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Planes, Trains and Awesome Meatballs – Sweden, June 2022

witchfinder

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And yes, there were some coasters too, but I will be covering other aspects of the trip as well for those that are interested, as I have quite a few tips based on our experiences in the country.

Our trip to Sweden was originally planned for 2020 but something happened then that meant we couldn’t go - I can’t quite recall what it was now. Back then the plan was to fly to Stockholm, spend a few days there with some of my wife’s friends who had booked a large AirBnB, and visit Grona Lund. We’d then get the train to Norrkoping to visit Kolmarden and then travel over to Gothenburg to finish the trip with a visit to Liseberg before flying home. That was planned as a six day trip as I recall, but when re-booking everything for 2022 we decided to add a few extra days on to make more of a holiday out of it.

This was our first trip overseas since that thing that happened in 2020 so was in some ways quite daunting. Unlike most foreign trips we do, we decided to do the entire thing using public transport. One reason for that was I had been rolling over the original train bookings from 2020 every six months as it made sense to make use of them, and we also had some hotel credits from that doomed earlier trip.

So that’s the background, let’s get started on this report on a nine day trip that saw us pass through 5 different airports, 6 cities, 11 train stations, innumerable trams and ferries and of course, the 3 homes of Sweden’s must-ride coasters! :D

Days 1-4 – Birmingham, Stockholm, Ostersund and Stockholm again

No creds in this bit I’m afraid so if that’s all you’re interested in then skip to day 5.

Having got down to a hotel near Birmingham airport the previous night (by train of course) we checked out just after 6am to head to the airport, drop our bag off and get through security. We’d heard all the recent horror stories about how long that may take so got there nice and early, and although it was quite hellishly busy, the queues moved steadily and we got through security in about an hour. There wasn’t much time to hang about though as we boarded our Eurowings flight to Stockholm, happily finding that we’d managed to book seats that inadvertently socially-distanced us from all the other passengers!

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The flight went without incident and was quite comfortable with quite a bit of legroom, so I’d recommend the airline if you get the chance to fly with them. We arrived at Arlanda airport, picked up our luggage and grabbed some lunch, then made our way to the pickup point for our hotel shuttle. We soon discovered that any problems that we’re having at UK airports were dwarfed by those at Arlanda, as we witnessed a queue for security that stretched the entire length of Terminal 5, though the SkyCity shopping area to the escalators for Terminal 4 and then doubled back on itself. The estimated wait time was 3-4 hours! :oops:

This was no issue for us right then, but we had a domestic flight booked for the following morning so were now thinking we’d need to be at the airport three hours before that flight rather than the usual one.

Anyway, we left the airport, caught the bus to our nearby hotel and checked in, then after a short rest we caught a bus to the nearby town of Sigtuna, which is billed as Sweden’s oldest town. We had a browse around, played a round of local attraction-themed crazy golf, checked out a supermarket (it’s always fun to browse for some unfamiliar snacks) and had some nice Thai food before catching the bus back to the hotel and chilling out for a couple of hours before getting an early night ready for the next day.

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That day came way too soon as we got up at 5:30am for the second day in a row, grabbed breakfast and headed back to the airport to catch our flight. As expected, there were some crazy queues building up already for the security checks but they weren’t as bad as the previous day so we were through in about an hour and eventually caught our short flight north to Ostersund.

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What a cute airport!
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We caught the bus into town, left our luggage at the train station and wandered around for a while, eventually finding the local museum which killed a couple of hours until lunchtime. The exhibition about food was interesting!

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After lunch (which was expensive even by Swedish standards - £22 for a steak sandwich and chips!) we stocked up on some food from the supermarket, retrieved our luggage and called a taxi to take us to our accommodation for the next two nights.

Hot tip No. 1 – don’t use taxis in Sweden. This 15 minute journey cost over £50! It was effectively £5 just to get in.

At this point I should probably explain that my wife Anna absolutely loves moose. On our last major overseas trip to Canada she was hoping to see lots of moose and all we saw were a load of bears and a snake eating a fish. We weren’t taking any chances this time and she had booked us into the Moose Garden, a moose sanctuary with on-site accommodation in the village of Orrviken.

When we arrived however, there was nobody to be seen. We tried calling the number on the door of their café – no answer. With the weather looking a bit iffy we decided to carry our bags up to the cabins we were supposed to be staying in and found them all unlocked so in the absence of anyone to tell us otherwise, we moved into one of them to shelter from the rain.

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Long story short – we eventually got in touch with the owners who had gone out for the day, having got confused about what day we were arriving. Not a promising start but it all turned out OK in the end.

But what of the moose, you ask? Yes, they were there and we got a private tour of the sanctuary, being allowed to feed them and see the new moose calves that had been born just a few days earlier. The place was in a stunning location and as well as numerous moose encounters we also explored a nearby nature reserve.

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Two days later we were dropped off at the train station by our hosts and set off on a seven hour train journey back to Stockholm. Our reason for choosing he train was that while the flight to Ostersund only cost £95 for us both, the return flights were almost double that. With no great urgency to get back to Stockholm, the train was a much cheaper at just £32 for both of us – imagine paying such a small amount for a trip like that in the UK! Swedish trains are also much smoother, more comfortable and less crowded and it was a very pleasant way to make our way back to the capital, with plenty of natural beauty to see from the windows.

Once we arrived in Stockholm we headed to our hotel for the next two nights and prepared for our first park trip of the holiday – Grona Lund! :)
 
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Day 5 – Grona Lund

This is where most of you will start to get interested I imagine. Currently Grona Lund is splitting access to the park into two sessions per day, and knowing in advance that there was a My Chemical Romance gig in the evening and the park was expected to be busy, we chose to go for the early session, which was 10:00 until 15:30. Our hotel was about 25 minutes from the park via public transport.

Hot tip No. 2 – you pay for public transport in Stockholm by tapping a debit card on a reader (they call it blipping in Sweden) and one blip lasts 75 minutes so you can use multiple forms of transport in that time.

Everyone says you should approach the park by water so we caught a bus outside our hotel to the ferry port Slussen, then hopped on the short ferry over to Allmanna Grand, which gives a great view of the park on the skyline slowly coming into view. We could see rides testing as we approached the ferry port and some lucky early riders on a couple of the creds.

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Hot tip No. 3 – if you have a membership card to one of the major coaster clubs, you can get one free entry to the park each year. Both RCCGB and ECC cards are included in this deal, so we’d joined the RCCGB specifically for this purpose since it only cost £15 for both of us. This offer also applies to all the other parks in the Parks & Resorts chain, including Kolmarden. Make sure you take photo ID with you as it may be asked for by the staff.

After mistakenly heading to guest services initially, we were diverted back to the ticket office to show our cards and collect our tickets, and we were soon in the park. We’d seen a lot of kids on the ferry and sure enough the park was swarming with them, as school had just ended that week. However, after some initial cred anxiety, it turned out that the park was easily handling the crowds and we didn’t wait any longer than 30 minutes for any of the rides, with most being under 15 minutes. The operations here are fantastic, with all creds running all the trains they have and the ride ops working quickly to load every train as quickly as possible and fill any gaps.

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Upon entering the park my cred count was 295, so one of the coasters here was going to be my 300th and I had firm plans about which one that would be. So because of that and the perceived crowd levels, we started by heading to the lowest-capacity creds first and kicked the day off with Vilda Musen, the Gertslauer bobsled.

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This had a very compact queue line packed with noisy children – if we were going to catch COVID on this trip, this was the most likely place so far that we were going to do so!

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Wait time was about 15 minutes before we had our only ride of the day. It has the usual tight turns you’d expect from a mouse coaster but it’s definitely more fun than a regular Wild Mouse layout with a few little airtime pops and good interactions with the other rides that it shares space with, most notably the larger Jetline that towers above it.

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With one ride under our belts and some of the cred anxiety removed, we headed to the back of the park to ride Kvasten. It should be noted for those of you that haven’t visited that you can walk from the front to the back of the park in about 3 minutes! :D

Kvasten is a standard Vekoma SFC, the original 395m model in fact. I’ve ridden a few of these and they are always good fun, and this was enhanced by some excellent witchy theming including a large structure underneath the turnaround area, which I only found out later erupts a quite pathetic burst of fire, Wicker Man style. You can’t see it on-ride! There’s also some good music in the station, making this one of the best-themed creds at the park.

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We grabbed the front row and the best part is the initial drop which sees you dangling above Twister, plunging through its structure before being swept to the left and over the water. It’s an excellent installation of this type of coaster, and while it was a little rattly compared to some of the newer ones I’ve ridden, it was pleasing to find that a 15 year old “new gen” Vekoma hasn’t got rough with age.

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Speaking of Twister, the Gravity Group woodie was next up. I rode this one alone first time around to see how rough it was as Anna has issues with some of the more aggressive woodies. I loved all the pictures and info about other wooden coasters around the world in the queue line.

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After waiting about 10 minutes and seeing some fantastic ops, I went for the back row and was joined by a bemused Swedish teen who had been relocated by one of the staff to allow the train to be filled. The ops weren’t too concerned with how far you pushed down the lapbars either, which I fully applaud.

Twister may not have much height, but it gives a pretty thrilling ride with a quite intimidating first drop, plenty of twists and turns (as you’d expect from the name) and some great airtime moments. It was certainly a lively ride with that out of control feeling you only get with woodies, but it wasn’t especially rough compared to the other GG I’ve ridden (Mine Blower) and it will certainly find a place somewhere in my top ten woodies.

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Right opposite the exit of Twister is the entrance to Jetline, and that’s where we were headed next. Anna re-joined me and we entered the shortest queue of the day so far - with three trains running it was virtually walk-on and we went for the back row.

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It’s actually not the tallest cred in the park but there’s no doubt that Jetline dominates the Grona Lund skyline and is far and away the most intense coaster there. I never rode Knightmare before Camelot closed and it rusted away, so I was keen to see what this layout was like and as you’d expect from a Schwarzkopf, it’s pretty damn brutal! The first drop through the tunnel is pretty cool, but it’s the second drop that really tries to rip your face off as the train comes into it really quickly and it dives sharply to the right. What follows is more banked drops and dives through its own structure before you’re slammed into the brakes.

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As we sat on the brake run we looked at each other, somewhat shellshocked. I’m not sure I’d call it especially enjoyable but Jetline certainly makes an impact and you have to take your hat off to Schwarzkopf for creating these insane rides that have stood the test of time and still ride pretty well.

That got me to 299 creds and that meant it was time for the big new draw at the park. Back in 2016 my 100th cred had been Black Mamba at Phantasialand so it seemed somehow fitting that my 300th would be another B&M Invert – Monster.

We expected this to have a long queue as the newest cred in the park and being right at the front, but thanks to us waiting a while to ride and the superb operations, it had a wait time of under 20 minutes. The queue and station layout is unusual – you start by going upstairs from the entrance, then back downstairs and eventually underground to board the train. Along the way are some nice details making it look somewhat like a Tube station, but the most fun part was the TV screens showing a number of cartoons explaining how to ride, with a number of comical monsters putting in appearances.

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We had intended for our first ride to be on the front, because that’s the best row on all inverts, but once we got to the front of the queue we were quickly batched on to a row in the middle of the train before we could say anything. There is a separate front row queue which was quite busy that time around and you have to ask to join it. Lesson learned for next time. So anyway, away we went, climbing out of the underground statin and back into the sunshine for our first ride on this almost brand new B&M.

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It was really rather good! It may be one of the shortest inverts out there, but it packs a lot into its layout and barely a foot of track is wasted. The first drop is fantastic, plunging you towards the Stockholm harbour before pulling away and into the first Zero-G roll. From there you fly through the park with near-misses all over the place, some fast and graceful turns and of course two more inversions. Then as you come out of the second Zero-G roll you got through a small hut, and on the way out you get airtime…. That was a real WTF moment first time around! I thought it was crazy when B&M managed to put airtime on a wing coaster (Fenix) but to get airtime on an invert was very unexpected, and most welcome.

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We both had a blast on that first ride so we went straight around and rejoined the queue, only to find it was now under 10 minutes and the front row queue was empty, so this time around we grabbed the best seats in the house, and it did not disappoint. The first drop was even more thrilling and that airtime pop seemed even more pronounced. It’s a pretty intense ride due to the compact layout and it definitely gave me old-school B&M Invert vibes. It’s not quite on the level of Nemesis or Montu but after some consideration I’m putting in third place behind them.

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It also has to be mentioned that this thing is an absolute marvel of engineering. How they fitted it into the park is amazing, and as you wander around you’ll spot the many wacky supports and quirky workarounds that made it all possible. Of course that’s part of what makes it so fun, because it weaves through the existing structures giving lots of footchopper moments. Later in the day we also found it gave you a rather delightful tour of the park’s food outlets as the smells from the many restaurants drifted upwards. I’m happy to have chosen it as my 300th, even if it was 2 years later than anticipated! :D

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It was approaching lunchtime so while we were in the vicinity, I decided to get Insane out of the way. My first ride on an Intamin Zacspin and it was exactly as painful and pointless as I expected. I don’t think I even got one full spin on it but I definitely got back and stomach pain. Nothing more to say about that one!

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After lunch we headed over to the kids area to grab the two kiddie creds – Tuff-Tuff Taget and Nyckelpigan. Both pretty poor kiddie creds in a park that I feel could come up with something better, to be honest.

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We didn’t spend much time in that area though we did stop for a drink and some Fika (Swedish cakes) but it seemed generally very pretty and well designed.

We then headed back into the main park for a ride on the ghost train Bla Taget, which had the longest queue of the day at about 30 minutes. This is a great classic style dark ride with some decent animatronics and some good jump scares. We sat behind a father and daughter in our carriage and the guy had some of the worst breath we had ever had the misfortune to smell as it occasionally wafted behind him! This kind of added to the horror aspect of the ride I suppose but it wasn’t really welcome! 🤢

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With most of the rides we were interested in done, it was time for some re-rides, starting with another front row on Kvasten and followed by second rides on Twister (Anna joined me this time) and Jetline (she skipped this one after the earlier experience!)

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As I’m sure you know, Grona Lund has a big thing for tower rides, most likely because they have a small footprint which is ideal for this tiny park. I didn’t have time to do them all and since I’ve ridden plenty of traditional drop and shot towers I skipped Fritt Fall and Katapulten and just went for the biggest, scariest of the bunch – Ikaros. This is the most recent tower to be added and has the tilting seats that point you face-down before dropping you. I was quite surprised to read afterwards that this is over 300ft tall as it didn’t seem that high, but still offers pretty daunting experience, though having already done Falcon’s Fury a few years back it wasn’t quite as nerve-wracking as that.

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The funniest thing about that ride was the exit, which takes you through a load of random corridors and staircases without any obvious direction, which makes it feel like they just plonked this ride on top of a building without much thought about how to get to and from it. You certainly get some fantastic views across Stockholm from the top though before you’re tilted downwards to face the bland, grey top of the building it’s built on.

At this point it started to rain a little, having been nice and sunny for most of the day. We only had about an hour left and wanted to get some re-rides on Monster to round off our visit, but before that we took a ride on the park’s other dark ride - Kärlekstunneln, AKA The Tunnel of Love.

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I’m not sure love is quite the vibe we got from this – there was lots of stuff going on with fairies and gnomes and the like, with some nice animatronics and scenes, and it was a nice way to sit down and get out of the rain for a few minutes.

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As mentioned, our intention was to round off the day with as many rides on Monster as we could manage, but unfortunately that seemed to be everyone else’s plan too so the queues were longer than earlier at around 20 minutes. Our intention was to get another front row ride but when we got down to the station the queue for the front was quite long, so we decided to make the best use of our remaining time by grabbing the back row, with the intention of then dashing around for one more ride on the front before the park closed it’s early session.

That back row ride was pretty fantastic and a very different experience to the front. Be it from warming up, the recent rain or the position on the train, it felt a lot faster and more intense on the back as we were whipped around some of the corners, but the big difference was the airtime hill (can you call it a hill when it’s above you?) which gave more of a floater experience on the back compared to the mild ejector at the front. Another pretty exciting surprise!

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As planned, we headed back around for one last ride and our plan had worked to perfection as the front row queue had mostly cleared so we were able to get one final ride on the front before the queue line closed. It was a perfect end to a brilliant first ever day at this great park.

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As we left the park we found our decision to visit in the morning fully vindicated as a crowd of thousands of emo kids had lined up to get in for the late session to see their idols My Chemical Romance.

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This photo is from over half a mile away from the park entrance! :oops:

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It was a bit of a shame they are running two sessions per day at the moment, but we got enough rides in that early visit to get a good flavour of what the park is like, and it tastes good. I absolutely loved Grona Lund – it’s like the love child of Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Joyland at Great Yarmouth, utilising its small footprint brilliantly with rides stacked on top of rides and a mixture of slick, modern attractions and older, quirky in-house built classics. It may be small, but you can still get lost amongst all the buildings and tight alleyways and suddenly stumble on a new area or pathway through the park, which makes it really exciting to wander around. There’s so many angles from which to watch the intertwining rides, making it a dream for photographers too.

The operations were fantastic and the staff were as pleasant as they were efficient, so there’s no need to worry even if the park is busy. The range of creds is good too, and by adding Monster they have filled the gap in their line-up for a sleek, modern coaster with inversions, and it was the best ride in the park, followed by Twister for me. I know there are plans to expand the park as shown on posters near the entrance, so if they can get the approval for that and use the same imagination and ingenuity that they have in the main park then it’s sure to be packed with great new attractions and I’d be more than happy to revisit.

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After we left the park, we met up with some of Anna’s Instagram friends and their dog, who like ours is a Romanian rescue, and took a pleasant walk through the nearby area before eating at a Vietnamese restaurant and heading back to our hotel to relax before another busy day which included more travelling.
 
Having not had the time write a trip report, I have to say I agree with pretty much everything you said about Grona Lund! Although Jetline sits higher for us, including a fairy tale sunset ride to end the holiday :p

We decided the only way to describe the theming, is that Grona Lund is themed to Grona Lund? There are lots are different styles, colours, and designs across the park, but they don't clash and everything smoothly flows from ride to ride. You move from the '50's diner of jetline to the "steampunk-ish" Eclipse without really noticing.

How big were the boats on tunnel of love? We were going to have a go but they looked far too small for two 6'2" large gentlemen 🤣

Did you enjoy one of Willie's Wieners during your trip?
 
We decided the only way to describe the theming, is that Grona Lund is themed to Grona Lund? There are lots are different styles, colours, and designs across the park, but they don't clash and everything smoothly flows from ride to ride. You move from the '50's diner of jetline to the "steampunk-ish" Eclipse without really noticing.

How big were the boats on tunnel of love? We were going to have a go but they looked far too small for two 6'2" large gentlemen 🤣

Did you enjoy one of Willie's Wieners during your trip?
Haha no, we didn't sample the weiners!

I get what you mean about the theming. It's very haphazard but it works - not a lot of heavy theming but just enough to make it feel like more than an average amusement park.

The Tunnel of Love boats fitted my wife and I reasonably well but neither of us is anywhere near 6'2" so you may have struggled ;)
 
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Day 6 – Stockholm to Ostersund

Another cred-free day but the next two have plenty so bear with me. ;)

This was our last day in Stockholm and we took full advantage of our 24 hour travel cards bought the previous afternoon and have a relatively cheap day of sightseeing. First stop was the Central Station to drop off our luggage.

Hot tip No. 4 – Luggage lockers in Stockholm’s station cost about £5 an hour, so if possible leave your luggage at your hotel for as long as possible. We learned this lesson the expensive way!

The public transport network includes many of the ferries that operate around the archipelago so if you have time you can go quite far out (and back) for a very limited cost, especially compared to the many commercially operated cruises.

Link to the Stockholm commuter ferry network info for anyone interested:

Unfortunately we didn’t have the time to get as far out into the archipelago as we’d have liked but we got the metro over to Ropsten and then caught Ferry 80 back to Allmanna Grand, effectively giving us an hour-long ferry tour of Stockholm’s waterways for free.

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The ferry also gives some more great views of Grona Lund and ends up at the dock right below Monster so I was able to get a shot of the drop that I didn’t get the previous day. It was great to travel in the water alongside the park and see all the rides in operation, twisting around each other.

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You may recall that the title of this trip report refers to awesome meatballs, and this is where they come in. We got the Djurgarden ferry again back to Slussen and took a short bus ride to Meatballs for Everyone, generally regarded as the home of the best meatballs in Stockholm. And they were good! 😋

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Afterwards we visited Gamla Stan, the old town, for a wander around. Our intention had also been to visit the Medieval museum (which is one of the few free entry museums) but time ran out and so we headed to the station to catch our train to Norrkoping.

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On arrival in Norrkoping about 90 minutes later we checked into our hotel and then wandered around the city, grabbing some Mexican food and checking out the eclectic selection of buildings and sculptures – it seemed like every building was completely unique in some way.

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We also checked out one of several huge sweet shops - they bloody love pick and mix here!

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After a couple of hours our feet were getting sore so we headed back to the hotel to relax ready for the next day’s visit to Kolmarden.
 
Day 7 – Kolmarden

Another relatively early start for this one as we had to get the bus to Kolmarden from Ostersund. It goes from the bus station adjacent to the train station, not from the bus stops outside the station itself, so that’s something to be aware of. We got the 9:10 bus which was a pretty fancy double decker with on-board Wi-Fi, so we could easily pass the time during the 40 minute journey which also saw some fantastic views across the nearby lakes.

Arriving at the park about 10 minutes before opening time, we flashed our RCCGB cards again to get free tickets and joined a fairly small crowd waiting for the gates to open, then made our way in.

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Hot tip No. 5 – use this escalator instead of walking up the hill to the main park. We didn’t and were knackered by the time we reached the top! 😤

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This zoo is absolutely huge and has some vast enclosures for the animals, who seem to thrive as a result as we saw creatures such as tigers and bears seeming a lot happier and more enriched than at many zoos. Everyone has their opinion on whether zoos are a good thing or not but there’s no doubt this is one of the better ones.

Anyway, I’d checked on the Kolmarden app and found that Wildfire wasn’t opening until 11:00 – kinda wish I’d known that before getting up for that early bus! As a result we made our way to the back of the park where the coaster is but took a ride on the Safari skyride, a brilliant 30 minute tour that gives you a bird’s eye view of bears, zebra, giraffes, lions and much to Anna’s delight, moose! Not all in the same enclosures I might add ;) It also gives some great views of Wildfire that you won’t see anywhere else in the park.

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Worth mentioning at this point that it was pretty overcast and we were expecting rain in the afternoon, so we were keen to get as much done in the morning as possible. With that in mind, I headed over to Wildfire after getting off the skyride, but as Anna wasn’t intending to ride this coaster she stayed on for another lap of the safari.

Arriving at the entrance to Wildfire about ten minutes before opening, I found a small queue had formed and saw a couple of test runs before they opened it up.

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Once they did, I managed to get the second to back row on the first train of the day and away we went… :D

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First impressions of the ride - well firstly it’s ridiculous that this ride exists in this park. It is so out of place in comparison to everything else there but they’ve done a fantastic job of hiding it from most areas. It’s also another engineering marvel, from the crazy lift/drop structure to the latter half that works its way through and around the surrounding terrain.

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As for the ride experience, that first drop and the following stall are incredible, with the former offering some amazing airtime and the latter making you feel like time stands still for a split second. From my first ride everything after that was a bit of a blur with a mixture of banked turns, two more inversions and a few airtime moments. I was going to need more rides to form an opinion about the ride in full and that was not going to be an issue as it was walk-on all day.

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I went straight round for a ride on the front row, followed by another mid-train. My feelings were pretty similar to the first ride – it starts off with an amazing one-two punch of the drop and stall but after that there’s nothing that especially stood out. Don’t get me wrong, it was all good but the latter half of the ride is quite samey with no big elements of note, and I know this is a fairly common criticism of the ride. After those first three rides I took a break to go and wander down the completely redundant queue line and take some photos of the ride.

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Anna rejoined me after her second Safari ride and we headed to the other cred in the area, Delfinexpressen. This Vekoma Junior coaster is perfectly functional but very mundane compared to its monstrous neighbour, and one ride was enough.

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After that it was back to Wildfire and this time I managed to get two back row rides without leaving the station, as the ride ops were happy for people to re-ride if nobody was waiting for their row, and you could even just get off and pick another empty row if you wished. I also applaud that with the exception of one ride when I was stapled, they’re very lax with checking your lap bars. As long as you’ve got the seatbelt on and the lap bar is down a reasonable way, they will just check that it has locked and that’s good enough, so if you want massive, out of your seat airtime on that first drop then it’s easy to get.

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Those back row rides certainly gave plenty of air on the drop but also highlighted a couple of issues with the ride. Firstly, it doesn’t matter how loose your lap bar is, once you’ve gone down that drop and through the stall, it gets forced down and restricts the freedom on the rest of the ride. It’s not a full-on stapling but it definitely reduces the impact of the subsequent ejector hills. The second issue I noticed was that when riding near the back, there are a couple of quite noticeable jolts towards the end of the layout, which is otherwise butter smooth. As a result, I found myself with a bit of a headache after those two rides and decided to take a break for a while until I recovered.

For the next couple of hours we wandered around the rest of the zoo, checking out the majority of the animal exhibits and eventually grabbing lunch at the all-you-can-eat buffet (including meatballs of course) which has an outdoor seating area with fantastic views across the nearby lake. At this point the weather was nice and sunny but that was about to change quite dramatically.

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As we finished our walk around the zoo we saw some pretty dark clouds looming and heard the sound of thunder approaching, and sure enough at around 2pm a storm rolled in. We managed to take shelter and sat to wait it out for about 20 minutes, then made our way up to Bamseland, the kids area and home to the last of the three creds here. This is a nicely put together area with some good theming and a nice selection of kid friendly flat rides. Unfortunately as we arrived an even bigger storm hit the park and once again we sought shelter as the whole area was pelted with rain for about half an hour.

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After that storm started to pass, it looked like they were about to re-open the cred, but after one test run it was closed again as apparently the track was too wet for the train to safely make it up the lift hill. This was starting to look like the first spite of the trip, not helped by the rain coming again.

With the outlook looking grim, we decided to go back down towards Wildfire rather than just sitting under an umbrella. There were some water-dwelling animals in that area so we assumed they wouldn’t be too bothered about the weather, but when we arrived we found that Wildfire was still happily running in the rain with a number of committed but drenched teenagers going round over and over again. I figured I might as well join them and see if the ride was running faster than it had been earlier.

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I started off with a front row ride that saw me feel the full force of heavy rain (AKA stinging needles of doom) in the face at over 70mph. After that I decided to ride sat behind somebody else each time to give me a bit of protection and had another three rides on various rows, each time not even leaving the station between rides.

I was pretty drenched after that session so decided nine rides overall was probably enough and decided to call it a day, but when I returned to Anna she said she had been watching the coaster go round over and over again and was considering giving it a go. I hadn’t even entertained the idea of her riding this since it’s about 50ft taller than anything she’s ever done before and her only experience of riding an inverting coaster with lap bars (Icon) had not been enjoyable for her. We went to take a look at the trains more closely and once she saw how enclosed you are in them and the fact you have a seatbelt as well as the lap bar, she bravely decided to give it a try! :oops:

I was fully expecting her to hate the ride but to my amazement, despite obviously being scared, she actually quite enjoyed it and when we got back to the station the ops asked if everyone just wanted to go again since there was nobody waiting, we went around for another lap! By then the rain was subsiding so the last two rides were slightly more enjoyable, but we both agreed that enough was enough after them.

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The verdict on Wildfire then after 11 rides. It is a fantastic ride with some amazing elements, and is comfortably my number one woodie, but having said that I would put it below the other two RMCs I’ve ridden (Wicked Cyclone and Storm Chaser) because I don’t think it maintains the initial wow factor of the first couple of elements though its entire layout. I felt it was lacking a bit airtime-wise in the second half too due to the issue with the lap bars clamping down, but as I said, it’s still a great ride and just sneaked in at the lower end of my overall top ten.

We left Wildfire and headed towards to front of the park, but we had unfinished business with a cred that still needed riding. Returning the Bamseland, the coaster was still closed but the weather was starting to brighten up so we hung around and within ten minutes they were testing it again, so we dashed over and were first into the station when they reopened it. So finally we got to ride Godiståget (AKA The Candy Train)

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And yes, of course it was a bang average kiddie cred! Actually, to be fair it’s a bit better than your typical kids coaster with some nice landscaping but most importantly completed all the creds for the park. Job done.

With that, we made our way out of the park and caught the bus back to Norrkoping, drying out along the way. The weather hadn’t been especially kind but we still had a fun day in this huge, beautifully presented zoo with some fantastic animal exhibits and an absolute monster of a coaster. Highlights of the day aside from Wildfire would be the Safari skyride, the brilliant tiger enclosure and seeing baby capybaras and tapirs. Of course, everybody on this forum would want to visit for the creds, but don’t overlook the zoo as well as it is really good.

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Next up, Liseberg. Probably be a couple of days before I finish writing that one up though!
 
Great reports so far @witchfinder!

Interesting to see that you consider Wildfire your weakest RMC. It does seem to be a slightly polarising one in that people either really rate it compared to other RMCs or don’t think a whole lot to it compared to the others.

If you don’t mind me asking, what is your current top 10, just to gauge what types of rides Wildfire sits near?
 
If you don’t mind me asking, what is your current top 10, just to gauge what types of rides Wildfire sits near?

It'll be in the Top Ten thread somewhere (it hasn't changed since 2019) but prior to this trip it was something like...

Taron
Wicked Cyclone
Goliath (SFOG)
Shambhala
Nemesis
Hyperion
Superman (SFNE)
Mako
Storm Chaser (KK)
Icon

WIldfire was good but aside from the drop and stall it lacked the insane elements and airtime of the other two RMCs I've done. I suspect it wasn't at its best the day I rode it due to the conditions tbh.
 
Day 8 – Liseberg


This was another long day as we had to get up at about 7:30 to pack our bags and get the train from Norrkoping to Gothenburg. Our train was this super-snazzy double decker affair, though that only took us to Katrineholm where we switched to a slightly less snazzy but still comfortable train for the rest of the journey.

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We arrived in Gothenburg at around 11:30 and made a short tram journey to our hotel on the edge of town. We chose this because the city centre hotels were very expensive, costing over £100 a night for anything with decent reviews. After dropping out bags off at the hotel and grabbing a quick pizza, we jumped on the tram back to the city centre and on to Liseberg.

Hot tip No. 6 – a single trip ticket in Gothenburg lasts 90 minutes, so you can make several journeys on one ticket if you’re quick enough. We used ours to get to the hotel and then over to Liseberg.

Hot tip No. 7 – there are two tram stations for Liseberg. The Liseberg one (red line 5) doesn’t go through the central station area so if you want that one you need to get on at Brunnsparken. However there are several trams that go to Korsvagen from the central station and that’s arguably closer to the park anyway.

Hot tip No. 8 – nobody seems to buy tickets or tap travelcards on the trams and we saw no inspectors on any of our journeys, so if you’re willing to risk it you can probably get away without buying a ticket at all ;) This does not apply to other methods of transport such as ferries.

Liseberg was my most anticipated park of the trip, being in my top five must-visit parks. It was open from 1pm – 10pm on this day and we got there at 2pm, picked up our wristband from the automated machines outside the park and made our way in.

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The place had only been open an hour and it was absolutely packed :( School holidays had begun earlier in the week and we were expecting it to busy, but the hope was that it might be quiet for a few hours to begin with, but that was not to be, with Helix already having an hour long queue. This was going to be stressful!

Hot tip No. 9 – download the Liseberg app on your phone to allow you to see queue times and more importantly use virtual queues on certain rides.

The website claims to have Wi-Fi across the park, but it was pretty abysmal or non-existent in many areas, except in the building housing Helix and Atmosfear. As a result I made the early decision to enable data roaming on my phone so I could make best use of the app. It’s £2 a day on my network so the benefits outweighed the cost.

The first thing I did upon entering the park was connect to that patchy Wi-Fi and get myself into the virtual queue for Helix. My expectation was that the virtual queue time would be equivalent to the standby time, but that’s not how the VQs work. Instead you’re booking the next available time slot in the VQ line, which at this point was at 4:30, so a wait time of two and a half hours. Further more, the app typically only lets you book a slot for one person in the queue, so if you want to ride as a group it may take some co-ordination to get a matching time slot.

Hot tip No. 10 (unverified) – if you have spare phones then take them, download the app, connect to the Wi-Fi and use them to book VQ spots on other rides. This may not work as the app may be linked to your Google account and not allow you to book other time slots. Also, take a screenshot of your VQ ticket just in case you’re in an area with no Wi-Fi when you need to use it.

We made our way up to the Helix entrance just to verify what group number the VQ was at, just in case there was a chance of getting on sooner. There wasn’t.

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Anna wasn’t going to be riding Helix or Valkyria as she was feeling a bit worn out, so she booked me a slot on the dive coaster for about half an hour later, so in the meantime I decided to start my Liseberg experience with a ride on Atmosfear while I was in the area. Queue time was advertised at 10-20 minutes but it was more like 30 by the time I got on. Ops weren’t great on this and the fact they were giving the option of using VR headsets probably slowed things down too. Given that I was probably only going to get one ride on this I decided to try the VR myself, given that there were plenty of other good views of Gothenburg to be had from elsewhere in the park.

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I’ve always thought VR on a drop tower was a stupid idea and to some extent I still believe that, but it was an interesting experience and the VR was done quite well. It’s a Sci-Fi theme with robots attacking you as you go up the tower, then a big reactor or something explodes and you plummet back down through space. There’s a different kind of anticipation when you’re not seeing your surroundings as you go up, and it’s strangely less tense than if you could. I’d recommend giving it a try.

So that was one ride down after being in the park an hour. Not great. By the time I got off, my timeslot on Valkyria had arrived so I had to dash down the two massive escalators and across to the far end of the park to meet Anna, grab her phone and enter the VQ line for my first cred of the day. It was at this point I discovered that Valkyria has a single rider queue so I didn’t need to book a slot – doh!

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Kudos to the batcher on this ride. They have to manage four separate queues – standby front row, standby rows 2-3, virtual and single rider – and they did so admirably. You’re only guaranteed a front row ride if you join that standby queue, though there’s a chance of getting it from the VQ line based on the whims of the batcher. There’s also a chance of getting front row from the single rider queue if you’re lucky, and that’s exactly what happened to me. First good thing to happen at the park that day! :)

I’m generally not a huge fan of dive coasters but I must say I was impressed with Valkyria. It’s tall enough to give a nervous sensation being hung over the drop, and the holding brake lasts for a few seconds. It’s also preceded by the train slowing down to edge you close to the drop, building up the tension.

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After the drop, most dive coasters I’ve ridden don’t tend to do much of note, but this has the best layout of any that I’ve ridden so far, with a gigantic Immelmann followed by some swooping turns and two more inversions, the last of which being a roll over the river. It’s over pretty quickly but provided some thrilling moments and feel a much more complete ride than the other dive coasters I’ve ridden (there have only been three, mind you). It has vest restraints rather than OTSRs and I know some people have complained about these, but to be honest I still got some weightlessness on the drop and maybe even a small pop of airtime during the following layout so they seemed fine to me.

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At this point Anna tried to get me another VQ slot on Helix and once she finally found some Wi-Fi we discovered they were all gone for the day, and shortly after the same was true for Valkyria. Not a problem for the latter since I could use the SRQ but it looked like I was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way for any further rides on Helix after my 4:30 one.

With an hour still to go until then, we knocked off some of the other rides in the park that had smaller queues. First up, Lisebergbanan, which had a 15 minute wait.

This thing is a capacity monster with five trains, so the line never stands still, but our queuing experience was made rather nauseating because somebody in front of us was dropping some absolutely hideous farts. We suspect it was a teenage kid in the group just ahead of us, and the first time we got wind of him was when we were stood on the stairs and he was just above us… 🤢

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Anyway, we survived that and got on the ride, choosing to sit ahead of that group. This one’s hard to get any photos of as it winds around the hill, so I didn’t really get any, but it’s a fairly fun ride with the expected Schwarzkopf intensity, a bit of jerkiness and a couple of surprising airtime moments. Nothing outstanding to me but reasonably enjoyable.

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We then headed over to the kids area to ride Underlandet, the cute dark ride themed to the park’s green rabbit mascot. Didn’t really understand what was going on but it was well done with a nice pre-show section in a lift (giving Gringotts vibes) and plenty of animatronics and cool effects. It also featured a scene where the rabbits were on the toilet!

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After that we jumped on Stampbanan, the smallest cred in the park, since it was right next to the exit of the dark ride. Nicely themed but otherwise instantly forgettable.

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After that, finally it was time for that first ride on Helix. I made my way up the two giant escalators (one of which was stopped – urgh) and joined the virtual queue line, which was still around a 10 minute wait. Along the way I got my first look at the standby queue which is quite the confusing maze. I’d be seeing much more of that later.

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Upon entering the station the first thing I noticed was that there was no music, which I thought was odd as I understood this ride has a pretty good score. No idea why it wasn’t on but it didn’t give much atmosphere. The second thing I noticed was the ride ops were quite deliberately stapling everyone once they got into their seats. Not a good omen for any decent airtime!

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I knew I wasn’t going to get many rides on this so I started off by waiting for the front, and after a few trains I finally took my seat for my first ride on this much-hyped coaster.

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Was it worth the hype? Well for me, based on that first ride, not really. I love a good launch coaster and I’m a fan of Icon so I was expecting to love Helix, but I came off completely underwhelmed. Firstly, those launches are barely deserving of the name – they are so weak they make Icon’s seem like Furius Baco! Apparently the ride goes over 60mph but it certainly didn’t feel like it. The layout is cool as it traverses the hillside for sure, but none of the elements really had any kind of wow factor for me, save perhaps for the airtime hill that follows the second launch and top hat, but due to those overenthusiastic ride ops, any airtime was quite neutered.

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So yeah, first impressions were that it looks great, rides smoothly but was just incredibly bland. I don’t like to judge creds on one ride though of course so I needed to get back on this thing to form a more rounded opinion. The standby queue was still up at around an hour though and with no VQ slots left, my plan was to wait until after we’d eaten and hope the queue time dropped and I could get a few rides at the end of the day. Spoiler alert: it did :)

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While I’d been waiting for the front row I’d gone back into the app and booked myself a VQ slot for Spökhotellet Gasten, so headed down there next. I was told this has previously been an upcharge attraction but that was certainly not the case on this day.

By the way, Anna had hardly ridden anything so far due to feeling a bit under the weather, but she had found some nice places to sit and read a book so she was happy enough. She’d also taken an interest in all those wheel of fortune games where you can win giant bars of chocolate, though she only had a few tries and never won anything.

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It took a few minutes to find the entrance to Hotel Gasten – at first I’d gone to the nearby bar with a similar name – but by the time I found it, it was time to go in. It’s a very well designed scare maze with some top notch theming and animatronics. There were actors in there who were well dressed to scare but to be honest they rarely made me jump, unlike a couple of the other people in our group. Nonetheless, I was very impressed with the quality of the attraction and really enjoyed it.

Next up we took a look at the rapids but decided they looked way to wet to ride, as the weather was looking iffy and we didn’t fancy having to spend the rest of our trip with wet shoes if they got soaked.

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Instead I headed back to Valkyria for another ride, taking a sad look at Baldur as I passed the boarded up entrance. I knew it was going to be closed of course but it’s still a pretty annoying spite. Using the SRQ I got the second row on Valkyria this time and while it wasn’t as good as the front row, I still really enjoyed it. I had more time to appreciate the station theming and surrounding area this time as the queue was longer and I wasn’t dashing to find the entrance. It’s a very nice coaster although I’m not sold on that mustard colour scheme for the track!

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There was still one cred left to get and that was Rabalder, so we headed there next. It’s another family coaster so nothing to get excited about, but we were entertained by seeing the rabbit mascot taking a ride on it. :D

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It also has this annoying bucket dangling over the back of the station to catch riders with drips of water unexpectedly. Luckily we rode on the back row so we saw it and managed to avoid most of its dirty tricks. Others weren’t so fortunate.

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That completed the creds and with the park still very busy and nothing else I especially wanted to ride, we went for dinner at the restaurant underneath Lisebergbanan, as recommended by @SilverArrow, and it was decent. I had BBQ Ribs, Anna had meatballs and we enjoyed a relaxing sit down although hearing the coaster rumble through the station above every couple of minutes was quite strange.

When we came out of the restaurant we found it had started to rain lightly and the outlook did not look good. Anna found a comfy place to sit and I headed up to get some more rides on Helix. The queue time was now being advertised at 30-40 minutes and in reality was closer to the lower end of that range. Here I got my first full experience of the queue line which is frankly quite horrible. Still no music on either, so some of the local teens had decided to play their own stuff (also horrible) and dance along to it as they queued.

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This time around I was heading for the back row but it had quite a large queue so I opted for the row in front, but then got lucky when the ride op moved two quite small girls out of the back seat (I assume they are slightly larger like on Icon?) so I managed to get the back without having to wait :D

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Second time around I got a bit more out of the ride. The launches were still pap but I got to appreciate the layout a little more and got some more airtime due to my seat location and slightly less vigorous stapling. The airtime hill I mentioned earlier gives a great view over the city and if nothing else you have to admire to work that went into building the coaster on the side of the hill.

After that I went around for another ride, the queue having dropped closer to 20 minutes, and this time went for the second-to-front row. Again I enjoyed the ride without being especially wowed by it, though on both these later rides I did notice that it has a very persistent rattle – the infamous Mack rattle – which is quite distracting but not rough in the slightest.

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Time was ticking away and I wanted another ride on Lisebergbanan, so I left it at that. After three rides I felt I had experienced the ride enough to form an opinion, and that opinion is just a bit “meh” really. It does lots of things well but nothing outstanding. I like an intense ride and I feel that Helix is quite tame – it doesn’t feel especially fast, it’s maybe too nice and smooth, the launches are pathetic, and while it has lots of clever inversions, none of them left a lasting impression. On the positive side the layout is great and it looks fantastic, but in all honesty I don’t think I even had as much fun on it as I do on Icon, and would even say that I enjoyed Valkyria more in this park. 😬

I’m sure this is quite surprising to most people reading this and perhaps I need to hand in my goon card? Maybe I caught the ride on a bad day, or more likely it caught me on one as it was an exhausting day towards the end of a tiring holiday, but as it stands Helix was a big disappointment. A coaster I expected to comfortably make my Top Ten probably struggles to make my Top 20! 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, after that bombshell, I ended the day with a back row ride on Lisebergbanan and that brought us to 9pm. The park was open for another hour but the rain was starting to come down more heavily and we were both knackered so we called it a night and headed back to our hotel for a well-earned sleep. With nothing firm planned for the next day we could finally have a lie in :)

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Thoughts on Liseberg as a whole then. Much like Helix, it was a bit underwhelming. I learned a couple of very important things about my attitude to parks on this day. First, I hate busy parks! I mean we all do, but I just get really annoyed when they are busy and even though I comfortably rode everything I wanted to, I spent the whole day in a grumpy mood. Secondly, riding almost everything alone is not much fun, and nor is standing in queues alone for hours. I think the social aspect and shared experience of riding coasters can’t be understated and this park visit really brought that home for me.

Having said all that, I can see that Liseberg is a lovely park with some great landscaping, building design and theming. It’s quite a confusing place to get around though and the park map is borderline useless, but I’m now much more familiar with the layout and if I do ever return then at least this experience will stand me in good stead. I should also mention that I thought the virtual queuing wasn’t particularly good, though it is free so you can’t complain too much I suppose. I found the operations and staff quite variable and trekking up and down those f*cking escalators to Helix was pretty tedious when they were broken!

Despite my feelings on that first visit, I would like to give Liseberg another try with now-lowered expectations on a quieter day and have a chance to take it all in without getting wound up, and I think any future trips would be done with fellow enthusiasts so that I can get that shared experience that means so much.

That’s all for Liseberg then. The final post in this thread will be to sum up our final day in Sweden (cred-free) and the trip as a whole, so if you just came here for the park reports then you can stop now ;)
 
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Day 9 & 10 – Gothenburg and home

Final couple of days of the trip then and we had a lazy morning in the hotel for a change, trying to decide what to do. The hotel was a pretty quirky place that was built within a sports complex, which meant many of the rooms (including ours) had an interesting view out of the window…

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Given there's only 4 hours of night time in the summer, the lack of natural light is actually a good thing so we quite liked this. The complex also has an underground cross-country skiing practice centre!

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If you fancy staying here it’s the Kviberg Park Hotel, easily reachable from the city centre and much cheaper than any of the central hotels.

I'd picked up a couple of flyers about the various boat tours you can go on from the harbour, and the archipelago ones looked fun, but all priced at around £50pp. After some investigation though we found that the tram line nearest the hotel ran all the way to Saltholmen port, from which you can get the public ferries across to many of the islands of the archipelago.

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So our last day in Gothenburg was spent in a very similar way to the last one in Stockholm, getting full value out of our 24 hour travel passes by using the ferry system to check out some of the archipelago. We missed one ferry so didn't see as much as we were hoping to but still had a great day exploring in the sunshine, cruising past many of the islands and visiting two of them – Vrango and Aspero.

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After that we returned to our hotel, grabbed our bags and then caught the bus to the airport where we were staying for our final night before flying home the next morning. The hotel was pricey but very convenient as it was in the terminal building, and a bonus was that the TV allowed you to stream apps from your phone to them so we were able to spend a quiet evening catching up on the latest episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+.

The next morning we went through a much less stressful process in the airport, with the Gothenburg security queues being a mere 5 minutes wait. We then boarded our Ryanair flight and found that pretty much the only empty seat on the plane was next to ours :D

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We landed in Manchester a couple of hours later and had obviously heard all the horror stories about people not getting their bags for hours, but we were off the place, through passport control and had collected out luggage in about 20 minutes. Result!

From there we got one last train to take us home and bring a pretty successful first post-Covid holiday to an end.

Just to sum it all up then, the best part of this trip was simply getting away from the UK for the first time in almost 3 years and finally managing to complete the holiday we’d planned and paid for before the pandemic started. Sweden is expensive for sure but it’s also a beautiful country so it was great to get out and see plenty of nature along with the city and amusement park visits. It’s a safe and welcoming country and everyone speaks English to a decent level so it’s easy to communicate. For the most part the people are pleasant although we did feel there was some rudeness on public transport in particular, but that’s probably true in most countries!

Speaking of public transport, it’s fantastic there and I highly recommend using the trains to get around - they were efficient, comfortable and cheap. We also proved that with a bit of research you can also use public transport to form the basis of a day touring the big cities, so you can have a cheap day in Sweden after all :D

A quick mention about that thing that happened in 2020. All restrictions have been removed in Sweden and the majority of people behave like Covid never existed. There were very few wearing masks anywhere, so if that kind of thing worries you then maybe don’t make this your first overseas trip. We started off masking up on public transport for the first few days to reduce the risk of catching it early on the holiday, but we gave up on that mid-way though and after being back for just over a week we can confirm neither of us got it despite all that time spent on crowded trams and ride queues.

As for the parks, differing experiences for sure but overall it was just brilliant to get out there, get some new creds and ride some top quality coasters after two years of mopping up horrible sh*te across the UK. For me the standout park was definitely Grona Lund – I loved every minute there and in Monster they have a ride that now competes with the best that the country has to offer. It wasn’t the best coaster in the country, but I would say I had the most fun on it.

To finish things off, here’s my top five Swedish creds, which if you’ve read the earlier posts shouldn’t be too shocking.
  1. Wildfire
  2. Monster
  3. Valkyria
  4. Helix
  5. Twister
Of course there’s one big name that I wasn’t able to ride, so at some point I want to head back and give Liseberg a second chance, ride Baldur and see if I was wrong about Helix.

Next up for us though is rearranging the other big trip we had planned for 2020 – the USA, including Cedar Point! Just booked the flights for that this evening in fact :D

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the endless waffle.
 
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Just been catching up with this - thanks for sharing, it sounds like you both had a great trip.

Do you reckon Anna's ride on Wildfire is the start of something bigger, or was that 'enough' for her to satisfy herself that this was the exception rather than the [new] rule?

I can also see what you mean about Helix - my very first ride on it was underwhelming too, but over the course of the day I really warmed to it. I wonder if perhaps the newer creations by Mack and Intamin have started to overshadow Helix now - at the time it was relatively unique, but it's not so much anymore. Progression? In this sense, I think that's okay! :p

Good stuff - did enjoy the endless waffle. I like how your reports cover a lot more than just the coasters. :)
 
I wonder if perhaps the newer creations by Mack and Intamin have started to overshadow Helix now - at the time it was relatively unique, but it's not so much anymore. Progression?
I think that's definitely a thing.
You think of rides that used to be the "Top" ones, eg the intamin airtime machines, some of the B&Ms, theyre good rides, but still very "conventional", basically just good elements arranged well.

For example I've ridden the likes of Kawasemi and Maverick, and they are good, but the coaster world has moved on,

And it seems the benchmark is a design every inch of track is doing something on newer coasters (Especially the new Intamins, Vekomas and RMCs) and a bit more in terms of shaping elements in really interesting ways. Mack is getting there now with Exodus and probably even the duelers at Epic Universe and the Europa Park Big Dipper.
 
Do you reckon Anna's ride on Wildfire is the start of something bigger, or was that 'enough' for her to satisfy herself that this was the exception rather than the [new] rule?

I can also see what you mean about Helix - my very first ride on it was underwhelming too, but over the course of the day I really warmed to it. I wonder if perhaps the newer creations by Mack and Intamin have started to overshadow Helix now - at the time it was relatively unique, but it's not so much anymore. Progression? In this sense, I think that's okay! :p

Well, we are heading to the US in September and she definitely wants to ride Lightning Rod (which relatively speaking should be fine since it has no inversions) and hasn't discounted Steel Vengeance either. That would finally make her break the 200ft barrier so if that happens, who knows? The big issue she has is with trains that feel really open and also inverting coasters that only have lapbars, which is why she hated Icon and would not even consider Helix. That also puts any B&M hypers out of the equation but perhaps Magnum is a possibility for her first traditional hyper.

I probably didn't catch Helix at its best (and I wasn't at mine either) so I would like to give it another chance sometime, but you may be on to something. Taron is my benchmark and aside from the great use of the hillside, Helix didn't come close to it on any level for me. I suppose it's just that problem that other people have hyped it up so much so it was never likely to match the expectation.
 
I can also see what you mean about Helix - my very first ride on it was underwhelming too, but over the course of the day I really warmed to it. I wonder if perhaps the newer creations by Mack and Intamin have started to overshadow Helix now - at the time it was relatively unique, but it's not so much anymore. Progression? In this sense, I think that's okay! :p
Re-rode Helix on Monday and I was totally in agreement with the above until the last 3 rides when it was nearly dark. It still does the business and beats all the other Mack's I've ridden by a fair margin.
 
Re-rode Helix on Monday and I was totally in agreement with the above until the last 3 rides when it was nearly dark. It still does the business and beats all the other Mack's I've ridden by a fair margin.
Maybe my problem was I went too close to midsummer when it didn't go dark early enough ;)
 
Great trip report, I've just got back from Stockholm. Thanks for the recommendation for Meatballs for the People, loved it there!
 
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