Rob Coasters
Hyper Poster
(I hope you like words)
"Hey."
"Hey, you."
"Have you heard about this roller coaster... The Ride to Happiness? By Tomorrowland?"
"It's at Plopsaland De Panne. In Belgium. It's super obscure. And really underrated."
"Built by Mack Rides. They built Icon at Blackpool, that white one near The Big One. And also Flying Fish, at Thorpe Park, it's the best ride there, stunning ejector airtime. I don't think you even know what that is."
"It's got onboard audio, The Ride to Happiness. It spins. It launches twice. There's a jojo roll out of the station. There's an outerbanked top hat a banana roll a vertical loop a zero g roll over water a a a a a...."
Then everything went fuzzy for a moment, before I regained my vision and surroundings. The voice of an old man becomes audible, with chatters in the background.
"Sonny! Wake up! What the Devil are you talking about? Some kid with spectacles? Double inverting dive loop? Sideways flo-jector? Plop... Saland, am I hearing that right? Quit the nonsense already good sir, you're next in line for the SWITCHBACK RAILWAY! Just two shillings s'il vous plait."
I board the #-1 Switchback Railway and the suited man pushes me on my way, bet he's got strong arms from doing that all day every day; the scale of his muscles hides behind his suit. Though my cart doesn't seem to follow its course. It takes a sharp right turn, as I feel myself capsizing to the right. Or left. I've lost my sense of direction, I can't find myself or where I am. Ignoring the completely straight track waving along, we were twisting and turning in ways never done before. I hear sounds that I can't drown out, they couldn't be from Yesterdayworld, the local orchestra of village-wide fame. I think I need to wake up again. This doesn't feel right. The world starts collapsing in on itself, the voices become distorted, the faces start glowing, my hands start decomposing.
Then everything went dark.
A violent shake wakes me up. Oh. Seems like it was all just a bad dream. Not the most exciting of endings, but it's an ending.
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But The Ride to Happiness is a very real thing. Was the nerd kid really telling the truth about how excellent this Ride to Happiness coaster is? Do I believe the hype of the nerds for once? I look to see what everyone else is thinking.
"Ride to Happiness is the best coaster on the planet."
"You need to get on Ride to Happiness at your first available opportunity."
"There is no experience in the world that comes even close to Ride to Happiness."
Everyone is screaming "believe the hype!" from the rooftops. I've just been asked when I'm getting myself down to Plopsaland De Panne. Alright! Alright! I get it! Now how the HELL do I get there?
May 2022
It goes this far back. The easiest public transport route at the time involved a flight down to Brussels at stupid o'clock in the morning, then immediately onto a train with 1 or 2 changes, then same thing back. Price: laughably high. Nope.
Second easiest public transport route involved getting on the ferry from Dover at stupid o'clock in the morning (getting to Dover was a problem in itself) then getting on the ferry as a foot passenger. Then getting from there to De Panne...
Nope. The aspect of riding to happiness was all but a dream. So I hit the panic button, and brought up the idea that we would need to drag family along to drive us instead. Which involved getting up at stupid o'clock in the morning, and probably forcing a hotel stay if the driver was too exhausted to do anything on the day. Nope.
Some time later in the year
Someone brings up the idea of catching a coach from London Victoria to Bruges. It would involve getting a coach at 9pm, ish, to arrive in Bruges at 5 in the morning. Th--- Nope. 5 in the morning is too much, simply. The next coach would get you there for 2pm, then an hour and a half of trains would get you to the park right when it closes. Nope.
So let's talk about my goals for 2022 for a minute
People had heavily acknowledged my dedication to the Wacky Worm cause and completely ignoring the actual world-class coasters on the mainland. I actually had a secret goal which I kept silent, which was to exhaust all of my options in the UK before going mainland. This idea proved successful as I was truly digging the bottom of the barrel towards the end of the year, almost clean out of places to go to by the time my Farmyard Flyer nab came around. So in December I decided, it's now or never. I am going mainland.
A spark of hope
2023 rolled around as I spent all of December focusing on Christmas. Now with a little more time to kill, I looked at the public transport routes to get to Plopsaland once again to see if anything had changed.
They did.
At this point I would have taken the 5am arrival in Bruges out of sheer desperation, but they happened to adjust the times to now arrive at 8:50am in return for a 12:30am departure from Victoria Coach Station. Our departure from Bruges to home was at 11:15pm, almost six hours after the park closed. I connected the dots and what was once a near-impossibly faffy trip turned out to be remarkably simple. Sleep on the coach, then get two trains with ample time for each one, as the long waits allowed time for potential delays, then you're on the best roller coaster in the world. I wrote down the itinerary, and it was agreed upon that the trip was doable. And all I had to do now was pin down a date. Then tickets would be booked.
And so that happened.
Our final itinerary was:
12:30am coach from London Victoria to Brugge
3am (I think) get off for the ferry
7am get back on the coach
8:50am arrive in Brugge
10am train to Lichtervelde, change there
10:30am train to De Panne
11am arrive in De Panne
18:52 train to Lichtervelde, change there
19:30 train to Brugge
20:00 arrive in Brugge
23:25 coach to London Victoria via eurotunnel
Let's just get on with the damn trip already stop rambling
After almost a full year of trying to get here, the dream was becoming a reality.
We left the house at 10:30pm on Friday to get to the coach station for 11:30pm, an hour before the coach was scheduled to depart, packing minimally with our bags consisting exclusively of snacks, and our pockets carrying everything else. The directions from Victoria Underground Station to Victoria Coach Station were horribly signposted as we had to use maps to find out how to walk six minutes. But there was no rush. My dad had a Starbucks, I didn't, getting enough sleep was one of my biggest worries of the trip. I've learned too much from Flamingo Land. Our bright green FlixBus had arrived at its scheduled time! But not before doing nothing while people stood around confused. But then the doors opened, our tickets & passports were scanned, and we were on. And it was a big comfy coach with reclining seats.
And now became the ultimate mission. To get as much sleep as I possibly could. People were chattering away for the first few minutes but eventually they shut up all by themselves. I put on my eye-mask that I still have from my St. Lucia holiday back in '17, and struggled badly to find a place to rest my head. In front of myself? No, the tray is too far away. Laying backwards on my reclined seat? I can't sleep that way, oddly enough. On the rolled up curtain conveniently right next to me by luck alone? Awesome! But it was still a heavy hefty struggle, I got a combined total of about an hour of proper shut-eye on the first leg. It's some work, but it's not enough.
We stopped for two hours as our FlixBus traversed the queue to board the ferry, getting led off twice to get our passports stamped. I used some more time to (try to) get more sleep, which I was partially successful with. I was ever so regretful of not having a quick power nap before leaving so I'd theoretically only need to get half the sleep done on the journey there rather than all the sleep. We were led off the coach for the ferry where I didn't double check exactly where our coach was.
The ferry from Dover to Calais was smooth sailing (pun originally not intended, but I fully intend it now). We slept in a lounge area with me finding all sorts of weird & wonderful positions to gain some Zs on the boat, and in the last few minutes we decided to wander, finding a quiet area perfectly designed for sleeping with big comfy reclined blue chairs. Right when we had to leave. Bah.
Finding our way back to the coach proved to be the most stressful transport-related objective of the trip. I forgot to note down what deck we were on, and I was led to believe that there would be an incredibly short time between the vehicle decks reopening and our coach departing. I led myself & my dad down to deck 3, when suddenly he says "I think we were on deck 5", so we get up to deck 5 immediately, squeeze past people through tight corridors and barely fit through tiny gaps between cars. Turns out my dad was right, we got onto our coach, then we both went "never again" to leaving our coach without checking where we parked. Lesson. Learnt.
Then I fell back asleep for the rest of the sleep, in French territory. Woke up for 5 minutes as the driver refuelled the coach's diesel, fell back asleep. Didn't notice us crossing the border into Belgium. Fell back asleep. Woke up. We're 5 minutes away from Brugge... hell yes. We haven't missed our stop and we haven't ended up in Amsterdam as a result, though had that happened we would've just gone to Walibi Holland instead had that been open.
We pull up to the coach stop around 25 minutes after we were supposed to, but I didn't care.
"Brugge." says the bus driver.
We get off, and we've now officially stepped foot into Belgian territory. The train station towers above us.
Finding our way across flat pavement for a three minute walk places ourselves in Brugge train station, but our train isn't for another 50something minutes, so we find something to do. Walking through to the other end of the train station brought us towards the outskirts of the city center where we spotted a war memorial,
a big building,
another big building,
and some ducks.
We occupied ourselves with these four things before it was time to catch our train, termination point Oudenaarde. With the chance to catch Zs for twenty more minutes I took the opportunity, but it wasn't long before we chugged up to Lichtervelde where we got off to change. Seven minutes of standing at a platform that smelt of rotting chicken coops later our train to De Panne arrived, solid chance for some more rest. Until our next station was De Panne and I clocked their Mack Xtreme Spinner on the skyline, and I got that true "it's really happening" feeling. We got off along with everyone else and began our ten minute trek to the park.
Good news! I had been successful with getting enough sleep for the day, something I'm pretty chuffed with. Sleeping on public transport IS possible!
Clocked all the other rides.
And with that, we were in! A wander to the left introduced us to Ride to Sadness (it was on staggered opening but that was a given as there was no one in this park). So we decided to hit the lower capacity rides first, starting with #163 Heidi the Ride. I had a discussion with my dad on who exactly Heidi was. "Heidi is a pretty popular TV show, I think it's that." "I'm not sure, it's a very wintery theme it seems." We kept pondering this question and it took until nearly the end of the day for us to discover exactly which Heidi the ride was about.
Strangely not the first coaster I've done that involves a girl named Heidi.
The hardware itself is a great little ride that I'm probably overranking a bit but it's still very fun. Even if it was only around 40 minutes past opening I still had moments of airtime in the back row. It ends very quickly and I wish it was a little longer, but what's there is good either way. My dad thought it was fantastic, "it's just like a runaway train!", I rally behind him. Fun, though it's a miserable queue on one train ops. It just. Doesn't. Move.
#164 Draak decided to open, and while it does have its slow moments it's still a decently long powered coaster that ranks fairly high for the model, millions of great helices and screaming through the station into the first dip was such a great laugh. The real highlight of the ride was watching the log flume fill up with water, very quickly, on our ride which was deeply satisfying for some massive coaster nerd like me.
We were going to do the Vekoma junior next, but my dad was heavily drawn to Mega Mindy's Jet Skis and immediately entered the queue for it as I followed. "I've never seen this in my life" he says, fascinated by the ride. We enter the queue, as a dormant banana roll towers silently above us. The ride was good fun, but uncomparable to the Skid. As quirky and fun as these rides are, I can't help but compare it and wish the pull was a little more forceful. My dad was more than happy about it though, and complimented the ride's speed. In fairness it did go pretty fast. I'm just becoming a harder chap to please with these rides against my will and I'm scared of that fact.
#165 K3 Roller Skater had a really silly theme that reminded me of something someone would make in Planet Coaster, in a positive way. Took me long enough to get on one of these old-school Vekoma junior coasters. The first drop spiral happened, I saw the demonic face of a Capri Sun eyeing me on top of the station, and I couldn't get that out of my head for the rest of the ride. Smooth though.
If you guessed that the next ride was going to be the Tivoli, you're wrong. it was actually the TikTak boat ride.
It was a pleasant little lazy river thing which started off with thorough confusion but slowly we got used to the gentle vibes of the ride. Cute.
NOW was the Tivoli. Almost walked straight past the entrance of the #166 #LikeMe Coaster but my dad spotted a nostalgic car that my mum used to drive that was right next to the entrance, a Ford Capri. So a few photos later, we were on. The theme left us with more questions than answers for the third time today. So how does #LikeMe stack up to Treetops and Egg-Spress?
Not well. My arse hurt from the hard plastic seats and the train made an almost deafening noise as it traversed the tracks. The train got comically close to the track though, as it always does. Is this redemption for missing Keverbaan? Probably not, but I do like these things.
We got a digital onride photo before moving on to #167 Anubis the Ride. My dad was clueless on the layout, and I thought it was hilarious that you couldn't see the launch from the paths unless you really tried. So we departed with ourselves in the front row.
"So you don't know what's happening?"
"No."
"Wait, see that big hill [the top hat]? Wait, how are we gonna get up there?!"
Launch. And wow did that LSM launch have some kick to it. It was chaos from here on out, with sustained ejector over the top hat into a dive loop, I lost memory of the layout and we were twisting and turning. I completely forgot about the immelmann which struck me by surprise, then we hit the MCBR where things calmed down significantly. It's great when you don't know the layout.
We were sitting on our sides for a bit before a slow heartline roll back into the station. Great adrenaline rush and a really smooth experience, just an indoor theming section stops me from putting it above Saw. Also wish the post-MCBR had a bit more to it, but I can't have everything can I.
The water coaster had twenty more minutes of sleepy time, so we knew exactly where to go next.
De Hangbrug.
Hangbrug was a hilarious little thing that was great fun to walk across, and it’s the little things like these that make parks great. We had no clue about the slide at the end, and we enjoyed a tumble through it at the end.
Now it was time for the main event.
We entered the plaza for the beautifully presented #168 Ride to Happiness for the second time today, this time the ride was open, and strolled through the entrance.
Walking through the queue gave me a feeling that I couldn't quite remember as we fed ourselves with mints to keep our ham sandwiches from potentially coming back up the wrong way. We opted for front seat, giving us perfect view of the incoming layout.
The robot lady gives us words of wisdom as mechanical monocles rotate in and out of place, suspenseful music booming in the background. She talks about the power of nature, or how our lives are about to change forever, and how we need to treasure moments like these in our lives (for reference, it really is indeed a life changing experience).
Departure.
The jojo roll out of the station feels like the robot lady telling us in spirit "don't worry, I've got you, there is no need to panic". It was such a graceful and well-executed movement that felt like the perfect way to kick things off.
From here on out it was simply the good kind of 'absolute carnage'. A spectacular ejector moment immediately kicks things off, forwards, sideways, maybe backwards, then the drop off as the perfectly timed audio matches the intensity word for word. You lose the first drop in the front which roughly translates to "this automatically makes it a back row ride" for most enthusiasts but I just can't miss that pulling into the top hat in the front.
From here, and even some time before, me & my dad were screaming our lungs out making sounds we had never made in our lives. The banana roll was executed perfectly in the way that we were facing downwards throughout the entirety of it, which is a definite contender for my best ever experience on any coaster. The loop follows, and a basic element like this can still prove incredible when factoring in the spinning and very loud bass pumping of the audio. The Zero G Roll hits and by this point we've lost our minds.
The twisted air hill comes in and then comes the Belgian twice twisting velocity knot, revered by many to be by far the best part of the ride, but I say that each and every element of the ride can be deemed ‘the best bit’ depending on which direction you’re facing when you perform the manoeuvre. The onboard audio reaches its second climax as it transitions from orchestral techno to just straight-up EDM, before three killer ejector hills with a tiny overbank in between before slamming into the brakes.
We were, simply, in disbelief at what we’d just experienced. The bass of the onboard audio turns up to eleven as it ends, and we roll into the station with nothing but pure shock on our faces. The face is frozen onto us getting off, collecting our stuff, walking down the stairs, and walking through the exit.
“Well that was worth the trip wasn’t it?”
It was incredible, and obviously my new #1. There is zero competition. It IS the best roller coaster, no, the best thing in a theme park I have ever done. But it wasn’t time for rerides yet.
"This isn't just 'Ride to Happiness'.
This is 'The Ride to Happiness'."
The final cred of the day, #169 SuperSplash, opened. We were fascinated by the rotating vertical lift thing, and so were some teenagers in front of us also on for the first time, as they went “Holy s**t!” in a very Dutch accent. Something I noticed on this trip is that people generally spoke Dutch/French, but swore in English, which I found highly entertaining.
(on a sidenote, it's one of those rides where you really can't be bothered to sit around and wait for a train)
Anyways, the door opened to a fun drop then skloosh, we get about four droplets on us, but in fairness we didn’t sit on the edge seats. Then we sat, and waited, for about four minutes. My dad justifiably claimed that to be the most boring log flume he’s done and I understand why. There's a lot of waiting around doing nothing. We get off and I forget my drink in the loose articles bin. “Do you want to do another log flume?” I ask, “Yes” is the reply. We wander over to Dino Splash, getting soaked by a SuperSplash boat whose water decided to come onto the path, and we both burst into laughter.
Dino Splash is an impressively themed log flume, and the first one I’ve done in an unacceptably long time that isn’t either a portable model or a 1 drop oval then the end. We were also quite fond of how fast the thing went through the course. Drop 1 didn’t soak too much, and neither did drop 2, but the drops were super fun and we really enjoyed the ride. Better than SuperSplash.
However we weren’t keen on our onride photos so we decided to give it another go, this time prepared for the camera. This turned out far better, we spent far too long deciding which photobook to get, then FINALLY discovered from the signatures in the photobook that Heidi is one of Studio 100’s self-made characters and not the title character of a British (?) TV series.
And then I lapped my new #1 roller coaster for the rest of the day. I got eight more laps in before stopping at around 4:45pm. I decided that I prefer the front row over the back, though I have heard that the back is better in the summer. The pull into and out of the crest of the top hat is simply sensational, along with the entire rest of the ride, and after watching a summer POV (and judging by when the onboard audio ended) I discovered that we were running around three seconds slower than a summer POV. To think that if the ride is THIS good, and it’s on a slow day, then get me on it in the summer on the second that I can do so.
After my final ride we went to the souvenir shop to find it badly lacking. RtH’s shop was closed so we went into a general one. Ride to Happiness merch was also lacking, no Heidi the Ride merch, no Anubis the Ride merch. Due to licensing from Tomorrowland, the Ride to Happiness merch was wallet-emptyingly expensive so all we got was a fridge magnet for twelve euros. No merch for the actual Plopsaland theme park. No fridge magnets that said Plopsaland on it, no pens or whatnot, we left the souvenir shop disappointed. They had silly amounts of merch for their brand characters, but almost nothing for the actual park or rides themselves. But I do like my fridge magnet.
Our choice of food ended up being a… Bicky burger. We had NO idea what a Bicky burger was, and unfortunately I didn’t like it at all. After one bite I was done, lesson learned. We also got frites with ketchup, but unfortunately the guy put far too much ketchup on. To say the frites were D.R.O.W.N.E.D. in ketchup would be an understatement. I couldn’t get through many of them and was done quickly. My dad got a Frikandel not knowing what it was, and turns out it was a spicy sausage thing. This was quite nice actually, we finished it.
We wandered around the park, thinking to ourselves “man, it’s time to go now, quite sad”. We found the entrance to Bos van Plop, a dark ride we were recommended to do, but we forwent it in favour of RtH and it was closing up now. We found the entrance to the train which we forwent in favour of RtH. We discovered an entire area of the park that we never ventured into, but that too was closing up now. Next time. I can actually say that because I fully intend on going back when it's summer.
After our short walk we sat back down to finish our food where we were told “park’s closed” around 47 minutes after 5:30pm, and with that we walked through the exit gates.
Our short trek to the train station found our train already waiting for us, 30 minutes before its scheduled departure. We hopped on, I fell asleep. Eventually we got back to smelly old Lichtervelde to change back to Brugge, and arriving at 8pm we had three hours to kill In Bruges (2008).
So we did some sightseeing, reached the CoasterForce image upload per post cap, and bought some more Belgian fridge magnets. We have more Brugge merch than Plopsaland merch. But here's the main event. Light pollution killing all the would-be stars in the sky is always a sad sight.
At 10pm we got a pepperoni pizza from Dominos which tasted great, and we sat in the waiting area with the timetables as the time until our coach creeped closer. At 10:45pm we made our way back to the FlixBus coach stop, and at 11:25pm our coach arrived to return to London Victoria.
We got back onto our FlixBus coach to find someone in the seat that we had booked. The person in our seat was already having an argument with someone over being in their seat, and things verbally escalated quickly. When things calmed down I had to be the one to tell them that the seat they were in was actually our seat. He was quick to get very upset at this, so I asked to see his seat confirmation which… proved that we both had the same seat booked. So me & my dad went to talk to one of the coach attendants about our seat being double-booked, where the attendant asked to see his ticket again after seeing mine. After a quick back-and-forth the attendant discovered that the man was in the wrong seat, and that the seat he was currently in was the seat for his first bus trip (he's now on his second). A quick scroll to the right showed that the seats he needed were directly behind him… which were occupied by someone ELSE. With the man digging into how “you don’t know how to run a company” despite him being in the wrong, it was extremely clear that he was NOT going to move without a fight. So the attendant just… let him stay there. Fairs. So the attendant decides to ask for the tickets for the people in what are supposed to be his seats, and turns out that THEY TOO are in the wrong seats. They get up and change without a hassle, and the attendant gives the seats to us. We’re… quite happy that we got these seats. With no seats behind us we could recline as far back as we wanted to. The men didn’t say a word for the rest of the trip and stopped being annoying. I fell asleep instantly.
At Calais we were instead going to get the Eurotunnel to Folkestone, so we got off to get our passports stamped.
“Where are you from?”
“United Kingdom!”
“No no, where did you go?”
“Belgium!”
“For how long?”
“1 day!”
*surprised look* “What was the purpose of your visit?”
“To visit a theme park!”
Always like seeing the look on people’s faces when we do stuff like this.
For some reason the driver announced for us to bring ALL luggage off with us. We got our passports stamped, the coach drove away. “Back in 15 minutes mate”.
Around 40 minutes later they apologise for the delay as the coach returns, guided by two vehicles with orange flashing lights. Someone spots workers flashing torches within the bus… they’re definitely suspicious of something. The driver comes back to apologise for the delay as the coach was “having a problem with the battery” which everyone knew was bogus but didn’t say a word. We got back onto the coach. I fell asleep instantly.
I slept through the entirety of the Eurotunnel journey and genuinely did not notice us getting on, being on, or getting off the train. Quite happy we were allowed to stay on the coach during that time then. I woke back up to find ourselves driving back into London, around an hour after scheduled arrival, where we got off and made our merry way home.
We came into the house, excitedly told my mum about our journeys for about an hour, then went to bed.
Continue my reports? Click here to travel to my next credding experience where I explore the miserable wonders of the West Midlands.
"Hey."
"Hey, you."
"Have you heard about this roller coaster... The Ride to Happiness? By Tomorrowland?"
"It's at Plopsaland De Panne. In Belgium. It's super obscure. And really underrated."
"Built by Mack Rides. They built Icon at Blackpool, that white one near The Big One. And also Flying Fish, at Thorpe Park, it's the best ride there, stunning ejector airtime. I don't think you even know what that is."
"It's got onboard audio, The Ride to Happiness. It spins. It launches twice. There's a jojo roll out of the station. There's an outerbanked top hat a banana roll a vertical loop a zero g roll over water a a a a a...."
Then everything went fuzzy for a moment, before I regained my vision and surroundings. The voice of an old man becomes audible, with chatters in the background.
"Sonny! Wake up! What the Devil are you talking about? Some kid with spectacles? Double inverting dive loop? Sideways flo-jector? Plop... Saland, am I hearing that right? Quit the nonsense already good sir, you're next in line for the SWITCHBACK RAILWAY! Just two shillings s'il vous plait."
I board the #-1 Switchback Railway and the suited man pushes me on my way, bet he's got strong arms from doing that all day every day; the scale of his muscles hides behind his suit. Though my cart doesn't seem to follow its course. It takes a sharp right turn, as I feel myself capsizing to the right. Or left. I've lost my sense of direction, I can't find myself or where I am. Ignoring the completely straight track waving along, we were twisting and turning in ways never done before. I hear sounds that I can't drown out, they couldn't be from Yesterdayworld, the local orchestra of village-wide fame. I think I need to wake up again. This doesn't feel right. The world starts collapsing in on itself, the voices become distorted, the faces start glowing, my hands start decomposing.
Then everything went dark.
A violent shake wakes me up. Oh. Seems like it was all just a bad dream. Not the most exciting of endings, but it's an ending.
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But The Ride to Happiness is a very real thing. Was the nerd kid really telling the truth about how excellent this Ride to Happiness coaster is? Do I believe the hype of the nerds for once? I look to see what everyone else is thinking.
"Ride to Happiness is the best coaster on the planet."
"You need to get on Ride to Happiness at your first available opportunity."
"There is no experience in the world that comes even close to Ride to Happiness."
Everyone is screaming "believe the hype!" from the rooftops. I've just been asked when I'm getting myself down to Plopsaland De Panne. Alright! Alright! I get it! Now how the HELL do I get there?
May 2022
It goes this far back. The easiest public transport route at the time involved a flight down to Brussels at stupid o'clock in the morning, then immediately onto a train with 1 or 2 changes, then same thing back. Price: laughably high. Nope.
Second easiest public transport route involved getting on the ferry from Dover at stupid o'clock in the morning (getting to Dover was a problem in itself) then getting on the ferry as a foot passenger. Then getting from there to De Panne...
Nope. The aspect of riding to happiness was all but a dream. So I hit the panic button, and brought up the idea that we would need to drag family along to drive us instead. Which involved getting up at stupid o'clock in the morning, and probably forcing a hotel stay if the driver was too exhausted to do anything on the day. Nope.
Some time later in the year
Someone brings up the idea of catching a coach from London Victoria to Bruges. It would involve getting a coach at 9pm, ish, to arrive in Bruges at 5 in the morning. Th--- Nope. 5 in the morning is too much, simply. The next coach would get you there for 2pm, then an hour and a half of trains would get you to the park right when it closes. Nope.
So let's talk about my goals for 2022 for a minute
People had heavily acknowledged my dedication to the Wacky Worm cause and completely ignoring the actual world-class coasters on the mainland. I actually had a secret goal which I kept silent, which was to exhaust all of my options in the UK before going mainland. This idea proved successful as I was truly digging the bottom of the barrel towards the end of the year, almost clean out of places to go to by the time my Farmyard Flyer nab came around. So in December I decided, it's now or never. I am going mainland.
A spark of hope
2023 rolled around as I spent all of December focusing on Christmas. Now with a little more time to kill, I looked at the public transport routes to get to Plopsaland once again to see if anything had changed.
They did.
At this point I would have taken the 5am arrival in Bruges out of sheer desperation, but they happened to adjust the times to now arrive at 8:50am in return for a 12:30am departure from Victoria Coach Station. Our departure from Bruges to home was at 11:15pm, almost six hours after the park closed. I connected the dots and what was once a near-impossibly faffy trip turned out to be remarkably simple. Sleep on the coach, then get two trains with ample time for each one, as the long waits allowed time for potential delays, then you're on the best roller coaster in the world. I wrote down the itinerary, and it was agreed upon that the trip was doable. And all I had to do now was pin down a date. Then tickets would be booked.
And so that happened.
Our final itinerary was:
12:30am coach from London Victoria to Brugge
3am (I think) get off for the ferry
7am get back on the coach
8:50am arrive in Brugge
10am train to Lichtervelde, change there
10:30am train to De Panne
11am arrive in De Panne
18:52 train to Lichtervelde, change there
19:30 train to Brugge
20:00 arrive in Brugge
23:25 coach to London Victoria via eurotunnel
Let's just get on with the damn trip already stop rambling
After almost a full year of trying to get here, the dream was becoming a reality.
We left the house at 10:30pm on Friday to get to the coach station for 11:30pm, an hour before the coach was scheduled to depart, packing minimally with our bags consisting exclusively of snacks, and our pockets carrying everything else. The directions from Victoria Underground Station to Victoria Coach Station were horribly signposted as we had to use maps to find out how to walk six minutes. But there was no rush. My dad had a Starbucks, I didn't, getting enough sleep was one of my biggest worries of the trip. I've learned too much from Flamingo Land. Our bright green FlixBus had arrived at its scheduled time! But not before doing nothing while people stood around confused. But then the doors opened, our tickets & passports were scanned, and we were on. And it was a big comfy coach with reclining seats.
And now became the ultimate mission. To get as much sleep as I possibly could. People were chattering away for the first few minutes but eventually they shut up all by themselves. I put on my eye-mask that I still have from my St. Lucia holiday back in '17, and struggled badly to find a place to rest my head. In front of myself? No, the tray is too far away. Laying backwards on my reclined seat? I can't sleep that way, oddly enough. On the rolled up curtain conveniently right next to me by luck alone? Awesome! But it was still a heavy hefty struggle, I got a combined total of about an hour of proper shut-eye on the first leg. It's some work, but it's not enough.
We stopped for two hours as our FlixBus traversed the queue to board the ferry, getting led off twice to get our passports stamped. I used some more time to (try to) get more sleep, which I was partially successful with. I was ever so regretful of not having a quick power nap before leaving so I'd theoretically only need to get half the sleep done on the journey there rather than all the sleep. We were led off the coach for the ferry where I didn't double check exactly where our coach was.
The ferry from Dover to Calais was smooth sailing (pun originally not intended, but I fully intend it now). We slept in a lounge area with me finding all sorts of weird & wonderful positions to gain some Zs on the boat, and in the last few minutes we decided to wander, finding a quiet area perfectly designed for sleeping with big comfy reclined blue chairs. Right when we had to leave. Bah.
Finding our way back to the coach proved to be the most stressful transport-related objective of the trip. I forgot to note down what deck we were on, and I was led to believe that there would be an incredibly short time between the vehicle decks reopening and our coach departing. I led myself & my dad down to deck 3, when suddenly he says "I think we were on deck 5", so we get up to deck 5 immediately, squeeze past people through tight corridors and barely fit through tiny gaps between cars. Turns out my dad was right, we got onto our coach, then we both went "never again" to leaving our coach without checking where we parked. Lesson. Learnt.
Then I fell back asleep for the rest of the sleep, in French territory. Woke up for 5 minutes as the driver refuelled the coach's diesel, fell back asleep. Didn't notice us crossing the border into Belgium. Fell back asleep. Woke up. We're 5 minutes away from Brugge... hell yes. We haven't missed our stop and we haven't ended up in Amsterdam as a result, though had that happened we would've just gone to Walibi Holland instead had that been open.
We pull up to the coach stop around 25 minutes after we were supposed to, but I didn't care.
"Brugge." says the bus driver.
We get off, and we've now officially stepped foot into Belgian territory. The train station towers above us.
Finding our way across flat pavement for a three minute walk places ourselves in Brugge train station, but our train isn't for another 50something minutes, so we find something to do. Walking through to the other end of the train station brought us towards the outskirts of the city center where we spotted a war memorial,
a big building,
another big building,
and some ducks.
We occupied ourselves with these four things before it was time to catch our train, termination point Oudenaarde. With the chance to catch Zs for twenty more minutes I took the opportunity, but it wasn't long before we chugged up to Lichtervelde where we got off to change. Seven minutes of standing at a platform that smelt of rotting chicken coops later our train to De Panne arrived, solid chance for some more rest. Until our next station was De Panne and I clocked their Mack Xtreme Spinner on the skyline, and I got that true "it's really happening" feeling. We got off along with everyone else and began our ten minute trek to the park.
Good news! I had been successful with getting enough sleep for the day, something I'm pretty chuffed with. Sleeping on public transport IS possible!
Clocked all the other rides.
And with that, we were in! A wander to the left introduced us to Ride to Sadness (it was on staggered opening but that was a given as there was no one in this park). So we decided to hit the lower capacity rides first, starting with #163 Heidi the Ride. I had a discussion with my dad on who exactly Heidi was. "Heidi is a pretty popular TV show, I think it's that." "I'm not sure, it's a very wintery theme it seems." We kept pondering this question and it took until nearly the end of the day for us to discover exactly which Heidi the ride was about.
Strangely not the first coaster I've done that involves a girl named Heidi.
The hardware itself is a great little ride that I'm probably overranking a bit but it's still very fun. Even if it was only around 40 minutes past opening I still had moments of airtime in the back row. It ends very quickly and I wish it was a little longer, but what's there is good either way. My dad thought it was fantastic, "it's just like a runaway train!", I rally behind him. Fun, though it's a miserable queue on one train ops. It just. Doesn't. Move.
#164 Draak decided to open, and while it does have its slow moments it's still a decently long powered coaster that ranks fairly high for the model, millions of great helices and screaming through the station into the first dip was such a great laugh. The real highlight of the ride was watching the log flume fill up with water, very quickly, on our ride which was deeply satisfying for some massive coaster nerd like me.
We were going to do the Vekoma junior next, but my dad was heavily drawn to Mega Mindy's Jet Skis and immediately entered the queue for it as I followed. "I've never seen this in my life" he says, fascinated by the ride. We enter the queue, as a dormant banana roll towers silently above us. The ride was good fun, but uncomparable to the Skid. As quirky and fun as these rides are, I can't help but compare it and wish the pull was a little more forceful. My dad was more than happy about it though, and complimented the ride's speed. In fairness it did go pretty fast. I'm just becoming a harder chap to please with these rides against my will and I'm scared of that fact.
#165 K3 Roller Skater had a really silly theme that reminded me of something someone would make in Planet Coaster, in a positive way. Took me long enough to get on one of these old-school Vekoma junior coasters. The first drop spiral happened, I saw the demonic face of a Capri Sun eyeing me on top of the station, and I couldn't get that out of my head for the rest of the ride. Smooth though.
If you guessed that the next ride was going to be the Tivoli, you're wrong. it was actually the TikTak boat ride.
It was a pleasant little lazy river thing which started off with thorough confusion but slowly we got used to the gentle vibes of the ride. Cute.
NOW was the Tivoli. Almost walked straight past the entrance of the #166 #LikeMe Coaster but my dad spotted a nostalgic car that my mum used to drive that was right next to the entrance, a Ford Capri. So a few photos later, we were on. The theme left us with more questions than answers for the third time today. So how does #LikeMe stack up to Treetops and Egg-Spress?
Not well. My arse hurt from the hard plastic seats and the train made an almost deafening noise as it traversed the tracks. The train got comically close to the track though, as it always does. Is this redemption for missing Keverbaan? Probably not, but I do like these things.
We got a digital onride photo before moving on to #167 Anubis the Ride. My dad was clueless on the layout, and I thought it was hilarious that you couldn't see the launch from the paths unless you really tried. So we departed with ourselves in the front row.
"So you don't know what's happening?"
"No."
"Wait, see that big hill [the top hat]? Wait, how are we gonna get up there?!"
Launch. And wow did that LSM launch have some kick to it. It was chaos from here on out, with sustained ejector over the top hat into a dive loop, I lost memory of the layout and we were twisting and turning. I completely forgot about the immelmann which struck me by surprise, then we hit the MCBR where things calmed down significantly. It's great when you don't know the layout.
We were sitting on our sides for a bit before a slow heartline roll back into the station. Great adrenaline rush and a really smooth experience, just an indoor theming section stops me from putting it above Saw. Also wish the post-MCBR had a bit more to it, but I can't have everything can I.
The water coaster had twenty more minutes of sleepy time, so we knew exactly where to go next.
De Hangbrug.
Hangbrug was a hilarious little thing that was great fun to walk across, and it’s the little things like these that make parks great. We had no clue about the slide at the end, and we enjoyed a tumble through it at the end.
Now it was time for the main event.
We entered the plaza for the beautifully presented #168 Ride to Happiness for the second time today, this time the ride was open, and strolled through the entrance.
Walking through the queue gave me a feeling that I couldn't quite remember as we fed ourselves with mints to keep our ham sandwiches from potentially coming back up the wrong way. We opted for front seat, giving us perfect view of the incoming layout.
The robot lady gives us words of wisdom as mechanical monocles rotate in and out of place, suspenseful music booming in the background. She talks about the power of nature, or how our lives are about to change forever, and how we need to treasure moments like these in our lives (for reference, it really is indeed a life changing experience).
Departure.
The jojo roll out of the station feels like the robot lady telling us in spirit "don't worry, I've got you, there is no need to panic". It was such a graceful and well-executed movement that felt like the perfect way to kick things off.
From here on out it was simply the good kind of 'absolute carnage'. A spectacular ejector moment immediately kicks things off, forwards, sideways, maybe backwards, then the drop off as the perfectly timed audio matches the intensity word for word. You lose the first drop in the front which roughly translates to "this automatically makes it a back row ride" for most enthusiasts but I just can't miss that pulling into the top hat in the front.
From here, and even some time before, me & my dad were screaming our lungs out making sounds we had never made in our lives. The banana roll was executed perfectly in the way that we were facing downwards throughout the entirety of it, which is a definite contender for my best ever experience on any coaster. The loop follows, and a basic element like this can still prove incredible when factoring in the spinning and very loud bass pumping of the audio. The Zero G Roll hits and by this point we've lost our minds.
The twisted air hill comes in and then comes the Belgian twice twisting velocity knot, revered by many to be by far the best part of the ride, but I say that each and every element of the ride can be deemed ‘the best bit’ depending on which direction you’re facing when you perform the manoeuvre. The onboard audio reaches its second climax as it transitions from orchestral techno to just straight-up EDM, before three killer ejector hills with a tiny overbank in between before slamming into the brakes.
We were, simply, in disbelief at what we’d just experienced. The bass of the onboard audio turns up to eleven as it ends, and we roll into the station with nothing but pure shock on our faces. The face is frozen onto us getting off, collecting our stuff, walking down the stairs, and walking through the exit.
“Well that was worth the trip wasn’t it?”
It was incredible, and obviously my new #1. There is zero competition. It IS the best roller coaster, no, the best thing in a theme park I have ever done. But it wasn’t time for rerides yet.
"This isn't just 'Ride to Happiness'.
This is 'The Ride to Happiness'."
The final cred of the day, #169 SuperSplash, opened. We were fascinated by the rotating vertical lift thing, and so were some teenagers in front of us also on for the first time, as they went “Holy s**t!” in a very Dutch accent. Something I noticed on this trip is that people generally spoke Dutch/French, but swore in English, which I found highly entertaining.
(on a sidenote, it's one of those rides where you really can't be bothered to sit around and wait for a train)
Anyways, the door opened to a fun drop then skloosh, we get about four droplets on us, but in fairness we didn’t sit on the edge seats. Then we sat, and waited, for about four minutes. My dad justifiably claimed that to be the most boring log flume he’s done and I understand why. There's a lot of waiting around doing nothing. We get off and I forget my drink in the loose articles bin. “Do you want to do another log flume?” I ask, “Yes” is the reply. We wander over to Dino Splash, getting soaked by a SuperSplash boat whose water decided to come onto the path, and we both burst into laughter.
Dino Splash is an impressively themed log flume, and the first one I’ve done in an unacceptably long time that isn’t either a portable model or a 1 drop oval then the end. We were also quite fond of how fast the thing went through the course. Drop 1 didn’t soak too much, and neither did drop 2, but the drops were super fun and we really enjoyed the ride. Better than SuperSplash.
However we weren’t keen on our onride photos so we decided to give it another go, this time prepared for the camera. This turned out far better, we spent far too long deciding which photobook to get, then FINALLY discovered from the signatures in the photobook that Heidi is one of Studio 100’s self-made characters and not the title character of a British (?) TV series.
And then I lapped my new #1 roller coaster for the rest of the day. I got eight more laps in before stopping at around 4:45pm. I decided that I prefer the front row over the back, though I have heard that the back is better in the summer. The pull into and out of the crest of the top hat is simply sensational, along with the entire rest of the ride, and after watching a summer POV (and judging by when the onboard audio ended) I discovered that we were running around three seconds slower than a summer POV. To think that if the ride is THIS good, and it’s on a slow day, then get me on it in the summer on the second that I can do so.
After my final ride we went to the souvenir shop to find it badly lacking. RtH’s shop was closed so we went into a general one. Ride to Happiness merch was also lacking, no Heidi the Ride merch, no Anubis the Ride merch. Due to licensing from Tomorrowland, the Ride to Happiness merch was wallet-emptyingly expensive so all we got was a fridge magnet for twelve euros. No merch for the actual Plopsaland theme park. No fridge magnets that said Plopsaland on it, no pens or whatnot, we left the souvenir shop disappointed. They had silly amounts of merch for their brand characters, but almost nothing for the actual park or rides themselves. But I do like my fridge magnet.
Our choice of food ended up being a… Bicky burger. We had NO idea what a Bicky burger was, and unfortunately I didn’t like it at all. After one bite I was done, lesson learned. We also got frites with ketchup, but unfortunately the guy put far too much ketchup on. To say the frites were D.R.O.W.N.E.D. in ketchup would be an understatement. I couldn’t get through many of them and was done quickly. My dad got a Frikandel not knowing what it was, and turns out it was a spicy sausage thing. This was quite nice actually, we finished it.
We wandered around the park, thinking to ourselves “man, it’s time to go now, quite sad”. We found the entrance to Bos van Plop, a dark ride we were recommended to do, but we forwent it in favour of RtH and it was closing up now. We found the entrance to the train which we forwent in favour of RtH. We discovered an entire area of the park that we never ventured into, but that too was closing up now. Next time. I can actually say that because I fully intend on going back when it's summer.
After our short walk we sat back down to finish our food where we were told “park’s closed” around 47 minutes after 5:30pm, and with that we walked through the exit gates.
Our short trek to the train station found our train already waiting for us, 30 minutes before its scheduled departure. We hopped on, I fell asleep. Eventually we got back to smelly old Lichtervelde to change back to Brugge, and arriving at 8pm we had three hours to kill In Bruges (2008).
So we did some sightseeing, reached the CoasterForce image upload per post cap, and bought some more Belgian fridge magnets. We have more Brugge merch than Plopsaland merch. But here's the main event. Light pollution killing all the would-be stars in the sky is always a sad sight.
At 10pm we got a pepperoni pizza from Dominos which tasted great, and we sat in the waiting area with the timetables as the time until our coach creeped closer. At 10:45pm we made our way back to the FlixBus coach stop, and at 11:25pm our coach arrived to return to London Victoria.
We got back onto our FlixBus coach to find someone in the seat that we had booked. The person in our seat was already having an argument with someone over being in their seat, and things verbally escalated quickly. When things calmed down I had to be the one to tell them that the seat they were in was actually our seat. He was quick to get very upset at this, so I asked to see his seat confirmation which… proved that we both had the same seat booked. So me & my dad went to talk to one of the coach attendants about our seat being double-booked, where the attendant asked to see his ticket again after seeing mine. After a quick back-and-forth the attendant discovered that the man was in the wrong seat, and that the seat he was currently in was the seat for his first bus trip (he's now on his second). A quick scroll to the right showed that the seats he needed were directly behind him… which were occupied by someone ELSE. With the man digging into how “you don’t know how to run a company” despite him being in the wrong, it was extremely clear that he was NOT going to move without a fight. So the attendant just… let him stay there. Fairs. So the attendant decides to ask for the tickets for the people in what are supposed to be his seats, and turns out that THEY TOO are in the wrong seats. They get up and change without a hassle, and the attendant gives the seats to us. We’re… quite happy that we got these seats. With no seats behind us we could recline as far back as we wanted to. The men didn’t say a word for the rest of the trip and stopped being annoying. I fell asleep instantly.
At Calais we were instead going to get the Eurotunnel to Folkestone, so we got off to get our passports stamped.
“Where are you from?”
“United Kingdom!”
“No no, where did you go?”
“Belgium!”
“For how long?”
“1 day!”
*surprised look* “What was the purpose of your visit?”
“To visit a theme park!”
Always like seeing the look on people’s faces when we do stuff like this.
For some reason the driver announced for us to bring ALL luggage off with us. We got our passports stamped, the coach drove away. “Back in 15 minutes mate”.
Around 40 minutes later they apologise for the delay as the coach returns, guided by two vehicles with orange flashing lights. Someone spots workers flashing torches within the bus… they’re definitely suspicious of something. The driver comes back to apologise for the delay as the coach was “having a problem with the battery” which everyone knew was bogus but didn’t say a word. We got back onto the coach. I fell asleep instantly.
I slept through the entirety of the Eurotunnel journey and genuinely did not notice us getting on, being on, or getting off the train. Quite happy we were allowed to stay on the coach during that time then. I woke back up to find ourselves driving back into London, around an hour after scheduled arrival, where we got off and made our merry way home.
We came into the house, excitedly told my mum about our journeys for about an hour, then went to bed.
Continue my reports? Click here to travel to my next credding experience where I explore the miserable wonders of the West Midlands.
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