This ride has underrated music by the way.
The next coaster was
Posiedon , a water coaster. I knew what to expect since we have one at Sea World, and this was more or less the same except one of the drops has an extra turn.
and there is a whole second drop that is basically a shoot the chutes type deal, that is really just more of the same.
But it did feel a bit more loose than my local one, so it picks up speed a bit quicker, and seemed a bit more foreceful, but was rougher too. I liked how it had a decent length of floaty sections too.
The theming was great, but no real story to speak of.
Perhaps my only bad encounter with staff was here. A boat pulled up, gates opened as i was arriving in the station, i sat down.
The op on the platform thought i was a previous rider who was refusing to exit, they kept repeating "you have to leave, you have to leave", my limited german wasnt much help...."err...ich nich fahrt?", it was only when I pointed out that my clothes were dry that they realised that I had only just boarded :/
Actually all of the Greek Area had great theming, probably my favourite in the park.
So next up was
Silver Star. You know when sometimes you look at something for years, and then you only just 'get' it and feel like an idiot. I always wondered why they chose the name silver star...Just sounded like a boring generic name that was inoffensive for a big ride and fitted the 'brand' of Europa Park at the time. The wierd little flying rock shape was no help either. I knew the ride was sponsored by Mercedes too, but whenever that thought popped into my head, I was like "Mercedes Isn't French, why is it in that part of the park?
Eventually it clicked....Oh, its called Sliver Star because of the Mercedes Benz logo! Derpderpderp.
In the exhibition area the exit there was a weak effort to tie it into the French area, with a sign that read "You are here" with a map of france with Le Mans highlighted.
A Disaster Transport "Weclome to Canada" moment?
The ride was better than I had heard, with good moments of sustained floater and kept its speed well. From memory the last couple of hills were pretty good in particular.
Spited by this one. Apparently as part of the changes they have figured out a couple of places to add pops of airtime, within the limitations of the existing structure and layout.
Next coaster was
Ba-a-a-a Express in a fantastic Irish themed kids area.
An the coaster has immense theming for its size, with grassy topped rockwork, and a cute Rastafarian sheep sitting in the middle with his/her friends.
Next coaster was the
Alpenexpress which passes through an elaborate, colourful mountain troll themed caved, which I discovered you can actually go walk through, eventually leading into an elaborately themed hallway with mosaics. This is what I am talking about when I say the park has endless areas to go exploring, and if you explore you are rewarded. The coaster itself was fine.
The final big ride I closed out on was the rapids ride, figuring if i got wet I could just crank the heater in the car , take shoes off etc and change my shirt straight away.
It had a couple of good wave generator sections, plus a whole section of animatronic characters you dont really see from off the ride.
You can actually get pretty wet on these rapids, as the people sitting opposite discovered. I got off fine, but be warned of the potential.
That evening after the park we drove to Basel, and with the last bit of light had a look at the 3 country junction on the Rhine
And the next day was Mums birthday, so we had a look around Basel in the morning, then drove to Colmar in France for the nice old buildings.
So thats two new countries I've been to.
The next morning was an early start to head back into Germany for day 2 at Europa.
The last coaster I had to get was
Matterhorn Blitz , not much to be said other than it had vertical lift with tilting effect like on Scooby Doo, and some very elaborate Swiss Barnyard theming in the queue. +1
A bit of a faff waiting for them to add an extra train on Blue Fire.
Mack, geddit?
But day 2 was basically re-rides, and riding the minor attractions I hadn't done yet, including the Virgin Glacier Flyer,which can be seen in the middle of this pic below. It's basically like a scrambler, but you ride in little planes, and the swing out, but what makes it interesting is the mechanism keeps the planes facing fowards the whole time as your little group of 4 planes rotates on the end of the arm, so you get this sensation of flying in formation, with each plane taking its turn at the front.
Much like Alton, the park was established on an old pleasure garden with a castle, and this is the Europa castle and garden, which is to the left of the main entrance street.
Actually, thats the one thing you can fault with the park, basically any animatronic (Except in Arthur) and especially any human figure, looked like a bad store mannequin and had bad movements. There's no shortage of engineering expertise in the organisation, nor any lack of in house creative talent, so why.
This African boat ride being an example.
The other fault...The Luxemborg area had literally nothing that felt like Luxemborg IMO.
Given the lack of pics at my disposal, ill run through everything else I tried in the order it is listed on the map beside me:
Jim Button, journey through Morrowland
A new thing where you ride in individual locomotives through various tunnels and facades, and a couple of figurines presumably from the film. Train obsessed kids would love it. I did laugh how the station had german style timetables and Verkehrsverbund maps.
Puppet Boat Ride
Mostly Just Rode because I've not ridden one of those farberge egg boat rides before. Cute in a word, and one case where animatronics dont need to be humanlike to be effective.
Volo Da Vinci
Suspended cycle monorail thing with nice views over the various boat and car rides at the front of the park.
Ghost Castle
Haunted mansion knock off with many of the same tropes, including the stretching preshow room, though there was a cool transylvanian lab type thing.
Picolo Mondo
Cutsey dark ride through some romanticised stereotypical scenes of Italy.
Arena of Football, Football Scooter.
Bumper cars, but there were touch sensitive goals and a giant ball rolling around in the arena, so if you bumped the ball into the goal at the end a mighty "goooooaaaall"would erupt over the sound speaker.
Snowflake Sleigh Ride
Bit of a pointless short dark ride in the russian area that just went through wintry scenes with mannequins of people singing, dressed all rugged up.
Mir Space Station
A walkthrough of a re-creation of the mir space station, with models of all the usual **** like the toilet, the bed with straps, and the control module, and bad store mannequin astronauts.
Dome of Dreams
A large dome cinema, playing a French/German language film called the secrets of gravity. Understood none of it, but it was kind of interesting seeing how the dome cinema format was used. In particular there was a well done part where you are floating through a lattice of atoms, and it felt very convincing in terms of being an actual 3D grid rather than something that was all distorted around the dome.
Rulantica Preview Center
Lots of nice artwork and models of the coming water park. The theming is going to be amazing, for example the stair shafts for the slides aren't going to be just plain concrerte, they'll be like you are climbing up through a cave with stalactites. I still reckon they missed an opportunity by not having a hydromagnetic slide and a Tornado in the lineup for the park....both would be slam dunk.
Grimms Enchanted Forest
I wandered through here. A good example of the park having heaps of things to see and do (Albeit this is for young families), with dioramas of various fairytales, and a lot of interactive things....I wonder if this was inspired by Efteling (Europa does seem to have a bit of 'borrowing'
Atlantis Adventure
A fun little continuous chain dark ride, with an upbeat sound track, that becomes grim for a little bit when you get to the "scary sea monster" part, but then the music perks up again ,and you are out of danger and all is good. the ride is basically through a series of underwater scenes, with cutsey underwater stuff like fish and anchors so forth to shoot at.
Pirates in Batavia
POTC but with a south east asian theme, with a lot of Bhuddist temples and so forth, and quite beautiful in parts.
I had some nice satay noodles from the restaurant overlooking the ride here, and they ran an impressive performance of acrobats as I was eating too.
Tirol Log Flume
Basic Bitch log flume but it went through that nice troll cave, and the queue line had buttons you could press that played youdelling, and you could attempt to repeat it.
I'm suprised they haven't ripped this out and put in a fancier Mack flume like Dudleys at IOA?
I also went on both monorails and half a lap on the train ride. The monorail actually uses trains that were used at the monorail at Brisbane Expo 88.
I think that's everything? Let me know if there are any obvious attractions I missed?
I'll finish off with some unsorted photos.....The park is just plain attractive:
So that's the wonderful Europa Park!
