Photo TR: Terra Mitica

Hello to all at themepark review! I decided that my first post should be a trip report so here goes.... Eeeeek..

Terra Mitica, Benidorm, Spain

We had the trip planned for a while as there was plenty to do for everybody, and it was a nice break from last years Disney-a-thon.. I did some reading up and discovered that terra mitica was built to counteract the building of disneyland Paris... So I had a feeling it was going to be reasonably good in terms of theming and scale.

On to the photos!

View of Terra Mitica from a distance.

The entrance is getting closer! Must..... Hold...... Excitement... In!

Hippo's just aint my thing.... Even if they do have huge shields and swords....

First impressions are proving to be well themed... Just a lack a shade, and it was seriously baking hot that day!

Our first ride of the day was the sky tower. A great way to see where everything was located.

The wiring in spain never ceases to amaze me. They have the sound system for the park in the drains with wires hanging into the water! WTF!!

Next up was the dodgems. Not quite sure why they were in the egyptian section of the park? Also note that all the cars are empty.......?

.......Seriously, there is nobody in the park.....

OMG!!!! People!!

The park has some really well kept areas. Really quite pretty.

Very high quality builds in some areas. Nearly touching the level of disney's buildings.

The first thrilling ride of the day. A little bit short mind. I actually spent longer waiting for other people to turn up to fill the empty seats than I did on the ride. They were trying there best to fill up every seat, even if it meant sitting for 10 minuites.

Time for the parks signature coaster. The mighty Colossus!

Colossus through the trees.

I've done quite a few wooden coasters in the past, but have never had the sensation of my brain smashing against the inside of my skull like that before. That ride is rough! So naturally I did it three times.... I can't even think in hindsight why I did it. LMAO!

Leaving the body breaker...

I now present to you the biggest WTF moment in the whole park. We are in the ancient greece section of the park. A rather nice entrance to a ride which is listed as the great simulator on the park map. But inside is a very old moving theatre with a film following a guy playing a piano thats on wheels as he races to a show. I couldn't work out what it had to do with greece, or anything for that matter. It was just odd. In fact it was so out of place that we sat in the cars for a good five minuites afterwards wondering what the hell we had just witnessed!

Time to rest my rather confused brain on a giant swinging frisbee.

Brain recovered! So lets shake it up again with a vekoma SLC!

Time for lunch. And the vast food hall contains just two people, shame they were staff members.. Surely It has to get busier by mid afternoon?

More Photos to follow soon!

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the pictures!

Great pictures !! good to see some pictures from you.. (now i know who i am talking to now)

Now THAT is how you do a first post.

Ah, memories of the Spain trip. It was a nice park, hotter than the surface of the sun on the day we were there too. Thanks for the pictures thus far, I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of the park since many things have changed. I swear the guy at the entrance to the motion simulator didn't have a robe.

Edit: I stand corrected, I just went through Kyle's trip report and that was one of very few clothed male statues in the park.

a film following a guy playing a piano thats on wheels as he races to a show... It was just odd. In fact it was so out of place that we sat in the cars for a good five minutes afterwards wondering what the hell we had just witnessed!

They had exactly the same show playing at Futuroscope a few years back, and I had exactly the same reaction to it!

Terra Mitica should have a few more customers in a few weeks time, once all the British schools break up!

If I'm honest, I think the park is built in the wrong place.. A lot of older people visit Benidorm for a week or two on the beach, hardly your themepark nuts! Theres more adverts for the Mundomar wildlife park than there is for terra mitica, (even getting hold of any information or a park map was hard), and Mundomar was tiny in comparison, and incredibly busy. I prefer portaventura I think.

Reading that report i can totaly see why they are trying to sell this park....

Great report and great first post. Welcome!

With lunch out of the way its time to relax on the boat that travels around the parks waterways.

As I said earlier, some areas of the park are themed really quite well.. The thing that lets it down is there is no space between each area. So Greece runs into rome... It starts to look a bit messy and confusing in places..

Spain is also suffering from a reasonably bad draught so water levels are really quite low. Also, the boats go around this whole section and there doesn't seem to be any way to access it on foot? Quite wierd if you ask me...

Time to help Jason and the argonauts on a wierd indoor raft/dark ride..

Load area of the raft ride.. Has anybody else noticed the wierd scary looking jawas under the waterfall on this ride? They were creepier than thi13een at alton towers. LOL!

The next darkride we encountered was this one. An interactive dark ride based around the minotaur... Except he only appears at the end..

Erm, there are some minotaurs on this minotaur ride right?

Oh, and after several trips round this ride. This was the highest score we got. They really could do with better guns! Or scrap them altogether and leave it as just a darkride. Not a bad attempt at a dark ride mind..

Time to invade the kiddie coaster and gain an easy credit!

POV!!

And a special photo for the track fanatics complete with tyre drive! Drool to your hearts content!

So, all the rides have been ridden and every area of the park explored, so what can I say? In short, the park isn't the worst one I have ever visited, but it has a feel that all the thought has gone into the wrong places. For example, the buildings are brilliant but the rides inside them leave a little something to be desired in the case of the piano riding simulator. There almost an after thought. Another thing that struck our attention is the queue lines. They are the widest and most complicated queue lines I have ever seen in my life! Seriously you could actually drive a Hummer H2 down them and not be worried about taking the wing mirrors off. Some of the lines even split into three paths that all lead to that same place.. If there were the crowds they were clearly expecting I feel that queue jumping would be rife! A pet hate of mine.... Grrrrr. So would I go back? Yes, but it isn't a park I would race back to in the near future!

I leave you now with two pictures that I found rather amusing during our trip to Terra Mitica..

This is Terra Mitica's equivalent to a fastpass ticket.. Wouldn't you be disappointed if you actually bought one?

And finally the mad rush to get out of the park at closing time! They had a great number of ONE! turnstyle open to exit the park! It was really that busy!

Thankyou for reading my first review/post and look forward to writing my next trip report in the near future.

Great pictures! I love to see Photo TR's from international parks to see the some of the crazy rides and the different styles of parks in different countires.

Rewind 2 and a bit years and I was there in April time, the park was more dead than this!!! I don't understand how they can make any money at this place!!

Although riding the Giant Drop 15 times in a row without standing up was great

I still love that this park has TWO rapids rides (one being the mostly dark ride one and the other much more traditional one) but over I really liked the park and I agree that it has some really nice attempts at theming. Thanks for the TR and for bringing back some good memories from the Spain Trip a few years ago!

If it's always that quiet then I don't know how it has survived that long. That's madness!

This seems like a nice little park with some potential. A few coasters, some theming, and a pretty good location.

Nice theming! I like it when a park goes that extra mile with theming. I will allways support those parks.

I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of the park since many things have changed.

Take a look at these photos.

OMG! The SLC has disappeared in the next photo!

The SLC has been moved to the other corner of the park area.

This is because the "Iberia" area has been closed to the visitors.

That's interesting. I didn't know that area had closed...

Eagh, sick! Goatse with a bull.

Terra Mitica is a nicely themed park, but it's really strange and confusing that they just close off a whole section of the park for normal visitors.

It's not like loads of people are going to complain if they close a whole section?

Great report Hazmat! When did you visit? I was there on Friday June 25th. The park was dead then. If it hadn't of been for a few coach loads of Spanish kids (I think it was the last day of school term) it would've been empty.

I last visited in May 2006 and the SLC was located in the now closed 'Iberia' section as previously mentioned. It was then named Tizona and built in and around a castle. I took some pictures of the castle and closed section from the observation tower. The Tizona name is still visible on the castle turrets from the boat ride.

You entered the Iberia zone just past the bumper cars (the archway is boarded up now) or just past the drop tower where you had a picture taken. I guess they've closed that area to try and save money?

Terra Mitica is so weird. I've never known anyone visit and when it's been busy. I visited around Christmas time in ....2001? and it was so dead that a ride op was literally following us around the smaller attractions.

The park is really nicely kept, the themeing is spot on, the dark rides are pretty good and their major rides aren't THAT bad. They certainly aren't so bad that the GP would think they were bad... So why does it fail to attract any visitors? Benidorm certainly attracts enough holiday makers from the UK and Germany that you'd think foreigners alone would make the park heaving, but no. Mystery.

Nice photos!

Terra Mítica has had a problem of management. If they had let real professional work, Terra Mítica hadn't been so bad. But now everything is going to change, because the park is rented by other Benidorm park group: Aqualandia-Mundomar. They're going to invest 15 million euros to solve rides' problems, lack of green where public walks, areas where refresh, restore buildings, etc. That's why they're going to close Terra Mítica 6 months to make all these improvements. They want to reopen Iberia zone and put in there a ride of quality, probably where Tizona was.

As far as attendance, it's true not always the park is busy, but I've been a lot of times when there were almost 15.000 people. Certainly, attendance has been limited by economic crisis...

According to Aqualandia director comments, the group wants to make Terra Mítica an European theme park reference.

Terra Mítica has started its new master plan's works. First works consist of improving Egypt, Greece, Rome and The Islands zones with a total amount of 5 million €.

Here's a pic:

Next year will be Iberia's improvement. They'll invest 5 more millon € to reopen this zone in 2012 (probably with some new rides) and finally, in 2012, they'll invest last 5 million € in Iberia too. Anyway, Aqualandia-Mundomar wants to buy Terra Mítica, this fact could be next year.

Terra Mítica will open again its doors in April 14th with more green, more water and more fun, because they're going to check all the rides to keep them in working order.