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!
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.
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 |
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