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Grona Lund + Bonus Mountain Coaster at Hammarbybacken So I still have do my trip report for Liseberg and that's Scandinavia sorted, but I probably won't get to that until sometime in January. In the meantime, i’ll smash this one out before i head away for christmas. Grona Lund is really one of a kind, located in the heart of Stockholm. https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/grona-lund The site is perhaps comparable in size to a Bunnings, or say 2x the area of LPS, but in that space there's 8 coasters, 4 drop rides, dark rides, heaps of flats, several eateries, and it's just so tightly packed in 3 dimensions and pushes the boundaries of clearance envelopes. Line too long on one ride, cool you can walk across the park in 2 mins to something else! The park is on two sides of a laneway, with a bridge connecting each side. One part has mostly kids rides, the rest feels like sideshow alley at the royal show, except everything is better. To get there you can take a tram (and the ABBA museum is right next door) but the best way is to get a public ferry (Pendelbåt) from Slussen. Just tap your credit card to pay the fare. You get a great visual on the way in. Previously it was a pay per ride or wristband type park. Now they limit attendance into 5.5h sessions that you pre book. I was worried that it wouldn't be enough time but it was plenty of time to get heaps of rides, and in addition you get two jet passes included, and waits weren’t that bad because of the capacity cap. Still, I bought 2 sessions on separate days so i could do daytime and evening, so it worked out to be the most costly park of the trip, though i definitely got my moneys worth. The park also has concerts included with admission on certain days, and they actually get major acts. Toto...Tom Jones...Pixes for instance coming up. Monster Obviously was going to kick off with this one. B&Ms newest inverted coaster. I have been following this project for years, ever since it was announced as “project blue harvest” back in 2017, and ive literally been holding off on a Scandinavian trip until this ride was open. It kept getting pushed back and pushed back, and of course there was Covid, but finally opened in 2021. You win some you lose some though. This coaster opened, but a few weeks before my visit Balder at liseberg closed for retracking…bah! The theming was fun, monsters have come up from a subway station.the safety video was done like an old Scooby doo cartoon meets MTV. The queue takes an interesting route up and down stairs through some buildings. As for the coaster, you rise up from underground to the apex of the lift hill with great views of the harbour, before hurtling down a very steep drop. You skim over a garden into a zero g roll then a forceful inclined immelmann. Next comes a corkscrew high above some buildings, before some more turns and a tight helix which also attempts to smack you into a building One more corkscrew follows, before a turn into a short tunnel, which had a bunny hill that would chuck you upwards and forward in your seat. Never felt that sort of airtime on an invert. One final turn and it hits the brakes Wowee What makes this special is the way you get the sense of height by being above the crowds, but you also get the near misses with buildings on all sides Ikaros Another ride I was eager to get on was This drop tower is an Intamin Sky Jump, that has tilting seats that have you freefall face first. Honestly one of the best drop towers I have done. The tilt at the top makes the tension just that bit higher A great thrill seeing the ground rushing towards you, and the addition of the seat rotation just before the brakes makes it just that little bit more dynamic. It seems like a bloody complicated system with long hydraulic rams. Why didnt they just have a pivot and rotate the seats like a freespin. Seemed to have less of a queue than the other drop rides, despite only having one side open, so i guess its perhaps a bit intimidating for most. Insane Ah, the infamous ZacSpin. 3rd one I’ve done now. They definitely are a ride that I find quite intense and nerve racking and even stressful in parts. On the smaller dips at the start your car stays fairly upright, so the forces feel amplified because you are being yanked up and down rather than following the hills predictably. And of course the drops are freaky because you change direction so half of it is always backwards and you feel frontal acceleration rather than just vertical. Once you get to the 2nd level it gets quite intense, and the curves are so tight that the forces are quite strong. Still did it a couple of times. You wouldn’t want the ride to be any longer. I think the reason this one is “worse” than the other designs is because it is quite compact still, so the turns are not quite as drawn out as they should be. Counter intuitively, if you did a scaled up version of the same layout, some of the jarring and rapid changes in force would be smoothed out. Twister So many of us have ridden Leviathan now so you know what Gravity Group wooden coasters are like. This one is SO compact, the turns are almost getting like a wild mouse, and it runs a short little 6 car / 12 person train to deal with it. So many near misses, and the layout is a tangle full of quick drops and ground hugging turns. Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that it is basically a wooden version of a rollerskater in terms of scale, though perhaps a little more intense. Good fun and runs well. I liked how the queue line had posters with some of the great wooden coasters around the world, it’s almost like they were trying to say “hey, this wooden coaster is a legitimate attraction, not an old rattler”, it could also be because they are trying to sell tickets to Kolmarden, because the last bit of the queue had a video promoting wildfire. Kvasten Vekoma Family invert that is more intense than Escape from Madagascar, but less intense than the SFC 450 (TNT, Orkanen, MWs forthcoming etc), so it was alright. The station was the best themed in the park, a really cool witches house full of detail, and a cacking spiel from the witch whenever the train departed. And there was even some theming around the base of the helix, and a kid was engaging in satanic worship. I love the airtime hill that runs the length of a section of boardwalk. Fits in so well with the park and its fun whizzing over the crowds. This is a ride to use Jetpass on because it's popular but only has 1 train. Jetline My hot take is that there are no bad Schwarzkopf coasters, and this is no exception. A thrilling layout with big drops and smooth turns and helices and heaps of near misses both with itself and other rides, all perfectly negotiated without jarring. One thing i found interesting with the layout is that it had a couple of big drops that broke away from the main layout and crossed halfway across the park, rather than being like a traditionally travelling coaster where everything is contained in a fairly compact footprint. This has the highest capacity in the park, waited 2 mins max each ride. Vilda Musen So normally if you were building a ride, its a strict rule you don't attach to another manufacturer's ride structure, since then you open yourself to issues of liability if one ride has an impact on the other. Grona Lund evidently offered enough dollars (or maybe its because Schwarzkopf are extinct now) because they built a mad mouse style Gertstlauer bobsled coaster onto the existing structure of Jetline. The layout was decent, despite being heavily driven by being able to snake through the other coaster. Still had all the staples of this ride model, nice curved drops, sharp turns, helices and even some good little airtime hills. This is another highly popular ride, so good to book your jetpass on this one. This might be some of my favourite theming too: Kärlekstunneln So if you were ever dreaming up a list of generic amusement park rides, you might say roller coaster, merry go round, ferris wheel, ghost train and ….tunnel of love. But has anyone actually ever seen one of these anywhere? Grona lund actually has one, complete with a heart shaped portal at the start of the ride. Wasn’t sure what to expect, was it going to be animatronics and pink coloured scenes of people getting frisky? A big dark tunnel where people can kiss in the darkness? Turns out it was more like a ride through fairyland, with dioramas of magical creatures, fairie amongst the toadstools and so on. Just stuff that was "pleasant" and "happy" and "peaceful" to use some adjectives. The ride path is so narrow, so all the scenes have to be behind glass because i guess modern day guests would just reach out and break stuff. Tuff Tuff Taget Imagine a kiddy coaster more gentle than a wacky worm, with a bit of wild mouse thrown in. Turns out a lot of 20-30 somethings ride this for a laugh, so no shame in riding. Nyckelpigan Another one of those oval shaped Zierer kiddy ladybird coasters. Veteranbilarna Quite a pleasant little car ride, mostly rode to get some pics of Nyckelpigan. Pettson o Findus Värld Walkthrough house based on the works of a Swedish children's writer. Aimed at kids with some bits and bobs on the walls around the house you could switch on and off and make noise with. Wholesome fun. Bla Taget My other hot take is that most ghost trains are overrated and rarely warrant repeating. I mean have you ever ridden one and thought "Wow that was awesome lets go again". Yeah maybe if its haunted mansion, but most of the low budget ones are so formulatic. This one did have an outward banked turn and some innapropriate theming to save it at least. Katapulten The rare S&S combo tower. Imagine you took Batwing and crossed it with Supreme scream. So you launch up, come down with some airtime, bounce and sort of stop halfway up the tower. You then are raised slowly to the top, held, and then finish off with a fast downwards launch. So its a longer ride cycle, and you get to experience two ride types in one. Surprised this model isnt the default over the conventional space shot at more parks, its more fun! Eclipse I quite enjoy starflyers, its just a shame there’s no way to take a camera to capture the wonderful views. One thing i thought was cool was how the ride base is on an elevated platform, but the queue line comes up around the middle of the tower (So the queue isn't on the outside like trident). So you get a good view of the ride rotating around you and rising up: Fritt Fall Evokes memories of space probe 7, good classic Intamin drop ride, with spectacular views. One side had the stand up tilt seats, which have more of a bicycle seat you sit on rather than a proper seat, and it tilts forwards a few degrees before the drop (Sort of redundant now that they have Ikaros), but the feeling of your legs hanging vertically makes it a bit more thrilling and feels more exposed. Lyktan Ended up riding this just to tick off every tower ride. This one is the smallest of the lot, a rotating Zierer family drop ride with a VERY random program of drops and lifts. Lustiga Huset A very long, very awesome fun house. I had everything, bridges, multiple slides, multiple turntables. And the punters love it, this is the first time ive ever queued for a fun house! At the end you finish off with a really long slide ridden on a mat from the top floor that concludes with an airtime hump at the end. A finley tuned operation, with conveyor belts taking the mats to the top, staff members setting them up for you, and an automated system dispatching you. Clearly everyone loves the slide so they have focused on optomising it. There were a few spin and spew rides I didn’t do, and for some reason I couldn’t be arsed doing the upcharge ‘house of nightmares’ walkthrough. So in 5.5h on the first night I did everything i wanted to, and if you were pressed for time and its not too busy you could do the park in that time frame, but booking a 2nd night made it much more relaxed and I definitely got to enjoy myself and Whats wrong with this picture? And now they have acquired the car park next door and have another coaster planned. If it’s anything like Monster it’ll be a hit. Grona Lund is a true icon in the theme park world, very unique, and a must if you are in Stockholm. ********************************* Bonus, the Mountain Coaster at SkiStar Hammarbybacken https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/skistar-hammarbybacken Hammarbybacken is an artificial hill formed by waste spoil from various tunnelling and construction projects over the years. During the winter they use it as a ski slope. During summer its mostly used by runners doing hill training, and grass skiing. But just prior to my trip i found out it even existed, and they were opening a Mountain coaster. This one is by Sunkid (Brandauer) and instead of a track like the Wiegand ones, its a single rail so feels pretty exposed. Access was easy, its not far from the city centre. You can catch a bus to the stop near Bauhaus Sickla, and then walk about 500m along some local pathways and across a pedestrian bridge to reach the facility. These have a reputation for being crazy, and indeed the one I rode in bavaria a few years ago was. This one wasn’t quite so intense, but still good fun. Had a few wide back to back turns that followed the slope, and towards the end was a bunch of downhill bunny hops that give a little bit of air. I purchased a 3 lap ticket, which was plenty. Wasn’t hard to get the speed to max out with a ‘no brakes’ , and it was fairly uninterrupted since i arrived first thing and had it practically to myself. Towing to the top is achieved by attaching a spring loaded rod to your sled. At the top it actually detaches quite hillariously and skitters across the ground as it reels itself back in. I dont think youd want to stand in the way! They also had a ropes course, and artificial snow tubing. If you've not done this style of mountain coaster it's worth a look.

PowerPark (Powerland) is an entertainment complex located in central Finland about 350km north of Helsinki / 200km north of Tampere. https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/powerpark So its not really that conveniently located. Initially I was going to hire a car for a day, but that was going to cost close to $200 for the day. However, the park is located a couple of km from the tiny obscure train station of Härmä on the main line to the north of the country. Finnish trains are well priced, but annoyingly, only a couple of trains per day actually stop there, which I guess made me uneasy since you don't exactly want to miss your train and be stranded in the Finnish countryside for an additional day. But as it turns out, the park has a shuttle that meets every train, the northbound train gets you there around 11.30, and the southbound leaves around 6.30, so enough time for a day in the park (Though you might want to stay overnight if you wanted to do every last ride, do some go karting etc) Free lockers too, but it was definitely a 'push' (And there's only 12 so keep that in mind) The park is owned by a wealthy businessman who manufactures industrial machinery (The factory is actually behind the park) and the guy seems to have a thing for go karting and stunt planes. So really the park is a passion project where he seemingly just builds rides, hotels etc on his land because why not? Overall, the look of the park is a mixed bag. Some parts are themed properly. Some parts look 'okay' but not necessarily what I'd call an attractive style. Some parts are just Italian flat rides chucked down everywhere. Some parts they clearly had an interesting idea on what to build. And there are various other facilities like go kart tracks, hotels too. So it ends up looking like this. But anyhow, onto the rides. Junker Top class, and has everything. Decently quick launch, a top hat, huge looping element around a walkway, airtime, twists and turns, and a couple of quick final inversions including a dive loop into a tunnel and a sudden corkscrew at the end. Normally Gerstlauer can be hit and miss, eg sometimes their rides run great, sometimes they are rough. In this case definitely a hit, and the fact the trains only had lap bars made this even better. Pitts Special If Junker was the hit, this was the miss. When this was being built, I thought this was pretty cool, A steep drop going into a mix of twisted and straight airtime hills, a variant on a non inverted loop, and even an RMC style wave turn. It almost reminded me of a mega lite coaster. Anyway. Not to be. The non inverted loop thing knocks out a lot of speed, and then the rest of the hills are slower and drawn out, so you get virtually no airtime anywhere, just the sensation of scooting over various elongated elements, though the wave turn was sort of interesting. So they bought a lemon I feel. If the idea was that it's meant to be less intense than Junker and more 'family' oriented fair enough, but then why put in an intimidating vertical lift hill? Its a shame because the design had so much potential. To add insult to injury, the park was running only a single 8 car train, so the wait was a bit annoying. I gave it another go later on the arvo, and it was still pretty average. Thunderbird A good ride from GCI, though again the staff were a bit slow. It opened the year after Thunderhead at Dollywood and clearly it had similar thinking. It would alternate between huge high banked turnarounds, and fast paced sections low to the ground where it was full of little bunny hops and twists. Ran really well too, so its a quintessential "out of control" wooden coaster. Hopefully our Leviathan has a similar vibe. Cobra Vekoma Boomerang. A lot of people complain about the roughness of these, but the main problem i have is doing 3 inversions backwards in quick succession is a bit nauseating. That said, this one ran well too. The trains are not the latest type (Eg like on Gold Coaster) but rather an intermediate design that was only ever used on a couple of coasters. In terms of looks it's battling it out with Sea Viper, but at least it's comfy Joyride A coaster from the early days of the park when I think they were just spamming carnival rides. It's almost like a Galaxi 2.0 , with nice transitions and helices rather than the design many of us would have ridden back in the days of Metropolis or Thrillseeker. I did find this support amusing. Mine Train Zamperla family coaster nearly identical to the Spongebob one at Sea World. Devils Mine Hotel Fairly standard ghost train fare, with trucks blaring headlights at you with their horn, and store dummy animatronics popping up. But lets be honest, most of your attention is focused on the shooting if such a system is installed, and there were enough moving bits and bobs to make it interesting. Oh, and they only give you a set number of shots. But even spamming the fire button didnt seem to cause any problems in terms of running out early. Neo's Twister Spinning wild mouse, but with fairly shallow drops, so not that fast. What it lacked in speed, it made up for in spinning. The layout looks like something from Roller Coaster Tycoon. One problem...The seat dividers were literal metal bars rather than moulded fibreglass, so they would dig into your thigh and pelvis bone at every turn. Ouch! (The spinning coaster at the Perth Show is a similar design, but thankfully had moulded seats) Dragon Tower A tall drop ride from Moser. Can you really separate drop rides though? They all feel bit similar, though this had 360 degree rotation on the way up. Seats could have been a little less bulky. The park also offers and observation tower mode where you just get lifted up and down slowly, without the drop. Though no cameras allowed so didn't bother with that option. Fun House After a bit of research, it seems like a lot of these European fun houses are made by https://gosetto.com/fun-house/ Essentially, you can purchase various modules like walkways, conveyors, spinning tunnels and then whack them together to create your walk through. So aside from having a thing for planes and go karts, the park owner seems to love construction as well, and there was some vague decoration base on this. Typhoon 360 Not sure who made this one, and normally I skip over these 360 pendulum rides, but I had to in this case because they built this cantilever roof that goes either side of the pendulum, creating an actual head chopper as you swing under. Thankfully this got up to the full inversion much faster than other versions, so it wasn't too much of an endurance test. Balloon Tower No queue, so onto here for some photos. Giant Wheel And good photos from up here too at the other end of the park. Kwai River This is a flume ride from British company interlink and has perhaps the most bizzare layout I have seen on a flume. You actually start at the top, travel across a bridge, then drop through a slot in the bridge. The boat runs on wheels so is able to make a turn halfway down, before a secondary drop. A flume that thinks it's a wild mouse. The remainder of the ride ambles along and eventually you get to the main lift and drop. And then a lift at the end of the ride to get you back to the station. So an interesting concept though the bare concrete and grass means it's not much of an 'adventure'. You can see there are plenty of other decent flats like the Booster and the Feista Mexicana. Had I had more time I probably would have given them a go, but in the end I focused on re-riding the coasters since they are unique to the park. How do I rate the park? Junker and Thunderbird are worth the trip. I had heard the karts were good too, but I just didn't have the time. I missed the bull riding thing too because it didn't open until late and I had to leave In the end I did all the above once, though did 2x on Pitts Special and 3x on Junker and Thunderbird. Visually, just wasn't a fan. Parks need to be themed, or presented well, but half and half like here means the ugly stuff undoes the efforts of the pretty stuff. That all said, it seems like they are adding extra theming as they go. Compare this pic from rcdb of the boomerang when the built it: And today: So, you wouldn't go to Finland just for this, but if you are already heading to Tampere for Sarkaniemmi then this is a good add on. They seem to show no signs of letting up, so I'm sure more good coasters will be built here. Feel free to ask any questions. More photos here https://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/powerpark

Belantis is located about 10km south of Leipzig in Germany. https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/DE/Leipzig/Belantis If the gallery is being buggy, cycle though the photos from this point to see all 180: https://www.parkz.com.au/photo/18063-Belantis/gallery/sort/newest/location/park-225/offset/0 I had a few spare days left on my rail pass, and it’s only 1h 15m to get from Berlin (Where I was at that point) to Leipzig, and then from there you take a local S-Bahn train to Markkleeberg and a bus to the park. I got caught out because the return buses don’t run as often outside of school holidays, so I would have been stuck till 4pm. Instead I got STUNG for a taxi back. Belantis is a spread out park (About the size of the dry part of Dreamworld) built around an old coal mine. The pit is now a lake, and there are different themed lands, eg Medieval, Egypt, Ancient Greece, Mayan, Native American etc. The park feels like a mixed bag, some pockets have quite good looking theming and feel like immersive zones. Other parts it looks quite weathered and cheaply done, a lot of the park is just grave/bitumen paths and long grass and untidy landscaping.And maintenance doesnt seem the greatest, with crumbling theming in parts. If you go on Google maps you can sort of see how spread out and sparse the park is. https://www.google.com/maps/place/BELANTIS+-+Das+AbenteuerReich/@51.2536898,12.3132948,467m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47a658c795f65d89:0xe080217d017f2766!8m2!3d51.2536898!4d12.3154835 I reckon the park would have felt better if they had just brought it all closer together. It’s the same issue WnW Sydney has basically. As for the rides, they are alright and some were interesting and unique, but I don’t think anything really grabbed me other than Gotterflug, which was a riot. The entrance area I thought looked good. Quite liked how the building was overlaid with the sundial design. First ride was Hurcan, a large Eurofighter. I heard this one was quite rough, and it shook a bit, but nothing unbearable. I don’t think you’d want to ride more than 3 times though. Starts off with a vertical lift and drop, zero g, then an oddly shaped cobra roll the train appears to wobble through. Then after a couple more turns it finishes off with some interlocking corkscrews. Nice layout actually. Too big for this coaster or top spin though. Aint it the cutest? After that passed through the Pirate themed area and tried Capt’n Blacks Piratentaufe, which is one of those family sized drop towers except it can sway from side to side. Cool little gimmick actually. The pirate area looked quite good, but it’s basically an island of theming, and once you leave its back out into windswept barren park area. It happened to be on the way but Posiedons Flotte was next, the park was dead so I was the sole person flicking around on this thing. They are their most fun when you hold the boat inwards and then suddenly turn outwards, which creates strong lateral forces. Think of it like a water borne version of flying scooters. Pressing on was Fahrt De Oddeseyus, which is a tow boat ride around the lake, passing some crap ancient Greek theming on the way, and at one point passing through a concrete culvert tunnel. Good way to waste 10 mins. I couldn’t hold off on the Egyptian bit any longer, and joined a 10 minute queue for Fluch des Pharaos, a large flume ride built by Hafema (The company that brought us Jurassic Park in Singapore and River Quest at Phantasialand. It’s sort of halfway between being a rapids ride and a flume, with boats that are inflatable dinghies holding 8, with the metal lap bars strapped/sewn onto the rubber body of the boat. The pyramid looks impressive from the outside, but a bit of missed potential. The indoor section of the ride is very brief, and really just long enough to get you to the elevator lift. Theming is essentially flat walls with a couple of statues and a mannequin of a temple explorer. The boat rolls sideways into a vertical lift, where there is a UV painted image of a big Pharaoh head, before you are lifted up, and slide sideways out again at the top, and down the main drop. The main drop is about as big as WWF, but not really wet at all. From there the ride is done at a speedy pace, leading through a few more twists and turns, and into the whirlpool element, which looks more interesting than it is, but the curved drop in the middle is kinda waterslide-ish. A couple more turns, passing a waterfall on the way, and the ride is over. It’s better than a regular flume ride, but the theming was too featureless. Right next door was Cobra Des Amun Ra, a Gerstlauer family coaster, and quite good, with a punchy layout full of elevation changes. It doesn’t just lumber around like the likes of Roadrunner/Madagascar. The station and queue building was nicely done for a coaster of this size too. Just as I got off, the park mascot made an appearance in the STATION, and then hopped on for an actual ride. You’d never see that here in Aus. Doubling back on myself, I took a ride on Gotterflug, which is a Gerstlauer Sky Roller. This is a similar concept to tailspin, but instead of it being seats on a tilted arm, it’s more like a star flyer in that it is a circular ride that rises up. The thing is super easy to get spinning, so you can get triple digit rotation counts if you like. I held back, but still spun more than any ride I’ve done on a Sky Roller. Crazy stuff. The back of the park is one big dead end, which is silly. There’s what, about 200m of path missing between Huracan and the Native American zone that would complete a logical loop around the lake, but its absence results in an 800m backtrack to reach the end of the park as a result. The park has a heap of random little non rides, like this nature walk, wonky bikes, kiddy cars etc. Filler I guess. This medieval town square is another example of a pocket of good theming, but all the shops were shut. So the next bit was the Medieval section, which has a Gertslauer bobsled coaster called Drachenriit, more or less a wild mouse on steroids with a spread out layout, and a much more interesting design overall. Starts off with a curved drop, then a few conventional switch back turns, then the remaining majority of the ride is quick helices and punchy bunny hills. Great fun. This whole area looked quite nice actually. The main castle building holds a Vekoma mad house ride, which I was sad to miss since it was closed for maintenance, but at the same time I’d done plenty of others on this trip anyway, so it wasn’t a full on loss. There was also a hedge maze. The bit at the back of the park was a sort of Native American village. I skipped over the canoes and the Frisbee ride. At that point I had done everything I wanted to, so I swung back via Huracan and tried a ride in the back seat instead, and then made my way to the exit. Time spent around 3 or so hours. It was at this point I discovered I had misread the bus timetable (carefully typing the footnote on the timetable into translate led me to discover that certain buses don’t run outside holidays), so I headed back to the entrance, where guest services called a taxi. I ate a pretzel in the meantime, before departing. Overall, the park is just average. I went mostly because it wasn’t too far out of the way from my location, and it meant more or less completing the set of major parks in Germany. Doesn’t stack up to the majors like Phantasialand or Europa of course, but I felt the 2nd tier parks like Holiday Park or Tripsdrill were better as well.

Hi there! My home park, Astérix, has soft opened its new-for-2017 attraction, Pégase Express. It is a family coaster in the mould of Firechaser Express (Dollywood) with a Greek theming. We've got a fresh on-ride POV that I wanted to share: And some pictures in addiction showing the ride: Sources: Fans du Parc Astérix, AlpinaCoasters, EDB Attractions I haven't watched the POV yet - and won't until I get to ride this! It's an opportunity not to get spoiled for once