really intrigued as it’s totally unique and looked like it could serve some fab transitions and a fun ride overall. The theme is a horror version of Swarm really; instead of an alien destroying an English village a vampire has destroyed a European hamlet. Flug even has it’s own signature ‘creature’ noise that screeches out as the coaster flies overhead, it looks pretty cool. I just really would love to see more trees and landscaping in this area. The station building is also really disappointing, especially when you have the gorgeous gothicky looking old log flume station sat all sad and boarded up right next door to it, it doesn’t seem fair somehow. I also think this area’s theme is let down by the office block building that runs along the left hand-side. Things like this dramatically affect my ride experience and it’s a shame really because they are easily preventable in my opinion. The coaster itself, aside from the first drop and airtime hill, is just really really dull. There is little to no pacing or sensation of speed, loads of hangtime to the point where the train seems to struggle around the track. What a boring waste of a coaster.
The last coaster of note at Heide Park is the Intamin woodie Colossos, which I only rode once back in 2009 and which made its way straight into my top ten; I was excited to see how it would hold up after all those years. It was our most ridden coaster of the trip and it is very very good. Excellent in fact. The trouble is it doesn’t suit my tastes in coasters. I like coasters with lots of elements stacked one after the other, relentless speed and having to catch my breath on the break run. For me, Colossos is just too drawn out. It rides hard and slow, like a B&M hyper but with only half of the intensity. It takes too long to get into the airtime, giving you time to prepare yourself for the forces. I can see why people love these coasters but they are too predictable for me.
Hotel Port Royale
Every now and then I like to visit resort hotels. I feel they add to the overall theme park experience and a lot of the time are really excellent. Recently I’d visited the Alton Towers Hotel and paid obscene amounts of money for The Smiler Room for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary only to be massively let down. As a treat for my birthday Conor had arranged for me to stay in a special room in the Hotel Port Royale and we were a bit sceptical to say the least. We needn’t have been. The room was wonderful, a bit bigger than the normal sized rooms with a lovely four-poster bed, a big bathtub in the main room and THEMING IN THE TOILETS!! To top it off a hostess brought champagne and birthday cake to our room so we could celebrate. Worlds away from the crap treatment and room at the ATH and really made the weekend special.
Furthermore, the deal we booked included breakfast and dinner, which was the usual buffet affair but with one difference. FREE REFILLS ON BEER! And the evening entertainment wasn’t the obnoxious crap found at the ATH but a nice mix of kids entertainment and mellow acts including magic, aerial acrobatics and musicians.
In 2015 the hotel are adding a pool area and frankly I think this will complete this already amazing hotel.
Thursday morning we arrived at Baden Baden airport (so good they named it twice!). The camp air steward asked if we would be going to the beer festival in town (more on that later) and we nodded yes to hide our shame that we were only in the country for creds. The lobby of the airport was plastered with ads for Europa Park and was complete with unknown UK goons heading there for their horror nights event. We jumped in the hire car and sashayed down the road towards Tripsdrill.
I had a little bit of cred anxiety, as I knew we had a lot to do and not a massive amount of time to do it in. However, arriving at Tripsdrill mellowed me out as there were only about 20 cars in the car park and by this point it was already midday. Winner.
Tripsdrill
From what I’d seen, this park was gorgeous and was full of the silly little things that make the great European parks unique. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time faffing about doing the silly stuff as well as getting substantial rides on all of the creds. I was wrong. The park was gorgeous and actually was a hell of a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Very very pretty, especially on a gorgeous autumn day such as this one. The buildings were all very picturesque and German looking (why do all the big German parks have areas themed to Germany?). My one big complaint was a lack of landscaping towards the back area of the park where all the rides are. It seems to have suffered a bit of that Toverland syndrome of doing things RCT style and just plonking rides down on a flat piece of field. The rides still individually look stunning but there is no flow between them and it all feels very deliberate, which I didn’t like.
Karacho was a fab little ride, Infinity coaster my arse, it’s Anubis’s younger, sexier sister. Can’t wait to see what this little bitch will be like once the theming is complete. We all loved it, however we did not love the one train operations, especially when the other 3 of the potential 4 trains were just sat on the transfer track, mocking us.
Mammut was the shocker for a few reasons. Firstly, *spoiler alert* PRE SHOW!!! I had no idea and adore little touches like that so this was very much approved of. Secondly, I have no idea how they’ve managed to build such a dull and characterless woody. It is silent and forceless; it’s actually impressive that they’ve managed to build something like this! But yh, totally bland and pointless. It looks nice but other than that, meh.
G’sengte Sau is just a lovely little picturesque thing. I love the way it frolics through the gardens and intertwines with the fab massive log flume. Very fun little plus one. Also, the ride op sparked up a fag whilst dispatching the train which was bizarre and one of those ‘only in Europe’ moments.
The ‘amazing’ drop tower thing was a bit gimmicky and crap, but again it looked very pretty so I’ll let it off. Once we’d mopped up the rest of the creds and had a bit of a faff with the non-ride stuff and a mooch in the tat shop we zipped off in the direction of Schawben Park.
Schwaben Park
As a self pronounced cred-whore, I have been to some **** holes in my time, and Schwaben Park is up there with the best of them. Inside this tatty little hillside shambles of a place three creds were waiting for us.
First up was Force One, which actually turned out to be a really swift little ride. Plenty of speed, excellent pacing, little pops of airtime and some good, sustained forces. We re-rode a few times as we were literally 4 of about 20 people in the park.
Meandering down towards the other two creds we came across a big chimp enclosure. The boys decided to try and connect with their ancestors by farting and grunting at them. This attempt at communication was repaid with one of them flinging **** at Darren B. It was **** hilarious.
Next up was the kiddie cred, which we had to drag another ride-op away from which I’m sure was one of many smoke breaks for that day to operate the thing for us. The train looks like the little Disneyland girl meme.
Finally another ride-op crawled out of the woodwork to switch on the vile Schwarzkopf thing for us. He had to jump in front of the train at the end to activate the breaks, yay!
We had arrived at the park for last entry that was at 4.30pm, however the park didn’t close until 6pm, so we did some exploring. We found non-upcharged go-karts and bobsleds, which were fun for passing a few minutes then ended our day on the fab Nautic Jets. Personally I find these terrifying but they turned out to be probably the best attraction at the park, so gutted Wicksteed spited theirs.
Ever since the air steward had mentioned the fair in Stuttgart we had been scouring the internet trying to find out what was there, and from what we could gather Testtrecke, one of the ‘big’ travelling coasters, was just a 40 minute drive away. Turns out this fair is pretty busy. After a bit of a nightmare with parking we finally settled and headed for the cred, alongside many people in traditional German get up. It was about 8pm and a lot of people were completely twatted, many people laying on the floor and puking in bins. Culture <3
Only 4euros for the privilege, Testtrecke was wonderful. It’s so smooth with some lovely transitions and the right level of forcefulness without being vile. Loved it. The rest of the fair consisted of massive ghost trains, travelling wild mouse creds and pretzels before heading back to our stylish Ibis lodgings for the night.
Holiday Park
Holiday Park has always eluded me because on paper there’s actually not much going on. Expedition Ge Force yes, but not much else. I was right. The park wasn’t exactly dead being a bank holiday Friday for ze Germans and yet we were done by 1.30pm, including re rides. The park is a bit crap, nothing of note other than the aforementioned and Sky Screamer, the new Premier thing that replaced their classic looper. I’m not a fan of the Plopsa characters so wasn’t all that impressed with that stuff and just felt quite let down by the place (even taking into consideration I wasn’t expecting much in the first place!). I wouldn’t rush back, that’s for sure.
Expedition Ge Force was the reason for our visit so we bee lined straight over and joined the queue for the front row. First thing in the morning it doesn’t exactly run like **** off a shovel, more like **** off of a piece of corrugated iron. Good pacing, good turn arounds, nice gentle floater airtime. Fun fun fun, but definitely not top ten material. Rerides later in the day proved to provide more speed which pushed it more into **** off a shovel territory, but still not there in terms of say, Skyrush.
Sky Screamer was the Nu42014 offering and the area looks quite cool. It all felt quite Merlin-esque, and the building looks quite cool, but it feels quite plonked and there’s a lot of bare concrete and fences around. The park have also done an Alton and kept the corkscrew from their corkscrew, only they haven’t cleaned or spruced it up in any way. It’s ugly. I was looking forward to sky Screamer as Premier make awesome coasters. The first half of the launch provided lots of fun willy lift and seemed promising, however the rest of the ride was completely gross. Overly forceful, disgusting hangtime, random TRIMS at the top (wtf?!) and just a massive anti-climax. It was poo.
The rest of the park is very generic ‘theme park’ stuff, a rapids, log flume (that was quite epic), handful of flats and a wild mouse. The plan at this point had been to head up to Fort Fun Abenteuerland, but German roadwerks were not on our side (see Benin’s trip report) so we sacked that off in favour of an Alpine Coaster at a much more convenient location.
Unfortunately due to a disgusting drive north to follow our cred stop, we had very little time in this park. It is a gorgeous forresty affair in the heart of the German mountains. The attraction is much more country park than theme park with slides, swan boats, climbing frames and trains making up the vast majority of the park’s offerings, however the star attraction of course was the alpine coaster, denoted in this case by a massive queue. Poo. Bank holidays are so spiteful! Oh well, we joined the back and waited probably about 45 minutes. It was a good little ride but unfortunately some stupid girls wanted to do 5mph down the entire thing so our ride was a bit spoiled in the end. I would have loved to have spent more time exploring this place, it’s a perfect CF playground.
Heide Park
On my previous visit in 2009 we had totally cred dashed this park, so my memory of it was vague. Since then they had acquired two new B&Ms so a revisit was on the cards. Overall I don’t have much love for the place, it all feels too deliberate and I feel the Merlin ownership is gradually starting to overshadow the European charm of the place. The area over by Grottenblitz, for example, is very pretty and lovely with the rides interacting with one another and has a very organic feel to it, whereas the newer side where Krake and Flug sit is very purpose built and Merlin branded. I know that the Vekoma & Huss corner is equally diabolical but I feel like Merlin should know better. It irritates me when parks do not landscape and add trees in around newer themed areas to help them flow together with the rest of the park more elegantly rather than just having the ‘ride area’ in its own stand alone territory. As a park it doesn’t have a very good atmosphere in my opinion and is saved by its few stand out coasters alone, which is such a shame because it has such charm potential.
First and foremost, soundtrack <3 I am a massive fan of IMAScore and their Krake soundtrack is another hit in my books. I wish it was louder and was also present on board. Something we noticed as a group over the weekend was a distinct lack of music in all of the parks, and the difference in ambience and atmosphere is massively noticeable. The station building is fab, I love a good pirate theme and Merlin definitely know what they’re doing in this territory, they really hit the nail on the head. And the Krake mouth is amazing! So daunting, the only difference I would make to it is I’d love it if parts of it were animatronic. In the back row the drop is really disappointing, however the front row gives a kick of Oblivion calibre. We rode this 4 or 5 times over the weekend, I really enjoyed it and it really benefits from the extended layout to compliment the intensity of the drop. Great attraction.
The layout of Flug der Damonen had me really intrigued as it’s totally unique and looked like it could serve some fab transitions and a fun ride overall. The theme is a horror version of Swarm really; instead of an alien destroying an English village a vampire has destroyed a European hamlet. Flug even has it’s own signature ‘creature’ noise that screeches out as the coaster flies overhead, it looks pretty cool. I just really would love to see more trees and landscaping in this area. The station building is also really disappointing, especially when you have the gorgeous gothicky looking old log flume station sat all sad and boarded up right next door to it, it doesn’t seem fair somehow. I also think this area’s theme is let down by the office block building that runs along the left hand-side. Things like this dramatically affect my ride experience and it’s a shame really because they are easily preventable in my opinion. The coaster itself, aside from the first drop and airtime hill, is just really really dull. There is little to no pacing or sensation of speed, loads of hangtime to the point where the train seems to struggle around the track. What a boring waste of a coaster.
The last coaster of note at Heide Park is the Intamin woodie Colossos, which I only rode once back in 2009 and which made its way straight into my top ten; I was excited to see how it would hold up after all those years. It was our most ridden coaster of the trip and it is very very good. Excellent in fact. The trouble is it doesn’t suit my tastes in coasters. I like coasters with lots of elements stacked one after the other, relentless speed and having to catch my breath on the break run. For me, Colossos is just too drawn out. It rides hard and slow, like a B&M hyper but with only half of the intensity. It takes too long to get into the airtime, giving you time to prepare yourself for the forces. I can see why people love these coasters but they are too predictable for me.
Hotel Port Royale
Every now and then I like to visit resort hotels. I feel they add to the overall theme park experience and a lot of the time are really excellent. Recently I’d visited the Alton Towers Hotel and paid obscene amounts of money for The Smiler Room for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary only to be massively let down. As a treat for my birthday Conor had arranged for me to stay in a special room in the Hotel Port Royale and we were a bit sceptical to say the least. We needn’t have been. The room was wonderful, a bit bigger than the normal sized rooms with a lovely four-poster bed, a big bathtub in the main room and THEMING IN THE TOILETS!! To top it off a hostess brought champagne and birthday cake to our room so we could celebrate. Worlds away from the crap treatment and room at the ATH and really made the weekend special.
Furthermore, the deal we booked included breakfast and dinner, which was the usual buffet affair but with one difference. FREE REFILLS ON BEER! And the evening entertainment wasn’t the obnoxious crap found at the ATH but a nice mix of kids entertainment and mellow acts including magic, aerial acrobatics and musicians.
In 2015 the hotel are adding a pool area and frankly I think this will complete this already amazing hotel.
