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Release The Krakow - Poland Trip Reports

Will

Strata Poster
It's taken me over 9 hours to get from River Park to home and I have very little energy (LANDIA!) and I'm looking forward to an early night, but I wanted to kick things off and say some thank yous before I forgot.

First, obviously to Dr Dave to ferrying me and Sue around all weekend and happily detouring to Katowice twice, despite the fact that he was flying from Krakow! You made our weekend a hell of a lot easier and even the cheesy 80s playlist was much appreciated when we started to flag a bit or needing kick-starting in the morning. Do-do-do-do-Do-do-do-do-Do-do-do-do etc. Sue also deserves a thanks for putting up with me for three days and being a travel partner as well as teaching me everything I never knew I never needed to know about tantalum; hope the presentation goes well :)

Obviously, Serena and Rob deserve thanks too - not just for the organisation, keeping us in order all weekend and generally ensuring everything ran more smoothly than any Live I can remember for some time, or for the fab activity packs but for being generally awesome people to pass a tedious queue line with - it was great to finally meet you properly.

I'm sure somebody from Legendia is reading too, so obviously, they get a thank you for letting us play with their new toy and the whole exclusive experience :)

In fact, probably everyone in attendance deserves a thank you for making the weekend what it was - by the middle of Sunday when we were playing the scarf game, I felt like I'd never been away.

I shall post other memories as they come to me, but for now, Lech is fab, Hyperion is even better - and I'm looking forward to a night of not being kept awake by the acorn-apocalypse!
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
Just on the train back now, great weekend, even if i kinda missed everyone on saturday (lateish bus arrival, and wanted to head straight to the hype)

Top 3 rides.
1 - hyperion. Didn't disappoint, particularly later and at the front, great airtime, but not skyrush!
2 - formula. Some werent that keen on it, but i found it just great fun and smooth. A seriously whoreable ride!
3 - lech. A great ride, but in 3rd because it was just so intense, lots gave up after 2 or 3 rides in ers. Oh, and it has a bit of a rattle.

Delpiero was right about energylandias dark ride! Hilariously bad! Basyliszk was great though.

Both parks had some rubbish though, the spinning mouse at el was gross, and the other 2 coasters at legendia are almost identical, down to the ghastly pink!

Tried out the cable cars on the way out. Rather nice!
 
It was a great trip!, I'm currently in a weird post-Poland night shift daze at the moment, but I appear to still be alive-ish; albeit in dire need of sleep (****ing acorns!!!!). In retrospect, 2-3 hours driving, then a delayed flight, followed by a busy night shift may not have been the best of ideas, but I think the experience was worth it!
I think Hyperion has made it's way in to one of my potential number-twos (behind i305), I look forward to revisiting the park and whoring it properly, especially at night after it has fully warmed up. The drop was great and the first ejector hill is just sublime - in an el-torro-y kind of way. I love sustained forces and those bits definitely delivered. The "totally-an-inversion-but-for-some-reason-not-an-inversion" turnaround was great too, and the rest was bouncy swoopy fun fun - with the only slight let-downs being the "not-quite-floater" lacklustre hill and splashdown effect not working (although I heard it soaked you, so maybe not that bad an omission).

I seem to have used a rather an excessive number of dashes in this post - maybe there's some subconscious hidden Morse code message or something that my brain is trying to say.

. -. . .-. --. -.--

.-.. .- -. -.. .. .-


-.-- --- ..- / .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .- .-. . / --.- ..- .. - . / ... .- -.. / .. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- .----. ...- . / -- .- -. .- --. . -.. / - --- / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - . / .- .-.. .-.. / --- ..-. / - .... .. ... --..-- / .- -. -.. / .--. .-. --- -... .- -... .-.. -.-- / ... .--. . -. -.. / -- --- ... - / --- ..-. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / -.. .- -.-- ... / .-. . .- -.. .. -. --. / .- -... --- ..- - / - .- -. - .- .-.. ..- -- / .- -. -.. / .-.. --- -. --. .. -. --. / ..-. --- .-. / - .- -. - .- .-.. ..- -- / ...- . -. --. . .- -. -.-. . / - --- / -... . / -... ..- .. .-.. -

Anyway.... this is post is probably an indicator to how kind-of jet lagged i am, and that I should probably stop pressing the "-" key.

Still, Lech was great! (if a little too intense for some - (not naming names!)). There was a rather interesting selection of flat rides too, which were interesting in various stomach churning ways. The main highlight, was of course - the joy and tactical coordination of stealing Sue's scarf.
But seriously, huge thanks in general to Legendia in being great to us and giving us wonderful ERT on their best coaster and showing us around the park.

Special thanks to Serena for the effort put in, and the goon enforced-fun pack (even if some of the crossword answers were possibly misinformed). It's little things like that that make trips extra special and you deserve all the warm fuzzies (hopefully provided by your new dragon companion, won for you by the efforts of several goons).

Also, Will should not be allowed to drink whisky unsupervised, and he missed out several of the doos! - It should be Doo, Doo Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo-Dooo, Doo-Doooooooo.

And I'm hungry like the creepy-nightmare-fuel-discount-efteling-wolf; that lives in river park.


I cant wait til ghosterfoce

and now I (hopefully) sleep.
 

Will

Strata Poster
I don't think I achieved a lot at work today; though I did bring my credsheet up to date on my lunch break, to the bewilderment of a few co-workers :p

Thanks to my own foolishness, as Dave's intimated above, I did spend Saturday in a bit of a hungover blur, not 100% feeling myself after getting a little too excited about cheap drink on the Friday evening, but somehow, I still managed to have a good day. Highlights obviously included the fact that Blackpool's old Zipper Dipper ride-op had clearly found a new job on Circus Coaster and decided that an already shameful cred needed some audience participation, the joyous front row ride on Hyperion toward the end of the day and getting to know a few people better when Hyperion broke down while we were queuing for it, Formula being surprisingly good (despite looking like G-Force) and the SLC not being entirely terrible. A lot of us went for fried chicken at lunch, not realising that we'd essentially bought a family bucket each and quickly found ourselves severely overfaced. The remainder of the coasters were severely meh (though I at least escaped the expected drowning at the hands of Speed!) and Happy Loops ('I can think of at least two things wrong with that rides name!') and the SBF spinner were particularly vulgar.

Whilst writing a later paragraph, I remembered that Monster Attack existed. This was perhaps our longest queue on the Saturday and was not, as we had hoped, so bad it was good - it was so bad it was ****ing awful - the Alien effects may have been impressive, but the actual ride did nothing and the shooting did not work. You also spent an annoying amount of the queue with nothing to look at save the crotch of a giant mannequin.

Nic took some zloty off us and organised a fab BBQ in the evening and a handful of males inevitably gathered around the fire to prove their manliness. Richard and a few others came out with some classic lines, crisps were incinerated and grapefruit beer was raged at - I decided I needed an early night so that I felt human on the Sunday, but from what I could hear, the fun continued until around midnight.

As hoped, I felt a lot more human on Sunday and can therefore remember it a bit better; we were concerned about being late because Sue, but thanks to Dave's driving, we weren't the last to arrive in the end. Entry to the park was painlessly sorted (aside from me being a dick and wanting to make the turnstile make a happy noise twice, thus breaking it). Our first impressions of the park were very good - it was considerably more pleasing on the eye than Energylandia and from across the lake, Lech looked particularly exciting. As the dark ride wasn't yet available, our enthusiastic host led us to Lech and, after a brief explanation and a slightly confusing but better-than-Wickerman preshow, let us into play. Unless you were Sue, it seemed that Lech was an acquired taste ('WHAT'S THE POLISH FOR: JUDDERY AS ALL HELL?!') but whilst I ended up preferring Hyperion, I was still impressed with this reinvention of Vekoma - the intensity was a real shock to the system (It's not often I see an enthusiast sick for non-alcohol reasons - whilst I was unable to complete a lap without greying out) but the transitions, mental first drop and the inversion through the station were a joy. I only managed 4 laps during the ERT session as I felt rather ill after doing three in a row and didn't want to chance it.

The other coasters were a little less exciting - I ended up with Rob & Serena for the oddly named and upsettingly pink 'Dream Hunters Society' which was a rather uncomfortable non-event, and the equally oddly named Scary Toy Factory was equally forgettable (and equally pink!) I'd almost managed to forget Budget Symbolica... I mean Bazyliszek, where the oversized novelty padlocks meant we had nearly as much fun in the queue line as on the ride - despite the slightly tasteless flourescent lights and glo-paint, this, like Lech, was clearly very high tech stuff compared to the rest of the park and showed that passionate investment had clearly been made in recent years, and comparing it to the atrocity we'd encountered the previous day made it seem even better.

Much of the rest of the day was spent watching Sue, Dan and Iac (I think? I spent the day calling him Lars, for some reason) riding REALLY obnoxious looking flat rides. I didn't think I'd ever encounter something more upsetting than Linnanmaki's Kieppi - but then I went to Legendia. I couldn't even stand to watch the Dragon Fight thing, whilst the spinning barrels of immense doom and Pandemonium-but-worse didn't look a whole lot better. As with the Log Flume and the spinny planes ride of not-as-old-as-Blackpool's, I oped to bag-lady and socialise - as Ian had said, with only three creds and a park that was dead as Southport, the order of the day was to 'chillax'. I also 'helped' with the social media: 'This rollercoaster is pink. How many pink rollercoasters can you name?' 'Tag a mate who would ride this obnoxious looking flat ride' etc.

Lunch wasn't as good (or as big) as the previous day's, but the setting was nicer, with most of us crowded around a long wooden table, having some particularly goonish debates and agreeing that the restaurant was a better use for a load of wood than bloody Coaster Express. At some point in the afternoon, the answers to Serena's fab (if partially inaccurate, not that I was goony enough to have noticed!!) quiz were read out and we had what was surely the ****test CF Faffle to date. Somehow, I managed to win something useful - I may have no idea what Michigan's Adventure is, but I'd spent the weekend in serious need of a glasses strap as mine were taken off me on all the bigger rides and I always enjoy a ride a lot more if I can see! Ian seemed less thrilled with his Alton Towers notebook.

Other daft attractions included the spinning tunnel of doom, which quickly sorted the men from the... people who'd over-indulged at the BBBQ. I managed to survive nearly three minutes (mainly by sitting down) - as there was a child at one end and Caffeine_Demon at the other and I was scared to attempt to leave for fear of being crushed by one or crushing the other. There was also the looping bike thing that didn't look up my street, but Chris showed everyone up by being insanely good at it - his only difficulty was STOPPING it from looping, whilst we also learned that he and Rob had a knack for throwing things to knock things off other things and win toothless dragons.

One final group bonding exercise came after half the group re-rode Lech Coaster and the other half stole Sue's 'whimsical' scarf, to punish us for dicking around with it in an annoying manner and causing me to ask everyone in turn if they were wearing the scarf. Surprisingly, it remained funny in a pantomime kind of way, but I suspect you had to be there. I forget who had it in the end.

The weather was beginning to turn and we had one final cred to nab, back in Zator, before we went back to bed, so some goodbyes were said and then we got back into the car to Zatorland, rode the fairly forgettable Dinocoaster in the drizzle (after trying to work out whether to use the circle's toilets or square's toilets?!) and then said the rest of the goodbyes. Myself, Sue, Nathan and Dave then went to a surprisingly good restaurant and I had a mixed grill that cost about a fiver.

The accommodation also deserves a mention, for not being exactly what I expected, but aside from the acorn-apocalypse (the metal roof was not ideal) and whoever unplugged the boiler on Saturday night, causing me to smell bad on Sunday, it was all part of the fun and quite well suited to us really. Having a fire-pit to gather around certainly beat all cramming into one Travelodge room like in the old days, and I wouldn't be aversed to staying there again if I found myself in Zator - the wifi worked for one thing!

This report's not up to my usual standard - despite Ian asking at one point during the weekend 'How the **** do you remember all this ****, Will!?!' my short term memory doesn't function half as well as my long term memory, so I'm counting on the rest of you to fill in the gaps, particularly with the Saturday. As for my opinions - I'd have to say that I'd be more in a hurry to return to Legendia than Energylandia - whilst Hyperion was the best coaster of the trip for my money, I had more fun on the second day and the park seemed to have more substance and a better atmosphere. The RMC and launched Vekoma however, may change my mind! Either way, here's hoping it's less than 7 years before my next foray to Europe with you lot :D
 

JoshC.

Strata Poster
There was also the looping bike thing that didn't look up my street, but Chris showed everyone up by being insanely good at it - his only difficulty was STOPPING it from looping, whilst we also learned that he and Rob had a knack for throwing things to knock things off other things and win toothless dragons.

Wait, are you saying saying Chris actually managed to loop on the looping bike?!? A couple of us tried for almost 10 minutes between us and got nowhere with it, before the guy comforted us and said "I think it's impossible anyway".

Feel like a right mug for believing him if that's the case :(
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Ok, not writing a big TR as y'all were mostly there anyway, but here are some random pics, not great ones to be hnest...

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How to read Polish?
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At lunch, spotted a random Dan who had failed to meet up with us winding his way thru the burdensome Hyperion queue...
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Train of shame #1
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and #2
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A momentous moment for IfC (#800), shame he had no mates...
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BBQ - well sorted Nic :)
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Day 2

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Lech ERT was fab, any-goon who didn't ride every available dispatch hang their head in shame now.
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Yeah this was a little optimistic wasn't it chaps?
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Boat about to sink...
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Never looked like a good idea this;
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Dan/Dean on the front row there
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Evidence of Chris' expertise
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Sue nearly got there...
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+1
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And when I'd ditched all the goons, had a bit of a wander in the town

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This was bit random!?!
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--

So great little trip ; ta to Serena for the organising etc, and ta to Intamin and Vekoma for the two splendid new machines. :)
 

Will

Strata Poster
Christ...
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Nice work, Dave :)

I also remembered two other things, which were Nic's rant about the pronuncation of Knoebels and Sue's rants about being asked what type of rock various pebbles were and also student loans.
 

Peet

Giga Poster
Nice pics, shame I missed the looping bikes on my trip, they look great fun!

Important question - does anyone know the manufacturer of the 2 Zyklon creds at Legendia? They look like Pinfaris but RCDB doesn't list a manufacturer and they are listed as originating in "2003 or earlier" and 2012 respectively. The 2003 one could be Pinfari but 2012 would be too recent.
My best guess for the newer one (Scary Toys Factory) would be Interpark, but could also be SBF; both of those companies make Pinfari zyklon style coasters.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Important question - does anyone know the manufacturer of the 2 Zyklon creds at Legendia? They look like Pinfaris but RCDB doesn't list a manufacturer and they are listed as originating in "2003 or earlier" and 2012 respectively. The 2003 one could be Pinfari but 2012 would be too recent.
My best guess for the newer one (Scary Toys Factory) would be Interpark, but could also be SBF; both of those companies make Pinfari zyklon style coasters.
Sounds like one for...

@roomraider!

(said in a superhero-esque intro style)
 

NathP

Roller Poster
Just got home last night from my Vienna addon lol. It was great meeting everyone over the weekend on my first CF Live! Many thanks to Serena and Rob for organizing!

Look forward to the next one!
 

DelPiero

Strata Poster
Nice pics, shame I missed the looping bikes on my trip, they look great fun!

Important question - does anyone know the manufacturer of the 2 Zyklon creds at Legendia? They look like Pinfaris but RCDB doesn't list a manufacturer and they are listed as originating in "2003 or earlier" and 2012 respectively. The 2003 one could be Pinfari but 2012 would be too recent.
My best guess for the newer one (Scary Toys Factory) would be Interpark, but could also be SBF; both of those companies make Pinfari zyklon style coasters.
I have them both down as Pinfaris in my spreadsheet, I usually leave them with ?? if i'm unsure so I think I would have done some research but I'm happy to be corrected.
The other cred is Soquet by the way.
 

DelPiero

Strata Poster
Was it open for you!? I got spited which was sad as I was looking forward to bagging my first Soquet plus completing the set of Former American Adventure creds!
Yeah I got it a couple of months back, interesting ride, not something I want to ride again though.
 

roomraider

Best Topic Starter
Sounds like one for...

@roomraider!

(said in a superhero-esque intro style)

Oh jeeze @Hixee give me the easy stuff why don't you.

As @DelPiero said I believe both are from Pinfari.
I cant say for 100% on this but I am fairly sure Dream Hunters is a Pinfari Z40.
Scary Toy Factory is also a Pinfari although which model i dont know.

This is mostly from various Polish enthusiast posts which say both are Pinfari. Such as this series of posts on Skyscrapercity.
https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1814223&page=214
We must have a couple of Polish Members who can read this better than i can though right?
 
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