Vekoma

The Pulsing Waters of Walibi Belgium

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Preface

It is rare that a concept where you always ask yourself how it actually works is put into action. It is even rarer if this is done by a park, which has already gained quite negative experiences. Well the Doppelmayr cable car coaster Vertigo, which was put into Walibi Belgium 9 years ago, is said to be quite fun on the few open days back in May of 2008; This was nevertheless a disaster on both sides. This time, however, the ride comes from the traditional roller coaster company Mack Rides. Therefore, the chances for another debacle were rather low with Pulsar. The Power Splash can be roughly described as a shuttle coaster, i.e. a roller coaster without a closed circuit, with a watering towards the end of the journey. What should go wrong, especially when the park knows a lot about shuttle roller coasters? Nothing!

Pulsar

Thematically Pulsar represents a machine (in the form of a beating heart), whose destructive energy is derived via a roller coaster at regular intervals. The nice thing is that the visitors are the missing component to make all of that possible. The story plays in the same universe that was created to restructure Walibi Belgium in 2011; So no “F*ck Slow, #Hard Gaan”, as in the Dutch sister park. In general, the audience in Walibi Belgium is now very pleasant; but it may also be that unwanted crowds of visitors (I remember times when the cashier was regularly insulted as “fils de pute”) fail to comply with the additional security measures all around in Belgium.

After walking through the queue on the upper floor (or as a Single rider just a few meters till the turnstiles) you are already divided into one of the five rows. You store your luggage in the shelves on the right side of the station and wait for the next arriving boat. The boarding is done very quickly thanks to automatically closing lapbars, so that only a few moments pass before the 20-passenger boat – accompanied by the heartbeats of the machine – is rotated towards the actual track.

Once in position, the boat is immediately accelerated backwards over a hill. The initial scepticism about the (still) quite shallow acceleration is soon to be forgotten, as you fly over the hill. Now you pass the still unflooded water water basin and climb the vertical spike on the rear end of the ride about half of its height. At about the same speed, the return leads to the station, where you are now noticeably accelerated on the hill and neatly lifted from the seat. Now you climb the front spike of the ride up to its end. With noticeably fast speed, you cross the acceleration hill for a third time, which now tries to eject you from the ride. Back in the rear section of the ride, you climb the spike till its (slightly flattened) top. During this manoeuvre the water level in the basin is raised by 30 cm. In the meantime, the upcoming splash quickly moves back into the memory of the passengers, whereby the previously accumulated joy suddenly passes into a respectful panic. At 100 km/h, the boat now dives into the pool, which leads to a visually very impressive wave. However, this rewards the front rows of seats only with a little mist, while it can thoroughly soak the rear of the boat. Shortly thereafter you pass the hill for the last time and are slowed down to walking pace, whereupon you stop in the next valley. The turntable then turns you back to the station and the bar opens.

Pulsar is an all-round successful attraction, where you always like to get on again. The ride is just terrific and can absolutely convince just by its unusual acceleration phases over the hill. The watering is optically more impressive than it is while riding; However, it is definitely scary! Especially if you suddenly get soaked after the first rather dry ride. Hopefully more copies of this truly enhanced water ride will follow.

Pictures

Closing Words

Due to the location within Walibi Belgium, the paths in the park are now slightly optimised so that you can commute on the fastest routes between the main attractions Flashback, Psyké Underground, Pulsar and Loup Garou. Interestingly, the probability to suddenly meet an old friend of yours in the park is reduced. However, whilst waiting for another round on Pulsar I suddenly got a call from my friend David. He was in a group waiting in the normal queue and I just got on as a Single Rider. After the ride, I finally realised him in the queue, so I took another round via the single rider to actually sit with him in the same row. My plans to leave Walibi for another visit of Plopsa Coo or Plopsa Indoor Hasselt were discarded. The times to leave Walibi Belgium early are now a thing of the past. Thanks Pulsar!

 

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Walibi Belgium

Klugheim’s wild roller coasters

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Phantasialand’s Klugheim

Due to the limited space available, rejuvenating cures are not uncommon in Phantasialand. A complete redesign of a theme area, which was only relevant for visitors with a large nostalgia for the rather boring dark ride Silver Mine, is part of the package. Nevertheless, it seems that the park actually hang on old icons, even if they were completely destroyed by a fire a long time ago. The multi-million euro project Klugheim with the two roller coasters Taron and Raik in an impressive scenery reminds of the former area around the legendary roller coaster Gebirgsbahn and its little sister, the Grand Canyon Bahn.

Once you enter one of the numerous entrances to the area and let yourself be overwhelmed by the breathtaking scenery, it is more or less clear that the park did everything right. In Klugheim, you can rave about the basalt rock formations or the numerous wooden buildings where the black tracks of both roller coasters pass by and cross each other. My highlight remains the fantastic food that you can get in Rutmors Taverne, the very nicely designed restaurant of the theme area. For a theme park this is outstanding, even the price is right. As mentioned before, you simply have to fall in love with this area. Actually, there is no need for a roller coaster, but the view to two of them makes the enthusiast’s heart beat loudly.

Raik

The smaller ride of the two roller coasters is called Raik and is made in the Netherlands by the manufacturer Vekoma. It is a Family Boomerang roller coaster and features an obligatory forward and backward ride; unfortunately, it also has always a rather long queue, which is why a visit is only really worthwhile during the later opening hours, when everyone else has already made his rounds on the roller coaster.

There is hardly anything to complain about the ride and after you have left the queue behind you, the friction wheel lift takes you up the hill. Once you have reached the starting height of 25m, the train is briefly held in place while the friction wheels are mechanically pushed apart. After the release of the train it races down the hill and immediately through the station. After a short hill, which introduces a downward helix, the lowest point of the ride is reached. At 62 km/h the train shoots through the canal, leaving it in a left turn. After a short reversal you approach the lift hill, after which you gain potential energy on the parallel track section – at least in theory – via a second pair of friction wheels. The backward part is now driven through a little slower, which is why the forces are not quite as pronounced as on the outward journey.

Raik is an exceptionally nice family coaster, which despite its two (world) records as the highest and fastest ride of its kind, does not quite match the ride characteristics of the prototype Ben 10 – Ultimate Mission of the English amusement park Drayton Manor Theme Park. Due to its significantly more compact layout and the resulting dynamic ride, it simply convinces a bit more. However, it’s hard to imagine a better roller coaster to get the next generation used to roller coaster riding than Raik.

Taron

As soon as your kids are old and big enough, nothing stands in their way of riding the second roller coaster in this area. As soon as you have left the beautiful queue and the extremely desolate open-air waiting area behind you and have decided to ride in the back part of the train or in the first row (which other than indicated has mostly a shorter waiting time), your ride on Taron can start immediately.

The ride on Taron

You leave the station in a right-hand bend, whereupon the train enters the waiting position for the upcoming launch. As soon as the track section is cleared, the train accelerates with a lot of pressure and races up a steep right-hand curve. This quickly turns out to be a slightly inclined U-turn, which sends the train at a high altitude in the direction of an exceptionally nice camelback, which pushes you out of your seat with ejector airtime. With a huge grin on your face, the train leads you through a tight left turn, just before the next twist brings a very surprising highlight to the visitors. The young buck tries to kick you sideways out of the train. Quelle surprise exceptionelle! From here the train shoots through a wide right-hand bend and then passes two gentle turns. After the second turn the roller coaster Raik is passed by in a small Bavarian curve. A left-hand bend follows, which leads into a short zigzag section. Another left turn takes the cars down into a pit and ends the first part of the ride.

In contrast to the Lost Gravity roller coaster at Walibi Holland, which has a similar division of the ride, the second act of the ride begins with an outstanding highlight, similar to the song “Totale Finsternis” from the musical Tanz der Vampire or “Maskerade” out of Phantom of the Opera. In general, Taron can easily be compared to a good play, only that here we forget about the intermission.

The train is now brought up to its maximum speed of 117 km/h with a tremendous force by a second launch. After that, the train shoots up a very steep left turn. Arrived at the highest point of the layout there is hardly any time to catch your breath, as a curvy shot follows in no time. Several short changes of direction, with constant inclination, lead to a fast descent, before you throw yourself into the abyss at a proper cross slope. On the following hill, the buck tries to throw you off again laterally, but this attempt again fails. All good things come in threes, which is why the following turnaround is just as wild. After that, you cross a relatively moderate right turn, above the heads of the motivated riders within the queue. A gentle twist leads to the final left turn of the ride. On the only straight section, aside from the station, launch and brake tracks, you cross two hills where the speed is reduced quite a bit. The only weak point of the layout is skillfully compensated with the following right turn, whereupon the brakes of the roller coaster Taron are reached.

Conclusion Taron

Taron is a genuinely impressive roller coaster and undoubtedly the best roller coaster in Germany. At the moment it has no competition in Germany, as the wood giant from the Lüneburg Heath is quite weak at the moment and its future is uncertain; otherwise Taron would only be the best steel roller coaster in the country; but who wants to differentiate in small nuances? The company Intamin has once again succeeded in a great coup, which was outstandingly staged by Phantasialand, besides the questionable record marketing. The expectations for upcoming projects have once again been raised by one bar; let’s see how the other parks (apart from the already well-known Star Trek Coaster of Movie Park Germany) will react.

Pictures Phantasialand

 

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Phantasialand

# Hard Gaan

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Hard Gaan in Walibi Holland

Slowly but surely one can say that Walibi has recovered from the Six Flags era. The re-branding of the brand in 2012 and the changes in the park that went along with it were long enough, but there were no novelties except for the reactivation of the roller coaster Speed of Sound and the truly ingenious design of the launch coaster Xpress: Platform 13. As successful as the restructuring of the park around the fictitious bands W.A.B. and The Skunx is, it seems that people in Holland prefer to go their own way and simply throw a lot of things overboard; because “Hard Gaan” and so on. There’s not much sense in that anymore, especially since they now serve a rather antisocial clientele. But what can you do when the biggest competitor serves all other target groups? As a first step to go fast, according to the literal translation, was to rob Speed of Sound of its soundtrack. Sure, the new track is good, but it takes away its history. The second step was taken this year with the opening of the roller coaster Lost Gravity.

Lost Gravity

The design of the queue is wacky, but partly very conservative and inevitably reminds of the roller coaster Dizz of the Belgian amusement park Bobbejaanland. A lot more would have been possible here, especially since the custom-made comic universe of Morvan, L’Hermenier and Wuye provided a lot more possibilities. The cars of Lost Gravity, on the other hand, are truly unusual. Similar to the Intamin Wing Coasters, they offer two seats with a corridor and two without, but also have a high front. The seating comfort is great and the design of the cars has very little, or more precisely, a negligible effect on ride comfort.

The ride begins with a right turn out of the station before it quickly climbs up via a chain lift. Without any rest the car immediately throws itself down the 32 height meters in an insane way; at least this is the case if one has taken a seat on the left side of the car. The extremely steep and widely twisted gradient is breathtaking without question, but at the right side it is almost boring compared to the left side, the radius is simply too narrow. With a lightning speed you pass over a ground level double-up, over whose hill you literally fly, before you find yourself on a top-hat element that is slightly tilted to the side; which you could also describe as a non-inverted banana roll, if you like. Somewhat contradictory to the previous layout is a huge camelback hill, which takes the passengers out of their seats again. At a breathtaking height, one now races through a wide turning curve, which in addition is also tilted outwards. So far, so good, and if Lost Gravity would end now, it would be a very short roller coaster, but also an extremely ingenious one. But instead of the final braking section there is a block brake followed by the second part of the ride.

After having reduced your speed, you now lean to the side and dive towards the ground again in a dive loop. A tight turn and a Zero-G roll are now carried out in a very tame way. The next turn will also be a turn where at least one of the acceleration vectors is zero. As a result, it is no longer possible to speak of a dynamic ride. You constantly brake and accelerate from new, which is equivalent to the accordion effect known from traffic jams. Over a hill you change direction again, cross another hilltop, pass a last pressure-laden valley, make a last turn and then find yourself in the final brake of the ride.

Lost Gravity is an excellent roller coaster for a little stop along the way, but nothing more. The first rumors were still about a revolving gondola roller coaster, this would have been hardly feasible with the first part of the ride, but ideal for the second. Either way, the first part is absolutely amazing, but the second one is wasted. The last curves are still a lot of fun and let you leave the ride with a little grin on your face, but the premiere of Mack Rides Big Dipper was not as convincing as it should be; at least there is enough potential for further installations.

Pictures Walibi Holland

Closing Words

Finally, I would like to appeal to human reason, which Dutch students probably no longer call their own. I assume that the student in question is striving for an equivalent to the German Abitur (as nowadays everyone does) and therefore should not be stupid – but how could one come up with the idea to sit on the seat and hold on loosely in a rafting ride with movable boats, like Rio Grande is? This is dangerous and should normally be rewarded immediately with exclusion from the park for a lifetime. If this boy would have fallen into the water and drowned, I would have neither been shocked nor worried about him; in fact, it was predictable. His buddies were similar, but in the postfactual age, you can’t let something arbitrary like rational rules distract you from your own horniness. Let’s all have a selfie! Yeah!

Walibi, you’d better think about Hard Gaan again, you might not be doing yourself any favours in the end.

 

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Walibi Holland