Roller Coaster

Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest (2016)

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Shortly before the end of my internship at Daimler AG in Sindelfingen near Stuttgart, I also went to the small Wasen, the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest. Here, small is already quite big, but this was a disadvantage for many showmen. Rarely have I seen such empty rides with such a good line-up, because they were simply not close enough to the crowd.

 

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Baden-Wuerttemberg

Full speed ahead on Karacho

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Preface

Erlebnispark Tripsdrill is not a good theme park. Although my reports always reflect a very differentiated and well-considered opinion, it makes sense for once to anticipate a judgement and play with open cards. I don’t like this park and I will probably never like it. The fact that I visited the park for a second time after 2009 was only because of the rather new launch coaster Karacho and even for this one I would never want to visit the park again, but more about that later. In general, the Erlebnispark Tripsdrill is overpriced, has an inferior gastronomy and demands a small contribution at every corner to be able to use the full offer. The wildlife park that belongs to the park is, as also the parking, included in the entrance fee, but is probably not really visited by many visitors; after all, the only reasonable connection to it is your own car.

History of the Theme Park

It all began in 1929 with the construction of the Altweibermühle zu Tripsdrill. Eugen Fischer, the owner of an inn in Treffentrill, took the idea of building the Weibermühle von Tripsdrill from the singspiel by Georg Anton Bredelin after some hikers in the region had explicitly asked for the mill. The allegedly rejuvenating cure of the wild slide was soon on everyone’s lips and thus Tripsdrill steadily developed into a popular excursion destination in the region. In 1957 the first zoo in the immediate vicinity of the mill followed and from the 1960s on the first rides.

Tour of the park

The rides of the front area

When you enter the park, you will immediately find yourself on the nicely designed village street, where you will find the pleasant panoramic Maibaum ride next to the Gaudi quarter, a covered children’s playground featuring a free fall. Here you can also buy the tickets for the crossing to the Wildparadies.

The Mühlental with the famous Altweibermühle is located next to it. To prevent the men from idly assisting the women’s rejuvenation there is also the Altmännermühle, a mechanical open-air obstacle course of an older construction. The Doppelte Donnerbalken, a more than modest vertical ride with a strange inclination effect, the leisurely boat ride Spirtztour der Seefahrer, the children’s log flume Mühlbach-Fahrt, as well as the unique Seifenkistenrennen round off this area.

Friends of overlong leisurely rides will find what they are looking for at the wedding market. Here you will find three of these attractions: the vintage car and horse-drawn Hochzeitsreise, the Schmetterlingsflug and the Wiegen-Hochbahn. Since marriages nowadays tend to be of shorter duration, a trip on the wine bucket ride Weinkübelfahrt is recommendable, before you try your hand at the soup bowl ride Suppenschüsselfahrt through the individual soups in a similar way. With the coffee cup ride, the spinning game could continue, but unfortunately the park runs all flat rides on a low flame, so that even the prototype of this popular classic is not convincing. But this only really gets worse with the Gugelhupf-Gaudi-Tour, the first and only modern waltz ride from Münsterhausen, which, with the best will in the world, has nothing in common with its predecessor. The three other rides, Wäschekorb-Rundflug, Schlappen-Tour and the Wellenflieger Wirbelpilz, are, outside of their design, accordingly worth no mention. After all, the big Tivoli roller coaster Rasender Tausendfüßler by the manufacturer Zierer still manages to entertain the passengers well.

Up to the present time of the report, the front theme areas of the theme park have been covered because they more or less form a unit and are connected to the rear area only by a rather narrow path along the outer park boundary. So there is no direct connection to the quite dominant roller coaster Karacho, which means that you can get lost mercilessly if you don’t know the place.  The peeps of the notorious computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon would have complained loudly about not being able to find attraction XY, especially since the signage is not optimal. In fact, I don’t know of any other amusement park in Europe that is as badly constructed as Tripsdrill, although it can’t be that difficult to build an overpass or underpass and create a second access route, which should also benefit the general distribution of guests.

Waschzuber-Rafting

But if one should have made it to the back area, one immediately comes across to the first big attraction of the park, the Waschzuber-Rafting. This stylish Hafema ride is completely dedicated to the topic of doing the laundry and has some interesting exhibits in its queue that reminds of a museum. The ride through the winding road is not particularly wet, nor fast, but nice and really well embedded into the landscape.

Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen

Behind the round boat rafting, the facade of the Rauhe Klinge Castle attracts all eyes, after all, this beautifully designed concrete block on one side houses two larger rides, which complement each other extremely well. The log flume Badewannen-Fahrt zum Jungbrunnen (Bathtub Ride to the Fountain of Youth) is quite unusual, its name says it all and surprises some, let’s say rather prudish, passengers a little bit.

After one has left the, once again museum-like, queue behind him and got into his tub, the trip can start immediately. As soon as the boat swims freely in the canal, one dumbles a little towards the castle Rauhe Klinge. Parallel to the walls, the first lift takes the boat up for a short time before it goes down a short shot. In a right bend the canal leads you into the building, whereupon you have found the fountain of youth and indeed the old women seem to taper off into young, crisp and well-built women. But the view is only short and so the second lift leads up quickly. This is also where the first turntable is waiting for you, whereupon you take the second, medium sized downhill run backwards. At the back of the castle you now make a turn including the second turntable. Thereupon another lift hill leads you up one last time. At the top you can have a last look at the surrounding landscape before you turn left and enter the upper floor of the castle. After a shorter straight section the big and final shot of the lift takes place, whereupon contact with the wet element is inevitable. The spray is refreshing, so after returning to the station you will be very happy to get out of the tub.

G’sengte Sau

The second ride of the Rauhe Klinge Castle is the 1998 built bobsled coaster G’sengte Sau by the Münsterhausen manufacturer Gerstlauer and its sign the first new roller coaster from the former factories of the legendary roller coaster smithy Schwarzkopf. After the brisk lift hill, the ride starts with a very steep right-hand downward curve, whereupon an outward helix is completed in the same direction of rotation. This is followed by four powerful, contiguous serpentines, which are perfect for exerting some pressure on the person sitting next to you, before the ride, still introduced by the “Wetten, Dass…?”-sign of the famous bet of extreme sportsman Dirk Auer in 2001, goes into a rapid helix combination. The following camelbacks are quickly driven through and can lift you a little bit out of the car before it goes into a final helix-combination. After that the final braking section is reached immediately and shortly after that the station.

The G’sengte Sau offers all kinds of riding fun on the wild ride through the naked concrete world of the Rauhe Klinge castle. Beautiful is certainly different, which is shown above all by the identical Thor’s Hammer ride from the Danish amusement park Djurs Sommerland, but the ride is also incredibly cult, especially because of the banner of the family show “Wetten, Dass…?”, which was cancelled almost two years ago.

Mammut

If you follow the circular route, the next big attraction of the park is the wooden roller coaster Mammut. The roller coaster opened in 2008 and was designed and built by the company Holzbau Cordes, but the trains used are from Gerstlauer. The perfectly joined track and the trains with their sprung axles made for a much too smooth ride, especially in the first years, so that a wooden roller coaster feeling did not exist. A circumstance that made me call Mammut a rather bad wooden roller coaster, but the ride has aged nicely!

The journey begins with a short left turn out of the station and into an unsuitably designed disco sawmill. A small dip and the train hooks into the chain, whereupon it is brought to a starting height of 30m. The first descent is a steep left turn down to ground level. Here one passes a powerful valley before it immediately goes along a high turn with a good speed. A high camelback follows, where you are lifted out of your seat. This is again followed by a turning curve, but this one leads into a steep curve to the left, whereupon the train dives into a small ditch. A clearly low camelback now repeats the game of weightlessness of the passengers, whereupon a fast Bavarian curve is made. Now the track leads through the framework of the lift hill and along the back of the layout. Over a short zigzag track some shake & roll – attributes of a really great wooden roller coaster – takes place, before the train dives into a tunnel after a left turn and a short change of direction. Here, the wonderfully dynamic zigzag course is repeated one more time, whereupon the braking section is already reached.

Mammut is fun! In fact, so much so that, with the best will in the world, you wouldn’t expect it if you’d only seen it in 2009. It’s the best roller coaster of the park, which is why it’s even more a shame that it was on n one train operation during the visit, although there was quite a rush.

Karacho

Let’s get to the last and newest roller coaster of the park, the launch roller coaster Karacho. The expectations were quite high, because if there’s one thing Gerstlauer can do, it’s to launch a roller coaster onto a ride offering a very funny track, and indeed Karacho has both. But the layout couldn’t convince after getting on the train, as these trains are really uncomfortable and the operating personnel additionally pushes the bars down so far that the legs are literally squeezed between the bars and the edge of the seat. Ouch! Kärnan from Hansa Park, a theme park in northern Germany, shows how it’s done differently, but until the trains were delivered two years later there were certainly some changes to them.

The ride on Karacho begins with a slow right turn out of the station. After a short and relatively steep dip, a heartline roll is initiated on a straight line. This happens rather clumsy in my opinion, as the dynamics seem to be missing during this roll; an example how to do it better can be found at the English amusement park Thorpe Park on Saw – The Ride, where the roll is passed after a short bend. Then you pass the first block brake and shortly after that another, in my opinion much too small, dip. With Karacho you are now accelerated to a speed of 90 km/h, whereupon you shoot up a top hat element. Without taking a breather, the car crashes towards the ground, passes the following valley with full force and daringly shoots an oversized corkscrew towards it. Here you are turned upside down for a second time before the train is longing for the ground again. Very restless and quick-witted, the car now takes you over a hill that is strongly inclined to the side, just before you screw up to the block brake in a steep curve. Here you are slowed down to walking speed, whereupon the following part of Karacho is driven through very leisurely. A short gradient changes into a short and uneventful camelback, whereupon you stay in a right turn for a very long time. But then the car takes momentum again and turns the passengers upside down once more while going down in a diveloop. Another corkscrew joins in and at the same time leads into the braking section, whereupon the station of the roller coaster Karacho is reached soon.

Karacho is not only uncomfortable, it also lacks the bite. The ride would be just ok if you could ride it without pain, i.e. with the classic roller coaster trains of the manufacturer, but it wouldn’t be anymore either. Especially the part with the dive loop is done without the insane force of earlier coasters and therefore hardly gives an impression; not to mention the absolutely nonsensical ride part before. Karacho certainly does justice to the target audience.

Pictures Erlebnispark Tripsdrill

Conclusion Erlebnispark Tripsdrill

The Hansa Park of the South is not a good park; it is a nice park, but simply not a good one.  I have tried to understand and comprehend the whole adulation of various roller coaster and amusement park fans in different forums, but I just can’t. It’s a fact that even among Swabians (at least the one I met during my time in Stuttgart) it’s more of a toddler park. There’s simply nothing here that justifies the high entrance fee. Let’s see if the novelties after Karacho can change my opinion…

 

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Erlebnispark Tripsdrill

A visit to the Crazy Horse

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Cavallino Matto

After staying in Rainbow Magicland near the Italian capital for almost too long, we reached the Tuscan amusement park Cavallino Matto at 4 pm on time. To my own surprise, the visit was a little cheaper thanks to the afternoon ticket and free parking.

In a good mood we went straight to the park of the Manfredi family, who have owned the Crazy Horse, Cavallino Matto, since 2006. However, the park was founded as Parco Gulliver as early as 1967, and was more a playground with pony rides and mini-golf than a leisure park. In the 1990s, more and more larger rides, such as the Colorado Boats log flume, moved into the park. However, the park didn’t gain in attraction until the Manfredi family took over and expanded it.

Rock ‘n’ Roll

I did not become aware of Cavallino Matto until 2012, and thus certainly earlier than most amusement park fans, when the Swedish amusement park Liseberg had its old Rock ‘n’ Roll monster from Schwarzkopf replaced by a brand new one from Gerstlauer, which in turn moved the old one to Tuscany. Here it was given a new environment, whereby the old theme is still used musically. In contrast to the comparable ride in the French Nigloland, the ride here is also very easy to turn thanks to the lack of partitions between the seats, which in combination with the general duration of the ride made for an all-round successful ride.

Topo Zorro

Opposite it is the children’s roller coaster Topo Zorro, a rather rare variation of the Italian long runner Brucomela with a helix instead of a straight downhill run. In contrast to the C&S-built ride Tren de Potosi from the Spanish Isla Magica near Sevilla, the waves in the upper part of the ride are quite round, which unfortunately makes the ride a bit less exciting.

Shocking Tower und Yukatan

Just a few metres further on, the first end of the Cavallino Matto amusement park is reached, where two rides venture beyond the ever-present treetops in a larger square. While the 55m high Shocking Tower from Soriani & Moser easily manages this, the gondola carrier of the Technical Park Typhoon Yukatan only reaches beyond the treetops in full swing. This makes the otherwise rather tame ride a very exciting experience.

Project 1

Passing a children’s driving school, as well as the Baia dei Bucanieri – a splash battle of SBF Visa – in whose courtyard the ship swing Nave Pirata is located, we went to the formerly largest roller coaster of the park: the L&T Systems ride Project 1. Here we also came across the exemplary handling of the park for the first time, according to which the train is sent onto the track immediately with enough passengers or after a certain time interval with only a few willing passengers. Especially on empty days this ensures sufficient rides on all relevant rides without having to pay attention to eventual closing and opening times.

The ride begins with a right turn towards the lift hill, which takes you up to the maximum height of 16m at a fairly leisurely pace. In a shallow right turn above the tree tops, you slowly but surely head towards the ground. Here you immediately pass through a long valley, after which you make your way to the sky with a similar gradient as you did on the descent. This also happens in a right turn, but the tree tops can only be seen from below. A smaller slope takes you to the other side of the ride, but there is now an uphill bend to the left. Parallel to the lift hill there is now another drop, whereupon the station is crossed in another left turn. This is followed by the last descent and a final bend, until the nice, but not necessarily exciting, ride in Cavallino Matto ends.

Wild Mine

Also from here it is only a few steps to the next bigger attraction, which for us was not the nicely designed dark ride Safari Adventures, but the wild mouse Wild Mine, also from L&T Systems. The ride is similar to its counterpart from Mirabilandia, but a bit smaller and has two hairpin bends less. Thus, the upper part of the ride goes through only five serpentine curves just before the funny interplay between steeper gradients and further hairpin bends starts one level below. Due to lack of space, the two successive gradients are slightly smaller, but this doesn’t hurt the funny mouse, especially since we didn’t have to wait an hour or rather a second for the ride this time.

Speedy Gonzales

Directly next door is the small roller coaster Speedy Gonzales, which we also knew from Mirabilandia. However, it seemed to be bigger there. Instead of just one lap through the layout of a simple figure of eight, the train set made its guided way over the track twice.

Colorado Boats

In addition to an electric horse-riding track and a 4D cinema, this area of Cavallino Matto also features the large, apparently home-made, Colorado Boats log flume. After leaving the station, you can take a little boat ride through the canal before you reach the first conveyor belt which takes you up to the top. Shortly after that the first shot is taken, whereupon the contact with the cool water is immediately established. Although the run-out area is very short, the boat glides very smoothly into the next curve whereby the speed is somewhat slow. No wonder that it is forbidden to change the natural speed of the boat. Of course we followed this advice written in German with pleasure and so we bobbed with the boat through the further course of the channel. A short time later we reached the second lift and thus the second and also biggest shot of the ride. Now the return to the station could be done properly moistened, but since no photo of the ride has been taken yet and this should best be taken during a descent, we climbed a hill a third time, but this time a remarkably small one. Fortunately, this hill is quite harmless and the boat trip through the forest ends shortly afterwards with a sufficiently pronounced degree of wetness.

Freestyle

On a brand new site, separated by a small public road, the newest and largest roller coaster of the Cavallino Matto amusement park rises to the sky. Although the Freestyle roller coaster is considerably older than any other ride in the park, the former Sky Rider from Canada’s Wonderland has attracted the park’s attention in all the forums. Almost like in 1985, the construction of the Stand-Up Coaster was eagerly awaited, which is the second ride of this type in Europe next to the Shockwave of the English amusement park Drayton Manor. Moreover, it is the only larger roller coaster of the Japanese manufacturer Togo in Europe, which is all the more reason to make a pilgrimage to the small, friendly amusement park in Tuscany.

While on most roller coasters the experience starts with the ascent of the lift hill, the access to Freestyle is already quite adventurous. Admittedly I didn’t understand the whole procedure at the first run, especially as the shoulder bar waistcoat couldn’t be opened completely, but this improved steadily from ride to ride. And actually it’s quite simple, because you only have to pull the nipple through the flap and turn the small crank to the top, then you see an arrow and press on it and it opens or closes. Actually you only have to push the loose harness forwards. But hopefully the person to your right doesn’t do the same at the same moment (which is very likely). When the harness is opened, place yourself onto the seat, close the harness and adjust the height of your seat. The seat is then locked in position and if necessary readjusted by the staff. The staff must be praised for their quick reactions and for allowing even a mentally handicapped and partially paralysed boy to ride in the course of the day.

As soon as the train has been cleared, you can take the lift up to a height of 27m at a leisurely pace. Up there, you take a turn above the green of the forest. In a curve you pick up more and more speed before you plunge down to the ground without hesitation. With extraordinary strong pressure you pass the first valley and immediately afterwards in a similar manic way the loop of the ride. After that you pass the following valley without any regard to losses before the train rushes up a camelback. Here you take off the floor in the front part of the train. However, with the best will in the world, the madness is not over, because the train now pushes through a narrow downhill helix, which is equipped with immensely high pressure. The now compressed legs are brought back into shape on the following hill by the negative forces; but the madness still continues. On a supposed straight line the train is now tilted to the left before it uses a right turn as a turning manoeuvre. Two and a half small hills, which get bigger and bigger towards their end, are the finale of this exciting ride. With the last hilltop the braking distance is reached and after another curve also the station, where you immediately feel the urge for another round.

The Stand-Up Coaster Freestyle is certainly one of the most intense roller coasters in Italy and also in Europe. The way the roller coaster stresses you in the helix is insane and almost uncomfortable, but in combination with the airtime moments during the ride it is extremely worth experiencing. If you can thankfully do without taking off on the first drop, then a ride in the front part of the train is recommended. Unfortunately, the ride characteristics are not the best, but the safety bars are almost negligible because they hardly touch your body; that’s why Dominik, who was rather displeased with the excellent Invertigo from Movieland Park, wanted to take one lap after the other, while one or two laps less would have been enough for me. But one can also be infected by such a passion.

Pictures Cavallino Matto

Conclusion Cavallino Matto

Cavallino Matto was the most sympathetic amusement park on the tour, so despite only two hours in the park we really had a lot of fun here. All in all, we had quite a few repeat rides on Freestyle and were able to ride everything without any problems due to the good waiting time management; only the strict approach to the Yucatan swing prevented a final ride on the stand-up coaster, which we had grown to love until then. So the ride just above the tree tops was the crowning glory of the tour through beautiful Italy.

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Click here for the next report of the Il Viaggio dei due Runner Tour

Cavallino Matto / Il Viaggio dei due Runner Day 6