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OK enthusiast community, I admit I tend to take much of what is said with a dose of skepticism, but just had a front row night ride on Beast and for once the hype was 100% valid. That was shockingly awesome. Which was a nice cap to the day, I think I’ll include KI in all my Ohio trips now. Wonderful park with some good rides. Was surprised how good Orion is and Mystic Timbers is just damn fantastic. Pretty great day.

Nuhhhh uh. Mamba isn't 'fine'. Mamba is fiiiiiiiine! Great airtime front and back, some laterals in the turn, it's like a mini prototype Steel Dragon!

... and we laughed and laughed

Yogi's Dark Harvest: No More Rangers

Okay, time for part 2. And this will be the longest one, I think. So let's get started! Part 2: Germany in Germany Day 4 of the official trip began with a park that had been on my radar for quite some time, Erlebnispark Tripsdrill! Tripsdrill is a small, oddly laid-out, oddly-everythinged park that seems to be transitioning to bigger park status. This is the park-end of their "main street." I've always been fascinated by this ride (G'sente Sau) and the way it interacts with their log flume (Badewannenfahrt zum Jungbrunnen...because screw you if you don't speak German). I was even more excited to ride it after experiencing Vilda Musen at Grona Lund back in 2019. However, it turned out to be quite tame. Still, it wasn't bad, by any means. This ride is famous for a small dark ride section that features an animatronic that drops her top to show her boobs. Sadly, this animatronic was broken and had her top permanently in the down position--which, obviously, is an outrage. Through no fault of my own, I came off of this ride overboobed. Smisty ditched me to ride with other TPR members. That seems okay...right? Being left behind in the station did allow me to witness some German teens throw their bags across the track, and one leap *over* the track to gently place his bag on the other side. He didn't even get fussed at by the operator. That was even more mentally assaulting than the continuous unbroken boob exposure. Tripsdrill has two of these weird spinning-tub-on-a-powered-track rides. Please note the guest barrier between the midway and the ride area. Speaking of which, please take a moment to examine this duck ride. No fences, no signage, no queue. You just get on a duck when it stops, I guess. Look, I spent many years of my life as a ride op at various US parks. This is noteworthy to me. Shoot an egg out of a chicken's ass into the mouth of the animal or human of your choice. I am not being vulgar. I'm just describing the thing. Of course, it will cost you money. Making this someone out there's exact kink. Maybe Mr. Erlebnispark. Mammut, as I understand it, is the only wooden coaster ever built by Gerstlauer. And I can see why they stopped. To be fair, the layout looks nice, the queue has some stuff to look at, the restraints aren't bad, and there's a cool little malfunctioning-sawmill dark-ride scene between the station and the lift--but otherwise this ride is quite dull. Just very slow and forceless. And yet, it still manages to have a notable push-pull shuffle throughout the entire ride. I can't even hate this ride. I feel sorry for it. It only has one train, also. Like, they could RMC it and I wouldn't even be mad. And if you know me, that's really saying something. Climb up a ladder and an animatronic come out of the window to shout at you in German. I like to think they're yelling at you for climbing up their ladder and trying to look in their window. You are a perv. Inside the building is a walk-through attraction that consists of a dark, narrow, twisting hallway with buttons on the wall that will light up a little mannequin who will tell you their life story (I think). Guess what her life story is. This not-quite a tilt-a-whirl is themed to baking. Literally translated, "Gugelhupf" means, "You are a muffin." Probably. This park is quite pretty. And there's a wine museum, if you're into that sort of thing. There's also a quite simple, rustic-looking fun house. And a death slide. Karacho has the most alarming beginning of any coaster I've even been on. You roll out of the station into a tunnel, where you take a quick dip, turn, slow roll inversion, and launch, all in total darkness. Um...spoilers, I guess. Maybe I should've said that first. But I suppose if you don't want to be spoiled, maybe you shouldn't be looking at a trip report. Take some responsibility for your own actions, man. Anyway, Smisty really liked this one. And I thought it was okay. The restraints weren't the worst. What the...? Why?! Every other parks' water cannons are a lie. The rapids ride is themed to laundry. Although...I'm not quite sure from what era. All of them, I guess? A fairly uninteresting splash battle, the famously "don't look that scary" drop towers, and their two new Vekoma family coasters, Volldampf (which means "goat-sex") and Hals-über-Kopf (which means "head up your butt.") Goat Sex was kind of boring (which...frankly, was a surprise to me) but Head Up Your Butt was the best coaster in the park. Not that I was here for the coasters. I was here for weird. And despite the lack of a proper dark ride, Tripsdrill delivered the weird. But there's no time to consider what just happened! Back on the bus! We left Tripsdrill early in order to get to Holiday Park before they closed, in order to have Expedition GeForce ERT at the end of the day (when the ride was good and warmed up) rather than the next morning. Rain came in, but many hardy souls kept riding anyway. Proof that I rode it. And I also took this photo. Because I'm that good. So...did I like it? Well, I didn't dislike it. But here was the problem.... [Feel free to skip to the next photo if you don't want a long boring explanation about restraints and the way they fit me.] I usually like these Intamin T-bar and European-style seatbelts just fine. They tend to be tight, as the parks shorten the seatbelts in order to be the determinator of whether or not someone is too big, and then allow the lapbar to rest comfortably in one's lap--which allows me slight upward movement (i.e., airtime) even as the seatbelt is holding me (tightly) back toward my seat. But Holiday Park does it differently. Here, the seatbelt is relatively long, but the lapbar has to be down to "within two fingers" of the seat side bar. So, I fit, but I was so stapled that any and all airtime was experienced by me as pressure on my upper legs. This wasn't painful, but it also wasn't particularly exciting. Kind of what I imagine a deaf person's experience of music might be. Like, they can't actually hear it, but they know it's there because they can feel the bass. None of which is me complaining. I'm just trying to explain why, for me, even though I love rides like Millennium Force, Ride of Steel, or Goliath at Walibi Holland, Expedition GeForce didn't do much for me. Seems like most other folks on the trip quite liked it, though. After ERT, Smisty and I headed to a German grocery store because....well, why would we not do that? Because we needed water. Yeah, that's it. Water. Biggest bathroom of the trip. Not sure if everyone's was like this. I assume not. The next morning we had ERT on Sky Scream. That's the red Premier Sky Rocket in the back, not the leftover piece of old-school Vekoma track there for decoration. This one is special because it has lapbars rather than over-the-shoulder restraints. Not special enough for me to ride it, though. Smisty did. I just asked her what she thought of it, but she doesn't remember. These are cool. I like that you can kind of tailor the ride to the kind of experience you want to have (although it takes skill if you want it to be wild). Haunted Mansion rip-off #2. I say "rip-off" with love, though. This one was the most torture-y, as I recall. The back of the park had a beach-themed area. We rode the Sky Flyer three times in a row, by ourselves, because no one else was back there yet. And we like those. It had a nice view. And it was already hot out and the breeze felt nice. Look, I don't need to explain myself to you. Also, this is not the Sky Flyer. I don't know what "Wickie" is but a couple of park's we visited had really similar "Wickielands." It seems to have something to do with cartoonish viking characters. Also, log flumes in Europe have no faith in themselves. They're all about turntables and backward sections. Just be log flumes, guys. I love when parks have little museums dedicated to themselves. Holiday Park has theirs as part of a restaurant. So that's pretty cool. Two parks on this trip had dinosaur-themed water rides. I intended to ride both, but wound up riding neither, for whatever reason. Hey, you gotta roll with the situation, you know? Wow. That's quite an admission, Holiday Park. I mean, yes, it's true. I just didn't expect *you* to put it out there like that. Back on the bus! A quick drive through beautiful German resort areas brought us to Wild- & Freizeitpark Klotten. (And yes, that hyphen is part of the name. Yes, in the spot, with a space after it and then the & symbol. Don't ask me.) We only had about 2 hours to explore this very strange place, but it's not particularly large. It is weird, though. Like, weirder than Tripsdrill weird. Self-operated rides? Yup. Allow me to explain how this one works. I have no idea. It's powered? And there are multiple buttons, some of which are red and some of which are black. And you have to climb over bars to get into the seats. And then you push the buttons. Which do something...? Or maybe they don't? No one on the ride could figure it out either. Oh yeah. So this is just a small kids ride that goes in a circle. But it has water guns that you shoot at the park's mascot in the middle. So it's got that going for it. A saucy puppet show. It might not have been saucy. I didn't watch it. But I have watched Futurama. Um, no thank you, Hey, it's another one of those Gerstauler Bobsled coasters like at Tripsdrill! Oh s#!t, no it's not! This thing is waaaaay wilder. It also wraps around a big round...um, castle thing...that also houses a log flume and a shooting dark ride. Zum Rittersturz features a spiraling vertical lift and a trim brake on the drop...?! Also water. Lots of water. I did not take this photo. I think Robb did. But I'm borrowing it because y'all need to see this. So, here's what I think happened: The park said they wanted magic wands instead of guns, but the designer wasn't sure what those should look like, so they googled "magic wand" but didn't realize that safe search was off, and well...this was the result. It's quite a short, simple dark ride. But they did a good job of hiding how little is actually going on. I do mean that as a compliment. It feels like they had very little money but made it work. Maybe someone donated the, um, "wands" and they just went with it. Here's another photo of Heiße Fahrt. And it will make you fahrt! Wait, that just means "journey." Airtime could be described as a journey, right? This isn't working. Look, there's airtime. And laterals. Sometimes at the same time. I liked it better than Expedition GeForce, let's just say that. Wait, that's going to get me hate mail. Look, cute animals: See, Klotten is also a zoo. Grizzly bears! Wait...are all of these animals from North America? I mean, I guess that's cool for their normal clientele. But all these guys live down the street from me! I didn't travel all the way to Germany to see American animals! You're not fooling me, Trash Gremlins! Homemade whip type thing. I would've liked to have ridden it, but when the German-only-speaking ride op asked me how many kilos I was, I had no choice but to fold. Um....800,000? Does that sound right? I would like Klotten to be my home park. Not so much because of it, but because I want to live here. It was cool, though. Our hotel at Phantasialand. Are you tired of my coaster opinions yet? No? F.L.Y. was terrible. It was cool staying in a hotel that was built all around a coaster, though. The weird, ugly proper entrance to Phantasialand. Which I'm not sure is bad, actually. It makes for quite a dramatic transition once inside the park, certainly. Phantasialand's "main street" is interesting in several ways, not the least of which is that rather that being full of shops and services, it's mostly eateries and attractions. It's also called "Berlin." Their main street is Berlin. "Berlin is on this map!" "So it is." For example, their hotel-themed fun house is located there. Which contains this weird elevator that doesn't go anywhere and an operator with fake ponytails who only communicates via whistle. Maybe not quite as fun as the one at Grona Lund, but elevated by its awesome crooked house hotel theming. Misty doesn't like fun houses, so this is what she did instead. The far end of Berlin, where you must then choose to go left or right. The park's layout is weird. In fact, I'm not even going to try to explain it. Okay, I will. Imagine the roman numeral 3, but not connected at the bottom. Kind of like this: TTT And that middle part is Berlin. Or just google a map of Phantasialand. That might be easier. The park's newest dark ride, Maus au Chocolat, is also in Berlin. It's like Toy Story Mania, but better and way longer. The covered midway that connects Berlin to Wuze Town. On the left is the only gift shop in Berlin. That's just fun to say. So, they're all about dragons in this park, with each dragon representing a separate themed area. Whereas I am all about chocolate-covered fruit. I opted for the pineapple, whilst Misty got grapes. Also pictured, apples (of course) strawberries (sure) and pears(!?) Looks like it's closed. No doubt to be replaced soon by Spectre, now that they have the rights. That joke is really just for me. Don't worry about it. Chiapas is quite a well-regarded log flume, and rightfully so. A bit on the wet side, and the restraints are awful (I suspect for everybody, not just me) but the theming is great and it has a neat soundtrack! On the other hand, it's in Europe, so it goes backwards for entirely too long. Still, it was really good! Phantasialand has a reputation for great theming. And I think this is a pretty good example of that. But I will say that it seems like there are several areas that are highly-themed but just have like one thing in them. This is Mexico, but really it just has Chiapas. At least, that you can see here. I guess there are technically two other rides in "Mexico," but it doesn't really feel like it. This isn't really a complaint so much as me saying that in the grand battle of Europa versus Phantasialand, I much prefer Europa's ride layering. Meanwhile, in a completely different part of Mexico, the famous Talocan--combining fire, water, intensity, inversions, and nope. The African section, which contains Black Mamba and...um...this stairway. Okay, so when you're in a foreign country, you don't want to be problem. We went to ride Black Mamba and got in line for the front row, when a ride op came over and told me that I had to ride in row 5. Now, I know what's going on here. I'm fat, and he's directing me to the big boy seat. Of course, I can usually fit in any row of a B&M invert, but I don't want to argue with the guy. And, like, what if he's right and I insist on the front only to not fit and I hold up the whole operation? I don't want that. So we moved to row 5. And the ride sucked. Look, Black Mamba is supposed to be themed. I say "supposed to be" because you can't see anything on a B&M invert unless you're in the front, So who knows if it's themed or not? Not me. I can tell you that it was intense in a way that I didn't really care for (ball-crushing positive g's in every pull out) and probably wouldn't have liked in the front row either. So, yeah, one and done for me. No big deal, though. It was unlikely that I was going to love a B&M invert anyway. Moving on. Presented without comment. Colorado Adventure is themed to the old west and located in Mexico, allegedly. What's the most frightened you've ever been on a roller coaster? For me, it was the moment I realized that the entire middle third of this arrow mine train was going to be in complete darkness. Good ride, though. The Asia section contains *two* rides, a super goofy kung-fu themed mad house and the park's other dark ride, "Ghost Rickshaw." Yes, it's Haunted Mansion rip-off #3--but this one distinguishes itself by being filled with weird monsters from Asian Mythology (I assume). And, as such, it was the best of the 3. Beware of hitchhiking ghosts! Ah yes, the 4 slushie flavors of the apocalypse: Flamingo, Gummibarchen, Waldmeister, and Fresh and Cool. The Asia section looks quite nice, though. This is a full-service restaurant, in case your curious. The queue for River Quest, the park's raids ride, located in the (*ahem*) Mystery section of the park. That's an option?! You can just have a "mystery" section? Nobody tell Six Flags. I knew this ride had some tricks, so I wanted to check it out. However, I was kind of disappointed. Yeah, the vertical lift and the 3 drops were fun, but otherwise it just meandered around, with no rapids to speak of. And the theming was (appropriately enough) a bit of a mystery. I mean, it's a castle, I guess. And the boats have bats on them. But there's nothing else to suggest, say, vampires or whatever it's supposed to be. And the name doesn't help much. It's just kind of a mystery castle. Mystery Castle. It's a completely enclosed drop ride. But not like Tower of Terror. More of a normal drop tower, but with a variable programs and some theming. So like Tower of Terror. But not really. I normally skip drop towers these days. But the theming drew me in. And I enjoyed it! Of course they built an enclosed one because of neighbors-who-complain-of-noise, but I think it all worked out in this case. Now we enter Klugheim, which as near as I can tell is part of "Mystery." It's also home to a full-service restaurant that serves meat to the brave. And let me tell you I am brave. Smisty had soup. Klugheim is also home to two intertwined roller coasters: Raik, a Vekoma family boomerang--and Taron, a custom Intamin launch coaster. For my money, Taron is the best coaster in the park. Fast, smooth, airtime, some laterals...it's just fun. Wuze Town. So for those of you keeping track, the themed areas are: Berlin (a city in Germany), Rookburgh (a made-up steampunk place), Mexico (which includes the American Old West), Asia, Mystery (which includes Klugheim, which is again made up), Africa, and Wuze Town (which is made up also, I think?) This indoor section was interesting but felt a little rundown and dingy. As for Winjas, they were fun...but both tracks kind of seemed to be fighting against themselves in terms of spinning, as they both pretty much just follow a right turn, left turn, right turn, left turn pattern. Having said that, it seemed like most people I talked to preferred Fear, but I actually like Force better. For one thing, I thought it's track trick was more interesting. But also, for me, the larger drops of Fear didn't combine particularly well with the ride's seat horn. Some neat-looking kids rides sort of hidden at the top back part of the indoor area. Okay, so the other thing people talk about with Phantasialand (besides the theming) is how little room they have to work with. Which is interesting because they have this area, which is like a quarter of the park and consists of a long winding path around some grassland and a lake that contains nothing, and a gigantic "calm boat ride" that clearly used to be Splash Battle but isn't any more. I can only describe this area as "unpopular," as it only seems to be (briefly) visited by people who are on day 2 at the park (like us) and the profoundly lost. Clearly, this can and should all go. And, I can only imagine, will. The orange and yellow building in the background of the last photo can probably go as well, as it houses a long-closed dark ride (Hollywood Tour, which I would've liked to see) and Crazy Bats, an indoor coaster that's been give the VR treatment. We did ride Crazy Bats, and it was my first ever VR coaster (a concept I have little use for, but it wasn't an upcharge and we were here and had time, so why not?) It was...fine. I mean, it probably would've been better in one of its previous regular-indoor-coaster iterations, but whatever. Yeah, fire sale this whole area. (I mean, not Wuze Town. Wait, is this Wuze Town? What even is this area?) Back to the Charles Lindbergh Hotel. I probably should've taken a picture of it before we scattered our junk everywhere, but hey. I must say that I didn't love this room as much as I thought I would. I dig small spaces, but the thing is, if you're going to design a small space, the you can't afford mistakes. Everything has to work together. You can't have, say, a really low, shallow sink and a really high faucet. Or effectively no air in the room and a window that's just a big round door. (I mean, I know Europe has a different view of air conditioning than the US does, but at least give me a window I can open with a curtain over it.) I suppose it's a bit of a metaphor for all of Phantasialand. They do their own thing, and they march to their own drum, but it just doesn't always work they way they think it does. Nice view, though. Okay, so F.L.Y. Look, I don't really like flying coasters anyway. I just don't find them very coaster-like. It doesn't feel comfortable or natural to me to be facing downward. But, this is a new generation Vekoma, so I thought there might be some hope. But it was kind of just like lying face-down on the ground while someone jumps up and down on your back. It's certainly intense, if that's what you're looking for. And there is one moment of airtime (which is cool, if kind of weird). But even with nothing to obstruct the view, it turns out that, even with all that theming, the ground is mostly just ground. As an aside, this is also the first coaster that ever put me through a metal detector. I wasn't particularly bothered by it...but still, wow. To be fair, most of the group seemed to love it. But Misty didn't like it either, so it wasn't just me. Overall, though, I do think Phantasialand is a pretty good park. I like Taron and Chiapas and Maus au Chocolat quite a lot. Colorado Adventure and Geister Rikscha were pretty good too. They have a cool fun house, some beautiful theming, and some amazing sweets. Okay, whew. That was a long one. Join me again in like two weeks to hear me complain about some parks in Belgium!

If I were gonna fight, it will def be on fri or sat night. Gotta make sure I make it to work during the week.

Sorry got lots going on and not at home. So can’t really remember tho I had the pork butt that was fantastic and the cheese plate looked good. I think everyone was pleased with their choices and everyone liked the beer options (tho I had wine)

Agreed it's pretty short but for the location and the park, reasonable. For those wondering what it looks like from in town here you go.