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Photo TR: Conny-Land


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Last week I visited the only amusement park in Switzerland: Conny-Land – home of the legendary Cobra. I have to say, I was a bit skeptical to ride it, but I was positively surprised not only about Cobra, but the whole park as well!

 

You remember playing early Rollercoaster Tycoons, and building a tiny park with all the rides just squeezed next to, and even above each other? Well, that’s Conny-Land. The park is tiny in area, but manages to pull off surprisingly many attractions. Rides, simulators, animal shows AND a decent coaster! Kudos to Conny-Land.

 

I guess most of you are most curious about Cobra (and to confess, so was I) so here we go: In short, it’s very, very on par with a good Vekoma boomerang. I say good because I’ve only ridden the one at Power Park with new trains and no headbanging. From technical point of view, Cobra’s restraints and seats are quite comfortable, nothing shakes or vibrates, wheels are running smooth and overall it isn’t as sketchy in person as it looks in the pictures IMO. The only sketchy part is when the train latches on to the lifting mechanism and the whole train jerks back and forth. The riding experience is actually much better than I thought, only the return hills back to the station are boring. The beyond vertical lift is great fun as is the drop, both of the airtime hills deliver, the loop is filled with positives and the hangtime in the reversing spike is plenty. Riding the front row provides a bonus thrill when you see the end of the track nearing. But I still preferred riding in the back to maximize the freefall in the so called ‘first drop’. All in all, a very solid 7/10 ride, provides enough thrill to amuse even an adrenaline junkie like me! Comparing with a boomerang: Cobra has a better first drop, has actual airtime and doesn’t have any headbanging, but the return trip is where boomerangs have an advantage.

 

Mammut is probably the other famous ride at Conny-Land. It is one of those rides which are _so_ much better if you don’t know what to expect beforehand. That’s why I’m not going to spoil what happens inside the tree, but I’ll just say my jaw dropped! Also the swinging action on the outside part is fun as well. Another positive surprise was their XD moving platform simulator. There was a sign in the queue saying that if you open your seatbelt the ride e-stops That’s when I knew this was going to be fun, but I had no idea I was going to have actual airtime! The film changes every hour but because of the long queue time I saw the same film twice on that day. It didn’t matter though, because the movements were crazy as I told, and I also liked the soundtrack. You can search for the film on Youtube (called Cosmic Coaster). It’s your basic fantasy rollercoaster but with the soundtrack and aggressive movements, I’d say it’s the best a more-than-3D-theater can get.

 

Conny-Land also has animal shows, with sealions and parrots. Most of the day the sealions are in their separate pool, but they perform on a separate arena. How do they get to that arena then? They literally just walk the same walkways as people. As a result, let’s say I was a bit surprised when suddenly two sealions with their trainers just walk by me, with only half a meter between us! Show itself also had interaction with the crowd, e.g. resulting in a pyramid made of both humans and sealions!

 

One of the more interesting experiences was Dino Attack, a shooting dark ride. Let’s just say it was as campy as it can get! I mean no disrespect, I just thought that some aspects were so bad it was hilarious! For example check out this film that plays on a CRT screen in the queue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymDQmO5ugY. But this is the kind of stuff that makes small parks so charming and different from corporate park chains. And it made my experience better, even though maybe in a different way than originally meant

 

Even though the park was somewhat filled, the queue times were non-existent, excluding Mammut and the XD simulator (both have long cycles and small capacities). However the queueing culture in Switzerland may be still a bit underdeveloped. Cobra has separate queueing gates for each row, but in the total of I guess 8 times I rode it, every time someone went to a different row than what they queued for, sometimes blocking me, sometimes blocking someone else resulting in confusion that the operators had to settle. I also saw adults telling their children to stay seated for another ride even though there were people queueing for all the rows for the next train. But is seemed they didn’t do it to be mean, they just didn’t seem to know how queueing works. Most of the time the waiting time for Cobra was only one train so this really didn’t bother me. It’s just an interesting perception I made, and wanted to share.

 

In total I spent around 4 hours in the park, mostly riding Cobra and taking pictures. I wouldn’t recommend it as a target for a whole day of fun, but if you are nearby and have a couple of hours so spare, I say definitely go check Conny-Land! I had a good visit and I’m glad I decided to visit Conny-Land and ride Cobra.

 

Now some pictures:

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Conny-Land and it's skyline

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You know a park is small when the park map doesn't have a list of attractions, rather everything just written on top ;)

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Looming over

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Beyond vertical

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Cobra's station

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Cobra's entrance

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Outward bound for airtime

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Taking a peek underneath

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Hi-tech. Very.

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For those of us interested in the mechanical details

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Weeee!

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Going over the parking lot. A clever solution for lack of space

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Foliage was nice throughout the park

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Mammut is a unique ride, indeed!

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#whatsinthetree

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I'll tell, it doesn't disappoint

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Real flamingos

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Real sealions

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Hello :)

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Doing the show

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I decided to skip the more generic flat rides and instead focus on the more unique rides

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I also skipped the splash battle

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and the ropes course.

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Thanks for reading :)

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Thanks for sharing. Really good photos of a querky park. I have always been interested in this park, and thanks for reviews of the rides. Cobra looks so sketchy Even with great photos that you took, it still looks like a ghetto ride.

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Great TR, when exactly have you been there? Maybe we saw each other, I was there on Saturday April 8th. I really like this park, even though there only is one coaster. They take care of their rides and for example upgrade them with more theming.

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