davidm
Strata Poster
I'm a bad euro-goon.
A lazy one perhaps?
I jet off to far flung places to ride their roller coasters and have totally avoided a load of (relatively) easy euro-creds.
Anyway, Italy ; had been on the should-visit list for a long time, but I always managed to find something else more enticing at the
time to do instead. So there I was, with no Italia-coasters at all. The shame of it.
This was not desperately well planned, I only booked the flights on the Saturday and traveled the Wednesday, but figured I could happily
spend a week or so wandering around Italy, riding their coasters and catching a bit of culture on the way.
So here we go...
Wednesday 7th
Cheapo flight from Manchester to Verona late afternoon - on Monarch ; flight was great, better than other cheapo carriers I thought,
first time I've flown with them and despite one of my drinking pals being a pilot for them out of Manchester would happily use them
again.
Some nice scenery on the way c/o an Alp or two;
Hire car pickup at Verona was pretty easy too and once I'd worked out which way to leave the airport was soon at the hotel for the night.
Had plumped for the park hotel, not really because it was super-convenient for the park (its a mile from the park) just that it was
an easy option that then didn't involve me having to do any more thinking (I mentioned that this wasn't a very deeply planned trip!)
Hotel was OK. Probably a tad nicer than the Alton ones but not quite as good as Heide's but its all slim margins. The room was good (lot
better than Alton's). They had some noisy kids entertainment going on, which didn't seem (what little notice I paid to it) quite up to
the standard of Alton's though.
Anyway, there was a bar serving awful Italian lager (that Peroni Nastro Azzurro stuff which people seem to like, but is in fact bland
tasteless nothing-water) so could sit in the very warm evening weather for a while.
Very nice (despite the awful beer).
Thursday 8th - Gardaland
Big hotel breakfast (buffet style, choices were OK not great) to start the day and then find the shuttle bus from the hotel to the park.
In typical not quite getting-it style, the bus doesn't pick up at the hotel itself you have to wander out to the road to pick it up -
thats a quality service then (not).
But the packed bus trip is brief and fine, dumps you in the car park and can wander under the fab tunnel to the park.
There was a reasonable build up of punters waiting to get in, but I spotted that there was a dedicated "hotel guest" entry so made for
that and was in with little faff and a little bit ahead of the masses.
Bloody stupid park layout this place though - the entry/exit area kinda isn't connected to the rest of the park apart from at one
point, so I was wandering a bit randomly in the general direction of the big rides for a while before I found the first coaster of the
trip ; Oblivion - The Black Hole.
Queue line for this was a bit OTT - seemingly taking over an old performance tent for an elaborate SFX filled experience that I just
walked straight through. Liked the fact that the themeing echoed the original Oblivion with that funny little circular tower effect
thing, and they had significantly up-scaled the effects with big HD wall displayed and the like too. Boded well.
Ride itself was pretty good - probably the best of the smaller dive-machines (i.e. Krake, Baron) but not really a patch on the big
ones (SheiKra, Griffon) in my opinion. (Miles better that the original Oblivion tho' obviously - because that is pants)
Couple of rides on that before any Qs built up and headed to the other ride for the day that I was keen to have a play on; the first
B&Wing Raptor
Unfortunately this appeared to be where the Qs had headed so there was a bit of a wait here in some horrible cattle-pens in the growing
summer heat.
Really liked this though ; for something that doesn't gain a huge height it uses its momentum really well with loads of near misses
of itself, its station and some faked up themeing. Really good then - better than some of the bigger wings that seem to be going for
size not subtlety (Swarm,XFlight,Eagle perhaps)?
Couple of rides on that (despite burdenous Qs) and I was now ready to wander the park picking up the rest of the coasters.
They seem to open the park in stages too, so had to wait a few minutes for the next area to open (was only a few mins, had it been more
I'd have double backed then to a different area).
I was keen to ride this though, mainly because it is much maligned and I was intrigued to see if it really was as awful as everyone made out.
Sequoia Adventure then...
No Q, so straight on and stapled in. Straight up the lift hill and the straight ahead and down and upside down and it was done.
So wasn't at all awful. Was just awfully dull.
Next to that (and in the same pic above) is the old Vekoma looper formally known as Magic Mountain but rebranded with lots of VR
and mysterious mystic stuff all over the place ; Shaman.
Anyway the VR was not running, so I was saved that and instead had a pretty standard ride on an old shaky Vekoma looper. Wasn't a very
comfortable experience, would be hellish with VR strapped to your face I would think! (The VR was there and all installed on the trains
just left in its pouch)
Annoyingly the next zone in the park was even later to open so had to double back at that point and put myself through a half hour wait
for an SLC - the shame, but its got to be done.
Blue Tornado (odd name that isn't it) is kinda slap bang in the middle of the park, contributing hugely to that odd-layout that
was still confusing me at that stage a bit. It is at least a slightly different SLC in that it has the extra-helix which only a few
have (my first SLC ever had it as well).
Wasn't great, but used to riding these things so hold on tight and try not to get your ears bashed in and you can survive happily.
Next door to the useless SLC is a pretty heavily themed mine train Mammut, and despite it being a bit bouncy in places (and
having a bit of a wait) I really quite liked this.
Doubling back again to the now-open final zone of the park, hit the longest Q of the day (probably of the trip actually) and a bit of
a slow traipse through a well themed but slow moving path to get to Kung Fu Panda Master. Which is just a Fabbri spinning mouse
for heaven's sake.
Last coaster (well last one RCDB lists anyway, but we'll come to that...) is what I thought was just going to be a caterpillar, but
was joyfully an extended caterpillar Ortobruco Tour so much more worthy of squeezing into the kiddy-train for that
Coaster-cred-anxiety all gone now, I could grab some lunch and explore the park a little (rather than just back tracking to find open
areas FFS).
There were a couple of big interesting looking dark-ride things, first up was this not-very-thrilling-looking-façade thing "Time Voyagers";
Having looked it up since, it was previously a Time Voyagers with a Mount-Rushmore type façade then then seemingly got spited for
an Ice-Age 4D job (presumably the same as Alton's) which has in turn been spited again for the old film, but not the old façade added.
Hence the rather awful not-quite-Ice-Age-not-quite-anything façade that we see today.
Anyway it was rubbish.
Much better was the dark-ride shooter thing "Rameses"
Not sure of the history of this one, but gave the impression of one of those elaborate old dark-rides that they shoved shooting gear
on 15 years ago - or maybe it was always thus? No Q anyway so a nice air-conditioned respite for a few minutes in a bit-like-Tomb-Blaster
kinda way.
Park has a flying island though - I do like flying islands so had a few rides on that.
One thing this park has in copious amounts is fantastic views as you go up a lift hill. My first ride of the morning was fab on
Oblivion's lift hill, Lake Garda coming into view for the first time - lovely.
and from the flying island you could spot the conspicuous local-competition-creds too
Got a few rerides in on Raptor and Oblivion at that point (much less Qs mid afternoon than in the morning) and chillaxed a bit
wandering the park for a while
Realised I hadn't wandered up to the wet-rides (its usually 50-50 whether I bother with wet-rides when I'm on my own, they are good
fun in a group as you can laugh at the wet people (and take turns being the wet-person of course) but on my own I only bother if
the Q is non-existent and/or theres something special about the ride), so to my surprise what I though was just a chute-type thing
turned out to be a proper water coaster thing Fuga da Atlantide - why isn't this on RCDB (it is on coaster-count though) its as
much as a coaster as Europa's big wet-ride?
Anyway, rode that (no Q), got a bit wet. Was good - loads of big themeing too - a good wet ride this one.
So a pretty good day in all - couple of good rides (only Raptor was very-good though) - nice big park (even with a terrible park layout,
presumably just because its grown in chunks over the years). Was reasonably busy even on a weekday, but not packed at all, could
easily do whatever I wanted but still would probably liked to have hung around for a couple more hours rather than be ejected at 6
when the place closed (low-season presumably).
They seemed to be plugging the VR-enabled Shamen a lot in their advertising - lots of it all over the hotel, on flyers and such like.
However since it wasn't working they then also had to have lots of big signs outside the park (on the road) and at the entrance to that
effect;
Ha ha.
Couple of (rubbish) beers and a pizza in the bar at the hotel - job done!
A lazy one perhaps?
I jet off to far flung places to ride their roller coasters and have totally avoided a load of (relatively) easy euro-creds.
Anyway, Italy ; had been on the should-visit list for a long time, but I always managed to find something else more enticing at the
time to do instead. So there I was, with no Italia-coasters at all. The shame of it.
This was not desperately well planned, I only booked the flights on the Saturday and traveled the Wednesday, but figured I could happily
spend a week or so wandering around Italy, riding their coasters and catching a bit of culture on the way.
So here we go...
Wednesday 7th
Cheapo flight from Manchester to Verona late afternoon - on Monarch ; flight was great, better than other cheapo carriers I thought,
first time I've flown with them and despite one of my drinking pals being a pilot for them out of Manchester would happily use them
again.
Some nice scenery on the way c/o an Alp or two;
Hire car pickup at Verona was pretty easy too and once I'd worked out which way to leave the airport was soon at the hotel for the night.
Had plumped for the park hotel, not really because it was super-convenient for the park (its a mile from the park) just that it was
an easy option that then didn't involve me having to do any more thinking (I mentioned that this wasn't a very deeply planned trip!)
Hotel was OK. Probably a tad nicer than the Alton ones but not quite as good as Heide's but its all slim margins. The room was good (lot
better than Alton's). They had some noisy kids entertainment going on, which didn't seem (what little notice I paid to it) quite up to
the standard of Alton's though.
Anyway, there was a bar serving awful Italian lager (that Peroni Nastro Azzurro stuff which people seem to like, but is in fact bland
tasteless nothing-water) so could sit in the very warm evening weather for a while.
Very nice (despite the awful beer).
Thursday 8th - Gardaland
Big hotel breakfast (buffet style, choices were OK not great) to start the day and then find the shuttle bus from the hotel to the park.
In typical not quite getting-it style, the bus doesn't pick up at the hotel itself you have to wander out to the road to pick it up -
thats a quality service then (not).
But the packed bus trip is brief and fine, dumps you in the car park and can wander under the fab tunnel to the park.
There was a reasonable build up of punters waiting to get in, but I spotted that there was a dedicated "hotel guest" entry so made for
that and was in with little faff and a little bit ahead of the masses.
Bloody stupid park layout this place though - the entry/exit area kinda isn't connected to the rest of the park apart from at one
point, so I was wandering a bit randomly in the general direction of the big rides for a while before I found the first coaster of the
trip ; Oblivion - The Black Hole.
Queue line for this was a bit OTT - seemingly taking over an old performance tent for an elaborate SFX filled experience that I just
walked straight through. Liked the fact that the themeing echoed the original Oblivion with that funny little circular tower effect
thing, and they had significantly up-scaled the effects with big HD wall displayed and the like too. Boded well.
Ride itself was pretty good - probably the best of the smaller dive-machines (i.e. Krake, Baron) but not really a patch on the big
ones (SheiKra, Griffon) in my opinion. (Miles better that the original Oblivion tho' obviously - because that is pants)
Couple of rides on that before any Qs built up and headed to the other ride for the day that I was keen to have a play on; the first
B&Wing Raptor
Unfortunately this appeared to be where the Qs had headed so there was a bit of a wait here in some horrible cattle-pens in the growing
summer heat.
Really liked this though ; for something that doesn't gain a huge height it uses its momentum really well with loads of near misses
of itself, its station and some faked up themeing. Really good then - better than some of the bigger wings that seem to be going for
size not subtlety (Swarm,XFlight,Eagle perhaps)?
Couple of rides on that (despite burdenous Qs) and I was now ready to wander the park picking up the rest of the coasters.
They seem to open the park in stages too, so had to wait a few minutes for the next area to open (was only a few mins, had it been more
I'd have double backed then to a different area).
I was keen to ride this though, mainly because it is much maligned and I was intrigued to see if it really was as awful as everyone made out.
Sequoia Adventure then...
No Q, so straight on and stapled in. Straight up the lift hill and the straight ahead and down and upside down and it was done.
So wasn't at all awful. Was just awfully dull.
Next to that (and in the same pic above) is the old Vekoma looper formally known as Magic Mountain but rebranded with lots of VR
and mysterious mystic stuff all over the place ; Shaman.
Anyway the VR was not running, so I was saved that and instead had a pretty standard ride on an old shaky Vekoma looper. Wasn't a very
comfortable experience, would be hellish with VR strapped to your face I would think! (The VR was there and all installed on the trains
just left in its pouch)
Annoyingly the next zone in the park was even later to open so had to double back at that point and put myself through a half hour wait
for an SLC - the shame, but its got to be done.
Blue Tornado (odd name that isn't it) is kinda slap bang in the middle of the park, contributing hugely to that odd-layout that
was still confusing me at that stage a bit. It is at least a slightly different SLC in that it has the extra-helix which only a few
have (my first SLC ever had it as well).
Wasn't great, but used to riding these things so hold on tight and try not to get your ears bashed in and you can survive happily.
Next door to the useless SLC is a pretty heavily themed mine train Mammut, and despite it being a bit bouncy in places (and
having a bit of a wait) I really quite liked this.
Doubling back again to the now-open final zone of the park, hit the longest Q of the day (probably of the trip actually) and a bit of
a slow traipse through a well themed but slow moving path to get to Kung Fu Panda Master. Which is just a Fabbri spinning mouse
for heaven's sake.
Last coaster (well last one RCDB lists anyway, but we'll come to that...) is what I thought was just going to be a caterpillar, but
was joyfully an extended caterpillar Ortobruco Tour so much more worthy of squeezing into the kiddy-train for that
Coaster-cred-anxiety all gone now, I could grab some lunch and explore the park a little (rather than just back tracking to find open
areas FFS).
There were a couple of big interesting looking dark-ride things, first up was this not-very-thrilling-looking-façade thing "Time Voyagers";
Having looked it up since, it was previously a Time Voyagers with a Mount-Rushmore type façade then then seemingly got spited for
an Ice-Age 4D job (presumably the same as Alton's) which has in turn been spited again for the old film, but not the old façade added.
Hence the rather awful not-quite-Ice-Age-not-quite-anything façade that we see today.
Anyway it was rubbish.
Much better was the dark-ride shooter thing "Rameses"
Not sure of the history of this one, but gave the impression of one of those elaborate old dark-rides that they shoved shooting gear
on 15 years ago - or maybe it was always thus? No Q anyway so a nice air-conditioned respite for a few minutes in a bit-like-Tomb-Blaster
kinda way.
Park has a flying island though - I do like flying islands so had a few rides on that.
One thing this park has in copious amounts is fantastic views as you go up a lift hill. My first ride of the morning was fab on
Oblivion's lift hill, Lake Garda coming into view for the first time - lovely.
and from the flying island you could spot the conspicuous local-competition-creds too
Got a few rerides in on Raptor and Oblivion at that point (much less Qs mid afternoon than in the morning) and chillaxed a bit
wandering the park for a while
Realised I hadn't wandered up to the wet-rides (its usually 50-50 whether I bother with wet-rides when I'm on my own, they are good
fun in a group as you can laugh at the wet people (and take turns being the wet-person of course) but on my own I only bother if
the Q is non-existent and/or theres something special about the ride), so to my surprise what I though was just a chute-type thing
turned out to be a proper water coaster thing Fuga da Atlantide - why isn't this on RCDB (it is on coaster-count though) its as
much as a coaster as Europa's big wet-ride?
Anyway, rode that (no Q), got a bit wet. Was good - loads of big themeing too - a good wet ride this one.
So a pretty good day in all - couple of good rides (only Raptor was very-good though) - nice big park (even with a terrible park layout,
presumably just because its grown in chunks over the years). Was reasonably busy even on a weekday, but not packed at all, could
easily do whatever I wanted but still would probably liked to have hung around for a couple more hours rather than be ejected at 6
when the place closed (low-season presumably).
They seemed to be plugging the VR-enabled Shamen a lot in their advertising - lots of it all over the hotel, on flyers and such like.
However since it wasn't working they then also had to have lots of big signs outside the park (on the road) and at the entrance to that
effect;
Ha ha.
Couple of (rubbish) beers and a pizza in the bar at the hotel - job done!
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