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Rollercoasters, Rain and Roaring

Will

Strata Poster
So, time for a bit of a write up of this week’s trip to the Netherlands – the first time I’ve been out that way since 2011. This will be slightly different from a normal report, as creds weren’t the sole reason for the trip; a couple of years back, I happened to be in Canada at the same time as the women’s football world cup was on – since then, I’ve become quite a big fan of ‘the Lionesses’ and was annoyed I hadn’t take the opportunity to go to a big game, so Euro 2017 was the ideal time to put that right and see an English side win for once, without excessive expense or any crowd trouble – and of course, I could pick up a few coasters along the way.

The trip began at an oddly civilised time on Sunday, my flight to Amsterdam leaving Manchester at around 1pm, and not as packed with loud people bound for naughty ‘lads holidays’ as I’d envisioned. I wasn’t thrilled to see my hire car was an Opel Corsa, which I’ve never heard a single good word about – but it was perfectly adequate and very easy to drive (so no repeats of the drama which blighted April’s Germany trip) – the only trouble was the lack of anywhere to plug in an iPod, meaning I was stuck with Dutch radio the whole time.

From Amsterdam, the first stop was Duinrell, about half an hour up the motorway. It had been a bit of a hassle picking up the car, so I was beginning to have cred anxiety, getting to the park around 90 minutes before it closed. On arrival, I was surprised to find the park was as pleasant as I’d been promised, but it was also very big and a bit of a hassle to navigate – and also, more than half the people there seemed to be British!

Due to time constraints, and the fact that I had a match to get to in the evening, it was decided that this would be purely a cred run. Kikkerachtbaan was first up – and this was a generic Zierer Tivoli – inoffensive enough, but nothing really to write home about. Then it was onto Falcon (a clone of Rage at Adventure Island) – I overheard a Scottish man in the queue murmuring about the Smiler and jokingly asked him if he thought the queue would get any shorter if I pointed out the ride was made by the same company; he appeared far from thrilled at this news, at first assuming I was winding him up! The wait was around 20 minutes, but improved by children in front pointing out to their incredulous parents that the chewing gum stuck to the queue line fences had been artistically crafted into penis shapes. One such child was less happy once seated, and had a bit of a tantrum all the way up the lift hill – from their conversation in the queue, I gathered this was the first ride she’d been on that hadn’t been themed to Peppa Pig. I did not like Falcon – it was rougher than I remember Rage being and had clearly aged badly; the rattling was severe, and I decided that this was not one I had any plans to ride again. The final coaster – Dragonfly, looked more interesting, and after a 10-15 minute wait, I established this was one of my favourite family coasters, picking up a surprising amount of speed and forces for what it was. Happy with my +3 in the space of an hour, I elected not to join the lengthy line for the somewhat unorthodox water ride and got back into the car (horrified at the car park charge) and headed up to Breda, which was around an hour away. I did like Duinrell and would have been happy to see more of it, but these are my only real memories of the hour there.

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The Bastion hotel was on what was essentially a business park, which confused both me and my satnav as we ended up doing several laps of the area, trying to work out how to get into the car park. I was amused to note that everyone I met in the hotel was English, many of them in matching replica shirts and this made it easy to find someone to share a taxi to the stadium with.

It turned out I didn’t need the taxi; there was plenty of parking and although drinking in sight of the pitch was permitted, the only alcohol available was 0.5% Carling. Ugh, I guess you can’t win them all. Although the stadium was one of the least pleasant I’d been to, the atmosphere was fantastic, helped by the English and Spanish fans sharing a stand. I caught myself joining in with both national anthems, as Spain’s is fun and I used to hear it a lot after F1 races. I shan’t bore you with the full details, but suffice to say that England scored in the second minute, then again in the fifth (disallowed due to offside) – then it rained heavily. People back home talk with trepidation about a ‘cold, rainy night in Stoke on Trent’ but to be honest, I’d never seen a match played in worse conditions – visibility was shocking, and it’s lucky nobody was injured. The child sat on my right who knew all the players by Christian name played ‘how many times can I get up to go to the toilet during the match?’ before finally coming back in tears having locked herself in the cubicle. Sigh. Anyway, Spain came back into the game well and were denied a very convincing penalty appeal, but in the dying minutes, Jodie Taylor, heroine of the previous game against the Scots, tapped home a second to send everyone back to the hotel in high spirits. I spent the remainder of the evening drinking high spirits with a couple of fans from Nottingham, and opening the hotel door for people (it locked itself at 10, for reasons unknown).

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The bad weather had set it once again when I awoke on Monday – my plan had been to drive up to Walibi World, but the previous night’s overindulgence had made me lazy and headachy, and I fell back to sleep. Eventually roused by the staff wanting to clean my room, I decided it would be more sensible to go to the other nearby park, which was in turn a mere 20 minutes from Tilburg stadium.

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Although I knew I had to go back for Baron, I’ve never liked Efteling and this causes me a fair few arguments among enthusiasts. I consider the park to be like Christmas – great for families with children or couples on a romantic getaway, but as I’m neither, it’s never really gelled with me – not helped by the fact that arguments have spoiled both my previous trips. Consider my surprise therefore, when I actually really enjoyed my afternoon and wished I’d allowed myself more than 3 ½ hours to explore. The trip started disappointingly when I accidentally ordered a burger with nasty relish on it, but substantially improved when it was time to go in search of rides. One of my main criticisms of Efteling has been that there are no real stand-out rides, and everything seems to be style over substance, but with Baron, a real corner has been turned. I was every bit as impressed with the ride as I had been disappointed by Krake back in April. The queue, even single riders, was efficiently handled, the pre-show really grabbed my attention (especially second time, when I realised there was a screen with English subtitles!) and the music (the bit that isn’t just marching drumbeat) is spine-tingling. As such, I was already a huge fan before I’d so much as taken my seat, perhaps biasing me somewhat – the drop may not quite pack the same punch as Oblivion, but everything that comes after flows together surprisingly nicely – oddly reminding me of everything I like about the Swarm. Even at 10EUR, I wanted to buy my ride photo which clearly showed me shouting with joy – but the staff in the shop were very slow and I gave up. This is now second only to Troy in my ranking of Dutch coasters, and if this is the way Efteling are taking things, perhaps it will be less than 6 years before I make the trip again.
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After a few minutes taking advantage of the wifi, watching Baron and taking pictures everyone’s taken a hundred times before, I headed over to Joris en de Draak, the queue for which, to my amazement, started in the station. This ride wasn’t at all how I remembered it, and… I wasn’t sure if I liked it – the relentless speed and constant twists of the track that seemed impossibly tightly banked were a little too much, but I suspect I’d have enjoyed it on another day. I elected not to ride the blue side; once was enough. With everything I wanted to do ticked off and the park surprisingly quiet (perhaps because of the intermittent showers), there was time to relax and enjoy my surroundings – something I’d not been able to do on either previous trip due to having to get all the creds.
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My next ride was DVH (sod typing that out in full), which I remembered being my favourite ride of previous visits (and the only Kumbak on my spreadsheet). This was also decidedly quiet due to the weather and also had an enjoyable soundtrack. The indoor section was every bit as good as I expected – but, especially considering the family feel of the park, was a hell of a lot darker than I expected – the Valhalla-esque effects as you ‘sail into the black’ would have upset me as a child! The coastery bit is alright, and I was glad to not get so much as a splash from the job, but to be honest, it’s a better dark ride than it is coaster.

With minimal interest in riding Python or Bob, and realising it was the dark rides and atmospheric experiences I’d enjoyed most so far, I figured it would be very wrong not to check out Symbolica. This had a longer line than the rest of the park, but also a single rider line, which cut out the wait entirely. Realising I really wasn’t going to be the target audience for this attraction, my ‘sense of disbelief’ was suitably suspended, meaning I enjoyed the pre-show as much as any child in the room did, and then it was onto the ride. I find Symbolica a very difficult ride to explain or describe, essentially being a journey through a series of things that happen, but the level of detail and the sheer size and scale of the indoor theming and effects puts everything at Disney Paris to shame. I won’t claim that I understood it, but I could tell it was clearly very good – I’d love to see Efteling attempt a similar take on a ghost train or something with equally dark theming.
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Either way, I couldn’t help coming out with a smile on my face – but now it was time for coffee, which came with a heart cookie. As good as Baron 1898 was, the heart cookie was almost certainly the highlight of the day – it was big and tasted like a mixture of marzipan and cookie dough. The coffee was somewhat forgotten as a result, but was also good. I also got to share the cookie with some ducks, who surrounded me while I was munching.

Trying to work out what I wanted to do next and if I’d missed any ‘must do’ attractions resulted in me getting very lost (Efteling is big, the map isn’t great and neither is my sense of direction!) I wanted to ride Vogel Rock, but realised I was in completely the wrong end of the park and rode Droomvlucht instead, because After Forever have a song called Dreamflight and it is good – I like the ride as well – the theming may be a bit silly, but it’s relaxing and a nice fleeting escape from the real world. Now running out of dark rides that weren’t Pandadroom, I realised I couldn’t possibly leave Efteling without going to see Spookslot and so this was next, again an impressive level of detail and made of ‘WTF’. Now I have Danse Macabre in my head again.

I rounded off the day with a bit more exploring and a last ride of Baron, electing to leave the park before the fountain show caused crowds at the exit, and also because I had to be in Tilburg for 20:45. All told, Efteling had gone up a lot in my estimation, and although still far from being one of my favourite parks, I’d have struggled to find a better way to pass the afternoon.

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Due to the badly organised parking in Tilburg and the fact that Holland v Belgium was a sellout, I didn’t manage to get into the stadium until after the anthems, and had to leave to get food during an injury as I hadn’t had time before hand. I’d accidentally booked seats in the Belgium end, so decided I’d better support them, as their fans were fun and as Holland were given a dodgy penalty. Ultimately however, it was the large crowd wearing orange that would leave happy, as Belgium were eliminated, while Holland progressed to the quarter finals. Again, the atmosphere inside the stadium was amazing and even questionable refereeing decisions didn’t anger the crowd too much (though the Dutch goalkeeper was persistently booed).
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The highlight was the Belgian equaliser – came out of nowhere and was reminiscent of Shaqiri’s goal against Everton a couple of years back. Due to road closures, it was nearly midnight when I got back to the hotel, and crawled back into bed.
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Tuesday was the final day of the trip and this time, I had to be up earlier than I’d have liked, as it was around 90 miles up to Walibi Holland. Due to the time of year, I had concerns that the park would be busy, but happily, it wasn’t too bad. Again, I hadn’t visited since 2010 and had VERY bad memories of the park which had been by far the least enjoyable park of our amazing road trip – comparisons with Thorpe had been drawn, and if anything, the changes made to the park had made it MORE Thorpe-esque, down to the constant pounding baseline music in nearly every queue and the theming of Xpress. There was also the matter of the clientele... Xpress and Speed of Sound had been closed in 2010, so I grabbed both of those – the restraints make Speed of Sound by far the best boomerang I’ve done (far superior to Prater’s and its nasty metal… things) although the music was a little unnecessary. The single rider line got helped me onto Lost Gravity in under ten minutes and this was an interesting ride which was just as good as it looked. If anything, the ride was an annoying exhibition of just how good Smiler COULD have been, if Merlin’s decision making teams had half a braincell between them. As for Xpress – despite intriguing theming, the ride is dull and forgettable. Also, if I EVER hear ‘The Shape of You’ again, it will be too soon – Walibi clearly being yet another park where I couldn’t move without hearing Ed bloody Sheeran. After a couple of hours cred-running, I was the kind of tired that a can of Red Bull didn’t touch, and I opted not to risk having to race to the airport after queuing for Goliath, which looked to be only running one train. I did manage a second ride on Lost Gravity though. Walibi Holland remains MEH with a capital M, but Lost Gravity is definite progress. It’s hard to say what I’d like to see removed more – Kondor, or the video screen on a stage that kept playing Ed Sheeran.
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From here, the drive back to the airport was easy if damp and I was surprised by how pleasant Amsterdam airport was – down to the excellent selection of Scotch in duty free, and the passport control man who was more interested in talking to me about Stoke City and Erik Pieters than checking my documents!

Overall, this was an enjoyable trip, marking a return to parks I’d overlooked for too long, and finally getting a couple of much-need major creds ticked off. Until next time, then…
Although, if cash was no object, I'd be heading back on Sunday for the inevitable quarter final against the French...
 

Hixee

Flojector
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Good report - nice to see a bit of culture mixed in with the creds.

I've been debating about a similar trip for a while (minus the football though, I have to admit), as I feel a bit basic now having not visited Walibi, Efteling, Duinrell, etc. Maybe one day I'll find the motivation to go. :p
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Getting round to reading some of these trip reports. It's great that there are so many at the moment but I'm falling a bit behind.

Glad you're coming around to Efteling. I totally accept the criticism that it's all a similar type of theming and if you don't like it, you don't like it.
Duinrell is a really cute little park. Nice to see a photo of it in the sunshine; it was a total monsoon when we were there.
Always love your trip reports Will, although usually more when they don't involve football ;p
 
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