Gazza

I agree actually. Rope light just looks too much like bunnings Christmas decorations, and doesn't fit with the lasers. My fantasy for Scooby is ghost projections etc.

Not sure if serious?

Yeah, scores are just on the ride photo preview screen you see at the exit just before you turn the corner.

The cinema at SW is kitted out for some 3D effects. The seats buzz, ticklers run across the room on wires, there's water drippers. More to the point though, the film seems more designed for use in a motion simulator, hence it only going for a few minutes and having big drops etc.

Obviously they'd be lifeless because they wouldn't switch them on whilst its still a construction site.

Also, when you ride in the front row on transformers and crane your neck a bit and look sideways you can see the other lift car and projector dropping down whilst you are being hoisted up.

I'd laugh if A) The mine ride reopened or They got a cool new ride And everyone got to ride it except you.

So, have they fixed the one on Everest?

Fixed.

The next day was a Saturday. The night before I drove to my hotel just north of Richmond in Ashland, which put me quite close to Kings Dominion. Whenever you seem like you might expect a quiet day at a US park there is inevitably hordes of school kids in school band T shirts staging an invasion. Not a problem in the end since queues were mostly pretty short. The day opened with them playing the US national anthem. I always feel so self concious during it. Protocol is that people from other countries should just stand respectfully and dont have to put their hand on their heart, but I always feel like people must think I'm some disrepectful pleb because I'm the only one not doing it....FWP. I had no platinum pass this time, so had to hang around in International street whilst the privileged got rides on Volcano and Intimidator 305. It's quite a nice main street compared to the other CF parks I've visted, lots of trees, well maintained buildings, flower beds and the like. It wasn’t all bad though waiting, the park is nice enough to open the Eiffel Tower early, so prior to the coasters opening I went up and got photos of the park and scoped the place out. 10am rolled around, and I hot footed it to Volcano knowing that it was low capacity. It is a launched Intamin inverted coaster. The theming looks nice enough, winding through some caves at the base of the Volcano and through a thatched roof queuing area. I waited for front row, which took a bit longer than I’d hoped since they seemed to take a while to check trains, and the first train always seemed to make it back before they were even halfway checking the second train. As for the ride, you make a left out of the station straight into a fairly good LIM launch through the base of the volcano. You then make a wide sweeping U turn out in the open out the back, and then speed onto a second launch which pushes you even faster. The track punches straight into the middle of the volcano, turns vertically, then pops out of the top of the volcano and does this weird upside down quarter loop + corkscrew thing to manoeuvre out. From there you work down in a steady spiral around the outside of the volcano alternating between U turns and barrel rolls. After the 3rd roll you go down a final big drop into the heart of the volcano….And hit the brakes. To me that final bit is a huge missed opportunity. Surely hiding a loop or something inside the Volcano would be a great surprise and the perfect finale. Anyway, I really liked this one, was going to re-ride straight away, but the whole queue house had filled in the time I had waited for front row, so I moved on. I went to buy one of those unlimited ride photo email packages, but couldn’t because they “didn’t have any cards”…This was about 15 mins after opening remember. The next ride I attempted was right next door….Avalanche, but operations had been a bit hopeless and hadn’t gotten the call to say they were clear to open for the day, so after wasting 10 minutes I cut my losses and moved on. This wasn’t a problem, I went straight to Intimidator 305, which had an empty queue, so wandered over to the front row again. To be clear, this ride has the worst theming ever…Its themed around a dead NASCAR driver, and has country music playing in the queue. Luckily a top class ride makes up for it. A speedy cable lift brings you up to a height of 90m and pitches you over an insanely steep first drop which flings you out of your seat. From there is a really long sustained low to the ground turn with forces so strong that your vision begins to go grey, and doesn’t get back to normal till you are heading upwards into a powerful airtime hill. From there is a whole series of fast turns and transitions…I was initially worried about this because I’d found the snappy transitions on Maverick unpleasant due to the neck cutting and the need to anticipate, but the soft padded “vest” harnesses on this one avoided that, so it was really cool. Theres a second smaller airtime hill, but why did they put the mag brakes on the first half of the hill? Why not put it after the crest so you still get air…Not enough air on the second one. Plenty more fast turns on the latter part of the ride too, you can barely keep your head up from the forces and the wind, resulting in an awful on ride photo. I got straight back on and tried the back row, which I liked even better because of the air you’d get on the first drop. Overall, awesome ride, no the intensity wasn't too much for me, yes it's better than Millenium force, yes, it should have had a couple more airtime hills instead of turns. I purchased my ride photo package here instead. I went back to Avalanche, which was running again. I love Mack bobsled coasters (The bumpy Intamin ones can go to hell) . Last time I went on one was at Blackpool in 2007, and this was just as fun, if not better. They feel a bit out of control and have fun transitions between the turns. Hanging around this side of the park, I went on Flight of Fear, which is an indoor coaster with an Alien/Area 51 theme where you launch into a twisted mess of track with 4 inversions and lots of turns in the dark. I’d been on the one at KI the previous year. That one had better theming (Bigger hangar room with more details and videos telling the story line) whilst this one ran a bit better. Unfortunately, it had the same problem of having a light on inside the building, which was enough to make all the track visible. They really need to black it out properly like Space Mountain in CA and have tiny stars of light, because in its current form the enclosing building just does nothing. Fun coaster though! I pressed on to Backlot Stunt coaster (So now I’ve ridden all 3)….Ostensibly, it’s a family coaster with an action movie theme, where you do stereotypical stuff like slalom around cop cars, dive into tunnels, go through a oil refinery that blows up (The fire effects were working which was a bonus) with a grand finale where you go down a small drop into an LA style aqueduct, (The splashdown spray at the end was working too). My thoughts are the same as the rest. Fun little coaster, and I like the upwards spiral, but the theming looks a bit too vague and incomplete in parts that the sense is lost. Anaconda was up next, which is an Arrow multi looper set over a lake, featuring a loop, sidewinder, and two corkcrews. Unfortunately not smooth like the one I had ridden the previous day, though the layout was a bit more twisted, particularly after the mid course brakes where you do this weird cloverleaf shaped set of turns that looks impossibly tight and steep for the trains. There’s also a nifty feature where the first drop goes into a concrete underwater tunnel through the lake, and a fountain fires off in sync with the train as it comes out of the tunnel. Looks cool, but it’s a shame the only place you can see it well is from the last bit of the queue….Why go to the engineering expense of the underwater tunnel if general guests can’t stand and watch? I liked Intimidator so much that I went back and did a few more rides without a queue before moving on to pick up the other coasters. Next was the hilariously named Dominator, a B&M floorless coaster. Operations were a bit hopeless and trains were going out with 8 or more seats empty regularly…Sorely needs a grouper, or a single rider line or something, because when members of the GP around you are commenting on this inefficiency, unprompted, you’ve got a problem. Again, I waited for front row, but since I was single I just took a bit of initiative and asked people who looked like groups of 3 if I could join…The others waiting didn’t mind at all which was nice. The coaster itself is really cool, because it has lots of “in between” track to flesh out the ride, compared to other B&M multi loopers where one inversion leads onto the next. Anyway, from the first drop is a massive loop, a low to the ground turn, overbank and cobra roll taken at classic B&M pace. The track curves up to the MCBR, then drops down again into a couple of large interlocking corkscrews, and a sequence of low to the ground turns and S bends to the brakes. I think as far as floorless coasters go this is one of the best ones out there, because of its pacing and unique layout….No zero g roll though <///3. I was back in the middle of the main street after Dominator. Lunch was Panda Express. As I kept finding in this part of the US, staff serving me would often say “You have an accent, where are you from?”, but because I can be a prick my standard response became “go on, have a guess mate”, and then laugh at them inside when they’d say stuff like “Scottish” or “South African” . Anyway I love panda express, and orange chicken, and have major withdraws at home because chinese restaurants here only seem to do lemon chicken. So I wandered up the street more after lunch and found myself at Shockwave, a Togo Standup like the one I had ridden last year at CW. I liked this one too, because the layout does irresponsible things like banking and heavily and having tiny airtime pops that make your feet come off the floor. Again, some more hopeless operations that you could overhear members of the GP commenting on. Basicaly, the ride ops kept mucking around singing songs, getting guests to cheer, singing happy birthdays etc etc to people on the train, and they just kept doing this, even though the checks were done and the loaders were waiting for the all clear. Now, I’m all for ops being enthusiastic, but you don’t actually waste time like this when people are waiting to board, and stacked on the brake run. So I ended up waiting 30 mins to just because the ride ops liked the sound of their own voice and were so non focused. Guests were saying “come on, why don’t they just start the ride!”. With that out of the way I did Drop Tower. What makes this one unique is that it has an enormous, non rotating ring of seats around the tower that holds 56, which puts rides like Giant Drop and Lex Luthor with their capacity of 16 to shame….. Certainly keeps the capacity high though checking takes a while. As far as drops go it’s much of a muchness, which is not a bad thing because I always do Intamin drop rides. Next I wandered over to Hurler, which broke down as soon as I’d walked through the long queue and gotten to the station >_> I took that as a sign to take a break from the rides for half an hour or so, and take some photos. I then tried Rebel Yell, this marked the first missed coaster of the trip since only half of it was open. Like its brother, Racer at KI it’s a good ride because it goes in a straight line, which the trains can deal with, so lots of fun little pops of air, though the lack of racing means it lost that sense of camaraderie that made Racer (And Grand National etc) really special. Riccochet was a fairly short wait, one of those larger model wild mouses with the big drop at the start. Enjoyable, though nothing particularly memorable about it. Grizzly I initially struggled to find, turns out you have to go through a gift shop for Dinosaurs Alive to get to the entrance. I thought it was going to be the same layout as the one at CGA, and the view from a distance seemed to suggest that, but it had extra hills and a bit twistier in part, and it ran a bit better too. Special mention has to go out to the poorly conceived ramp at the exit…Why not make it ramp all the way to eliminate the need for a wheelchair lift to the station :S Rebel Yell was back open and a POS. Just really rough and unenjoyable, and the station just looked ugly and uninspired. Good laterals though. It was getting late afternoon by this point so I went on the Americana ferris wheel and just asked another group if I could go with them because I was a single rider (This is the situation where I’ll thicken my accent a bit and throw in some colloquialisms to break the ice) Umm…it had seatbelts that you could just undo if you wanted anyway….Why???? But the view of Rebel Yell and the water park was nice. Woodstock Express was the last coaster I had to pick up. Woodstock express was probably the best of the kiddy woodies I’ve ridden, mostly due to the fact it had been recently retracked so was running quite well. A simple figure 8 with a few hills, but had a bit of kick and did the job well. Nearby was Flying Ace, a flat ride I’ve never been on before. It’s a chance Aviator, The ride spins and rises up, and you sit in pairs on seats suspended by cables, with rudders either side of you that you can steer by way of a control lever between the two seats. Essentially it could be though of as a really toned down version of a Flying Scooters, though you could make the thing swing a bit by applying similar methods that you do on scooters and smoothly alternating directions. My car was still swinging a bit as the ride came down and to a stop, causing it to scrape on the ground :/ I was initially going to skip it because the other ones of this ride at other CF parks I'd ridden had been crap, but Boo Blasters on Boo Hill had no line so gave it a go. What I had disliked about the other versions of this ride is that the guns seemed stupidly hard to aim and register targets compared to the other shooters I’ve ridden. Made it actually a bit more fun, and resulted in an ORP of me looking quite serious. The scenes are all just blacklight 2D cutouts and so forth, which is fine for a cartoony kids ride. The final unique ride of the day was Firefall, a Huss floorless top spin with a temple theme, and a water feature out the front with fire and fountains, which made the thing look really special. The sun was setting too, making the flames look extra good. It ran a decent program with sequences of 4 or so flips in a row, and you didn’t get wet which was nice. With everything done I wanted to do I did a reride on Dominator in the back, a reride of Volcano in the back, a lap on Avalanche, and lots and lots of rides with minimal wait on Intimidator through to closing time at 10pm. As for my thoughts on the park, certainly has a decent variety of coasters…..Several woodies, several launched coasters, plus a few world class ones like Intimidator and Dominator, and I had a pretty good day with lots of rides. The disorganisation at a couple of places and questionable operations on a couple of rides were the only downers. As for what I'd do to the place? Possibly a proper dark ride like what SF are starting to do? A steel family coaster? Some sort of more modern looping coaster like a Wing Rider? Hard to say because the place ticks most boxes....Even the closed water park looked really good, and I would have gone in had it been open.

Buy back the Chance Trabant from funfields, new theme and all and return to it's old location http://www.funfields.com.au/assets/Uploads/bout-2.jpg But yeah, Ocean parade has become so big that if you wanted you could make that far southern end a new V8/motorsports themed zone. Lay down some bitumen, edge the pathways with red and white stripes, replace the rubbish bins with oil drums branded with high performance oil and you're most of the way there.

For me, it is what it is. I have no problem with parks having a really good mix of coasters and sensations. Most enthusiasts tend to gravitate towards stuff, that is fast paced, forceful, with lots of airtime....Check out the worldwide coaster rankings for proof. And we have Superman for that, which will never get old. But would I want a theme park just with coasters like that? Of course not! I like GL precisely for the reasons themagician has stated. It has strange moments of banking, drop angle, and hang time that couldn't be accomplished with a full sized train....Different again to Lethal, which is mostly about positive G forces, and different again to Scooby which is all about the theming.

Madrid isn't in Germany m8.

Yes but theme park attractions have to appeal to a large portion of visitors, not just ones who like looking at parked V8 supercars.

Except for the Papier-mâché mountain.

All said, I wouldn't mind a motion base dark ride here at some point in the future. What riding DarKastle (And Recalling back to Transformers, Spiderman, and Indiana Jones) made me realise is that the ride motion in itself is fun, and the sets and screens are really just the icing IMO. The Six Flags ride looks fun purely from all the twirling and tilting it is doing, and the compact sets and tight spaces I reckon would emphasise the sense of instability you get on these rides (Say when you ride Indy and it feels like the car is going to tip over) If I were building one at an Australian park I'd. 1) Be selective about set design...Face the ride vehicle to minimise the number of walls you need to theme. 2) Bifuricate the track at a couple of points, and have duplicated sets of curved screens with extended motion simulator type sequences (Similar to the way Transformers does it) 3) Rapid fire pacing...Really push the ride system and throw guests around as they pass from scene to scene. Younger visitors in particular would get something out of all that bouncing and tilting. 4) Don't skimp on the sound system. Eg have a look at the part of Spiderman where you escape Dr Octopus. The sound system plays some pretty heavy engine growling and tyre screeching which makes it seem like the vehicle you are in is really labouring, again making the ride feel faster and more thrilling than it actually is: https://youtu.be/-MgPOFZvRNA?t=122

I know it was irrational, but part of me was secretly hoping the Supercar attraction might have been a coaster:

Possibly a closer one is senzafiato at Miragica in Italy, which is basically a minature version of Supermans layout: http://www.themeparkreview.com/parks/pimages/Miragica/Senzafiato/miragica_012.jpg

Yeah, will probably just fix the links when I get the full photo set uploaded on the forums.

This TR will be posted on another site so I've uploaded on flickr. That said, a more extensive collection of pics will be uploaded into the Parkz galleries in the coming days anyway (As I always do) so not sure what you're complaining about?

So, I’ve just returned home from a 3 week stint over in the US, and naturally did a few theme parks. The first week I spent with family in California, but for now I’ll jump ahead to the east coast part of my trip since im a bit sick of CA. I flew into Richmond, VA from LAX. Crossing the US is a ballache. You say leave at 7am west coast time, and arrive at 4pm East Coast time. We’re very lucky to have direct flights between most cities in Aus! Virginia is quite pretty. Very leafy, and it was a nice hour drive to Willamsburg. I checked into my hotel, stopped off at an outlet center to get a jacket, then pressed onto Norfolk (Another hour away), partly because I wanted to see the place, partly because to get there you get to go across a “Bridge Tunnel” which sounded like the coolest thing ever. Basically it’s a long causeway, with an artificial island in the middle that the road drops through, and into an underwater tunnel. It then rises up through a second island. Norfolk was a bit dead on a Thursday night, so I had a bar meal at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Naively I forgot how much food you got, and didn’t manage to finish more than half. So first big park I visited….Busch Gardens. One that has been on my park bucket list for a long time because of its impressive coasters and excellent theming. Unfortunately for me it was a cold (15C), Drizzly, and I had a bit of a cough, but still managed to have a great day. I got to the park bright and early, and ended up being one of the first in. 20150501_093755 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Overall, it’s a beautiful park, very tastefully themed, and better looking than the one in Tampa (Which is already pretty good) The entrance sequence is very nice too. From the Car Park you walk down a winding, sloping path through some woods to the turnstiles, and into an English main street with phone boxes, a double decker bus and UK flag bunting as far as the eye can see. 20150501_155902 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Initially I planned to turn left and hot foot it to the newly opened, week old Tempesto, but the park does the whole staged opening thing, and at this point the only thing open was Loch Ness Monster. Basically, its an old school arrow looping coaster, with two loops that interlock, like links on a chain. As far as Arrows go, this is one of the excellent old smooth ones. You drop off into a river valley, up around a U turn, then down again through the first loop. After this you head up again, and into a feature I had no idea about, a triple downhill helix in a tunnel (Very RCT) A second short lift hill brings you up to one final drop into the 2nd loop, and back to the station. The queue had some nice theming too, such as diving bells and exploration equipment based around the hunt for the Loch Ness Monster, and a station that resembles a Scottish Loch Castle. 20150501_145013 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_125434 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_095118 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Next up was Griffon, which is at the far end of a rather nice French themed area. Definitely tops Griffon and Sheikra for me in terms of the B&M Dive Machines….For extra fun, ride in the far outside seat. What stood out to me is how well the ride is integrated with the surroundings, with plenty of walkways to view the ride from any angle, and a first drop that plunges into a depression in the ground with an iron bridge over the top. Anyway, snagged the front row. A turn lift hill, and another turn leads to you to the edge of the first drop. You’re held for a second before plunging down…A cool thing to do is to curl your arms and legs back and pretend your skydiving. Overall, I reckon I prefer pure uncontrolled vertical drops compared to the “steeper than vertical” ones seen on many newer rides. Just feels more natural and has a greater sense of a continuous descent. Anyway…at the bottom of the drop you woosh under the bridge, up into an immellman, before a turn brings you up to the mid course brakes. What follows is a 2nd near vertical drop down a hillside (No brakes), another immelmann, rise, and then a section where you skim across a lake with scoops on the train catching the water and throwing it up behind the train. A couple more turns and the ride is over. Overall, ver y re-ridable, and probably my favourite coaster in the park. 20150501_134618 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_175939 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_144721 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_141101 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Working around further, I skipped the French Canadian themed section, and crossed a wooden bridge into the Swiss themed area. Again, it looked gorgeous, and the parks huge inverted coaster, Alpengeist wraps over and under the Bridge. The queue even looks nice, with beautifully detailed wooden walkways leading to a Ski Chalet themed loading station, with nice touches like blackboards with concerning ski reports, ski equipment and so on. Again, I took front row, which probably wasn’t the best idea since the drizzle was cold and stung your face a bit. Anyway…A huge lift hill takes you up to nearly 60m, and the spiralling first drop picks up tremendous speed. From there are four very large inversions, an Imellman, loop, and cobra roll. Some nifty thematic touches like a ski jump at the bottom of the immellman, and a ski hut with skis crashed into it that the train belts through. After the cobra roll the track twists and turns upwards rapidly into the midcourse brakes, before you drop down into a Zero G Roll, and a corkscrew. The final trick is a forceful helix, dug into a trench with fake snow, making the train feel like it’s surrounded on all sides. One of my top inverted coasters (Up there with Nemesis and Banshee)…It just feels like a blur. 20150501_173127 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_141121 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_132750 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr 20150501_102902 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr It was coming close to the time when the Italian section was ready to open, so I hurried back around to Tempesto, figuring novelty and low capacity would mean long lines. I’ve previously ridden one of these premier sky rocket loop coasters at SF Discovery Kingdom, and the ride experience is still pretty solid (Despite some shortcomings)….Essentially you lauch forwards up a bit of vertical track, fall backwards and launch again in reverse up a second vertical bit of track, launch a 3rd time all the way up the vertical, to the top, trough a barrel roll, then drop down, up into a non inverting loop, and then come back to the station. It’s all quite quick, but still feels quite complete. The ride feels a little confusing since you keep going back and forth and covering different bits of the track each time (More complicated than say Buzzsaw, where the loop is pretty predictable) I had some concerns this coaster would look a bit tacky at Busch, but the theming is passable…Basically designed to look like a travelling circus stunt show. You walk in through a wooden loop de loop, and the station is themed with mock stage facades (Colourful on the front, plywood on the back with set numbers) I though the ride experience was a bit poorer than the one in California. The trains are a contortionist act to board a the best of times, but Busch went and installed these stupid “Comfort Straps” that come over your shoulder (Imagine a soft version of the Intamin accelerator harnesses) But the’re pointless, they never take your weight apart from half a second as you go down the vertical drop, and they just seem like they slow down loading on what is already a challenging ride for a park this big. I boarded with minimal wait, and they have 4 staff checking restraints. I liked their solution for loose items too…Just have a tub of bum bags at the entrance. You just wear your belongings during the ride, and then return the bum bag on the way out. 20150501_154541 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8800/17889249712_ab61be71ce_c.jpg20150501_182425 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8758/17892818251_85c1c4a940_c.jpg20150501_152016 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5466/17704716850_55a1d76324_c.jpg20150501_151945 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Right next door is Apollos Chariot, the coaster where Fabio got splattered in the face by a goose. Wasn’t taken by it. The other B&M hypers I’ve done are better. It had several big hills, and you didn’t even float out of your seat. The small hills on the return trip had a tiny bit of airtime, but overall it was disappointing for someone rasied on the likes of Superman Escape and its attempts to eject you from your seat. First ride was in back. I tried again in the front, and it was a tad better, but still just an “okay” ride. https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7707/17892280185_674601d299_c.jpg20150501_152308 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Continuing around was Verbolten, which as the day went on seemed like the most popular ride in the park. The story I didn’t quite follow, but it seemed to be themed around a Car rental place for tours through the German Black Forest, but there was a sub narrative about some guy deliberately making the forest grow more wild so people would get lost/entangled, so he could steal their stuff. Think blair witch project, with night vision CCTV in different parts of the forest with confused people in view begging for help. The station looked like a disorderly mechanics workshop and you load into trains themed like classic cars. From the station you drop out under gravity through a few sweeping turns, towards a tunnel entrance to the indoor section (Which looked a bit shit because it was just a themed piece of wall, on columns, sitting in front of a giant show building….Why did they even bother?) Anyway, you roll straight onto the launch and are quickly boosted uphill inside, where you do several fast turns in the dark, with blacklight 2d trees and so forth around the track. You are brought to a stop, before continuing around a dropping u turn, and then stopping a second time. Red eyes of wolves light up around the train out of the darkness, and then all of a sudden the whole section of track the train is parked on drops down several meters and joins up with a track on the bottom level. You then roll forwards out of the building, down a small drop and onto a second launch. This gives you enough juice to make it to the high point of the ride….An elevated wooden bridge that has begun to collapse…Cue the howling wind and creaking timber sound effects. The train drops off the end down a substantial drop towards the river, and then a few more quick turns lead to the brakes. Overall, a pretty solid coaster, though the pacing feels a bit stop start. https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8756/17706069619_706a143d3e_c.jpg20150501_150148 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5348/17704531278_f8cb778cf8_c.jpg20150501_112726 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5350/17892892321_aa4822a636_c.jpg20150501_111413 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7734/17271806073_8da0a91182_c.jpg20150501_111623 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Pressing further into the park is the Oktoberfest section, which includes Mach Tower, a large gyro drop type ride (Built by Moser rather than Intamin)…It’s themed to a maypole. The ride experience wasn’t quite as refined as Intamins…It hits the brakes pretty hard, and the brakes are quite high up the tower compared to most drop rides. Once was enough. https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7676/17704492968_3b405be081_c.jpg20150501_145725 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Further on in the German section is Curse of Darkastle, a motion base 4D dark ride in a similar vein to Spiderman, Transformers etc. The exterior is really well done.A foreboding grey castle with the queue winding through courtyards, through loggias etc…Really felt like the Harry Potter castle at a smaller scale. Eventually you reach the preshow room, which tells the story of a Baron that went all strange and locked himself up in his castle, and was responsible for the disappearance of several visitors and family members to his castle. This opens up into the last bit of the queue/boarding area, themed like the castle stables, where you board a horseless “golden sleigh”. After a bit of a delay due to a breakdown I was on within about 10 minutes. Initially I had some reservations about this…It uses a cheaper version of the motion base system, using air bags (Think like when you board a bus and they lower the front end to allow disabled people to board) rather than hydraulics. But this turned out to be unfounded. The ride movement was very fluid, and the cars could spin and move along quite nimbly. The ride did lack some of the polish of the Universal rides in terms of set design and the forced perspective on the 3D screens. Anyway, the ride basically runs you around the castle, with the baron tormenting you at every turn…Think of stuff like being bombarded with arrows and knives, a section where he whips up a whirlwind and throws a harp at you (Cue the wind effects). One of my favourite scenes was where you get lifted up to the “second floor” (all at ground level) with some movement recreating the levitation effect, and then you prompty back away and fall down a spiral staircase (With the ride car at a heavy tilt, bouncing down the steps and skidding off the bottom, with the whole set built at a tilt to make it feel convincing. The final sequence of the ride has you high above the castle being tossed around in the air with giant curved screens, with the sets actually built sideways to give the impression you are looking down vertically. Like all these rides, theres a simulated freefall drop where you crash into the dungeons. You make your escape outside the walls of the castle (Where the Baron has no powers)….at the last moment he tries to grab you, but explodes into ice (Cue the water spray effects) Great ride, I want one here in Australia, just because the ride movements are so much fun. https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5348/17889343662_a036bc1b84_c.jpg20150501_113216 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7711/17706008149_0fb247d9fb_c.jpg20150501_190437 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7760/17271905873_444d1a69e4_c.jpg20150501_113512 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr By this point it was lunch time so I settled down out of the cold in Festhaus…Basically a giant beer tent with long tables you can watch a show at, which was a pretty fun production about a bunch of Bavarians competing to produce the best brew. Lots of choreographed dancing and barrel tossing between them. I had german potatoes (basically like baked potato slices that had been soaked in vinegar), red cabbage, roast chicken…and joy of joys…..A hot chocolate. https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5467/17866002526_a39ecfb4e8_c.jpg20150501_121857 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr With lunch done, and the sun at its highest point in the sky I did a lap around the skyway, which was interesting because it had a triangular, one way layout, rather than the up and back layout like most. I did a lap on the train to take photos and chatted to an employee that was considering studying in Australia (No, the spiders aren’t that bad….no, don’t study in Adelaide etc etc) After my lap on the train I ducked into the Sesame St Forest of Fun to take a lap on Grovers Alpine Express, which had surprisingly few kids riding. A pretty short kids coaster, and you only get one lap. https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7780/17271826543_312c8d58af_c.jpg20150501_155244 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr Just up a tad further is Escape From Pompeii. This is one of the best rides in the park. Its one of those shoot the chutes type rides, where you ride in a 20 person boat, go up a conveyor, along a high section, and then down a big drop that throws up a tidal wave of water when you splash down. Fortunatley this one wasn’t too wet, nobody was around the coin operated spray guns, so I escaped unscathed. Anyway, what made this ride mint is the thematic execution. The queue wanders past an archaeological dig to the station. A slow conveyor takes you the top section which is enclosed inside some roman buildings. Things start off with a few hanging lights shaking and signs warning of tremors. Theres also a nice classical music sound track. Suddenly a big wooden beam falls above you. In the next room, themed like a roman temple with columns and statues erupts in flames. The music becomes more dramatic. The flames spread, the water by the boat catches alight. A conveyor under the water boosts the boat along. You continue to the next room and the flames spread in sequence up the walls, and onto the ceiling (Which looked really cool because it was a layer of gas and it looked all bubbly underneath) You escape the flames, a huge 4m tall statue tips across the course. With onee final turn and the music reaching a crescendo a set of doors open and you go down the drop. Really Really good, and it brought back memories of Bermuda Triangle at Sea World. https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8887/17889265812_1bcc5bbf9f_c.jpg20150501_154844 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5444/17269729884_2c1af50962_c.jpg20150501_160606 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr For the remainder of the day I lapped around the park and did lots of re rides on the coasters and Darkastle. Most were short waits, except for Verbolten which seemed to be about 30 mins. I wouldn’t have minded trying the Roman Rapids, but apparently it doesn’t open in cold weather, which was a shame because it looked really cool, with lots of statues and archways and the like. I tried getting all 3 story options on Verbolten, but only managed to get the wolves again, and the one where the spirit of the forest appears in the trees. https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8830/17892289445_f8d7823b7a_c.jpg20150501_151557 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr As for the rest of the park…Some beautifully themed areas, particularly the Irish themed area (With the hilariously named Grogans Pub) and this Leonardo DaVinci themed area where there were flat rides themed around different inventions, set in pleasant gardens. Lots of cool details around too, like Roman graffiti in the Italian area. I liked how tastefully everything was done. Nothing loud and brash. Nothing looked out of place or out of theme. https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5468/17269790854_2fa89c9461_c.jpg20150501_144054 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8798/17269793364_bb8000243f_c.jpg20150501_143959 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5469/17889240852_ccde7d4d4d_z.jpg20150501_191717 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7764/17706048139_348b9a1db2_c.jpg20150501_151029 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7658/17704725200_402c32cdeb_c.jpg20150501_150615 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5345/17892305965_6dbc313500_c.jpg20150501_150553 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8794/17706068159_071880f058_c.jpg20150501_150444 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr As the day drew to a close the weather eased up a bit, so the coaster rides were more enjoyable without raindrops hitting your face like needles, so hung around Griffon and Alpengeist doing lots of re-rides. Right at the end of the day the clouds broke for the first time. It sounds Cliché but it made for a pretty awesome final ride on Griffon, with orange light from the sunset and beams of light breaking through over the hilly horizon in direct view as everyone hung over the first drop. As I exited I did a last sneaky ride on Loch Ness Monster in the back seat, which wasn’t quite as smooth. So yeah, everyone should aim to visit this place at some point. https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8788/17704504258_7d519005fb_c.jpg20150501_142356 by Gavin Seipelt, on Flickr

There's also a Sesame St dark ride just as you come into NY that I think you missed. Great trip report....More Aussies who want to visit a big, highly themed park should get a cheap scoot flight to SG and visit ( Plus Singapore is nice too) Hopefully BSG will be up and running soon.

Rainbow Road family coaster (Running trains like the ones on Juveulen at Djurs Sommerland)

Obviously this doesn't imply anything, but worth sharing:

As far as I know Intamin accelerators have the shoulder straps because of the heavy braking (Stopping guests from lurching forward) Verbolten is very much a family thrill coaster, say on par with Jet Rescue, Storm or Scooby.