Heide Park, April 2018

Earlier this year I visited Germany.

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/DE/Soltau/Heide_Park (Full set of 350+ photos there)

Heide Park is located 60km south of Hamburg. To reach it, I caught a train to Buchholz, and then changed to an hourly local train to Wolterdingen, a small village station where it's a 2km walk to the park entrance (No shuttle available)

Heide Park is one of those parks that was established in the theme park boom in the 1980s (Much like Dreamworld) so it has a similar vibe with the style of buildings, gardens, neat planning. A lot of the older attractions have great stonework and traditional German craftmanship.

Tussauds (Now Merlin) took over the park in 2001, and they do a good job on theming too, but the vibe is somewhat different on these attractions, and a lot of the old buildings have been re-purposed to fit new themes.

 

So, the first thing I did was Indy Blitz. Damned if I'll queue for a kiddy coaster.

Next I did the most recent major attraction, Ghostbusters 5D.
Like Justice  league, it has 3D screens with targets to shoot, though no physical targets. The cars are also 8 seater renditions of the ECTO-1 that can spin.

From what I could garner, the park has a mascot who is an adventurer.

And the adventurer has a warehouse full of his treasures, which have been taken over by ghosts.

The queue had cool ghosts trapped in portraits.

It was average overall,  the screens were sort of just chucked on the wall, with props stuck on as well that felt a bit amateurish.
Like there was a scene that had a bunch of shipwreck treasures and the theming on the wall around the screen was just ship steering wheels, bits of rope, a random treasure chest. And there were obvious things like when you left the station and turned the corner you could see the car ahead at the first screen, whereas if they had rotated the car as it left the station they could have faced you away and not revealed that it was just a big room with screens.
But it was still, at one point in the ride you are teleported to NYC for a final battle, and the car actually has as ghost trap on the front that opens up and sucks the ghost in.

The gift shop had its own Ectoplasm soft drink, pale green with a sort of apple flavour.

Next up was Desert Race, an Intamin accelerator that could could think of like a Superman that has been squashed down a bit and had the top hat removed. The first hill has a bit of airtime, the other two are just more like twisting hills with not much air (like the two after the helix on Rivals)

The launch is great of course, and the theming helped, although it looked a bit awkward, trying to pull of a desert setting in a place where it snows.

What were they thinking with the logo though? For a thrill coaster with an off road rally theme, it's a bit vanilla isn't it?

For the kids was a driving school with a similar theme.

Nearby, and on the way was Grottenblitz a powered mine train coaster, which had a few turns outside, before going into a cave (Hence the grotten) with a diorama in it. Good family fun.

More time in caves, with Drachengrotte, which was part of a really nice looking "How to Train Your Dragon" land (In German it's called "Training Your Dragon Made Easy") It was quite a short boat ride, with an oval layout, half of which was in cave. I confess to having no idea as to what was happening since I havent seen the films, nor understood the German.

The outside theming was good, including an actual jet of fire. The inside part was a few static sculpts and a projector screen, and it had some of the same issues as Ghostbusters with some stuff kind of just slapped in, like the very visible lights with leads on the wall, but overall still looked alright.

It was probably a weird itinerary, but I figured everyone would rush the coasters first, and I was interested in seeing some of these secondary attractions, without necessarily wanting to queue.

After that was Krake, a mini B&M dive coaster, At 40m in height, it's only as tall as Superman escape, but feels taller for some reason.

 

The ride delivers a quick burst of thrills, much like what you get from a drop tower. It's a very short coaster, but I don't think it matters really in this case, it's just a few rapid fire moments, and hits the brake run with a bit of speed, and feels greater than the sum of its parts.

A lot of money obviously went into the theming, from the fortress station building, the well themed boarding platform, and of course the ship destroyed by the kraken. This would be a great ride at Sea World.

 

And then onto my most anticipated ride at the park, Flug Der Damoenen.

I hadn't fully appreciated how steep of a hill this was built on, and it makes for one of the most dyamic wing rider coasters, with big drops and plenty of speed. The shorter train makes this a bit less lumbering than the likes of X Flight for example. The theming is nice too, fitting in with the existing architecture of the area.

 

Along the way are near misses that suit the satantic  theme, such as wooden stakes, metal spike fencing, and a wooden bridge you narrowly pass under.

The ride lacks the signature slow inline twist typically seen on wing riders, but the Demonic knot actually provides a similar moment of slightly unusual feeling slow rotation towards the end of the ride.

I really liked this one, and did plenty of rides. Wing coasters have become one of my favourite types of B&M. If you want an intense looper, that is best left to other manufacturers....Let B&M focus on rides that give a sensation of flight.

Further up the hill was Scream, a gyro drop that was a conversion of an old observation tower (Seriously, what's with all the duplicate rides at this park?...2 monorails, 2 slow boat rides, previously 2 flumes)

Oh, as for the ride, well I love drop towers so this was good fun and I liked how they had the kids drop tower right next to it.

A nearby building in the area had a balcony you could go up into, and a slide back down for the kids. Really like when parks just have random nice features to explore and opportunistic play for children.

Next was Bobbahn a very lengthy, albeit bum vibrating Tobbogan coaster, with the signature sense of constantly accelerating and feeling out of control.

This one was at the top of a hill, and has the first lift hill off the top, so you get quite high up, allowing for plenty of turns. A couple of shallow uphill sections keep it going even longer. There's even several turns that are underground, so I cant even begin to imagine how much this ride cost in the day, given Bobsleds are a pretty expensive coaster type to build.

The ending of the ride is a bit anti climatic. You hit the brakes at the bottom, then make three right hand turns, passing through the maintenance bay, and then finally rise up a lift hill back to station level.

In some ways the likes of Avalanche at Blackpool work better because its just downhill all the way.

Continuing around the park is Limit, their SLC.

I did my duty and gave it a ride before moving on.

Big Loop was the remaining coaster, with a couple of loops, a couple of corkscrews, and a helix. Super simple stuff.

 

Continuing around the park I had a look at the Mayan flat ride area, but literally the majority have been pulled out and blocked off with bamboo, which is not a great look,

especially considering that their flagship coaster Colossos right next to it is out of action too. It made the back end of the park just feel un-loved so I quickly moved on.

A bit of a bummer to miss Colossos since I loved El Toro too.

Moving back towards the middle of the park is the Panoramaturm observation tower, where I got my fill of aeral photos of the park.

And then after that was Mountain Rafting, a river rapids ride with ridiculously high capacity and all the old school wave generators still going (Many parks in the US have theirs off)

And again very visually attractive.

Because it was early afternoon, when the sun is less disruptive to photos I did a lap each on the Monorail.

And the mini Panoramabahn. @pushbutton German parks often have at least a couple of Monorails, and also trains etc to, so these are the places to go.

It was on this I spotted that I had completely been avoiding a Peppa Pig kids land that only opened a few weeks earlier. Not for me of course though. 

Procrastination continued with a burger at Piraten Burger.

....and a stroll around the rest of the Pirate themed land, which had a splash battle that I skipped and one of those onion boat rides.

This loop of path led past the Oldtimer ride. Eh why not? Turned out to be worth it because the gardens were beautiful.

Continuing on was the Wildwasserbahn. Again, why not? wasn't too wet, and the station theming was nice, but otherwise fairly run of the mill.

At that point I had done everything I wanted to, so spent the rest of the time till closing re-riding Flug and Krake, finishing up on Desert Race, where the ops gave us a bonus lap because we were the last train of the day.

Overall, its an extensive park with a good variety of attractions, though seeing so many removed ones gives a feeling of disappointment.

The park sits at a level that is behind the likes of Europa Park and Phantasialand, but better than a run of the mill amusement park, and should be even better with Colossos returning in 2019.

 

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/DE/Soltau/Heide_Park