Pirat

A great Afternoon in De Panne

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Preface

Years have passed since I first visited Plopsaland De Panne on a very busy Maundy Thursday. The catapult start roller coaster Anubis – The Ride was just four days old, but the amusement park could not convince me at all. With the derailment of their park railway, which back in the days was running through a large animal enclosure, my mood was down and I left the park early.

My memories of Plopsaland have been negatively influenced since then, but the constant development in De Panne was always of interest. Theme areas have been restructured or pounded out of the ground, a theatre has been built, as well as a very interesting swimming pool. With the construction of the wooden roller coaster Heidi – The Ride and the planned opening a visit was unavoidable, which is why I bought a Plopsa Funcard with parking pass (very worthwhile, especially regarding the Benelux parking fees) in the Holiday Park at the beginning of the season. Unfortunately, the wooden roller coaster would not open this year due to noise problems.

After a short visit to the Plopsa Indoor Coevorden I reached the parking lot around 3pm. From there, under the incredibly well-positioned wooden roller coaster, a path leads to the park’s entrance. Such a crock, not being able to ride this beauty.

History of the Theme Park

The Plopsaland De Panne was opened in 2000, but the origins of the park date back to 1935. The Florizoone family opened Meli Park, the country’s first amusement park right next to their honey empire Meli. Constantly declining visitor numbers in the 90s led to the sale of the amusement park.. The (still quite fresh) Studio 100 brought the park back on the road to success with its own (children’s series) licenses.

Tour of the park

Mayaland

If you enter the park you find yourself on a covered Main Street and shortly thereafter on a huge square with some fountains. There are many paths to choose, but you can also find the entrance to the park’s theatre as well as the entrance to the indoor theme area Mayaland. This is a smaller version of Holiday Park’s children area and offers fun for the whole family with the Kontiki De Swingboom, the Flying Fish De Bloemenmolen, the Demolition Derby De Waterlelies and the Family Freefall Tower De Valtoren. Like the theatre and the adjacent swimming pool, the Mayaland is also used outside the regular parking opening times.

De Vleermuis

If you follows the course of the park’s railway, which incidentally passes through the hitherto unfinished theme area based around the children’s series Heidi, you quickly encounter the roller coaster De Vleermuis. This is a small coaster with free-swinging gondolas made by the company Caripro, in which both tracks deliver a race on the steadily sloping and rather simple layout in the form of an eight. Basically, only the quite fast vertical lift is notably. But you should hold on tight to prevent nasty surprises. The hard to enter ride vehicles and the rather small capacity do not speak for the ride. The ride is ok for the audience it serves, so mainly small children have some fun.

De Boomstammetjes

A few meters further on you will come across the beautifully designed medieval theme area, where De Boomstammetjes the park’s log flume and the powered roller coaster De Draak await their passengers. As one of the first of its kind, the log flume opened in 1989 with a double down. The ride is quite long and features two shoots. Unfortunately, the ride was not flooded.

De Draak

Above the log flume, the Draak was on its track. Through the long and beautiful queue you reach the station. The ride starts with a right-hander with some up and down features. A longer straight with some hills is following, but the speed is still missing. In a downhill helix the train takes some speed, but also the upcoming near-ground directional changes above the log flume can not really increase the tension. A right-hand helix leads the train back to lofty heights. In another downward helix you build up some speed again, whereupon the station is quickly passed through and another lap follows.

The ride on the roller coaster De Draak is unfortunately not very exciting nor fast. The course of the coaster is not really bad, it just lacks the speed for the existing elements. Without, the roller coaster is one of the most boring representatives of its kind, which does not bother the existing target group in the park.

Rollerskater

Arriving at the central lake, you immediately meet a Zierer Jet Ski and a magic bike by Zamperla, as well as the first earworm of the park, as both attractions are located in the Mega Mindy Universe and the series’ title song is played over and over again. You can find some peace at the neighbouring Rollerskater, a family coaster of the manufacturer Vekoma, which comes here in a beautiful and somehow oversized design.

Kaatje zoekt Eendje and Viktor’s Race

Next to the boat ride Kaatje zoekt Eendje you can find the family coaster Viktor’s Race. With the introduction of the children’s series “Kaatje van Ketnet”, the roller coaster Dongo’s Race was redesigned and features a new train and new rails; after all, the ride built in 1976 is the park’s oldest roller coaster and one of the most popular within the park. The transformation has a very positive effect on the ride and fits seamlessly into the general concept.

Rox Flyer and Prinssesia

Meanwhile, the Funtime Starflyer Rox Flyer looks like a foreign object in the park. Right next door you can find the park’s upscale restaurant Prinssesia housed in a fairy tale castle. The park’s tea cup is also included in the newly created complex and now features a roof above the ride.

Piratenboot, Storm op Zee and Super Splash

We complete the tour around the lake with the pirate theme area of Piet Piraat. In addition to the HUSS Pirate Piratenboot, which was elegantly placed on the lake, and the Koggenfahrt ride Storm op Zee, this area is dominated by the Mack Rides Super Splash of the same name. From a height of 18m you dive in spacious boats 20m to the ground, passes over a short hill and shortly after splashes into the lake. After that you are on a leisure cruise back to the station. The peculiarity of this ride is the reduction to the essentials, e.g. there is no unnecessary backward part at dizzy heights. The necessary rotation of the boats happens during the climb in the vertical lift. As always, you don’t get soaked on a Super Splash, but you will get wet.

Anubis – The Ride

In 2009, Anubis – The Ride – a roller coaster based around the TV series “Het Huis Anubis”, which was followed by its own German-language production on Nickelodeon shortly after – opened. The Anubis House is a boarding school in which a group of students experience numerous mystical adventures and intrigues; Accordingly, the presentation inside is extremely impressive, especially compared to Holiday Park’s Freefall Tower. The images of the cast were reduced and the soundtrack is not played in a continuous loop anymore.

Once seated in the six-seater car, one immediately leaves the station modelled after the Anubis house and takes some momentum in a short right turn. Shortly thereafter, the actuator located on the car dives into the stators located on the track accelerating the train to a speed of 90 km/h. Now you climb a very steep hill, similar to a half-sided Top Hat element. On the top, you quickly rotates sideways and dive down to the ground. Confronted with very high G-Forces you quickly rise up again to dive down within a dive loop. On a hill you experience some air time whilst changing the direction. In an Immelmann you see the world upside down for another time. A steep curve then leads you into the ride’s block brake section. Barely reduced in speed, a left turn leads you to the ground level. After that you run over a small hill and make the final change of direction, before you are swept up in a crisp and beautiful heartlineroll.. Shortly thereafter, you reach the station.

Anubis – The Ride is still pretty damn good. The ride offers some amazing G-Forces, the airtime is pronounced and the inversions are all passed through very quickly. The design of the ride is also done very well and creates a very unique ambience. As a standalone attraction, the ride is fully embedded in the overall concept of the park.

De Grote Golf and Wickie – The Battle

The visually most impressive theme area is the Wickieland built in 2013, where Vicky the Viking and the other vikings found their new home. With the nicely designed Zamperla Disk’o Coaster De Grote Golf and the picturesque Splash Battle Wickie – The Battle by Mack Rides you can find two great rides in a great atmosphere. Unfortunately, it is very noticeable that figures or groups of figures were used more often, so that sometimes the variety is missing. Since these figures can be found in all of the Plopsa Parks, this is very noticeable.

Kirmesplein

Equally well done is the newly arranged theme area Kirmesplein, which no longer looks like a collection of old rides. The wave swinger Wienerwalz was replaced by a newer copy. Likewise, a number of figures from the Samson & Gert universe can now be found in this area.

Het Bos van Plop

Next to the toddler area themed around the clown Bumba – which you should never show your children, unless they are fans of the teletubbies –, which is very popular in the Benelux countries, you can find the Kabouter Plop, after which Plopsaland De Panne was named, the park’s last remaining area. In addition to a small farm and a tractor ride – of course with free-range livestock – this area particularly captivates by the dark ride Het Bos van Plop, in which one can discover the world of the gnomes on a rather long journey. This is beautifully staged and has (most likely) a very large reference to the television series, which is why usually very long waiting times can be found here.

Pictures Plopsaland De Panne

Conclusion Plopsaland De Panne

Plopsaland De Panne has rapidly and steadily grown over the past seven years, giving the park a very Efteling-like charm. Everything is well done, which is why you feel really comfortable within the park. The additions and enhancements of the past years show impressively how a park can further develop existing concepts in order to offer an overall better experience. Plopsaland De Panne just became one of the best theme parks to visit in Europe.

 

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Plopsaland Belgium

Slagharen, daar kun je veel beleven

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Attractiepark Slagharen

One of the amusement parks which I have wanted to visit again for quite some time is the Attractiepark Slagharen. During my first visit in 2009, and still under the patronage of the Bemboom family, I was completely thrilled by the park’s 70s and 80s rides, which had long been decommissioned elsewhere. The cable car that leads across Mainstreet with all kinds of food stalls and connects the two parts of the park remains in your memory just as positively as the good old Looping Star roller coaster, the dark ride Ocean of Darkness or the flying swing Apollo, where simply everything was allowed.

Jules Verne Adventureland

In 2012, after almost 50 years of family ownership, the park was sold to the Spanish group Parques Reunidos and an untypically rapid change in the park took place. The iconic Ocean of Darkness dark ride was the first to be demolished to make room for the queue for the children’s driving school The Passepartout Explorer. The surrounding area has been redesigned to form the Jules Verne Adventureland theme area with a number of Italian-made children’s rides, the still magnificent Schwarzkopf Enterprise and the Twist ‘n’ Splash Expedition Nautilus. The dream boat of the Weber company was therefore moved and is now, as is the Flying Carpet from the same company, no longer in the park.

Apollo

Since this year, the Apollo has only half of its gondolas, which makes the touch-down a bit smoother, but consequently reduces the fun of flying to almost nothing. The long seat chains, the mutual pushing off, the turning in before the ride, all this is now no longer tolerated and accepted, there have even been occasional warnings. The once most ingenious chain carousel of all times is now only a shadow of its former self.

Octopus

The Octopus is another classic. The Monster II from Schwarzkopf is a very special ride, where you can spin like crazy inside the gondola without any great weight shift. This happens as soon as the gondola brakes are released and can be held for the entire duration of the ride with very little practice. And the ride does not have to hide behind the ride on the younger successor model, which is still widely represented at local fairs today.

Aqua Mexicana

Since this year it is no longer possible to take the monorail to the other side of the park, after all the main station near the swimming pool has been abandoned, so you can either take the monorail on foot or the standard route by the cable car. The number of rides on this side of the park has not been reduced as drastically, but the small swimming pool with iceberg theme has been modernised and supplemented with a handful of slides of a newer design. As Aqua Mexicana, the pool now stands out with its significantly increased surface area and slide tower, although I wonder why of all things the portfolio of the actual amusement park had to be reduced even further by taking over the dinghy slides.

Pictures Attractiepark Slagharen

Closing Words

As great as Attractiepark Slagharen continues to be, the quality of the park has been massively reduced in recent years under Parques Reunidos. Obviously something new has to be created from time to time, but not at the cost of a massive reduction of the existing portfolio, which was secretly the key to the success of the theme park. Nowhere else was the choice of rides as large or the number of roller coasters as negligible for a successful visiting day as here.

For decades, all the laws of the economy have been contradicted and it has been shown that with good rides alone, despite the perceived standstill, you can attract more visitors than most other parks of this size will ever have. Of course a lot of the success of the amusement park was due to the free tickets that were thrown in masses in supermarkets near the border and the focus on the holiday park as the main source of income, but all this has not changed much since the takeover. Besides, the ADAC discount is still highly recommended.

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Attractiepark Slagharen

When the sky screamed for the first time

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Preface

If the day begins suboptimally it can only be good, at least that’s what I thought when I woke up early in the morning at Jan’s home in Weiterstadt, saw my glasses in pieces and spontaneously had to plan a visit to Fielmann in Haßloch. On the way we picked up Martin, so we got there on time and after about ten minutes of waiting we could take the way to the neighbouring Holiday Park. Despite these circumstances we waited super punctual on the forecourt for the others and then awaited the opening of the roller coaster Sky Scream together with them.

As I myself was not in possession of a valid season ticket, I joined the queue and waited surprisingly long. Since Julian now also joined the group and made significantly faster progress in the line next to mine, I joined him in order to extend the queue with a funny action by using our Fort Fun season tickets. Since the group was still not complete we decided to repeat the whole game with Jan’s annual ticket at another ticket office, after all, a ticket was still missing. Last but not least Martin surprised us with an expired season ticket, which blocked his entrance and led to some nice hours in the season ticket queue, while we enjoyed ourselves in the park.

Holiday Park

Majas Blütensplash

Meanwhile it was already clearly after 10 o’clock and thus our lively troop with the urge to ride something moved into the Majaland to pay a visit to the Blütensplash. Well entertained, a little wet and with a kitschy children’s song in our ears, we were now attracted to the actual reason for the visit, as a high structure surrounded by a lot of naked concrete radiated a certain end-time mood from which we did not want to resist.

Sky Scream

An old, dirty Vekoma track showed us the way to the roller coaster Sky Scream and shortly after we made ourselves comfortable between the concrete walls. Up and down a short steel staircase we waited now with a little more people on the way up to the station. Certainly most of the people willing to ride waited there and due to the narrowness of the station there was also a little chaos, because although the first row obviously had the most people, some of the other rows had a much longer wait. Especially when the station is a bit narrower, it would have been useful to set up a turnstile and let a maximum of 2-3 car loads into it. Certainly the Holiday Park is seldom as full as on the day of the visit, but a little more order could lead to more rides, which I actually regretted by a small mistake towards the end of the day, when all the others rode three laps in a row.

Finally taken a seat in the, at least in the last rows very narrowly laid out, cars of the roller coaster Sky Scream and pushed down the unfavourably shaped bar, the ride could begin. The first launch resembles in large parts the initial acceleration of a boat swing. After the change of the running direction the ride is much more powerful and so you almost reach the apex of the Non-Inverted Looping, from there you have a wonderful view to the Wild Mouse roller coaster and other areas of the park. With a lot of momentum you accelerate a third time and after a 180° turn around the axis of the track you reach the uppermost level without any effort, where you are torn out of your seat. After a very short breather, the immense airtime is followed by a strong hangtime in a roll that could not be placed better. Now follows the immersion into the Non-Inverted Loop, where you are physically stressed, especially in the rear part of the train. The rotation around the axis of the rail is so brutal that you hardly notice the following valley. Another reunion with the apex of the element initiates the final of the ride, whereupon you come to a precise stop in the station after another ride through it.

The Sky Scream is a truly outstanding ride – it does what the Superwirbel hasn’t been able to do for years, if the ride was running at all, and that is to be a noteworthy internal competition to the Expedition GeForce. It draws people away from the park’s everlasting main attraction. Although the ride built by Premier Rides is not the best German roller coaster novelty this year, which is without question the Flug der Dämonen in the Lueneburg Heath due to its rounder overall package, it is definitely one of the better roller coasters in the country. Holiday Park has done everything right by its risky choice.

Lighthouse Tower and Expedition GeForce

An attempt to get a backwards ride on the Palatine Lighthouse Tower by intensive rocking later our group increased to its full bloom. Martin’s request to get something to eat was skillfully ignored and accordingly the Expedition GeForce was given its long-awaited tribute. Since the ride has always been going well, another ride followed later in the day, but this time in the first row of the train. Interestingly enough, we then rode in the same trains as the group members who had broken away since the water ski show and had been waiting much longer for the last row of the train.

In the Pfalzgraf we tried out the entire range of products on offer, in my case it was a well cooked, but unfortunately quite sweet goulash of inferior quality. For the high costs one can actually expect something better, especially since the drinks were unfortunately not included, but it was still better than the iterative approach to a goulash meal of the Studierendenwerk in Hamburg, so you were able to eat it.

Burg Falkenstein

Well filled we decided to go to Burg Falkenstein, where apparently frighteners were waiting inside from 13 o’clock on. The park was really trying to upgrade its dark ride, inside the dark ride you were sprayed with water and got caught by the only active actor.

Wickie Splash

While one novelty this year is of a consistently positive nature, the disfigurement of the great Mack log flume Teufelsfässer with the now trivial name Wickie Splash is definitely not. The ride is now designed in the style of the new animated edition of the series Vicky the Viking and features a colourful look, which is not yet matching with the overall style of the ride. In addition, the lighting of the newly equipped turntables is completely missing, which makes the ride much worse. The degree of wetness of the ride would have remained the same, had it not been for the constant efforts of the other passengers to shovel water into the back of the boat.

Pictures Holiday Park

Closing Words

The meeting in the Holiday Park turned out to be absolutely great, especially since the group created a proper atmosphere here, which somehow couldn’t really be heard from the small splinter groups of the other forums visiting the park at the same day. Although we didn’t really manage to ride much during the visit, except for some permanent riders at Sky Scream at the end of the day, we visited every relevant ride that was on the way. At least I didn’t regret the long way to Palatinate at all and would not be averse to other meetings of this kind in the future.

 

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