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 (!)
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.
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.
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!
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...
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!
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?
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