Back to Europe for IAAPA Expo Europe and more parks

I attended IAAPA Expo Europe in London this year and I decided to pair it with some park visits in the UK, France and Netherlands. Landing at Gatwick airport near London was bad: rundown airport with very poor train links to the city. 25 pounds (28$ USD) for a long and congested train ride to the city was bad, followed by transfers to my hotel.

IAAPA Expo Europe was held at the Excel Center, a convention center on the east side of town near the London City Airport. Its much smaller than the Orlando show, but still was worthwhile and productive. I attended an IAAPA event where we went to Chessington World of Adventures, got a tour with management, food, networking and some free time to explore the rides.

Chessington World of Adventures:

This was the first park Tussaud Entertainment and John Wardley acquired and John Wardley's influence can still be seen in places, even after years of ownership by Merlin who acquired Tussaud. Vampire is the park's largest roller coaster and its a gem. Its a 1990 two lifts Arrow Suspended Coaster that spent the whole 2001 season closed for modifications by Vekoma. Vekoma redid the station, reinforced footers and then installed three inverted style swinging trains where your feet dangle. The ride is a gem with great pacing and a logical progression in intensity. The first part is swinging in the forest at a good pace, which is fun. The second lift is where things escalate: you drop off the first lift, swing above the Lost Woods main street (ex Transylvania) and then go back into the forest for the largest drop into a tunnel. It then concludes. The ride is a gem with an amazing queue and station, but given its age, I am not sure how long it has left.

The rest of the park has a recently rethemed Mack log flume, Maurer Wild Mouse (the Rattlesnake), large Maurer spinning coaster with a non compact layout that works really well. Croc Drop is their latest ride: imagine a 70 or so feet tall bouncy tower from Zamperla, placed inside a large crocodile mouth. Its a really fun ride and works well with the park target demographic, which is 4 to 12 years. Their next expansion is coming in 2023: a B&M Wing Coaster "family shuttle coaster" and two other rides themed to Jumanji. They have some nice animal exhibits as well, with some integrated into a safari ride.

After IAAPA, I went to Thorpe Park, another park Merlin own in the London area. After purchasing the park in 1998 from a cement company, Tussaud decided to rebrand the park as it was too close to Chessington to share the same target demographic and Chessington, due to its location and neighbors, has a hard time getting planning permission for large rides.

After an unfortunate fire in 2000, Tussaud went full speed into the teenagers and young adults segment for Thorpe Park, adding 5 roller coasters from 2002 to 2012 and building a lot of thrill rides in between that. The end result is a park with barely anything for kids and the closest thing with Walibi Holland and Energylandia to a Six Flags or Cedar Point park in Europe. The crowd who attend Thorpe Park is quite rough and you have to expect bad line cutting, smoking in line and the park doesn't help: the music is always too loud, the theming is confusing at best and so on.

Still, I went to the park and had a good time. The Swarm is quite close to X-Flight at Six Flags Great America layout wise and is a really good B&M Wing Coaster. Its not too intense, but the fun interactions with the apocalyptic alien invasion theming is fun. Like, the park purchased an old airplane and chopped it up in pieces, with the track diving under the wing and near the engine at one point!

Stealth is my favorite coaster at the park and in my top 5, as its so simple and just efficient: its a mini Top Thrill Dragster from Intamin, standing 205 feet tall and consist of a 0-80 mph hydraulic launch in 1.9 seconds. Its beyond intense, fun and just a blast. Add efficient ride operators who kept the line short all day and I rode it plenty enough that day. Colossus was the world's first roller coaster with 10 inversions when it opened, but the awful Intamin trains on it meant there was no way I could ride. I was fine on everything else at the park and on the trip, but picture the Colossus trains: take the Millennium Falcon train and seats, replace the T-Bar with a tall thick shoulder restraint with a short seatbelt. I'd need to lose 50 lbs to have a chance to buckle the seatbelt. I rode it in 2009 and it was not fun: one heartline roll is fun.... but four in a row is a little too much!

Saw The Ride is a Gerstlauer Eurofighter that is not smooth at all, but the scary atmosphere and nice indoor section compensate. The Walking Dead: The Ride is a retheme of the world's most pointless roller coaster, X:\ No Way Out. Originally, you were trapped in a computer in this indoor coaster, which featured Vekoma junior coaster trains running backward in a tight spiral layout that made everyone nauseated. Add random hard stops on brake runs and it was a complete disaster. Now, The Walking Dead IP added a ton of theming, turning both the entrance and exit corridors into a scary walkthough and the ride is now scary, with good theming and a cool stop where zombies attack on screen as someone tries to restart the ride.

Beside the coasters, the park has an amazing Fabbri drop tower that surprised me, a Mondial Top Scan and other flats. The biggest dissapointment was Rush, the S&S Screaming Swing. It ran really weak with a short program and could barely reach 90°.

I then went to Paris, where I visited DLP again and spent an afternoon at the Jardin d'Acclimatation. Jardin d'Acclimatation has a particular story: its an historic city park right outside Paris city limits with a small number of animals today, ride and beautiful gardens. They have an ancient boat ride from 1926 that is a gem, a small train from 1878 that carries guests from the subway a mile away to the park and the current ownership situation is unique: LVMH group (Louis Vuitton, Moet and Hennessy liquors) own the deed to the land, who in turn subcontract operations to CDA (Compagnie des Alpes, owner of Parc Asterix and Walibi). In 2017, LVMH kicked out the carnival operator who ran the rides for them and invested 60 million euros (60-65 million $ USD) into a new ride package and steampunk theming. CDA came in to operate and the park looks great today.

They rethemed the park and the park flagship coaster today is the Speed Rockets. Its a Gerstlauer Bobsled, which is their take on a wild mouse with horseshoe curves, banked curves and airtime hills. Its a brillant ride and the perfect ride for the park. The other coasters consist of two ancient Soquet roller coasters and a Reverchon Crazy Mouse with smaller cars and a more spaced out layout. I made sure to ride the Dragon Chinois (Chinese Dragon), as its about to close to be replaced by a new roller coaster in 2024.

I returned to Disneyland Paris because Space Mountain was under refurb the last time I went in June and Avengers Campus opened. Space Mountain over there is the best coaster Disney has ever done. Its tall, fast and originally told a full story. Now, it has the Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain theming package and while its not perfect, the layout is amazing and the new trains help a lot. A few years ago, they changed the fiberglass cars and restraints to the new MK-1212 seats from Vekoma. The MK-1212 is what Carowinds and Hersheypark run on their Boomerang and SFOG has on Blue Hawk. They make everything a lot more comfortable and I ended my night there with a few rides that made me really happy.

Avengers Campus is a retheme of the awful "Backlot" area at the Walt Disney Studios, which originally consisted of concrete paths, billboards and sheet metal buildings. It was a complete blight that shamed Disney and I am happy to return Avengers Campus fixes all that. The awful Armageddon show is gone and a new building that is prettier replace it, housing Web Slingers like at Disney California Adventure. They expanded the Rock n Roller Coaster building with a new facade, complete with talking screen where FRIDAY, Tony Stark assistant talk from time to time. They redressed all three restaurants and they are all good, solving the park food issues.

Avengers Assemble: Flight Force is the new name for Rock n Roller Coaster and the ride itself remains the same. The new queue mostly hides the launch area and lead into a new preshow, where an amazing animatronic of Iron Man explains that Kree Missiles are heading for Earth and him and Captain Marvel will blow up the missiles while we serve as bait. The queue and preshow are amazing... the ride is not! Rock n Roller Coaster over there used to have an amazing light show that worked really well. They removed 90% of it and instead, installed 3 screens throughout the gravity building. It just doesn't work as you can barely see anything on the poorly placed screens and its only at the end where the remnants of the light show work for the finale.

Web Slingers is like in California and is Toy Story Mania with your arms. Its tiring and I didn't enjoy it a lot. Food wise, I had the pasta bowl at Stark Factory and it was great! Parmesan Mac and Cheese in a large bowl was what I had an it was very fair for the price.

I visited Nigloland as well, which is a family park in the Champagne area, east of Paris. It was about a 3 hours drive to reach the park, almost all on small roads. The park grew a lot recently, reaching 700 000 guests a year and the park has a loyalty to Mack Rides: the owners parents and grandparents used to purchase rides and trailers from Mack back in the 1920-1930s and they established Nigloland in 1987.

Nigloland today has 6 roller coasters, many flat rides and a dark ride. The latest roller coaster is Krampus Expedition: a new generation Mack water coaster that consist of a drop, curve, rise into the big drop and a large drop underground that rises up into the airtime hill and into the water. The theming is nice, with a themed rock wall with waterfalls and the ride goes through a scary stone head. As nice as it was, all I could picture: was this worth 12 million euros? Its rattly and is just an average ride.

Alpina Blitz is the Mack version of the Intamin Megalite roller coaster. The owners visited Djurs Sommerland during a TV show, loved Piraten and told Intamin ok, we want one. It somehow transformed, thanks to their loyalty to Mack, into Mack doing a near clone of the Megalite, using the Blue Fire trains. I was not impressed: the ride felt too tame and even in the back row, the airtime was not that good. Add a lot of vibrations and shakiness and I was dissapointed.

Noisette Express (Hazelnut Express) is a fun ART Engineering family roller coaster with cool theming and great train. They installed two tower rides the same year in a castle: Donjon de l'Extreme is a 328 feet tall Funtime drop tower, with great open overhead lap bars. Fun ride and they also built a small Zierer bouncy tower for kids right next to it, which is an amazing idea.

The park has an older Mack powered coaster and a recent Mack Wild Mouse. Spatial Experience is a ferocious indoor Mack Coaster that is space themed and runs the same trains as Eurosat used to have at Europa Park. It also features the same spiral lift, which is fun.

Food at Nigloland was priced the same as Disneyland Paris amazingly: I paid 17 euros for a plate of meat in sauce and fries, a slice of apple pie, piece of bread and 8 oz soft drink. Over at DLP, I paid 17 euros for a nice pretzel pork burger, fries, apple strudel and 16 oz soft drink. Even for soda bottles, the price was nearly the same at Nigloland, Thorpe Park, DLP, etc.

I concluded the trip at Efteling, a massive theme park in the Netherlands. It is a storybook theme park, with a forest filled with elaborate displays showing Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderalla, etc. They have a lot of dark rides, some roller coasters and two water rides. The rides are all so well integrated into the forest that it doesn't even feel like you're in a park.

Baron 1898 is what I'd picture Disney doing with a B&M. Its 100 feet tall and the lift hill looks like a mine shaft, complete with massive turning wheels and lattice structure. The ride is a B&M Dive Coaster using the 6 across cars and the storyline is this: the preshow has a greedy mine owner hiring us as new miners to dig up gold. From a ventilation shaft, 3 banshee ghosts appear, saying they protect the gold and if we try to get it, they'll take care of us. The second room is where we're assigned to rows, with an animatronic of the mine owner above us promising us riches for the gold. After boarding the train, it stops before the lift hill where the banshees reappear, using incredible projections on the wall. They dissapear and we go up the lift hill, where at the top the banshees sabotage the train, causing us to freefall into the ground. An Immelman loop and Zero G Roll, concluding with an helix make up the ride. Its an amazing ride that is beautiful and so well integrated.

Joris and The Draak is a fun GCI racing coaster, with an interesting concession for kids: kids between 43 and 47 inches can sit in the four middle cars of the trains, making it more accessible. The ride itself has a ton of airtime and fun turns.

Python was originally a Vekoma produced clone of Carolina Cyclone, built under license from Arrow. A few years back, Vekoma re engineered the layout and a local company built new indestructible track for it. The result is amazing: its as smooth as a B&M, forceful and just a great ride now.

Vliegende Hollander (Flying Dutchman) is a one off water coaster from Kumbak Rides, where Intamin had to come in to fix the lift hill to make it work. After a beautiful queue in an old port, you board a large 14 passenger boat that start with a float past two boats. Then, you float in the dark until you see on a water screen in front of you the flying dutchman, before suddenly dropping down under the actual boat. You engage the steep lift hill and then go outside for a drop, horseshoe turn before rising into a brake run. Another drop and turn lead into the splashdown, in an actual lake! A chain lift, mounted vertically in the water slowly bring the boats back to the station.

The indoor scene with the Flying Dutchman is amazing. Its so unique and a spectacular sight, worth the wait on its own. The ride is very complicated though as you can imagine, so it will forever remain a one off.

Vogel Rok is a rare Vekoma MK-900 indoor family coaster with nice theming and onboard audio. Max and Moritz is a pair of new Mack powered coasters from 2020, but it was down due to track fatigue issues.

Over for dark rides, the headliners are Fata Morgana, Droomvlucht and Symbolica. Fata Morgana was down for refurb and I rode Droomvlucht a few times. Its a suspended dark ride that is a simple trip to the land of fairies, with calm relaxing music and massive scenes. Its beautiful and one of the best dark ride in the world. Symbolica is a trackless dark ride with a shocking preshow that sets the ride well. Three cars leave at once and they follow different paths in the fantasy castle. Its on the level of Mystic Manor, Ratatouille, etc. and they did an amazing job.

I wish I lived around the corner from Efteling. I spent two days there and it counts as one of my favorite parks ever.
Thanks for the shout out for Droomvlucht, I liked it so much I rode it many times. It was so creative and downright dreamy, including the entrance and the queue. And finding the unload station in the middle of the gift shop/cafe tickled me to no end.
I rode Python for the credit and braced myself for the worst. But I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it. This was before the refurb, and even so, it was smooth, fast fun.
I’m sad the Intamin Bob is gone, but should I be? It was probably the best example of that type of ride and it’s replacement looks rather meh.
My other favorite odd ride there was Villa Volta. Mad Houses are all over Europe it seems, but Efteling’s was the best I encountered. Once past the pre-show it was nothing but fun.