Europe Road Trip: Day 15 - Home

10 parks later and we're all done. That was as many as we could realistically fit into two weeks without running ourselves ragged or doing long drives before/after each, and without bankrupting ourselves!

This morning we had our final breakfast at the very nice B&B we'd been staying in in Belgium, and drove back into Turnhout to grab some petrol before heading out onto the motorways for the 2 hour (ish) drive to Dunkirk for the ferry home.

RJ started the drive for the first hour and a half, and I took the next hour. He managed to successfully navigate the traffic hell that is the Antwerp ring road (despite me shouting at him for going in the wrong lane once) - a bit of a baptism of fire as even on a Saturday morning it was very busy and the road signage doesn't always seem to match the lanes or the sat nav!

My section of the drive was much less troublesome, though we had a minor detour when some roadworks saw all motorway traffic directed off at a junction to make a U-turn at a roundabout and get back on again. Imagine that happening on the M25!

As we approached Dunkirk we saw more signs of the heightened security in the port area. Aires near the ports were barriered off, abandoned and graffiti'd, and hastily-erected No Stopping signs were put up along the port access roads. The high fences with razor wire tops didn't make it feel any more welcoming. Once we'd checked in for our ferry, not only did we have the usual passport checks, but every vehicle was stopped and its cargo inspected - in our case they had a look in the boot and a rummage around the cases on the back seat to satisfy themselves we had nobody trying to hide in there!

After that it was the usual ferry process - queuing in our lane until really quite soon before sailing time, then parking up on the ship and the usual trip around the self service restaurant. We managed to bag ourselves a nice little table by the windows that overlooked the bow of the ship, so we could see where we were going throughout. RJ finally managed to get himself the curry he'd been dying for for days, though apparently it wasn't great. I had the fish and chips mostly because I remembered the fish being quite decent. Thankfully my pudding was actually warm this time round.

The crossing from Dunkirk being longer, I'd brought my laptop onboard, so while RJ read I first tried to take advantage of the free wifi, but finding it unusably slow gave up and instead used these blog posts to try to calculate how many rides we'd done in each park. From my mental arithmetic, I reckon we managed to take 200 rides over the two weeks, which is an average of 20 per park. Not bad at all.

In case anyone cares, in order of number of rides (including shows) done in that park, our scoreboard goes like this:

1. 34 rides at Heide Park (1.5 days)
2. 31 rides at Efteling (1.5 days)

3=. 25 rides at Europa Park

3=. 25 rides at Bobbejaanland

5. 24 rides at Hansa Park

6. 20 rides at Phantasialand

7. 12 rides at Movie Park

8. 11 rides at Parc Asterix

9=. 9 rides at Disney Studios (1/2 day)

9=. 9 rides at Disneyland Park (1/2 day)

Second week parks score highly as it was much quieter, so we spent less time in queues and more time riding. Asterix was our busiest park and the one with the longest queues so unsurprisingly it's at the bottom (the Disney parks being only half a day visit each). This also says nothing about the quality...

On reaching Dover we headed back to London. Traffic crossing the Thames looked pretty awful no matter which way we went - there was an accident at the Dartford Crossing causing tailbacks on the M25 to the M20 junction, and the Blackwall Tunnel was its usual congested self. We went via the latter, and spent a good half hour or so shuffling forward a few metres every minute or two, which wasn't a huge amount of fun. Once on the other side, traffic was better, so we were able to pop up the A12 to deliver RJ to Essex, then back down again for me to unload and park my poor belagured Fiesta up, nearly 2000 miles after we began.

Tomorrow morning I have no alarm set, and my washing machine is working overtime to clear the backlog of laundry I've accumulated over the trip. I also have a ton of photos to upload, so it's going to be a busy one! Almost wishing I'd booked Monday as an extra day off!

Look out for a few bonus posts over the next few days (if I have time to write them) giving a bigger overview of the trip!

Europe Road Trip: Day 14 - Bobbejaanland

Our last park of the trip today - Belgium's Bobbejaanland - which was founded by Belgian singer Bobbejaan Schoepen in the sixties (becoming an amusement park in 1975). It was never going to hold a candle to Efteling's glorious landscaping and theming, but we were somewhat surprised to find it a rather odd experience overall.

On arrival we discovered to our shock that park maps were on sale for €2 each, rather than being given away freely like every other park on our trip. This started us off on a sour note. Something that also didn't help was the staggered opening of park rides. After gates opening at 10am, a selection of rides opened at 15 minute intervals for the next hour. Opening times were only publicised on a couple of screens around the park, which meant the first time we came across a closed ride we simply assumed it was broken!

In any park we visited where we had no flagship ride to head for, we would usually pick the first visible rollercoaster, and this turned out to be Typhoon. Built by Gerstlauer in the early 2000s as their second ever Eurofighter, this was very minimally-themed, if by being themed at all you count putting a name sign above its vertical loop. It was unusual because it was pretty smooth and didn't bang our heads around as much as we'd expected. Another unusual aspect of the ride, which was replicated throughout the park, was that the photo counter was self-service. You put €5 in a vending machine, entered the photo code from the preview screens, and then in a minute or so your photo popped out. However, the quality wasn't amazing - what you basically got was a snap that looked like it had been developed in Boots in the 90s!

Behind the coaster we spotted the supports for the giant frisbee ride Sledgehammer. However as we approached it we discovered it was closed - at this point we still hadn't twigged the staggered opening hours - so carried on round to the bizarrely-named Adventure Valley (there was no valley) where we thought we'd take a look at their indoor coaster Mount Mara/Revolution. Unfortunately after joining a queue for it, a member of staff appeared to say the coaster wasn't working and that maintenance had been called, so we should go to another ride. It was at this point we found the screen showing the list of ride opening times.

Outside was one of the park's more unique rides - King Kong. In this ride you sit inside a carriage, over which towers a gigantic ape figure. This lifts you up in the air and shakes you around, tilting from side to side. I can't say it's the most exciting white knuckle ride in the world but I've never seen anything else quite like it!

By the lakeside we found the Maurer Sohne spinning coaster Dizz. At least, it's meant to be a spinning coaster - our car barely spun at all. Since it was a quiet day, many of the coasters were running reduced numbers of trains - in the case of Dizz and Typhoon it seemed to be two, which was a little stingy given the Dizz cars only carry 4 people. The ride was all right but we'd both been on much better spinners.

Looking for something a little more adventurous we crossed over to the rapids ride, El Rio. This used flexible boats similar to those on River Quest at Phantasialand. It was actually quite a decent rapids ride, with a whirlpool section similar to River Quest (I haven't checked, but I'd not be surprised if they were from the same manufacturer!) We got a little splashed but not majorly wet. A unique feature I'd not seen before came right after the station - the ride had a ferris wheel style boat lift that would lift the boats up and deposit them onto a chute to slide back down into the water. Unfortunately it was obvious by the plants growing at the bottom of its chute that it hadn't been used in quite some time - a little research when we got back told me it had only worked for the first two years due to being unreliable and also a liability when it came to emergency evacuation. Shame, as it looked quite interesting.

Next door was another surprising coaster. Speedy Bob was a pretty standard Wild Mouse coaster, the same type we've ridden multiple times on this trip. However, this was almost comfortable. The bends were sharp and fast but not rib-achingly painful and other than the final set, the brakes didn't try to slam your nipples into the ground. Unsurprisingly the photo counter was closed for this ride.

Across the way, we had a quick slide down Big Bang (a 4-lane dinghy slide, same as Depth Charge at Thorpe and the one we did at Hansa Park), followed by our second biggest queue of the day, for Dreamcatcher. This is a Vekoma suspended coaster, using trains very similar to those on the Vampire at Chessington. Unlike a standard inverted coaster the 2-seater cars can swing from side to side as the ride goes round corners, which can be fun. As it was a quiet day they were only running one train so the queue was a little slow, but unlike many of the other rides they'd at least made an attempt at theming it, with some tents and fountains. The ride itself was OK, but nothing to write home about. It looked like it was meant to have fountains underneath the track, but they weren't active so it looked more like a stagnant pond.

Walking around the bottom end of the park's lake, we passed the children's indoor playground and ended up at the family coaster Okidoki. This was quite fast and fun, and a decent little family ride. Just past it was a ride I'd not even noticed, but that RJ had found on the map - Indiana River. This was an indoor log flume, the first one of those we'd tried. It was slightly daunting seeing how wet the boat we were getting into already was, but it turned out to not be that bad, and the theming was actually quite nice for a dark ride, especially by this park's standards.

Further up was the Bob Express (a lot of things in this park are called Bob!) which was one of the ubiquitous Mack powered mine trains. Unlike the others we'd been on, this was a particularly long track, which interacted with the Wildwaterbaan log flume to go up and over mountains and circle the lake. The only downside was that a group of children riding had decided to see how much they could scream, and the result was earsplitting. After the statutory two circuits of the track we were glad to get off and leave them to it!

Opposite, we took a trip round the El Paso laser shooting ride. The frontage of this looked rather temporary and dated, like something you'd find at a seaside funfair. You boarded some flimsy 4-seater cars and had a lightweight laser gun each. Unlike other rides of this type we'd been on, there seemed no way to tell where your gun was pointing, nor whether or not you'd scored, and there was no score readout on the vehicles. You had to note your car number and wait til the end of the ride where they were listed on a screen. Needless to say, we didn't do very well, though RJ beat me by quite a way in terms of score!

While still damp from the Indiana River we went onto the Wildwaterbaan log flume - the big difference between the two being that this one was more conventionally situated outdoors over a lake. The drops on this were unusual, in that you seemed to glide along the bottom horizontally for quite some way before any splash was generated.

A quick browse in the gift shop by the entrance failed to turn up any sort of t-shirt that I'd a) actually buy, or b) even existed in adult sizes! RJ got his pin badge but for the first time this trip, I didn't buy anything at all!

Back round to the Adventure Valley we went to have a look at the Forbidden Caves. I didn't have high hopes for this as the map just showed it as a sort of trail around some bushes, but actually that was just the queue line, and the ride itself was much, much better. A "tour guide" takes a group of you into a room and talks at you for a bit, mostly in Dutch but also with a French translation so I was able to work out what he wanted us to do. We were all to move into the lift which would take us down to the Forbidden Caves themselves, to join some expedition thing.

The lift was one of those theme park effects where you stand in a room with a vibrating floor and some sound effects, but to be fair to them they'd made a bit of extra effort by putting in some spinning pulleys in the corners so it did look like it was winching you down the shaft. At the "bottom" we emerged into a batching area where we were divided into rows of 6. This was probably the first point at which we realised it was an actual ride rather than a walkthrough! Instructions appeared on screens above us in Dutch, German and (thankfully) French, so I could work out what we had to do to board. The last thing mentioned was that we needed our "protective glasses" - so this was evidently a 3D experience! Compared to the low-tech efforts in the rest of the park this was a pleasant surprise!

The doors opened and we boarded a vehicle on a track, which moved forward into a simulator room where the wraparound screens and vehicle movements made it an immersive experience and actually a lot more fun than I'd have expected! One thing I only realised after writing this is that despite having been told we were going 20 storeys down in the lift, there was no such conceit to get us out of the caves, so quite how we then emerged at ground level I've no idea...

Back in the main building we joined the queue for the now-opened Mount Mara, which was nudging past the 30 minutes wait line. This was their new VR coaster experience. Their existing Revolution indoor coaster had a split purpose - you joined its queue to ride it normally, or the Mount Mara queue to ride with a Samsung VR headset on giving a completely different ride. Throughput was limited because although the ride cars could hold two people, the VR system could only cope with one person per car (or more likely, they only had one set of headsets!)

It was actually quite fun, but suffered from the graphics being similarly low quality to those on Galactica at Alton Towers, so you had the feeling you were in a 90s computer game rather than anything particularly modern. It's a cute idea but I have a sneaking feeling it's a passing fad.

After this we were very hungry so went to find lunch. Ideally I wanted something that wasn't just "x with fries", but after completing a whole loop of the park we couldn't find anything that met that brief, worryingly. So in the end we gave in, RJ had a hot dog and I had something mysterious that looked like a battered sausage, but contained the sort of stuff you used to get in a chicken nugget before they decided to actually use real meat.

To calm down after lunch we went on the obligatory chairswing, Kettingmolen, then walked through some rather pretty gardens and around to Sledgehammer, which had finally opened. It was a decent enough ride, though in my view nowhere near long enough, and I preferred Maelstrom at Drayton Manor. It wasn't bad enough to stop us going round for another go, though!

Back at Typhoon we thought we'd have another go, and this time, having worked out where the camera was, bought ourselves the on-ride photo from the automatic machine. To calm down after the excitement I persuaded RJ to come onto the garden boat ride Bootvaart, which similar to the one we did at Hansa Park was a calm water ride through pretty gardens. Somehow RJ still managed to get splashed by a fountain, I've no idea how!

We next went back to Adventure Valley to re-ride the indoor coaster, this time in its Revolution guise without headsets. Something I didn't mention earlier was the extreme length of this coaster's train. It may have only been running one train but it was 30 carriages long! That would mean at full capacity it could handle 60 people per cycle, which is insane! The ride itself began with a long spiral lift hill around the outside of the building with light and projection effects, followed by a fast twisty descent. I found I actually enjoyed this version more than that with the VR, plus the queue was a lot shorter!

Going more old-school, in the cowboy town at the bottom of the park we had a go on the Horse Pedalo. This is pretty much what you'd expect - a horse-themed car with two seats and pedals (and a brake!) that you power around a monorail track. It was good old fashioned fun! Speaking of which, next to it was De Aztek Express, where you sit in cars on a circular undulating track, around which you rotate first forwards and then backwards. It was surprisingly fast!

We finished off the day with a second ride on Dreamcatcher (this time in the front row with no queue - the latter being a good thing, the former less so (great view but you got your head banged every time the rest of the train hadn't caught up with you yet!), then another trip round Revolution and finally a swing on Sledgehammer.

After paying the quite steep €8 parking, we headed back to the B&B, which our sat nav managed to make extra exciting by taking us down a road we weren't actually allowed to be on (apparently it was cycles only in the direction we were headed, or at least that's what I guessed from the reactions of drivers coming the other way!) Ah, Belgium.

Tomorrow will basically be a drive to the port, a boat, and the drive home, so I bet you can't wait for that one!

Europe Road Trip: Day 13 - Efteling

As with our time at Heide Park, I don't propose to repeat too much of yesterday's descriptions for rides we'd already tried, but there were plenty of new experiences for today!

We started off with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. This was the usual buffet type affair with the added magic of a number of fairytale characters circling the room. Down one end was a table of cereal, yogurt, fruit and juices. At the other, baskets of bread, trays of bacon and eggs, pastries and bread, and most excitingly, cake! While RJ took his customary scrambled egg on toast, I had a bacon sandwich followed by a croissant, a pain au chocolat, two very nice pancakes, a doughnut and a pink iced fairy cake with a princess on top, because of course I am a sparkly breakfast princess!

It turned out we could get a discount on the park's photo pass (6 photos for €25) if we bought it at the hotel, so we did; we also booked tickets to the Ravelejin show that afternoon, without really knowing what it'd be about. More on that later...

Into the park itself for early ride time, our first stop was right inside the hotel entrance - the indoor rollercoaster Vogel Rok. The fascia of this ride building featured an enormous roc bird, and the ride itself was themed around it. As you zoomed through the dark various bird-themed theming illuminated around you. It was good but quite short in comparison to other indoor coasters we'd ridden recently.

Across the way was the themed teacups type ride, Monsieur Cannibale. It instantly won "best soundtrack of the day" by using the Sacha Distel song of the same name, which is very very catchy and jolly, even if the theming of the ride itself is somewhat contentious - apparently there'd been complaints in the press previously about its racial sterotyping! The cups were themed as cooking pots - hence the name - and were so stiff they were almost impossible to spin, so we just sat back and enjoyed the music!

Further down was the third of our early ride time attractions - Spookslot. I had no real idea what to expect from this, as all we knew was that it was some sort of haunted attraction. It turned out to be something very Efteling. After entering the attraction building through what look like dark caves, you come to two large doors in the rock. When they open you make your way into a split-level viewing gallery with large glass windows at the front. We were the only two visitors at this point so we had the luxury of the whole attraction to ourself.

The actual attraction is a vast animatronic spooky scene, set to pieces of music including Danse Macabre. Ghosts fly around, a body hangs from a rope, and the dead try to climb out of their graves. It's very nicely done (especially when you consider its age) and I enjoyed it. A word I used a lot today was "charming" - this definitely was, and it's not often you say that about a haunted attraction.

By this point the rest of the park had opened, so we headed over to Baron 1898 before the queues built up. The park was quiet as you'd expect for an off-peak weekday; however as the newest thrill ride it was always going to be the one with the biggest possibility as a queue. Luckily we had no problems with that, and ended up queuing for front row. The ride was just as enjoyable as yesterday, and photo number 1 was checked off.

Around the corner we revisited the George and the Dragon duelling wooden coasters and took a ride on each, before deciding we liked the Water Dragon side more than the Fire one. It coincidentally seemed that the Water Dragon won nearly every race. To our surprise, the photo counter here wasn't open, so no picture for us. We then went to Python and again the photo counter was closed. At this point we began to worry that our bargain photopass was going to prove useless.

Thankfully at the Flying Dutchman we had an excellent ride (if quite wet), and their photo counter was open. I asked the attendant if the other coasters' kiosks would be opening today and he confirmed they would but only for the middle hours of the day when it was busiest. We noted this and moved on.

Behind the Python was the area we visited yesterday with the pirate ship Halve Maen. Before we re-rode that, we had a go on Polka Marina, a giant Seastorm ride. This looked more exciting from the ground, as once we were on the ride we discovered it wasn't particularly fast. Luckily we got end seats on the pirate ship which made up for it. I was tempted by the car ride in the background but it had a queue, so instead we headed back to the coasters to see if we could get our photos yet.

Thankfully both counters had now opened so we re-rode Python and both Dragons before heading further into the park. Now that the sun had come out we fancied trying the rapids, but on the way there we passed the entrance to the Swiss Bob, and thought we'd give it a go.

In keeping with the theme of today, this turned out to be not quite what we'd expected. At least half the parks we'd visited so far had had a Mack Bobsled coaster, and our expectation here was the same. However, it turned out to be a different design entirely, made by Intamin and using single 6-seater cars rather than the train of 2-seater cars the Mack ride has. The track itself was smoother and had steeper drops than the helices and turns of the Mack. Unfortunately the extra speed meant it was quite jolty and uncomfortable to ride, and in the scheme of things I don't think I preferred it.

Moving on to Piraña, the rapids ride, we passed straight through a large cattlepen queue, thankfully not needed today, and up into the ride station building. This brought you out onto the customary turntable where we had a 6-seater boat to ourselves. The ride itself was good fun, especially when we were overtaken by another boat which then caused us both to get jammed at a point where the flume narrowed. It took two other boats bumping into the back of us both to get them to move through the gap and let us follow. They then proceeded to draw all the water effects at them meaning they got soaked and we didn't. Unfortunately I was so distracted by this that I didn't look at the camera. Which meant we had to go round again...

Our second go had no traffic jams but got us a lot wetter - an enormous wave splashed my back, while RJ caught a similar amount from a waterfall. Still, we got the photo!

As we dried off it felt like it was time for lunch. Yesterday I'd spotted the park's pancake restaurant (well, we were in the Netherlands!) and TripAdvisor rated it very highly, so I'd suggested we go there. The weather was lovely so we sat outside to eat - I ordered a ham and cheese pancake while RJ ordered a ham one. It was only after eating about a quarter of it that he admitted he wasn't actually keen on pancakes, and wasn't enjoying this at all. I had a bit of his to help out, and suggested that once I'd finished he could pick up food elsewhere, which he later did.

We had a nice wander round the shops next. Unlike a lot of the parks we'd visited, Efteling doesn't have a lot of gift shops. Individual ride exit shops were pretty much unheard of, and there were only a few souvenir shops in the place. The one we visited was next to the park's collection of classic carousels, and featured ornamental models of the fairytale exhibits we visited in the afternoon, as well as general park merchandise. I bought myself a park sweatshirt (they didn't do much in the way of t-shirts) as well as some sweets for gifts. RJ was more interested in another shop that specialised in pin badges. It had a display case on the wall with examples and details of all the different pin badges the park had produced in the last 15-20 years. He managed to get himself both a park badge and a Baron 1898 one as well.

The afternoon was a lot less adrenaline-filled than the morning. Our first proper ride was Villa Volta, the park's madhouse attraction. We'd seen 3 or 4 of these so far on the trip, but this was by far the best thanks to its theming and soundtrack. I gleaned bits of the storyline from a poster in English outside, but in the pre-show all the narration was in Dutch so we didn't really know what was going on. The decoration of the ride chamber was excellent, though, and contained some really nifty little details that made it so much more fun.

Across the way was Droomvlucht (Dream Flight), which reminded me somewhat of Peter Pan's Flight from Disneyworld. By the looks of the horrifically large cattlepen queue area, it gets wait times rivalling its American second cousin twice removed - I'd really not like to be in the park on a day when they manage to fill that up! The ride itself was all right for kids but not amazing - you board 3-seater suspended carriages that run in pairs from an overhead rail. You're then taken through a series of animatronic scenes, with the carriages turning to face different aspects of them. The final scene takes you down a spiral track rather quicker than the rest of the ride, but it really left us cold, despite me really wanting to like it.

What I really did like was the Sprookjesbos (Fairytale Forest) - rather than being a ride this is a signposted path through the woods, where every now and again you come across a picturesque scene from a popular fairytale, with a précis translated into 4 languages so that you get the idea of the story. Scenes included walk through houses (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty), static props (Long Neck, the Little Mermaid), and animatronics (the Dragon, the Emperor's New Clothes). It was all absolutely charmingly done, and well-maintained - the effects work and everything was looked-after, which made a nice change from the sort of parks where something like that would be left to rot after a few years.

This took up a large chunk of the afternoon so by the time we'd finished it was time for the Ravelejin show. Again, we had no idea what to expect as we entered the outdoor theatre. We collected a set of earphones and an audio translation box on the way in, but this proved to be useless as the English translation played at the same time as the Dutch audio in the theatre so was utterly inaudible, which was a shame as it meant we had no real idea what the storyline was.

There seemed to be something with a lady who did falconry, then five modernly-dressed friends come in looking for someone. They disappear through a gate and come back on horseback in a sort of armour. They're then attacked by some bad guys who appear from a pond, and there's some sword-fighting and stunt horse riding. Then a huge animatronic fire-breathing 5-headed creature pops up and then for some reason the bad guy is vanquished and goes back to his pond and the friends find the guy they're seeking and probably all live happily ever after. Well, I did say I couldn't follow the storyline. RJ described it as being something like a medieval Power Rangers.

After the show, we thought we'd visit one of the attractions we'd not yet done, Fata Morgana. However, on arriving at its entrance we found it closed for renovation. To make up for this we headed back to one of our favourites - the Water Dragon. Here we found a slightly longer queue than usual, which turned out to be due to them now only running a single train on each track, for some reason.

Afterwards we had a quick spin round Baron 1898 in the front row again, before our final ride of the day, the Carnaval Festival dark ride. This was like a cross between the Haunted Mansion and It's A Small World rides at Disney, with echoes of Toyland Tours at Alton Towers. The ride itself was an omnimover system, running through colourful scenes depicting stereotypes of the different countries of the world (including for some reason a quite extended section on Japan and nothing at all on North America). I can't say it's something we'd particularly have wanted to wait in line for!

Finally it was back to the front of the park for the Aquanura fountain show we'd watched the previous night. This was again excellent and we enjoyed it just as much as the first time round. On the way out of the park we had a very tasty pizza each from the stand just inside the entrance, which did nicely for dinner.

From the park it was then time to head to our final hotel of the trip, a B&B about 40 minutes away in Belgium. Google Maps sent us down a road that seemed to be mostly full of tractors, and in a low-key way this led us into Belgium. We had our B&B's address programmed in, but when we turned up at the location indicated we couldn't see it. RJ got out to walk around and look at house numbers in case there was no sign, while I rang the B&B to find out if they could direct us. In the end the owner came out in her car to find us (having apparently had a neighbour who'd driven past us ring her and ask "are you expecting some English people, as I think they're lost?") and brought us in.

The B&B is very nice - the rooms are modern and enormous and the owner was very friendly. After a shower I sorted out my laundry and souvenirs ready for our last park tomorrow and the journey home! Sad to think it's nearly the end of our trip!

Europe Road Trip: Day 12 - Lübeck to Efteling

The end of the holiday is fast approaching - after today we have two more parks on our itinerary. Today, however, is a driving day, at least mostly.

We eschewed the quite frankly expensive breakfast at the hotel and instead popped to the bakery next door where we purchased some croissants, as well as some rolls for lunch. We then visited Netto, both to purchase some ham and cheese to make our lunchtime sandwiches and to deposit our empty plastic bottles in a whizzy machine - the deposit refunds from which saved us €1.50 on our purchases.

Back at the hotel we checked out and got on the road. It was a very long road, leading us from the north of Germany over to the Netherlands, and not much that was interesting happened. RJ and I switched driving duties every hour or so.

There were a couple of long stretches of roadworks, including one fairly hair-raising contraflow where the outside lane was barely much wider than the car, and with lorries on the inside lane often right up to the line and a fixed metal barrier on the other side, it took severe concentration to get through it, especially when said lorries were a bit wobbly. Cruise control definitely helped here - fewer things to concentrate on.

I was also surprised that what seemed to be one of the major east-west routes across the country was only a 2-lane motorway. With the inside lane an almost constant stream of lorries there was a great deal of congestion every time one overtook, and traffic in the opposite direction had several large jams - thankfully our side managed to avoid this on the most part.

Our lunch stop was taken shortly before the border into the Netherlands, where I decided to fill up with fuel. This proved to be a good decision - petrol in Germany turned out to be around 30¢ per litre cheaper! Roads in the Netherlands were much the same as the German ones, even down to the road signs being similar. Despite varying amounts of congestion we made decent time and eventually arrived at Efteling around 4pm.

The park itself was open til 6pm, and the friendly receptionist at the hotel gave us our 2-day tickets along with our room keys. The room is rather more luxurious than the Ibis we stayed in yesterday, with two double beds, a large wardrobe and a bathroom with an actual bath!

Having dropped our bags in the room we proceeded out to explore the park. The hotel guest gate brought you into the park in the middle of a kids' play area. We took a path through the woods to see what we'd find. On the lake in front of us were some boats, and in the distance we could see rollercoaster tracks. The first ride we came across, however, was a rather large and detailed pirate ship. Of course we had to have a go on that!

The next stop was something rather familiar - a Vekoma steel coaster, with an identical layout and colour scheme to that of Big Loop at Heide Park. In this case it was called Python, and it had one key difference - the trains (vinyled with a snakeskin design) had had new restraints fitted, similar to those used on B&M flying and wing coasters, where you are held in by neoprene straps and have wider-spaced bars to hang onto should you wish. This made it a much less uncomfortable ride, as you had nothing to bash your head against and were held in securely in the twists. The ride was popular - even on this off-peak day they were running both its trains full.

Moving along, we found the GCI wooden duelling coaster Joris en de Draak (George & the Dragon) and just had to have a go. It has two tracks - Water Dragon and Fire Dragon. Trains are released simultaneously and race around the track, with the winning train getting its banner unfurled both at the winning post and in the station. We rode Water Dragon first, and had our second surprise of the day - unlike some of the wooden coasters we'd ridden on this trip it wasn't rough at all. There was none of the horizontal slamming into corners that we'd had on rides like Bandit. The only annoyance was the seemingly pointless seatbelt you had to wear, which went across both riders - there were individual lap bars as well, so the belt seemed redundant! We went back round and rode the Fire Dragon, which lost its race (I didn't notice which won on the first circuit!) Outside the ride was an enormous animatronic dragon, which was a very nice touch.

The water coaster De Vliegende Hollander was nearby, and we'd seen its main drop from the previous ride. The entry way was through an imposing themed building full of barrels and rope, as well as a sailors' bar. You make your way through the queueline into a double-sided station, where 16-seat boats load and unload on one of two platforms, which made throughput pretty rapid. The boats were heavily themed as old wooden vessels, with a lantern on the front. This proved very useful as we went through the indoor dark section thick with fog, before being surrounded by stormy weather effects as we approached and ascended the lift hill. At the top, doors opened exposing us to the daylight outside, and we dropped onto a section of rollercoaster track which circuited an area behind the ride building before taking us up to a block brake in a tower structure. We knew what was coming now - a drop down towards the lake, and over a small bunny-hop into the water, with a light splashing similar to that on a log flume. The boat then made a leisurely circuit of the lake and back into the station. Interestingly the boats were at no point actually floating - they ran on a track on all the water sections!

The final ride we got in before the end of the day was the park's newest coaster - Baron 1898. This is a B&M Dive Machine, very similar to Krake at Heide Park, but heavily themed around a mine. In the batching area of the queue you're given a paper ticket to signify your gate and row number, and sent up to the bag drop, and from there you wait outside the appropriate gate for the pre-show. This takes place in a round room where, in the centre, a recorded message from the mine owner, which is interrupted by a warning from ghostly figures known as the White Ladies. You then proceed to the main station building, where a ride host takes your tickets and lines you up at the correct door for your row.

The station building itself is a high-ceilinged Victorian factory type affair. You board the ride shuttle, which like Krake has 3 rows of 6 seats, and are then taken forward into a room where projections of the White Ladies fly around the walls and music plays. From there it's onto the nicely-themed lift hill, and up to the top where as is customary on this type of coaster you're held for 3 or 4 seconds over a the misty mouth of the mineshaft, before being dropped vertically into it. The ride then goes through an outdoor section including two inversions, before returning to the station. The outdoor section feels longer than that on Krake, and despite it having a smaller drop the theming is very good and overall it felt rather nicely done. The orchestral soundtrack added to the ride experience.

By this point it was now 6pm, closing time, but there was one more thing to experience. At the end of each day, Efteling put on a fountain show on their large lake, involving lights, water and fire effects. We found ourselves a spot by the water's edge and settled down to enjoy. Which we did. A lot. It was very nicely done - the whole thing lasted around 15-20 minutes, with fountains and lights timed to various pieces of familiar classical music, and it was spectacular. We'll definitely be back to watch that one again tomorrow!

After a quick browse in the (now heaving) gift shop, we headed back through the park to the hotel guests' exit and up to our room, where we attempted to decide what to have for dinner. The hotel restaurant didn't have the world's largest menu, which was proving a bit of an issue for RJ who wasn't overly taken by any of the choices.

In the end, as we didn't really want to go back in the car again, we stuck with it. I ordered a rather nice Sea Bream dish while he took the Satay Chicken but swapped out the sides for potatoes and ketchup. We finished off with the dessert named "Chocolate", which was for some reason served in a large bowl with a whisk. It comprised a large amount of chocolate mousse, a scoop of chocolate ice cream, some chocolate brownie chunks, some curls of dark chocolate and some strawberries. I think the menu said it was meant to have caramel sauce as well, but I didn't notice any. Either way, it was rather tasty.

Back in the room, I ran a bath. Or rather, I put the bath on to fill, and about half an hour later it had finally got to ankle-deep - the tap wasn't the fastest thing in the world. However, a nice bubbly soak listening to the News Quiz on iPlayer was a pleasant way to relax!

Europe Road Trip: Day 11 - Hansa Park

When we planned this holiday we made a general rule that we shouldn't be driving more than an hour or so either before or after a park on any given day. Today was a small exception as we were travelling about 150km, which took just over an hour and a half with traffic, so let it slide. After a slightly lighter breakfast than yesterday's carb-a-thon (one croissant, one pancake and one bacon and sausage roll) we packed up and headed out on the road, first cleaning off a layer of tree sap drops that had settled on the windscreen.

Arriving at Hansa Park was slightly underwhelming, as the car park is the other side of a busy road from the park itself. You end up going up an escalator onto the overbridge and back down the other side, like entering some sort of 1990s shopping mall. It's then a bit of a clash to suddenly approach the large brick-built turrets that make up the park entry gates. Unlike the other parks we've visited on the trip there's no big gateline - just a couple of members of staff stood either side of the entrance with handheld scanners, plus a couple of friendly security guards checking bags for alcohol and weapons (!)

Once inside the layout is slightly unusual. There's the normal street of shopfronts that most parks present, but once past that you're somewhat on your own. We enquired about park maps and were told that there were none available. On asking around later we discovered that due to some sort of printing error they'd been withdrawn awaiting a new batch. In the meantime we were left to work out our way around the park using only the variable-quality signage and the occasional map poster. What didn't help is that many ride entrances don't seem to have signs, so you can join a queue and not necessarily be sure what it was for!

We started by walking into the first ride entrance we saw - for an indoor ride called "Space Scooter", with no idea what was inside. The theming made it look like some sort of indoor coaster, based on our experiences in other parks, but it turned out actually to be a large indoor dodgems arena. We were the only two people in it, and so there were empty cars dotted all over. We thus discovered the fun game of "Dodgem Tennis", where you bump an empty car into the other driver's path. After a fairly long chase our time was up and we moved on.

Around the corner, in a maze of unmarked paths, we found a good old fashioned Schwarzkopf steel looping coaster, Nessie. For its age (it was older than me!) it was nice and smooth, other than the brake run inside the monster's mouth which was pretty vicious, and bafflingly lit with flashing strobe lights for no particular reason. Entwined with this coaster was Rasender Roland, a Vekoma family coaster. Smaller and newer than Nessie it was still pretty rough, if mildly exciting.

Moving deeper into the park we came across Fliegender Hai, an inverter ship ride. Facing inwards the gondola is spun 360 degrees in different directions for a bit, until you get a bit dizzy. Staggering around the corner we came across an area themed as a Red Indian camp, and straight out again in front of the wild mouse ride, Crazy Mine. This is the exact same model of ride as the Rattlesnake at Chessington, and no more comfortable to ride.

The station layout was bizarre - oncoming riders were told to place their bags on the opposite platform, but the way the barriers were placed meant that there was no actual access to it, other than to climb into the car behind the one you were boarding and throw your bags diagonally over the edge! The ride itself was as painful as you might expect, despite the smiles in the ride photos.

Across from this was something utterly huge. The second tallest rollercoaster in Europe - Der Schwur des Kärnan (the Oath of Karnan, apparently). This is a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster (similar model to The Smiler at Alton Towers, but a massively different track layout. The theming was still being completed at the time of our visit, so the enormous tower containing the ride's lift hill and main drop was an unpainted grey box which reminded me somewhat of the Rugby Cement buildings back home.

I'm not going to say what happens during the ride as it's one of those ones where it's so much more fun when you don't know. Let's just say it's very fast and a lot of fun, and the interior theming is spot on. I particularly liked the batching area for the station - you line up in 4 rows of 4 people inside a circular room with many doors. A series of flashing lights then occur, then one row illuminates, as does a symbol above one of the doors. People in that row then go through the lit door to board the train. It means that you have no idea which row of the train you'll be assigned, as they seem to be set randomly.

One problem we had was that we were the last ones into the batching room, and in front were two groups of 4 and two groups of 3, meaning the only two remaining seats were in separate rows. This meant getting a photo was pretty much impossible, and would have been a rubbish picture anyway as we had no idea where the camera was (it takes you by surprise!) As such we went back round again for a second ride - thankfully the park was very quiet so there was no real queue to worry about!

Behind the ride was a raft ride similar to Storm Surge at Thorpe and the Oxygenarium at Parc Asterix - the ones where you ride down a twisting track in what's essentially a paddling pool with seats. Again, the park being quiet helped us walk straight on to a boat to ourselves, and once up the rather fast lift hill we were soon swooshing down, though not spinning much as we'd stupidly sat at opposite ends of the boat so it was too balanced to do much. At the bottom we overtook some people whose boat had stalled in the wave pool (but they got moving again eventually) and managed to dodge the water cannons on the way back into the station!

Next to this was one of the oddest rides I've ever seen. Called Die Glocke (the bell) it's... well, a giant bell. The clapper had six seats facing outwards around it, and the whole contraption swung like a Frisbee/Afterburner ride (sadly without ringing sound effects). In the path of the bell's swings were some fountains that rose and fell along with the ride's movements, but not high enough to hit the riders. It was a lot of fun, and utterly bizarre. From the ride we could see the corn maze that had been constructed for the park's halloween events, though not open at the time of our visit.

Around the corner from these rides was the Spanish area of the park, which rose up to a viewing area overlooking the park's holiday lodges, and behind them the Baltic Sea. We'd almost forgotten that we were beside the seaside, and although that area of coastline won't win any awards for beauty, it was still quite calming. The sun had come out by this point so I lotioned up to ensure I wasn't going to burn. We'd noted that during this trip we'd probably spent more time out in the sun than most people do on beach holidays! I seem to be acquiring quite the tan on areas not covered by my shorts and t-shirt, so would look very odd topless!

Continuing to work our way round the park we encountered their Huss pirate ship, Fliegender Holländer (literally Flying Dutchman, I believe) which was good fun as they usually are - pretty much exactly the same model as The Blade at Alton Towers. This was situated in a pretty area of gardens which we returned to later. On the way out of that area we walked through an underpass, along the walls of which were a series of "hall of mirrors" style... er... mirrors. We had a good few minutes taking rubbish photos of ourselves in them, though I had to be dragged away from the one that made me look several stone thinner...

Our last ride before lunch was Fluch von Novgorod, the park's Gerstlauer Eurofighter coaster. We joined the front row queue in the station, and immediately the ride was stopped and a couple of engineers climbed down onto the track and wandered off into the ride. We could hear intermittent hammering, and hoped that whatever they were doing they'd remember to put it back together when they'd finished! The ride operator came over and announced something to the queue - our guess was something along the lines of "we should be open again in about 10 minutes but we advise you to go do something else", however nobody moved so we didn't either.

Eventually whatever problem there was was fixed and we got onto the ride. The first section was like a mini dark ride, with scenes involving an opera-singing Viking for some reason, and then the ride proper began. As with Kärnan, I'm not going to tell you what happens, but it was great, and this was RJ's favourite ride in the park. The theming was again spot on (they'd actually finished it on this one!) - the exit was confusing though - you choose between two routes and follow a maze of passages until you get to a door with something written on it in German. Eventually you end up in (where else but) the gift shop!

It was definitely time for lunch now - not wanting burgers again led us round to the Cowboy town area (I'm not sure if there were official names for the areas, but as I said, the signage was quite poor and the maps non-existent.) There RJ got himself a hot dog and I went for a "grilled pork neck steak" which turned out to be a skewer of pork, and was a rather nice change from the usual fast food. A wasp tried to have some of my Diet Coke, realised there was no sugar in it and flew off to bother someone else, thankfully.

After lunch we did our traditional round of the water rides. The Wildwasserfahrt was a short but damp log flume with two drops, and next door the Super Splash was a single large drop water flume which didn't get you as wet as it looked, despite RJ's worries (I don't like drop towers, he doesn't like getting wet!)

This brought us back to the front of the park, so we had a quick browse around the gift shop (I got myself a t-shirt - I need to work out how many I've bought so far this trip!) and then went to fill in some of the rides we'd missed on our first round. Wellenreiter was a spinning ride with spinning cars on the end of arms, and was placed somewhat close to the dodgems building (you could have reached out and touched the walls at some points!) Worryingly as the ride slowed to a stop it felt like it scraped along the floor - later when we walked past it was closed for maintenance, so who knows?

Barracuda Slide was the same type of water slide ride as Depth Charge at Thorpe Park, though unlike Depth Charge it's very manual - you have to load your own boats and return them at the bottom of the hill! Those boats are pretty heavy - I've no idea how children manage as it took me both hands!

Barracuda was right next to Kärnan, so we had another go on that. Somehow, with no communication between us, we both opted to do a bored expression for the camera, so the on-ride photo came out hilariously - even though we'd already got one we just had to have another! The other people in the carriage seemed to enjoy it too! I got myself a Kärnan t-shirt and also a CD of the soundtrack which I enjoyed (another IMAScore production!)

Back into the pretty gardens, I persuaded RJ to come onto the river boat ride through the flowers, Blumenmeer Bootsfahrt. He wasn't impressed. It was nice and relaxing and the flowers were pretty though. He soon got over it when we went back for a second run on Fluch von Novgorod!

To calm down from that, we had a quiet ride on the Holstein Turm, an observation tower which gave a great view across the park and out to sea. Slightly closer to earth, the obligatory chair swing ride was good fun. Since we were now back at the entrance it seemed a good opportunity to ride Nessie again, front row this time.

Heading back across the park, we were aiming for Die Schlange von Midgard, a family coaster themed around a dragon. On the way there, however, we discovered a rope ferry and just had to use it! The coaster itself was decent fun - it had been as extensively themed as its big brothers, and included a dark ride scene before the lift hill. You get two circuits of the track, which was nice.

The final ride we'd not done was Pow Wow, the teacups style ride. Bizarrely this was one where you couldn't take your bags on with you! But it was smooth and easy to turn so I may have overdone it a bit on the spinning - as we disembarked our vision was still swirling before our eyes! Luckily a quick slam around Crazy Mine managed to knock things back into view.

At this point we decided to pop down for one more go on Rio Dorado and Die Glocke, before it was time to head to this evening's hotel. Half an hour's drive from the park we'd booked a room in the Ibis in Lubeck, the nearest big town. We were a bit too tired to go out and eat, so RJ found a takeway place 2 doors down from the hotel where we could order online and pick up. We both went for the chicken (I felt I'd eaten a lot of beef lately!) and it was reasonable enough.

Tomorrow we have the long drive across Germany to do, heading for the Netherlands. That'll be an exciting read, won't it?

Europe Road Trip: Day 10 - Heide Park

Today's blog will be quite difficult to write, as I already described most of the rides here yesterday. It's the first time we've spent more than one day in a park, so entering new territory here!

We started the day the right way, by availing ourselves of the vast breakfast buffet at the hotel. I had some pancakes the size and shape of pikelets, with unidentified jam (there were no labels on the jars), plus a couple of croissants and a bacon and sausage bun. I also had a bit of fun with the fresh juice presses and managed to get myself at least 2/3 of a glass of orange juice that I made all by myself! RJ went more traditional, and made a nice cup of tea to have with his cooked breakfast.

It was chilly as we headed into the park for our early ride time. Our first stop was Krake, which I think I'm safe in saying is RJ's favourite ride in the park. Since it was only hotel guests in the park at this point, we went for the front row as there was little to no queue. Despite it being a quiet day the ride was operating with two trains, so throughput was very good and we got on quickly. In what became a theme for the day, we weren't entirely happy with our first attempt at an on-ride photo, so went round again for a second attempt, which we preferred. The guy manning the photo counter was chatty and told us how there'd been 12,000 guests in the park the day before, whereas today they were only expecting 2,000. This was good news for us - minimal queue time!

Next up was Flug der Damonen, the wing coaster, and my favourite. Unlike yesterday when we rode the left-hand side, today we took the right and ended up in row 5. Again, we wanted a better photo so went round again and once again ended up in the same seats. We still weren't happy with the photos, but the queue had begun to lengthen so we decided to come back a bit later.

Down the hill was the Big Loop, one of the rides we didn't do yesterday. It's a good old fashioned steel coaster by Vekoma, which was built the same year I was born! Oddly it seemed less rough than Limit, the Vekoma SLC we'd ridden the day before! I'd read online that the trains used on it were ones from the old Corkscrew at Alton Towers, though I can't necessarily verify this. They did look similar though (and were just as bumpy and hard!)

It was a fairly chilly morning, and having failed to find a t-shirt that I liked in the Krake shop I decided to pop back and get myself a hoodie instead. This proceeded to keep me warm for much of the day as the weather had begun to turn rather autumnal, rather than the tropical summer of the previous week. It could also be to do with us having travelled several hundred kilometres further north!

Suitably warmed, RJ then managed to chill my spirits by somehow persuading me to go on Scream with him. This is a very high Intamin drop tower. Now, as I may have mentioned, I don't like drop towers. It's not the drop bit I mind, it's the really high bit at the beginning. This is why I don't mind rides like Disney's Tower of Terror or Mystery Castle at Phantasialand - you can't see how high up you are, so it doesn't matter. This ride, however, was built on the top of the tallest hill in the park. You can see for quite a long way, and you can very much tell how high up you are. I didn't like the idea of it at all and it showed. Unfortunately it was a walk-on, so I had no time to protest (though I definitely tried!)

The drop itself wasn't unpleasant - very smooth and fast and over in about 2 seconds. Unused to such a silky smooth ride it was time to head round to the Bobbahn, the bobsled coaster, where after another very short queue we were soon rattling around its rather fun course at some speed. We did this twice in a row as well, eventually coming out with a somewhat odd photo where it looks like I'm fending off an amorous approach from a drunken RJ!

Around the other side of the park, a ride we'd missed the other day was the Grottenblitz - the park's powered mine train ride. It was fairly short, and comprised a few outdoor helixes followed by a quick spin through an indoor cavern with some horse figurines inside, for some reason. It was all right, but the Runaway Mine Train at Alton Towers beats it easily, and the Colorado Adventure at Phantasialand would knock it dead by breathing on it, if rollercoasters could do that.

Another double ride now - Desert Race. We tried a first run at it and didn't manage to get anything decent on camera (RJ's head was chopped off, for a start) so went round again, and with a careful bit of "would you like to go in front?" managed to get ourselves into the front row. It turns out the ride is a whole lot more fun from that viewpoint, and we got a much better photo that time round, despite the sun coming out and making us squint.

We took advantage of the sunshine to go and ride the rapids - the Mountain Rafting ride was a fun experience that reminded me a lot of the Alton Towers rapids. As it was quiet we got a boat to ourselves, and for the first time ever managed to be facing the right way when it came to the photo point! (In every park so far, it's always taken the photo when we've had our backs to the camera. Always.) However, when it came to claiming the photo, the camera had chopped RJ's head off. The operator was able to reposition the photo for the print, but for some reason the online version still has him decapitated.

Next to the exit we could see the "How to Train Your Dragon" area (called something unpronounceable in German), which was a nicely themed children's ride area. But we're big kids, so saw no trouble in riding the Himmelsstürmer (the same lie-down roundabout model as the Avatar ride at Movie Park) and then I talked RJ into coming on to the Drachengrotte boat ride. I must admit I've never seen the How to Train Your Dragon film, so had no real idea what was going on, but hey. There were glowing eyes in caves and dragon eggs and stuff, so, you know, dragons, yeah?

On our way towards the park entrance to look in the shops, we passed the Wildwasserbahn (that's Log Flume to you and I) and decided to do that too. It reminded me a lot of the Alton Towers one before it was bathtub-ised and then ultimately closed for demolition, only this one is slightly shorter. Still good fun for a giggle.

We reached the shops and didn't really find anything of interest - we'd wanted some Flug der Damonen t-shirts but at this stage in the season all they seemed to have left was size XL, which was no use at all. Disappointed, we wandered outside to try to find somewhere for lunch. One downside to visiting on quiet days is that not all the food outlets are open. Having eaten a lot of sausages in the past few days we instead made for the Pirate Burger stall in the middle of the park, via a quick swing on the Bounty pirate ship on the way.

The burger place was busy and fairly slow to get served, and the cashier was unsure about taking RJ's staff discount (and got someone in the kitchen to ring a supervisor who told them that yes, Madame Tussaud's is a Merlin attraction...). To be fair for a fast food burger it was reasonably good and especially with the staff discount, not too expensive.

To let the food digest, we had a slow stroll back over to Krake, with the reasoning that it's a smooth and not too twisty ride, so whatever food we'd eaten would probably stay down. (As old hands at this theme park malarkey, we're fairly concrete-stomached as it is). It was a lot of fun - so much so that we ended up getting another photo, despite this now pushing us over our photo-pass limit!

Somehow I persuaded RJ to come back on the Big Loop with me, as I was loving the nostalgic feel to the ride. The ride host spotted RJ's Smiler t-shirt and seemed pretty impressed, which was nice. The staff in general were very friendly (despite our limited German) and the next section showed this.

We'd popped over to the area called "Land der Vergessenen", which Google Translates suggests is something along the lines of "Land of the Forgotten". Other than Colossos (which was hard to forget, being massively tall and disappointingly inoperative), there was a circle of flat rides. I decided we should tackle them in order, going clockwise.

First up was Breakdance, which, as the name suggests, was a Huss Breakdown. Alton Towers used to have one of these, known first as the Astro Dancer, then as the Dino Dancer and finally Dynamo. Either way, you sit in 2-person cars mounted on arms on top of a domed platform, and when the ride spins, so do the arms, and the cars sort of swing/spin. It's fast and quite fun, that's all that matters.

El Sol next door was a bog-standard Enterprise (though it already started on something of a slope), and Aqua Spin we'd already done the previous day. Huracan was a new ride for me, though a very old one in terms of ride technology - the ride is a circular disc with high walls, and you stand against the wall and for some reason put a bit of rope across the front of you, as if that's going to help. The ride begins to spin quite fast, and the centri-whatever forces stick you to the wall as the disc tilts up in the air. It's quite good fun.

Continuing our journey clockwise we would have hit Lady Moon next, but it was mid-cycle and the operator in the cabin pointed over to the next ride - Magic. I'm still not entirely sure what this was meant to do, but it was like one of those fairground rides where you sit in 2-person cars, with 3 or 4 cars on the end of each arm of the ride, and the arms lift you up into the air while they and the cars spin or at least move from side to side. It was quite odd. The operator was friendly, and as we were the only people on the ride, he told us that at the end of the cycle we should signal if we wanted him to send it round again. While my tolerance of spinny rides is pretty good, it just wasn't the most exciting ride in the world, so after two cycles we got off and went back to Lady Moon.

Lady Moon seemed to be the bastard offspring of an Enterprise and the "Magic" ride we'd just done. Similar sized cars were mounted onto a disc, which spun while the cars also part-rotated. It was oddly disorienting, and we managed a double cycle of that as well. Eventually however, we staggered off onto the final ride of the area - La Ola, the chair swing. Pretty much the most universal ride of the trip - nearly every park we've visited so far has had one!

At this point we checked the time and realised it was 4.30pm, and with the park closing at 5 we wanted to ensure we got to re-ride our favourites. So it was a fast walk around the lake to Krake, which thankfully had no queue so we were straight on, followed by Flug der Damonen again. By the time we'd got off all the rides had closed and it was time to head back to the hotel.

After a quick shower and change it was time to pop out on some errands. I'd somehow managed to forget to pack nail clippers, despite going out of my way to get some out before leaving home, and my nails (despite being cut just before we left) had grown into claws which were being annoying and catching on things. So I'd checked and in the nearby town of Soltau there was a drugstore open til 8. Also open til 8 was the Designer Outlet village which we'd originally planned to visit yesterday before remembering it was Sunday and that since German opening times make no sense, it was closed.

On our way into Soltau, however, we hit a problem. The road through the town centre was closed due to a fire (by the amount of smoke, quite a big one). Thankfully we followed a side road and found somewhere to park, and were able to walk in and find the shop I needed. Having made my vital purchase we drove out to the outlet village where I'd been saying I wouldn't buy anything...

Four t-shirts and some trackies later...

Trying to decide where to eat was difficult, neither of us had many ideas, other than RJ mentioning ordering Domino's as a joke. Having ascertained that no, Domino's don't deliver to this area, we did Google some local pizza places, and set off back into Soltau to attempt to find one. We ended up back in town and went for a walk around the high street to find the highest-rated one we'd spotted online. No idea where it was as we never found it - instead we went round a corner to find a large sign saying "pizza", and settled for that place instead. It was a fairly basic restaurant so we decided we'd rather order it to take away and have it back at the hotel instead.

The pizza was actually pretty decent (and much cheaper than the hotel buffet!) and meant we could just relax afterwards. Or indeed, write really long blog posts.

The scores so far
Favourite Coaster	Taron, Phantasialand
Least Favourite Coaster	The Bandit, Movie Park
Favourite Non-Coaster	Tower of Terror, Disney Studios
Least Favourite Non-Coaster	NYC Transformer, Movie Park
Best Food	Europa Park
Worst Food	Disney Explorers Hotel
Most Idiots Smoking	Parc Asterix
Best Theming	Disneyland Park

Europe Road Trip: Day 9 - Heide Park

Today we abandoned our original carefully-made plans and went a bit off piste.

Originally, as part of our hotel booking we had a two-day ticket to Movie Park, which we'd planned to use this morning, but having been somewhat underwhelmed with it decided a better idea might be to make a start for Soltau and get to Heide Park early.

After a deliciously carb-filled breakfast at the hotel (seriously, don't go to Germany if you don't like large quantities of baked goods for breakfast!) then a short detour around the nearby small towns trying to find a petrol station that wasn't charging motorway prices, we set off.

Traffic was alternately light and heavy, with German roadworks still causing slow patches. It seems almost every part of the German motorway network is being resurfaced concurrently, so every 10-20 kilometres you hit a contraflow! There seemed to be a fair bit of congestion around - at one point Google Maps pinged at us and told us it could save us 25 minutes by sending us on a detour through a series of small villages rather than staying on the autobahn!

Thanks to this we eventually arrived at Heide Park at 2.30pm, and despite being earlier than the stated check-in time they had no problem setting us up with our room and some park tickets courtesy of RJ's Magic Pass. The view from our room was spectacular - out across the park, with coasters as far as the eye could see! We couldn't wait to head out...

First stop was Krake, their dive coaster. This was a similar ride type to Oblivion at Alton Towers, where you board short but wide trains (in this case, 3 rows of 6 seats) and are taken up high, then held over the edge of the vertical drop for around 2-3 seconds before plummeting straight down into whatever's below. In this case, the jaws of some horrific sea creature. Coming out the other side you skim across the water, releasing a wave of water via fins on the train, before the ride's inversion - an Immelman - and then a quick hop and turn back to the brakes. Similar to Oblivion it's over pretty quickly, but it's still a fun and forceful ride with nice theming.

Second stop was Flug der Dämonen, the park's wing coaster. The comparison here is with The Swarm at Thorpe Park - you sit in rows of two people on either side of the track, legs dangling. Unlike The Swarm, the space available for this ride is very restricted so the track features tighter corners and inversions than its UK cousin, which is a more swoopy, relaxed ride. I also enjoyed the soundtrack to this ride!


Round the corner was the drop tower, Scream, but I wasn't in the mood so we decided to leave that for tomorrow. Instead something slightly more gentle - their Mack bobsled coaster, Schweizer Bobbahn. Like the ones we'd ridden at Europa Park and Parc Asterix you board your 2-man cars sat one in the other's lap. Unlike the others, this was built on the side of a hill, so as the ride went on you descended further and further, so that the ride ended with a lift hill back to the station. The views were spectacular though. You could also see underneath the preparations for one of the walkthrough attractions for the park's Halloween lineup.

We pressed on down the hill to Limit, another Vekoma SLC. Thankfully, unlike MPExpress from yesterday this appeared to have had at least some maintenance done to it in the past few years. However, being a Vekoma it was still pretty uncomfortable to ride!

To calm down we entered a small area with a number of flat rides, and headed over to the Huss Top Spin, Aqua Spin, which was rather misleadingly named as other than the same pathetic fountains as the awful NYC Transformer at Movie Park, there was no other water and you didn't get at all wet! However, unlike NYC Transformer the ride actually flipped, and during the sequence we got up to 4 flips, which wasn't bad. It wasn't quite Talocan, but it'd have a hard job living up to that.

Having not had any lunch, and it being past 4pm we were looking for somewhere to buy a snack, but unlike the UK parks it seemed the food outlets were either selling full meals or novelty sweets. We couldn't find so much as a doughnut, so instead continued on past Colossos, which was out of action. According to the park's Facebook page they're awaiting spare parts for a repair, and don't expect it to be open for the rest of the season, which is a shame as it looks really good, with an impressively steep first drop!

Instead we went to try Desert Race, an Intamin launch coaster. This turned out to be an almost exact copy of Rita from Alton Towers, only with a different colour scheme and a nifty revolving bag drop. The ride itself was slightly smoother than Rita, with a slightly different amount of banking at the end, and for some reason the race start traffic lights seemed stuck on green, but otherwise, pretty much identical.

We did plan on trying their runaway mine train ride but couldn't find it (it turned out we'd gone in the wrong direction after Desert Race!) so instead headed round towards the park entrance to look at the souvenir shops. I found a shop selling crepes, so got one of those to tide me over til dinner, and we popped back to Krake for a second go.

Back at the hotel we changed and headed to the buffet for dinner. I managed to demolish a heroic amount of rare-ish steak and roast potatoes, followed by some waffles I made (the buffet counter included a waffle iron and a bowl of batter!) and a chocolate mousse, plus a plate of pick'n'mix sweets I nicked from the kids' buffet. We then popped downstairs for the evening's entertainment.

This proved to be the most baffling thing I'd seen so far this trip. It was some sort of musical stage show, and featured a dwarf, a witch (at least, I think she was - she cackled a lot and looked at a crystal ball) and a mad adventurer guy who apparently owned the hotel. It was all in German so I had no real idea what was going on at any given moment. As far as I could tell, the dwarf took some gemstone thing from the witch (who for some reason kept it in a cage), and in fury the witch did some magic and zapped a round thing from the park gates. This was apparently a bad thing.

The dwarf and the explorer guy then had to go round different areas of the park and find four quarters of this round thing, while every now and again the witch would come on and sing a song, while her backing dancers in silver zentai suits and bowler hats did acrobatic things in the background. In the second half, one of them did something with a diabolo (which I've discovered is the proper name for one of those string things where they do tricks with what looks like a solid egg timer on its side), while another two did some aerial acrobatics while hanging from ribbons from the ceiling. What this added to the plot, I've no real idea.

Anyway, once we'd been thoroughly confused, the witch sang about (as far as we could tell from the video in the background) how her childhood was spent being locked in a cupboard and made to sweep the floor. After that the witch's dress lit up with fairy lights, which was apparently a good thing, and then everyone was happy and sang some jolly song. At least I think that's what happened...

The scores so far
Favourite Coaster	Taron, Phantasialand
Least Favourite Coaster	The Bandit, Movie Park
Favourite Non-Coaster	Tower of Terror, Disney Studios
Least Favourite Non-Coaster	NYC Transformer, Movie Park
Best Food	Europa Park
Worst Food	Disney Explorers Hotel
Most Idiots Smoking	Parc Asterix
Best Theming	Disneyland Park

Europe Road Trip: Day 8 - Movie Park

After the nice weather up til now, the sunshine had mostly gone and the temperature had cooled. It had been stormy overnight, and today remained cloudy for the most part.

It was also the day where we realised we'd been spoilt by the gorgeous, well-designed parks we'd visited so far.

After waving goodbye to my cousin and her family we drove out towards Bottrop to Movie Park Germany. There was a bit of traffic so by the time we arrived it was already 10am and there were large numbers of people walking from the car parks into the park. Thankfully we already had our tickets printed so could skip the admissions queues and head straight in.

The main entrance area reminded me a lot of Universal Studios or the Disney Hollywood Studios, as it was made up like an American street of shops. We headed round the back of the park away from the crowds to the first coaster we'd seen from the car - MP Express - a very standard looking Vekoma SLC (Suspended looping coaster). These are basically the budget equivalent of a B&M inverted coaster - generally pretty rough riding, and this was no exception, though I couldn't decide if it was as violent as Infusion at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It wasn't very interesting though - stuck out on its own surrounded by concrete and gravel, with no theming to speak of. At least we didn't have to queue.

Next to it was something that looked a lot more interesting - Bandit, a wooden coaster. This didn't open til 11am so in the meantime we had a look at what else we could ride. The High Fall, an Intamin drop tower, was not the obvious choice given my usual distaste for the genre, but hey, what harm could it do?

Well. It turned out to be a) floorless, b) one of the ones that tilts outwards when you get to the top, and c) a lot higher than it looked from the ground! It had one hell of a drop on it too! I did it once - I probably wouldn't do it again!

Bandit, the wooden coaster, was next and elicited similar "never again" feelings, but for other reasons. We joined the short queue outside the doors and waited for 11am when the ride would open. As we queued through the rather shonky western-style interior and made our way up to the station with its authentic fluorescent lighting and wood-effect wallpaper., we ruminated on the other wooden coasters we'd ridden over the past week. Most of those had been long and exciting, if a little rattly. We wondered how similar this would be. Or indeed how painful.

The answer came - very painful indeed. The experience of the ride was like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. The restraints tightened once around the first bend, and every time you went over an airtime hill it banged into your belly. The track was incredibly rough and the train screeched around it at quite a pace - but we were being bashed around too much to enjoy it. By the time we returned to the station it felt like we'd been beaten up! We bought an on-ride photo just for the interesting range of faces we were pulling while the ride attacked us. Not recommended!

Next to that, however, was a particularly interesting ride called Sidekick. This was like a pirate ship and an afterburner ride had mated and made something thoroughly odd-looking. You sat inside a round disc facing inwards, and lowered your overhead restraints. Then the ride began. Kicker wheels underneath swung the disc from side to side in the same way as a pirate ship ride works. However, once this had got up to speed, the disc began to spin like an afterburner ride (think Vortex at Thorpe Park). Midway through the ride the spinning stopped - then reversed direction! Just when we thought the ride was almost over, it sped up and spun at quite a fast rate - at this point it made it my favourite ride of the day so far!

Heading back into the main part of the park we had a quick go on the Top Spin ride, NYC Transformer. Watching from the cattlepen queue line, we noticed something unusual. The ride sequence was oddly long - usually it performs a pre-set list of movements and finishes, but in this case the park seemed to operate it with around 3 different sequences one after the other, most of which managed to not-quite flip the gondola. With this sort of ride you really want the gondola to flip over - Talocan at Phantasialand the day before did very well at this with around 8 flips per ride, but this example at Movie Park managed a pitiful one. We almost considered leaving the queue in disappointment but decided to stick with it. I can't honestly say it was worth the wait - ok there was some airtime in the parts where it flew us over the top, but otherwise it was sub-par in every way.

Thankfully around the corner was some light. Or indeed dark, as the next ride was horror coaster Van Helsing's Factory. In comparison to the basic theming of the previous rides, this had a well-designed building themed around a 1960s US petrol station and garage. You queued in a room with a video of the Van Helsing chap doing something to a car and explaining how he builds cars to hunt monsters (or something), and then every now and again a model machine gun at the end of the room would go off with the appropriate loud sound effects, though I'm not sure why. After this room you moved into a corridor where occasionally to an accompaniment of screaming, UV lights would illuminate warnings scrawled on the wall, such as "You are doomed!", which was a nice touch, and would have been nicer had it not gone off every 30 seconds or so.

At the end of that corridor you went up steps to the station and were put into 4-seater cars. The ride itself is a Gerstlauer bobsled model (not to be confused with the Mack version which actually looks like a bobsled!) - the track was mostly in either complete or semi darkness, with animated props jumping out at you. It was rather nicely done and probably my favourite of the park's attractions.

An unusual attraction that wasn't at any of the other parks was The Walking Dead - a walk-through horror maze. It was an upcharge attraction at €5 but we decided to do it. After queuing through shipping containers it was the sort of thing we'd done at Thorpe Park for Fright Nights several times - lots of scenes, scare actors interacting with you - all good fun (especially if you have scared and squeamish guests with your group!)

Following this it was time for lunch - today we chose pizza, it was fine but nothing to write home about so I won't.

To digest we did our usual trick of heading for the park's rapids ride. "Mystery River" was certainly mysterious. You enter into what looks like a house set against the side of a mountain, and end up in a corridor lined with books, like a small branch of Waterstones. This leads you through into another room filled with slightly larger books (which looked like it used to be used as a batching area), then an even bigger room with a screen (which looked like it used to be used as a pre-show), then into a stuffy airless corridor with various runes painted on the walls. As far as we could tell, this passage used to be lit by UV tubes in the ceiling, but only two of them were still working, and instead the illumination came from the emergency lighting. It seemed that the corridor was not originally designed to be a queue line - merely an exit from the pre-show leading to the station, but instead we had to spend about 20 minutes in what was basically an overlit plastic box.

The station itself was an indoor version of the usual turntable affair, except indoors. The boats were the standard 9-seater rapids boats. The course itself combined indoor and outdoor scenes with witches and dragons and goodness knows what else - if there was a storyline we didn't grasp it. The whole attraction looked like it had had a lot of effort put into it some 15-20 years ago and hadn't been touched since, so it just seemed quite run-down, disappointingly.

In contrast, the Ice Age ride next door was sleek and modern with subtle lighting, almost realistic rock effects and animatronics that worked. OK, so it was more of a kids' ride, but it still beat the rapids hollow for enjoyment.

Having run out of adult rides to go on, we went for the more family end of the market. Ghost Chase was a Mack wild mouse coaster, and kept up the park's general trend of having coasters designed to cause you pain. That being said, you almost expect it from a wild mouse, so can't really complain. We did absolutely have to buy the on-ride photo as it had exquisite expressions of pain from us, coupled with gleeful faces from the girls in the row behind us.

A more sedate ride was next-door at the Avatar ride, where you lay down flat on your front and a harness was closed over you. The ride then rises up like chair-o-planes, and rotates so you swing outwards as if you're flying. It was a good sensation - as RJ said, someone ought to make a rollercoaster like that!

It was getting towards the end of the day, and also beginning to rain, so we took a quick look round the shops and then headed indoors for one more go on Van Helsing's Factory. By this point it was time to go, the rides were closing (like Phantasialand, the park opening and ride opening times seemed to vary wildly) so we headed back to the car. As part of our hotel booking we actually have tickets to return tomorrow, but after being underwhelmed today we decided not to bother.

On the way to tonight's hotel we stopped off at the world's worst-staffed McDonald's (excluding the one at Watford Gap services on the M1) where it took a ridiculously long time to be served, not helped by groups of parents coming in and ordering 20 happy meals in one go. With the aid of Google Translate I tried to ask for a Big Mac with only cheese, but they didn't understand me so I had to go for English, which felt like cheating. I'm really trying to speak the right languages but it's not always easy!

Tonight's hotel is very nice - it's in a village about 10 minutes from the park, in a nice old-fashioned building, but it has (sporadic) wi-fi, plus a pool. One of the first things we did after checking in was go for a quick dip - it was very refreshing!

Tomorrow we have a decent length drive up to Soltau for Heide Park, so that'll be fun... in the meantime, should get an early night!

The scores so far
Favourite Coaster	Taron, Phantasialand
Least Favourite Coaster	The Bandit, Movie Park
Favourite Non-Coaster	Tower of Terror, Disney Studios
Least Favourite Non-Coaster	NYC Transformer, Movie Park
Best Food	Europa Park
Worst Food	Disney Explorers Hotel
Most Idiots Smoking	Parc Asterix
Best Theming	Disneyland Park