This was one of the parks I'd most been looking forward to, particularly their newest ride, the rollercoaster Taron. The park was surprisingly busy when we arrived (it was a Friday - hardly the peak holiday season!) and I couldn't find an English park map so picked up a French one as I had more chance of understanding it than the German! As a side note, parks providing translated maps is great but they really need to keep the ride names the same as what's displayed on the sign, else it makes it impossible to work out if what you've looked at on the map is the same thing you've joined the 45 minute queue for!
Anyway, we were heading for Taron as our first ride, as were a good number of others. The most direct route on the map was blocked off (for crowd control purposes) so we were signposted on a tour around several areas of the park before making our way back round to the entrance to its area, where we found a roped off area and joined the short queue that had begun to form. Soon after, several hundred people were queuing behind us so we'd evidently turned up at the right time.
One annoying thing about Phantasialand is that although the park itself opens at 9am, most of the rides don't open until 10. This meant we basically had an hour of waiting just to be able to go on anything. On the plus side, we could see parts of the ride from where we stood and it looked amazing! A huge rocky canyon had been created with many craggy outcrops poking out around what seemed like miles of track. Every now and again a test train would be sent round, and you'd see it twisting through the gullies and caves.
The weather was gorgeous so I used the time until opening to smother myself in lotion - on this trip I'm getting through more than I would on a beach holiday! In many ways we're spending longer outdoors than if we had gone somewhere to lie by the sea!
Eventually the opening time came, and the thoroughly cheerful (!) chap who'd been stood at the head of the queue holding back the hordes opened the gates and let us through into the ride's actual queue line. This twisted over and under the ride itself, and gave an excellent view, making it more and more exciting. We made it to the station and took the unusual choice of joining the front row queue, as it seemed short enough to make it worthwhile, and the ride was one we'd been especially looking forward to.
This proved to be an excellent idea - because the coaster itself is amazing. With two launches, and a long twisting (but unusually non-inverting) layout, it was spectacularly good fun and very enjoyable. Oddly very few rides in Phantasialand offer on-ride photos so there was no chance to grab the usual snap of us waving hands in the air and gurning to camera!
Next-door, intertwined with the tracks of Taron, stood Raik, a Vekoma Junior Boomerang, similar to the Ben 10 Ultimate Mission ride at Drayton Manor. This was nicely themed to fit in with Taron, and had a relatively short queue. It was a good fun family-friendly coaster and a nice counterpart to its bigger brother.
Round the corner was a rather unusual ride. River Quest is the park's rapids ride - nothing new there, you might think, but this one uses special boats which can flex in different directions. The course itself runs inside a building themed to look like a castle, and instead of the usual ramped lift hills, it uses an actual vertical lift to take you up quite high to a whirlpool-shaped course, which gradually swirls you round as if into a plughole. There are rather steep drops for a rapids ride, and while you don't get massively wet you certainly get splashed!
Speaking of usually-dull rides made good, the Colorado Adventure mine train ride is one. When you think of a runway mine train ride you think of the tame children's coasters at most UK theme parks. This was nothing like that. It features three lift hills, some very steep drops and sharp bends, plus a whole ton of speed. It's a nice long ride with indoor and outdoor sections, and integrates nicely with Chiapas, which shares some of the route.
Another "standard ride made excellent" was Talocan. This is a Top Spin ride (think Rameses Revenge at Chessington or the now defunct Ripsaw at Alton Towers) except that it's double-sided, and in a massive pit with fire and water effects. The theme is that you're being sacrificed to the gods, and it works really well. There's a high level viewing gallery above the ride where people too scared to get on can watch. The ride sequence itself is much better than those I've experienced in other parks - we got a total of 8 spins (often you barely get one!) as well as some nice fast flyovers and flips!
Our last ride before lunch was Black Mamba. This was a B&M inverted coaster (in the same vein as Nemesis or Osiris) and like Nemesis is mostly down a large pit with inversions and corners through tunnels and caves. However, the layout seemed quite tame, and most of the interesting parts were near the beginning so it seemed to fizzle out. I'd put it on par with Nemesis Inferno at Thorpe, only slightly less comfortable.
For lunch we went to a cafe in the Berlin area of the park and, since it was Germany, I had a Bratwurst and RJ had Currywurst. We knew we'd be having a decent dinner that evening so didn't want to go overboard with lunch! It was basic but decent - elsewhere in the park there were more fancy restaurants but we just wanted something quick.
Normally we'd ride something gentle to let lunch digest but for some reason we decided to go up to the other end of the park for some of the other, odder rides. Temple of the Night Hawk was our first stop. This was set in a space station, allegedly, though it looked more like a late 80s council leisure centre building. There was a section in the queue which was blatantly once used for a pre-show, with a two-level platform and a large glass panel which had been hurriedly painted over with ugly green paint. On climbing the stairs into the station we boarded a long train, which then set off into the darkness.
Ah the darkness. This ride has no lights inside at all. You can see glimmers coming through the roof of the station, but otherwise you have no idea where the track is going. It's very long and very fast, with 3 lifts and plenty of twists - the closest I could compare it to is Space Mountain at Disneyworld Florida, except without the lights. I actually enjoyed it rather a lot, and for a Vekoma it was surprisingly not that jerky!
Opposite was a pair of indoor coasters - Winjas Fear and Force. Two separate Maurer Sohne spinning coasters with adjacent stations. We picked Fear, and it was a good fun ride with a vertical lift and a few trick track elements (including tilt track and a bouncy section!) Later on in the day we returned to ride Force, which was similar yet different in various indescribable ways!
Underneath the Night Hawk ride we spotted a ride called "Hollywood Tour". This turned out to be a boat ride through various scenes inspired by major classic Hollywood films. It was... well, to be charitable I'll say "dated". The animatronics were threadbare, the lighting was very basic and it had a look of being rather outdated. This whole area of the park looked like it needed a bit of TLC, which was quite jarring given how well-kept the other areas looked.
Coming back into the main area we spotted the entrance to "Maus au Chocolat". We had no real idea what this was, other than the description "interactive dark ride". What it actually turned out to be was pretty much identical to Toy Story Midway Mania at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. You sit in two-seater spinning cars, and are taken round a track to stop at various points in front of screens. Wearing 3D glasses, you then use the icing bag in front of you to squirt icing at targets in various animated scenes in front of you to score points. I think I did quite well, with a score over 120,000 points!
By this point we'd done nearly everything in the park we wanted, so decided to treat ourselves to an ice cream (as they looked delicious) on our way back for a re-ride of Taron. I got a waffle cone with a mixture of Duche de Leche and Kinder Egg flavour ice cream, and RJ got a cookie sandwich with vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The guy on the entrance to Taron looked admiringly at them and asked RJ if he'd bought it here, which was slightly confusing as it'd have been rather difficult to bring it from home!
While in the queue, Taron suffered a short technical shutdown so we had to wait an extra 10 minutes or so, but it was still worth it. This time we didn't bother with the front row, but the ride was still as good as we remembered and we came off very happy. Needing to calm down we headed for the Feng Ju palace, a madhouse ride in the China area of the park. There was some story about some warriors fighting over a lady (as ever) which we didn't quite get, but at least there was a pre-show, unlike the Europa Park version. The ride itself was the same layout and seating style as Hex, with the decor of a Chinese temple. An interesting addition was a large screen on one side of the outer drum, which at the climax of the sequence played out the finale to the story, where one warrior defeats the other and gets the girl. Or something like that.
On the way back round we took another trip round the Colorado Adventure, forgetting that as we wanted an on-ride photo, sitting at the front inside the (covered) engine might be a silly idea. We then went back and did the other side of Winjas - Force, as I mentioned earlier. Since it was next-door and had no queue, we did Temple of the Night Hawk again, but opted to skip the Hollywood Tour, oddly enough!
Then it was back for another spin (literally) on Talocan, a quick whizz around Black Mamba, and finally finished the day with one last go on Taron. In the gift shop I splashed out on a Taron t-shirt, plus CDs of the soundtracks to Taron (gorgeous) and Chiapas (a complete earworm). This may sound odd, but I often have theme park ride music on while I work, as it's unobtrusive and strangely energetic.
Back in Cologne, we went out for dinner to a nice little restaurant nearby, where I attempted to order in German (with a reasonable amount of success) and had a nice lamb and feta dish. Afterwards we went for more ice cream followed by a quick drink in the square round the corner - it all felt very European! We certainly slept well that night!
| The scores so far | |
| Favourite Coaster | Taron, Phantasialand |
| Least Favourite Coaster | Euro Mir, Europa Park |
| Favourite Non-Coaster | Tower of Terror, Disney Studios |
| Least Favourite Non-Coaster | Hollywood Trip |
| Best Food | Europa Park |
| Worst Food | Disney Explorers Hotel |
| Most Idiots Smoking | Parc Asterix |
| Best Theming | Disneyland Park |
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