Theme Park Insight

The word, wow can't really sum up how incredile Phantasialand new Floorless Top spin is. Without a doubt Talocan is an outstanding ride and it really sums up how different the UK's themepark industry is to that of Germany's. British parks philopsy seems to be get em in and give em quick fixes. Themeing is nothing to shout about either. Yet in Germany, theme park vistors in general are a lot more picky about what makes a good ride and what makes a great ride. Albeit the German theme park is nealry 5x bigger. A quick search on RCDB reveals that what i consider to be around 10 biggger theme parks in the UK of varying sizes and decaying themeing. But Germany is not only home to more parks and bigger parks; most importantly its home to better rides.

Is it to late for Britain to be build any incredible rides again?

For more stunning images of Talocan visit: onride.de

Labels: Germany, Phantasialand, Talocan, Topspin

Plans have been revealed for Alton Towers new and "world's first" water slide.

The slide itself resembles to be an open-topped tornado type ride and will be located outside at the back of Cariba Creek, Alton Towers, water park buit in the centre of the Splash Landings Hotel.

Little is currently known about when it will open, but we do have some rather swish plans.

To see all of the plans click here.

 

Labels: Alton Towers, Cariba Creek, Water Park, Water Slide

It has surfaced that Maverick will in fact not open this Saturday to the public like the rest of the park will but instead has been delayed till mid June.

The reason?

Intamin and Stengel's love child has some strange and irregular issues. After some more testing it is clear that some of the ride's track is settling in as expected. Maverick's bitter-sweet, post-launch 360-degree heartline roll has stirred up some problem. The problems could be very varied but the most likely fault is due to the intesity of the roll located shortly after the rides 70mph launch. To much stress is being but on the track and trains by the roll. Forgetting the fact that roll will most likely decapitate willing maverick riders Intamin, IntaRide or Stengel(ride engineer/designer) would have already calculated the stress accurately. But it appears not, his engineering skills can now easily be compared to some of the late Togo's standards. Well maybe not exactly.


While I applaud Itamin for taking a radical route in building their latest and greatest thrill rides- well compared to B&m's orthodox and tired ideas; yet has Maverick been in the now (thank God)defunct Arrow class of construction?

Now there are two options available to Cedar Point. Either modify, the heartline roll or replaced it with some fascinatingly dull straight track and just hope the ride works from there on.

This type of issue is very rare, and no coaster pops to my mind that had to be re-tracked before it even opened but we will just have to wait and see if this ends up like the first 4d coaster; a proudly Arrow inovation.

Labels: Cedar Point, Heartline-roll, Intamin, LSM Launch, Maverick

For the first time in ages we have some new media on a very interesting and innovative Intamin concept. The ZacSpin, a lifthill version of their ball-coaster as they iron out the kinks of its bizarre launch system.

But it seems to me that Intamin's inovation has fallen short of a unique layout. Now there is not much leniency with a roller coaster that can only go vertical but a 14 second ride once the train has left the lift is abysmal.

But why not take a look for yourself:

Video One

POV Video

Labels: Ball Coaster, Intamin, Kirnu, Zac-Spin

Some may have been wondering why i haven't posted for a while but I've been quite busy and also been quite hot (lie it rained everyday in Madrid while temperatures soared in the London sunshine) in Madrid.


While running around in a Meridian street trying to get out of the thunder-storms i got the chance to visit two Spanish parks.

Firstly, i visited a very big park just outside of Spain, a trip on a Renfe train for 25km and a flyby a rather depressing looking prison you arrive at Parque Warner Madrid. A brilliant park with some incredible coasters. To highlight a Batman clone, certainly the best themed and possibly the most intense due to the loss of two rows making the rides trains only 7 rows long. Themed around a asylum in chaos as insane inmates escape and hide in the dark corners of the brilliantly themed queue line waiting for some victims.

Another highlight was Superman, a B&M floorless coaster, the first floorless coaster i have ridden and I quite enjoyed. Superman is a great coaster but it is nothing fantastic or outstanding. It's your usual B&M formula of the same elements, and making sure that the coaster has at least one major fault so that they can sell bigger and even better floored designs.



But what surprised me most was the parks only Vekoma coaster. Stuntfall. A Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang that thank god wasn't closed nearly always like the DeJa Vu series. And simply put, for a shuttle coaster it is awesome, perhaps the best in the park. Look past the rather garish colours, awful trains, bad track shaping and strange support structure, if you can to the beauty within this ride. It's an extremely intense ride for starters. The vertical lifts have a very strange sensation, being supported by only a dodgy Vekoma restraint 180ft above the ground is a very scary thought. But suddenly you are dropping vertically; your body floats up from laaying onto the restraint to literally fre-falling. Net you are thrust down at the bottom of the lift as your eyes vibrate your vision due the g-forces and bad Vekoma design. But overall it is an outstanding roller coaster filled with intensity and a great sensation of speed.

But what about the other park? I hear you asking. Well i will post a longer review and more photos on my site when I've got the time.

But for now.

James

Labels: Batman, Madrid, Parque Warner Madrid, Roller Coasters, Spain, Stuntfall, Superman, Theme Parks

So what has been big this week. Well the words on every ones lips has been Mystery Mine. Dollywood's run by the real Dolly Parton has revealed it's new Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter to a small and very lucky crowd of people who were able to ride the new coaster on its soft opening.

There are a few videos, none of which so anything out of the ordinary about the ride but what really interested me about the ride was a review i read that although not rather in-depth told some of the main elements of the dark ride portion of the ride. And it sounded fantastic.

Although i will probably not get to ride Mystery Mine for quite a while, its sounds like a great coaster, and still as i said back in January on my web site my favorite ride of 2007.

Shame it's in the USA.

Labels: Mystery Mine, Theme Parks

Hi,

and welcome to my brand new blog all do to with theme parks.

I plan to give you some insight into whats going on as well as review some of my favourite rides.

So without further ado... :)

James

Labels: Theme Parks