Had a heavy (and long) weekend and was too tired to post so here’s a recap of the (Easter) weekend. I took the Friday off so together with a holiday on Monday that can only mean one thing: four day theme park weekend! Thanks to my excellent insurance I was also able to buy a new cam and due to natural tech progression this one is even better than the one I lost.
Friday: Walibi Flevo
Aaah, Walibi Flevo, European legacy of Six Flags. Walibi Flevo, Six Flags Holland, Walibi World and now Walibi Flevo once again. Despite the naming and some other issues this is (together with De Efteling) one of my favorite parks. Like with De Efteling, we neglected to return our season pass forms during winter and were (again) forced to visit the season pass desk. The desk was to open at nine so we planned to arrive there an half hour earlier to beat some of the horde. In the end we weren’t that early but at least arrived before nine.
When we arrived we turned out to be the third car waiting to enter the park and had to wait for twenty minutes or so before the parking would open at nine. This allowed for a nice opportunity to take some one-of-a-kind shots of the Calibra waiting in front of the Walibi gates to open on the first day of season.
Goliath is the best coaster to be found in a large radius rivalled maybe only by Black Mamba in Phantasialand (the only B&M nearby on the European mainland) but they are so ultimately different to eachother that you just cannot compare them. The thing that makes Goliath rule is the fact that the trains lack shoulder restraints. Together with the world’s only Stengel dive element this makes for a unique hands-up experience.
Saturday: De Efteling
The first thing I did on Saturday was get a new cam. The model I wanted was due in two weeks and because I was impatient like a little kid I took the best model from last year. It is still an improvement to the one I lost so having the latest and greatest wasn’t that important. After explicitly asking for a new one they still managed to ship me off with, what later turned out to be an used and more importantly broken (the display had a group of dead pixels) camera. Luckily we found out really soon after coming home and immediately returned to the shop. In the end I again had to settle with the model from the showcase (like the one I lost) but this one had a lot less footage on it, has a pristine display and shows no other defects so I guess I’ll keep it.
After getting the good cam we went on to De Efteling in the hopes that it would be less crowded than the week before and fortunately it was. We did the usual program and were also able to find a power outlet to charge some of the new batteries for the cam – excellent! You won’t be able to do this in a lot of other parks.
Today we only had to wait 45 minutes instead of the two hours from last week to ride De Vliegende Hollander and I also enjoyed it more because of some new things I noticed during the dark ride part of the ride. We continued with our usual regime but went home pretty early at four something. I guess this was largely due to the fact that there was a serious lack of good looking women that day which in its turn was probably caused by the fact that the weather wasn’t particularly nice.
Sunday: Avonturenpark Hellendoorn
We skipped this park last year but now that we can enter it for free with our Walibi season passes we gave it a go. The weather was very nice, especially during the morning and even though the park is clearly aimed at younger visitors and families we had an excellent time. The personnel was very friendly and the whole park has this ambiance that makes you feel somewhat like coming home.
There is the longest rapids ride in the Netherlands, Sungai Kalimantan – which we didn’t ride. Most of the time the queues for these attractions are too long and you never know if your raft is going to end up below that waterfall to get you soakingly wet for the next umpteen hours. Instead, we went straight for De Donderstenen (The Thunder Rocks! It sounds much cooler in English) which is a nice junior coaster. We tried a hands-up experience but the coaches are just too uncomfortable and some track parts too dangerous to complete a full circuit with your arms stretched up in the air.
Tornado is an old-school Vekoma built in 1990. The track is short but the layout is pretty elegant with a small footprint. It is like the little yellow brother of Python. It would be nice to see a new Kumbak train on that thing (like those on Python). Together with a spring cleaning session and maybe a new paint job this would make this puppy shine again. They also need to get rid of that carnival entrance and put in a proper queue house. At the end of the day we rode this numerous times. The way you are bent into the loop after the first drop and the feel of the loop itself is pretty special. As is the way the track is laid out with multiple sections very close to each other.
A must ride is the Riool Rat, Sewer Rat, which is a pretty old but lovingly created coaster. The sewage theme works pretty well for this ride and is nicely executed. It all starts from the industrial queue pit. The entrance to the main attraction itself is barred with a heavy iron rotating gate. This gate is no joke and if you are not careful you can seriously injure yourself with it. Once some invisible force activates the green light you can enter and you begin your decent into the sewers. After navigating your way down a stairs intertwined with iron tubing followed by some wet, narrow, dimly lit tunnels you find yourself at a seemingly abandoned coaster station. However, just before the train is about to stop the lights go on and a ride attendant reveals herself.
Dark roller coaster rides are not common and even though this one is not the youngest anymore, years of decent maintenance and small tweaks still make it a worthy visit. You can really tell someone is giving a lot of love to this attraction because after ten years it is still the best ride in the park and can stand proud next to other great dark coaster rides.
Another ride to note is Montezuma’s Revenge. I have seen a lot of Topspin rides but this one is absolutely the maddest one to date. The program is ultra short but that is probably a good thing because it is also ultra intense. It starts with one or two gentle sweeps but then you are sent up into sky and it executes its sextuple violent spin attack as it travels down. Then it does some more gentle sweeping and finally finishes off with another swoop, a inverted lock and a hefty final tumble before the program ends. I was glad I could leave. The six spins did me in. On observing this machine execute his program you can really see it’s getting into it. The flimsy looking arms show all kind of vibrations and loud grumbling and squeaking noises can be heard during the more exciting parts. You think it might fall apart any moment now but that is also what makes this ride kinda spectacular. It makes every other topspin seem like a kiddy ride.
One thing to note is that if you ever see a swinging ship ride and it is not in De Efteling – don’t ride it. They all suck. All those ships are cheap plastic rip-offs by some Italian ride company called Zamperla and besides from the fact that they look cheap, swing uncomfortably sideways and are too small, they don’t even remotely offer anything that resembles the ride you get in De Halve Maen: the only real swinging ship in the world and it is built by the legendary Intamin. On a side note, if someone knows another Intamin ship somewhere please let me know. I’ve been dying to see the 320 person version in action but apparently it hasn’t been built…
All in all it was a great and chilling day all around in Hellendoorn. Nice weather. Nice people but not too many of them. Good beer, a place to smoke and an overall great ambiance.
Monday: Walibi Flevo
We thought about going to Movie Park Germany, Bobbejaanland or Walibi Belgium on Monday but to buy season passes you usually need some identification photos. We were out and didn’t want to go on a whole quest to get them so we went back to Walibi Flevo. It seemed to be a little busier than last Friday but because the park was better prepared for it this wasn’t very noticeable for the casual traveler. In fact, Goliath had two trains from the beginning of the day! This is something special because I’ve not even seen this on very busy days last season. Of course, another train would be inserted during the day once in a while during late season but from the beginning?! Excellent move! Less people in the queue equals more revenue and maybe more importantly – more happy people and we all know: happy people spend more money so you get even more revenue!
Theme park 101 aside… Had another great day. We arrived early and that is always nice. The best part of the day is when the sun appears from behind the horizon and begins to travel towards it’s appointed highest point for the day: this is the opening, anything can happen and there are no worries. I also was able to put the cam to good use and also tried taking some still pictures with the new 5 mega pixel cam. This should provide some better Flickr material than the grainy shots I took with my phone.
The Calibra did more than 1100km this weekend and she doesn’t seem to mind as long as she can knock down a drip of oil once in a while. Still though I must take her for a quick wash and her regular checkup soon because I’ve been neglecting this for way too long now.