Ferrari Land, located in Salou, is Europe’s first theme park dedicated to motor sports. The theme park is located right next to the theme park Port Aventura Park and the water park Port Aventura Caribe Aquatic Park and is therefore part of the holiday resort Port Aventura World on the Costa Dorada near Salou. Ferrari Land is home to Europe’s tallest coaster: Red Force.
In recent years, Legoland Germany, like no other Merlin Entertainments park, has seen some great additions to its offering. The park finally became a full day destination. Since my last visit in October 2015, the park added the themed area Lego Ninjago World, two new rides to the Land der Pharaonen area and added a new B&M wing coaster to its line-up, as part of the Lego Mythica themed area.
Lego Ninjago World
Lego Ninjago World is so far the biggest extension Legoland Deutschland ever experienced. The themed area is based on the popular Lego Ninjago brand, famous for its well made TV show Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu. Back in 2017, it was the most expensive expansion of the park to date. The area offered a unique interactive dark ride experience that you could only experience at Legoland parks.
Lego Ninjago The Ride
Lego Ninjago The Ride is the first interactive dark ride where the passengers are using their hands only to target. The ride system is using an array of sensors to catch the movement of the hand. Depending mainly on the height of your hands and the angle to the sensor, your hand movement input is interpreted and a colour dot appears on the sensor so that you know where you are actually aiming. The whole process is not that intuitive and so confused hand waving actually is a good way to score quite a lot of points. The movements can be refined on the many screens the riders pass-by or stop right in front for a longer film sequence.
Overall, Lego Ninjago The ride is a very solid dark ride. Sure, the technology is not as sophisticated as the Web Slingers at Disneyland Paris, but for a worlds first, this ride system is actually quite alright.
Lloyd’s Spinjitsu Spinner
The newest addition to the Lego Ninjago World is Lloyd’s Spinjitsu Spinner, a Sunkid Loopster. This ride basically takes the old Luna Loop concept by Heege to a new level and is one of the hidden gems at the park. As you control the rotation of your ride vehicle, you can have a rather gentle ride, a ride full of backflips or you could try to take the whole ride in an upside-down position; albeit this is not that easy, as the ride vehicle will rotate back into its starting position after a while and you have to adjust the rotation quite often.
Land der Pharaonen
The Land der Pharaonen themed area was once created to house the interactive dark ride The Temple as its standalone attraction right next to the entrance to the Legoland Feriendorf resort. In 2019, the area was expanded with the interactive rides Pyramiden Rallye and Wüsten X-kursion.
Pyramiden Rallye
The Pyramiden Rallye is one of the classic rides from Metallbau Emmeln that you would like to see more often in family theme parks around the globe. The interactive ride is a nice work out for the whole family trying to extinguish fire in a pyramid located in the middle of the desert. While the story of this ride does not make a lot of sense, it still is one of the nicest additions we saw in Legoland Deutschland in recent years.
Wüsten X-kursion
The Wüsten X-kursion by RES is an interesting tower ride: the passengers can control the rotation of the gondolas, as well as their ride height by pulling a rope inside the gondola. Overall, rides can have a nice gentle observation ride towering the Land der Pharaonen section of the park and get a nice view onto the new themed area Lego Mythica right next door.
Lego Mythica
Lego Mythica is the newest area at Legoland Deutschland. It is based on the Legoland own IP. Its centrepiece is the Maximus roller coaster by B&M. The two family drop tower Fire & Ice Tower by Zierer and a small playground supplement the area. Lego Mythica is the most expensive expansion so far for the theme park.
Maximus – Der Flug des Wächters
When thinking about a roller coaster at Legoland, nobody ever would come up with the idea of creating a B&M wing coaster featuring two inversions, but somehow this project came true with Maximus – Der Flug des Wächters. The statics of the ride speak for a very family friendly ride, which we now want to have a closer look onto.
After we have finally left the extremely trivial queue behind us, the ride can already begin. Following a left-hand bend, we immediately reach the lift of the ride. Having reached the top of the lift hill at 17 m, we immediately drop down towards the ground. In an upward helix we experience a little pressure before flying over a small hill. In the following valley we experience the highest forces of the ride, before going straight into the first inversion of the ride. After the corkscrew, we continue our way to the left, before we change direction in order to prepare for the grand finale of the ride: a roll above the entrance portal. Shortly thereafter, we find ourselves in the brake section of the ride.
Maximus – Der Flug des Wächters is a fine ride for what it is: a nice family ride and the first one to feature an inversion for many of the park guests. The ride on the left side of the tracks is the overall better ride experience, while the right side offers a more pronounce ride through the first helix.
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A lot has changed since my last visit to Walt Disney Studios Park. The black light show Animagique has been replaced by Mickey the Magician, the Cinémagique theatre has been closed since 2017 and Mushu’s frikandel joke in the Dutch version of The Art of Disney Animation has been replaced by the musical revue Frozen – A musical Invitation and that’s not all.
There is no trace of the stunt show spectacle Moteurs… Action! Stunt Show Spectacular and the fiery hot Armageddon Les Effets Speciaux, the Studio Tram Tour has been massively shortened and instead of a light show on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster you now fly through space with Iron Man on Avengers Assemble: Flight Force. Last but not least, there is Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure – a smash hit of a dark ride and the biggest novelty of the Marvel Avengers Campus area.
Cars Road-Trip
The Studio Tram Tour was a rather boring stopgap at the Walt Disney Studio Park, although Catastrophe Canyon alone was worth a ride. The irrelevant scenery on the way there, as well as the finale to the rather unknown film Reign of Fire were not really worth mentioning and dragged the attraction down a bit.
Cars Road Trip now focuses mainly on Cars-tastrophe Canyon. A few roadside attractions dot the way, but that’s it. The integration into the Cars universe has definitely been successful, which makes this attraction a pleasure to experience more often, despite its significantly shorter ride.
Avengers Assemble: Flight Force
The roller coaster Avengers Assemble: Flight Force presents itself to its potential passengers much more discreetly than in its previous rocking life. The entrance to the ride is hidden around the corner, while the main building offers interesting information to visitors of the Marvel Avengers Campus. I can imagine that if you didn’t know there was another roller coaster here, you would walk right past it.
The queue now has a changed layout. In general, I like the new orientation of it extremely well. It’s just a bit of a shame that you can now only see the launch area from the normal queue and that you can no longer get past it as a Premier Access guest or single rider. The highlight of this ride is the new Iron Man animatronic, which gives you perfect instructions for the ride.
The ride itself is also outstandingly staged up to the moment of the launch. 3, 2, 1 and wham, you miss the state you experienced on this ride for so long before. Don’t get me wrong, the video projections on the ride are well done and would underline them perfectly, if only they weren’t so dark; however, the synchronised light show spectacle of the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster was just awesome. As with the other indoor roller coasters at Disneyland Paris, something is missing here in places. A few decorative elements here and there would be enough and the ride would be a guarantee for a good mood. Apparently, this has already been recognised, which is why the ride has been closed again for further work shortly after its opening.
Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure
The Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure interactive dark ride is of a different calibre. The Spider-Bots developed by Peter Parker get a little out of control during Open House Day on the W.E.B. campus and duplicate themselves like crazy. Contact with other substances in turn causes them to partially mutate. Now you have to stop the robots before they devastate the entire campus. To do this, you swing webs like Spider Man and free one location after the other from the little crawlers.
Unlike other interactive themed rides, everything here works contact-free, you just use your hands and shoot your nets through space with amazing precision. No wild flailing to score points – it’s more about purposeful movements, which can be quite a challenge. The team concept is just as motivating: you play together, which in turn positively enriches the ride.
Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure is definitely a blast of a ride and the current main attraction at the Marvel Avengers Campus. Everything has been done right here. The video quality is outstanding, the interactivity during the ride works really well and last but not least, the ride is incredibly fun.
Pictures Walt Disney Studios Park
Conclusion Walt Disney Studios Park
The Walt Disney Studios Park is well on the way to overtaking its sister park right next door. During my visit, the park was always better attended, even though the park is still a large construction site and not every show was currently being performed. With the Marvel Avengers Campus, visitors were introduced to the first stage of the park’s major expansion offensive, which will feature the next highlight with the Arendelle themed area around Disney’s Frozen. So things remain exciting at Walt Disney Studios Park.
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When thinking about a roller coaster at Legoland, nobody ever would come up with the idea of creating a B&M wing coaster featuring two inversions, but somehow this project came true with Maximus – Der Flug des Wächters. The statics of the ride speak for a very family friendly ride, which we now want to have a closer look onto. 
