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!
