A day in Walygator Parc

Preface

On Easter Monday David and I originally wanted to go to Phantasialand, however, the park hadn’t yet closed its Maus au Chocolat competition and the entrance fee of 37€ wasn’t worth it in regard of the expected crowds. Therefore we searched for alternatives and somehow we settled on the idea to visit France to see the Monster of Walygator Parc in action.

Walygator Parc

Once arrived at the park we had to go to the ticket offices. This took some time, as the park unfortunately only has a small number of these. At the entrance most of the people waited on the the left side of the entrance. With our walk directly to the other side, we saved a lot of time.

The park, formerly known as Walibi Lorraine/Stroumpf, has been run by a French showman for some years now, which is why a lot of novelties moved to the park area, but also a lot of trashy rides has gone into the park. Thus, the park has a certain charm that is worth discovering.

Anaconda

The rides portfolio is quite respectable, you can find some classic rides as well as the worst wooden coaster in the world – at least if you believe this year’s Wood Coaster Poll. We went into the coaster with the lowest expectations, after all we were all familiar with Efteling’s former wooden coaster Pegasus and were positively surprised. Anaconda is just fun, even if you don’t have much speed on the hills. The descents are even better. The ride doesn’t beat you up nor rattles, yet it was described by some coaster fans as a massive physical injury…

Family Coaster

Since we are all interested in roller coasters, we drove the most gentle of all Wacky Worms soon after. We managed to create a good atmosphere on the Family Coaster, which probably caused confusion for some passers-by.

Waly Twister

Thereupon, we wanted to continue our journey towards the monster and therefore took a ride on the Waly Twister with us. Unfortunately, as with almost all flatrides in the park, it was operated on a budget. In the meantime we observed how the Monster had to be evacuated.

Waly Coaster

Instead of waiting, we decided to take a closer look at the rest of Walygator Parc. Thus we went to the Vekoma Hurricane Waly Coaster, which also was surprisingly good. Moreover, it was nice to sit in an Arrow train again, which unfortunately are getting rarer and rarer.

One more surprise came to us in the theatre of this section, where we watched a magic show. In three languages they presented a mix of magic and comedy on a stage that could convince solely because of its lighting technology. The magician, apparently having a dog fetish, presented many tricks that worked according to the same scheme, but this was well covered by her immense bust size.

Terror House

The next highlight of the park was the Terror House. I must confess that I am not a fan of such attractions and have no idea what Halloween is all about. But as the other guys wanted to take a walk through the Maze by all means, I couldn’t say no after all. A positive note is that you were sent in small groups of 8 people through the Maze, which led to a slightly longer waiting time.

Before you were allowed to enter the Maze one floor lower, you had to conquer the real terror: the Funhouse. You were sent through narrow corridors with various bizarre funhouse elements and numbers on the wall, which might also be found in Bobbejaanland. The only thing missing here would have been some clowns and the creep would be perfect.

On the lower floor there are some interesting rooms and effects, especially the butchery scene at the beginning has already given a girl in our group the rest. Instead of cheering her up, however, her boyfriend told her how funny the whole thing was and how much fun he had with it. Dulled as you are by some horror movies I found the rest very nicely done and quite amusing. The walk through the rooms of the maze took quite some time and showed off the park’s overall quality of doing stuff nice, when on a budget.

Rafting

In the immediate neighbourhood of the horror maze you will find the park’s rapid ride, which tells you the story of Odysseus and his ten-year odyssey. As only eight boats were in use on Rafting and the loading system is more than strange, we had to wait some “trains” until it was our turn. The rafting itself is really impressive and has a wonderful wetness level, as you can get pretty wet by the waterfalls.

Rivière Sauvage

In order to be able to really get soaked in Walygator Parc, there is also a wonderfully designed Soquet log flume Rivière Sauvage in Walygator Parc. In contrast to the one at Walibi Sud Ouest (formerly Walibi Aquitaine), there is even an outflow in the boat and the ride comfort is much better. The degree of wetness is quite good for just one drop.

Monster

As the main reason for our visit was still missing we lined up at the Monster. We were already in the station and had to wait only one more lap for our journey in the front row, however, the train braked A little bit too strongly and the whole ride went down. It took about an hour until they were ready to start a test run, but even there the train braked too hard. As we wanted to go at least once we had to wait. Since the ride operators for the day were dismissed at some point, our hope for a ride fell apart and we left the park.

Pictures Walygator Parc

Closing Words

Nevertheless, the day was not a disappointment, as we got to know a nice French theme park. Especially the design in the front area of the park can even blow you away and the shows are even recommendable. The rides of the park are great, even if the HUSS Topple Tower always stands still. Walygator Parc has a good mix of roller coasters and the world’ s worst wooden roller coaster, which is truly worth a ride.

When the Wild Mouse roller coaster arrives in the park next year, Walygator Parc will see me surely again. And I will start my day on the Monster, as I would love to ride this roller coaster at some point.

 

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A thoroughly positive start to the season on Krake

The Kraken

Right to the start of the season, we lined up directly at the new roller coaster Krake. First we had to wait until something moved at all. After a certain time both trains in use were sent on the ride and the audience in the queue was very speechless of what was offered. Shortly before 10am the baggage claim opened, as one is used to from the English Merlin parks and so we didn’t have to queue up to the gates for long. Somewhat negatively is to be noted the division of the rows, since there is no separate queue, the crowds of visitors are slightly jammed.

As for the ride on the Krake, I can only say that it is very surprising. The layout is stunning and the airtime is terrific. The Immelmann can be considered as a good ride element (after all, this one is better than the ones on rides like Saw – the Ride and Anubis), the following airtime hill has wonderful floating airtime, even the curve is taken at a wonderful speed. The drop itself is of course the highlight for the outside spectators as well as for the passengers of the ride, thanks to the chain brake.

Less important from the actual ride is the splash of the roller coaster Krake. While the coaster silently completes its course, one doesn’t notice anything of the water fountains. But for the soaker among us there is a wonderful splash zone near the entrance of the roller coaster Big Loop.

 

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A day at Thorpe Park

Preface

Because of a wonderful cheap flight to London (with all fees 16€ for there and back) via Lübeck, I thought it would be time to visit Thorpe Park during the Fright Night event. Soon some more people were found who wanted to do this for a long time and so we could set off.

As with every proper tour, something had to happen and our Stefan, who practically defies all danger, had a small fracture five days before departure. In short: We were only two of us now and our luxury plane from Ryanair took off on schedule. Many thanks to Merlin Entertainments, who refunded our money at Madame Tussauds and sent us a ticket for the next season at Thorpe Park.

After we took the coach from London Stansted to Liverpool Street Station and made our way from there to Waterloo Station, we were already on the train to Staines, where we took the shuttle bus to the park at about 9 am. Quickly we picked up the prepaid Bloody Horrible tickets (Thorpe Park and London Dungeon) and we were ready to go.

Tour of the park

Colossus

The first ride of the day was Colossus. The ride is quite comfortable, but the one or other encounter of head and shoulder restraints in the first two inversion figures could not be avoided. I personally would consider the corkscrews and the last Heartlineroll as the highlight of the course, because the ride feeling of these two is much better than the rest of the course. Colossus is also very photogenic and due to its location wonderfully laid out.

Logger’s Leap

Roller coaster #2 was to become the nearby Eurofighter. Since it was supposed to open a little bit late, we decided to take a ride on the log flume Logger’s Leap. The ride has a pleasant level of wetness, whereas the drop in the dark is quite nasty and soaks you a bit. The double drop that follows later is not so wet, but offers a nice portion of airtime.

Slammer

For dry spinning we went to the nearby Sky Swat Slammer. S&S really did something massive with this machine. The ride is intense and very fun (I would not market this thing as a family ride).

Nemesis Inferno

This was followed by Nemesis Inferno, which alone is very convincing because of the part in front of the lift. But if the queue is empty, you have to zigzag a few times to get to the station (with Tidal Wave the longest queue to be crossed during the day). The ride is quite amusing from my point of view, which is why the ride became the first B&M Coaster that I enjoyed.

Stealth

St.Jimmy now saw the roller coaster of his desire, which is why we immediately set off in the direction of Stealth. Quickly we handed in our luggage and off we went. The launch was nice and the top hat afterwards too. Especially in the front part of the train it is very convincing. The descent is awesome, only the hill that follows is not very pleasant.

Tidal Wave

Since the weather was oddly good and therefore T-shirt weather prevailed, the Spillwater Tidal Wave had to be ridden as well (although it should be done in all weather conditions). The ride itself was great and with Slammer, X:\No Way Out and the new Coaster for the year 2012 the only reason for me to visit the park again.

X:\No Way Out

Let us now come to one of the highlights in the park: X:\No Way Out. You only hear mostly bad things about the ride, but it deserves the appreciation of some fans who enjoy the special. The ride is perfect in what it does, which is why I am so enthusiastic about it. All in all one of the best indoor coasters I ever had the pleasure to ride. Many thanks to Vekoma for this ride.

Saw – The Ride

Since meanwhile also Saw – The Ride ran, we joined the line. The queue was moving quite fast, so it didn’t take us long to get to the station. Again we had to hand in our bags and take a seat in one of the two trains, which are loaded at the same time.

We could experience our first ride in the first row and were immediately taken with the dark ride part. The first drop is pretty intense and the roll after the block brake has a nasty little extra, but I won’t tell you more. The outdoor part can be described very well by one word: fast. Not only does the lift run at top speed, but the car is also just racing down the track. On block brakes no consideration is taken into account, so that one experiences partly extremely positive and negative forces without braking.

Flying Fish

We almost forgot the Powered Coaster Flying Fish, but we still didn’t want to miss this roller coaster. I haven’t ridden the standard model from Mack Rides for a very long time, which made me very happy. Nevertheless I think that there is something missing at the coaster. A tunnel at the end would make the ride much more interesting, but the 4 laps are a lot of fun even without a tunnel. The beautifully designed train does its best for that.

Rush

Let us now come to the S&S Screamin’ Swing Rush. Praised by many we wanted to test this ride of course. It’s fun for a few seconds, but in general the ride is much too short and the rocking motion is not that special.

Samurai

Between Saw and Colossus there is the Mondial Top Scan Samurai. After many years, it was nice to see a Top Scan once again in person. The ride was okay, at least it was better than the rides on the other flat rides in the park.

Detonator

Very close to Nemesis Inferno is the Fabbri Tower Detonator. Like its 40m high brothers (to be found in Attractiepark Slagharen, BonBon-Land, …) this tower offers airtime in masses. The Humpty Dumpty rhyme before the fall is a really nice feature for Halloween.

The waiting times were generally between 0 and 20 minutes during the day. In the meantime it was also necessary to wait 50 minutes for Nemesis Inferno. Because of the Fright Nights, Thorpe Park was open until 8 pm, so some reruns could be done in the dark; after all, most of the English were waiting over 60 minutes for the Mazes.

Pictures Thorpe Park

 


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