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PortAventura/ Ferrari Land Trip Report August 2017


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PortAventura - 9th/12th August 2017

 

Hello. This is my first post here so hello everyone. In August, this year, I visited PortAventura and Ferrari Land for my first ever time, so here's my trip report about PortAventura. The Ferrari Land one will be posted soon. It was a fantastic trip and I wanted to share my specific thoughts about it. I stayed in the Villa Romana Hotel which is about a 15 mins walk to the resort and about 15 mins walk to the beach. My room had an amazing view of the park so I could see Red Force, Thrill Towers, Shambhala, Dragon Khan, Huraken Condor and King Khajuna. I even one night watched FiestAventura one night from my room. The picture below shows the view (you can't see the water park attraction as it was cut off by the camera).

 

DSCF1984.JPG?width=500&height=375

 

General Thoughts

As most of you know, PortAventura is a theme park in Salou, Spain, home to 8 roller coasters. Visiting there for 2 days, I have some mixed feelings about some aspects of the resort. General points are below :

- For instance, I've found that perhaps the opening times are maybe a bit too long (one of the days was a White Night and my family and I managed until 12:30, when we gave up because we were just too tired).

- Personally, I've found that the park is really Shambhala and then the rest are more filler attractions, leading to me to believe the park desperately requires a major coaster (like an invert) and a large scale dark ride, not a simulator.

- Honestly, I had no issue with staggered openings because as long as you plan your day around them, it can if anything be an advantage.

- The day of White Nights was very quiet, with me being able to ride the big 3 coasters in the first hour.

- Express was over-used on some rides, especially on Shambhala. Literally, at least half the train was Express which made the main queue, queue times increase dramatically. Stampida had no one regulating who came through to the coaster turnstiles meaning at times, vast amounts of people walked straight through to ride, with no member of staff regulating it.

- Front row seating was done very weirdly. On Dragon Khan and Stampida, I wasn't allowed to wait to go onto the next train to get front row, even though I was happy enough to do this and I was a single rider. -

- The park needs to create a better system for re-validating tickets for medical reasons.

 

Ride/ Show Count

Shambhala - 5

Dragon Khan - 2

Angkor - 1

Balloon ride in Children's Area - 1

Waiton Port Boat Transportation - 1

Dance Revolution - 1

Los Portfolios - 1

El Diablo - 2

Huraken Condor - 1

Temple del Fuego

Furius Baco - 1

PortAventura Parade - 1

FiestAventura - 1

Tutuki Splash - 1

Kontiki - 1

Silver River Flume - 1

Tomahawk - 1

Grand Canyon Rapids - 1

Stampida - 2 (once on each side)

Tami Tami - 2

La Granja de Elmo - 1

Magic Fish - 1

 

Coasters

To make this easier I am going to write my favourite to least favourite attractions for the next couple of section.

 

1. Shambhala- It's a very good coaster but to properly enjoy it, you need to ride either at the back or front of the train (personally I prefer back for the force) with a loose restraint. If you don't do both you will enjoy up rather disappointed like I was on my first ride. It did get better though and probably will be my no2 coaster behind Saw: The Ride.

2. Furius Baco - This is an incredibly under-rated coaster. Roughness is a very minor issue as long as you place your head back for the launch and keep it forward for the rest of the ride. I also really enjoy the theme (including the preshow) and how is looks off-ride in Mediterrània.

3. Stampida (blue) - This is a quite good wooden roller coaster and is just about not too rough enough to find the coaster unenjoyable like the blue side. However, the audio played when trains enter and also leave the station is far too loud.

4- Dragon Khan - This was a massive disappointment, with the coaster being far too rough to be called enjoyable. I tried both rows 3 and 5 and both were just as rough.

5. El Diablo - My first Arrow Dynamics coaster was mostly good, with a very fast moving queue but some of the banking was a bit too strong. It's a far superior ride nearer the front of the train as the banking

6. Tami Tami - This was surprisingly quite a fun credit with some force. In fact, this was the only coaster I managed to ride after midnight on the White Night.

7. Tomahawk - I guess this was all right and fairly smooth but nothing too impressive.

8. Stampida (red) - This is a very rough and unenjoyable ride. At one point, it felt like I was being squashed to death so if you have the option of riding only 1 side of Stampida, ride blue not red.

 

Water Rides

1. Grand Canyon Rapids - Wow, a great attraction, with some big waves. Probably the UK rapids will feel tamer than ever when I next ride them/

2. Silver River Flume - Fairly good but 3 drops perhaps felt slightly repetitive.

3. Tutuki Splash - It's a bigger Tidal Wave, with an extra drop so what can you exactly expect. Just an alright attraction.

4. Angkor - Please just convert this attraction to a jungle cruise style attraction with some ride commentary, no water guns and more water effects. The theming is fairly good but in some areas, it has broken, showing the polystyrene. The water guns are stupid and completely ruin the attraction. Once on-ride, you cannot see what you are shooting so this ride becomes rather pointless. It also says a lot that the ride never had a queue over 10 mins and the queue moved quite slowly, despite the queue being in the station, when I rode.

 

Shows

1. Dance Revolution - A very well produced production with some great singing, dancing and skills shown by some of the performers. The soundtrack is also fantastic. One small issue I had before the show started was when the park was showing a variety of clips and adverts. One advert was for Horror in Texas (a year-round horror maze) which showed blood and gore, and could be considered frightening for younger members of the audience. This production had a large variety of people, young and old, so I was slightly surprised to see this advert being shown. It certainly wouldn't be allowed in UK shows, oh wait we don't have any large scale theatrical productions. :lol

2. FiestAventura - Mostly another great show but it lacked a major finale (felt a bit random if anything) and although the effects were very good, they didn't always work (I thought the lotus effect was the show going wrong). I watched the show on a bridge between a restaurant and a ship and I could see most things that were happening. However, if you are going to see this show, arrive early (even at 11:10, it was very busy).

3. PortAventura Parade - To sum it up quickly, it's a Disney parade with a good soundtrack (needs to last longer because it became incredibly repetitive) but it has lots of very basic floats.

4. Temple Del Fuego -This is a really random attraction without any English and the main show happens too quickly. If anything, once again it's far too scary for the designed family audience. I have no issues personally with what was there but if I was younger, I would have definitely found it too much.

 

Other Attractions

 

Huraken Condor - Drop towers never seem to really intimidate me so I was interested to see what I thought of a taller drop tower, compared to Detonator: Bombs Away. Detonator is probably more forceful and doesn't become sort of rough at the end (for some reason on Huraken Condor, I had a bit of head-banging near the end of the drop). For any of you wondering which tower I had, I had a sitdown with the floor but this ride is rather meh.

Magic Fish - Another slightly disappointing flat ride which although had a bit of force at certain points, it was not worth the 10 minute queue.

 

Conclusion / Final Thoughts

So what do I think of the whole park generally? Well, I rate it between Legoland Windsor and THORPE PARK, but the park really does need more major attractions. Most of the rides in the park are good, with a few being fantastic. I will say though the atmosphere at White Nights was electric in Mediterrània with the live dancing, music and of course the fountains. Anyway, thank you for reading this and I hope it was an interesting read!

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Ferrari Land - 9th August 2017

 

General Thoughts

I know I've been a very harsh critic of this park, on some other forums, by saying some negative stuff about it but I feel like what I have said is true. This park desperately needs another major coaster as the park cannot handle crowds whatsoever. Also, this park should not be counted as another park but instead be apart of PortAventura because the park is tiny and has only 7 rides. As it currently stands this Summer, the park closes 4 hours earlier compared to PortAventura so I would personally like the park to be open until at least 10 pm. Sadly, I was unable to ride Maranello Grand Race.

 

Red Force

This is not a bad attraction but at the end of the day, it felt like a bit quicker, bit higher Stealth, meaning I wasn't left speechless like some Youtuber. However, operations were absolutely awful. As it is, the attraction has tiny trains, fitting only 12 people but having a 1 train operation on a peak Summer day with very slow loading is seriously disappointing for a resort as big as PortAventura World. I calculated, on average (when everything was going well) trains were dispatched every 2.25 minutes leading to a capacity around 250 people per hour. This meant the advertised time of 50 mins was more like 125 minutes. I knew I was going to have to do single rider but the queue for this was right at the very end meaning I had to queue for 2 hours in the main queue. When Red Force, was not operating well, some interesting stuff happened. Firstly, I saw from my hotel room the train roll back and from what it looked like, it only went halfway up the structure. Secondly, when queuing the train somehow slowed down to a halt at the end of the launch track meaning the train stopped. It was bizarrely then manually brought back into the station afterwards, which was rather odd.

 

Thrill Towers

I got the shot version and it's really forceless, so much so I spent my time on the ride finding my hotel (which I did).

 

Flying Dreams

Let's be honest, the actual preshow videos are rather poor and are rather boring. At least, the queue had some nice projection mapping, which did look rather impressive but the ride itself was fantastic. I absolutely adore the soundtrack (soarin quality) and most of the places I knew what they were and were shown quite well. The finale and the ride system itself are a wonder to behold too.

 

Racing Legends

From a fantastic themed attraction, we get a very poor dis-organised video 'ride'. Such a disappointment with the most random effects going off in the actual ride and another awful preshow. The staff wasted our time by making us wait for a sequence so we could watch another preshow, even though the doors to the actual ride room were open!

 

Junior Championship

This is an alright attraction but is nothing really to shout about. It has a bit of force but if anything it feels a bit boring as the ride sequence is quite long.

 

Summary

Really, Ferrari Land is something you need to do if you are in the resort but expect a crowded, awfully organised park.

 

Anyway, I did visit Barcelona later on that week and it's an alright city, but nothing awfully impressive and my family nearly did get pick-pocketed. If you have any questions about anything I've said or just about PA in general, please ask. Thanks for reading my two part trip report.

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