Trip Report: Belantis 25/04/18

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 2^nd tier parks like Holiday Park or Tripsdrill were better as well.

 

Edited January 6, 20196 yr by Gazza