VsEuro

It seems nobody is commenting anymore ... that means it is time for a video ... DarkestRide01.wmv onride in the raw ... no editing has been done to it

I'm glad you all like it this much ... keep the comments comming. I will release a movie when time has passed ... but first i want people to be surprised by what they see when they download it. The transports in the church are indeed not needed if you run the coaster normally. I placed them in the church to be able to run 3 trains. The weels don't make al lot of speed difference. The only use is for an emergency stop, the coaster just comes a very little bit of power short to make it otherwise. That is why i placed them overthere. If i remove the transport and brake wheels around the church only 2 trains are allowed instead of 3. Normally this mid section brake and transport should never be used. The coaster is designed in such a way that all 3 trains fit into the line for the station. It only needs a special ride computer and that's what i can't make in NL.

Hello unknown people from the planet earth, Years ago i started to build a NL coaster with 3ds elements and a lot of custom supports. It looked like a great coaster but due to work and other private things i did not complete it. One month ago on a bored evening i decided to pick up where i left and finish the darkest ride. Beneath you can see a few teaser screens i made 5 years ago. The story: You are visiting a dark castle from the middle ages. There is a small train running trough the castle and guiding you through different towers, chambers, a chapel, secret passageways, ... and offcourse the torture room. But once you reached the top of the first tower, the ride fails and starts to run completely out of control ... You quickly fly trough the rooms and other places. Luckily the ride control is restored just in time and you all can leave safely in the station . The building: I used a rather unique way of building. Almost the entire castle is builded with walkways of a wooden coaster. Only a few roofs, a cave and smaller 3ds objects are made with anim8or and a few other programs. But to be honest, i really don't advise anybody to build something the way i made this coaster. It really takes ages to finish. The environment: This dark ages coaster has offcourse it's own environment and should not be run in any other. The name of the environment is VsEuroCastleScape. This environment is a night environment with other lightning than the default night mode. This to allow the usage of Lightning effects and ... It's also a special environment because the wooden boards of the walkways are replaced with more concrete looking boards. I have a second environment that creates a wooden castle in a snow environment that uses daylight. This was created for a previous coaster of me. I don't advise to use this, but it does allow to have a closer look at the castle witouth having really strange textures on it . Enough blablabla now ... have fun, the download(s) should be somewhere on this page ... I'm very curious of what you all think of this coaster. Snowscape.zip The snowscape environment (for those who are afraid in the dark) DarkestRide.nlpack The darkest ride track package (including also the environment and 3ds objects) Preview 5 Preview 4 Preview 3 (photoshoped green) Preview 2 (photoshoped green) Preview 1 (photoshoped green)

I was a bit bored tonight so I’ve translated the dutch text of coasterchi of tp.nl. Excuse me for translation mistakes, my English is not perfect, but it beats the hell out of translation engines Dutch English. Translation --- Now, a complete story from the beginning to the end. I was there just to watch the test rides together with a pall (Anton). Only, when the third ride started there were people in the train! So I started to get really excited ... Anton had to leave so i drove off to the building site and ran to the station. For one of other reason I was almost immediately pulled in the train, and then ... suddenly ... I was all alone backseat on Troy in a few minutes. "Attention, trains moving" sounded and <>, the brakes moved. Riding, riding on the track, damn, that thing already has a huge speed! <>, very smooth on the lift hill and up. What a view, really incredible. Almost upstairs, hands up and <>, there you are pulled over the top. Not like EGF, but very good, there is no doubt about that. Then the 70 degrees turn. You don't really get the idea that you are so banked, but damn, that thing goes hard! Then you go up trough the horseshoe where you get a little airtime bump before you are launched in the turn. Super! The trip down, you are pulled very well down in the backseat and then trough the switch, witch gives a very good head shopper feeling. Damn again! Then into the turnaround in witch you get a good speed and then backseat pulled trough to the little airtime hill, that is taken at a huge speed. Then it is time for the big camelback with airtime and <> into the turn towards the fly trough. This is a fun part. The flytrough makes no added value to the track, but it is really cool to look at from inside the station! After the flythrough the rides begins to get a true killer! The little dip after the flythrough is really cool. And after that part there are a lot of very quick track changes after each other. At a really high speed you are thrown from the left to the right, and back again … and back again ... After this follows the last drop before the helix! That part is again really cool and the final helix is a great element for this coaster! You enter the brake with a very nice speed! Damn, what a ride! But ....... , that was only backseat! I haven't told you yet how much better the front seat is! (In my opinion)! The 70 degrees turn at the beginning is really unbelievable front seat, and same can be told about the head choppers and the piece after the flythrough. You are thrown everywhere but is truly super! And then I haven't even spoken about the smoothness of this beast! Damn smooth! Wow, where I have to place this coaster in my top 10 list I will tell later if I’ve ridden him more. Cause at this moment I really am stunned of this super coaster of Toverland... Damn, your gonna love that ride! --- end of translation of coasterchi

And turn number 3 is going up . ALtough it's not yet really visible in the dark webcam picture. Here's the webcam of Troy: http://www.troytoverland.nl/nl/webcam.php A bigger picture of the webcam today. Here you can see them building the first part of turn 3.

That looks pretty cool to me ... great news that they finally started testing with people (personel only). And even greater news that they really are trying to open it on april 1st this year if all goes well with the dnv checkup. At least, that's what Olav (The big boss of the efteling) said in an interview. I found some testing pictures on http://www.dvhe.nl/ and http://www.themepark.nl : Yes ... people inside !

Plopsaland Indoor in belgium is heading for a new publicity stunt. One of the e co-founders (Gert Verhulst) was a singer of popular childrens songs in the 90's and he made a song about what he would do if he had 10.000.000 Belgian francs (250.000 EUR) in 92. Nowadays, Gert owns more then a million euro's so a few enthusiasts of the 90's asked him to do as he prommised in the song. He used to sing that he would give away 100 kilo's of chocolate and give away free lemonade and build a carnival in this song. And that's exactly what they will do for promotion! He agreed to open the doors of the small indoor park one day for free for the fan's of this song in the 90's and for a bunch of children in need. All tickets will be "sold" or given away in presales beacause of the amount of people that are intested. He will also give away one hundred kilo's of chocolate together with free lemonade for all the visitors that day. Now that's a good example of how to promote your park and spoil your visitors. I wish more parks did something like this . Does anybody now any other park that did similar publicity stunts?

Flying dutchman @ Efteling ... it's one year behind on it's original opening date. But is running succesfull tests since friday according to some dutch themepark-enthusiasts at www.themepark.nl .

Plopsaland - indoor exists 1 full year now, and they announced some numbers ! They did not get the expected amont of people (275000) but got much more visitors. They reached the final number of 300000 visitors in the first year. With a top op 3700 visitors in one day And that is not the only good news. They actually managed to make enough money to pay back the entire investment of the complete new building and there indoor park in one year. This means they will be making some very nice profit from 2007 on, and they can already start investing in new attractions and expantions overthere! They already added a few small extra's in the first year like an extra place for dining and drinking! I think this is great news for the new year! The future is looking good for the plopsaland group!

While the rain makes everbody wet overhere ... the woodie is errecting (or something like that ) http://www.toverland.info/content/woodynews/update_20_12_06.php

The old link was down, but someone uploaded it on rapidshare ... all rights reserved to the creators offcourse! This is the new link i found: http://rapidshare.com/files/3785695/mountainglider_promo_INTERIM.wmv.html

I found a promotion video of doplemayer with a few pov parts of the ride. The ride is finished now and waiting to be opened next year ! http://homepage.mac.com/neusjeroen/

A group that not often has been discussed over here is the Plopsa - group (Studio100) in Belgium. In my opinion they are doing great lately. They started plopsaland in 1999 after a full winter of refurbishments. They took over an old park called the meli. The meli wasn't all that bad, but it just was loosing a lot of its look in the final years of the park. They really became in decay. Studio100 (the group that took over the meli) was new on the market, they only made children’s tv shows at that moment. The owner of the company started when I was about 5 to 6 years old on tv with a puppet dog doing a kids show that still is running on tv. (I actually still like the show ) He is now officially a millionaire so the shows and parks haven’t been bad for him! Since the 1999 take over of the Meli everything has changed over there. New rides came in (a powered steel coaster, a duelling single suspended coaster, a water splash, a star flyer, shows, family attractions and loads of other small things. They started to use a lot of theme in the park and it is looking great at the moment. Sometimes even crazy themes, like a washing machine to ride through on a coaster . They attract a lot of visitors for there size of park at the moment. This winter they are going to build a new entrance, move several rides for this, and remove the monorail of the park for this new entrance. They will also add a frog ride, a horse’s attraction with rabbits instead of horses (i haven't yet figured out what it’s going to become?) and a new small water attraction. About 85% of there budget for this winter goes to the theme of there plopsa-garden (they will also install a few new children’s attractions in these gardens, so the park is now tpr friendly ) They are also building some new shops and are going to bring more theme to the toilet buildings and a few other small buildings as giant toadstools and trees. In the further future they are also planning a hotel, refurbishments of the castle in the park, adding extra theme parts to the boat ride part of the super splash they installed ... it looks like they want to become as good as Disney at using themes. Oh yeah and they have confirmed conversations with vekoma for the possibility of an extra coaster on the lake in the park, but nothing is sure for now. For those of you that want to see a movie of this park, i found this movie on the web: http://rapidshare.com/files/2329773/Plopsaland_De_Panne_Compilatie_T-Bo.wmv.html Attention this is not my movie, all credit for this movie goes to the guy with the copyright notice at the end of the movie ... ------ But that's not the only thing they have done lately ... this year they have opened a new indoor park in Belgium. This park also is a big success (it has been several times sold out this year, and runs better than expected (they expect some 275.000 visitors in the first year, and that is a lot for a small sized indoor park in it's first year). Oh yeah and to keep the park interesting they are looking at creating indoor snowfall in the winter at announced hours, so you can have all the winter snow fun in the park! ------ Also this year they took over telecoo, a park located near the only decent waterfalls in Belgium (don't expect something huge ). They took it over at the beginning of the year and already introduced a new name a few carnival rides. This has already been a big success resulting in the visitor numbers going up about 50%! And for next year they are going to retheme this park, add shops, dancing fountains and add a star flyer. These are some screens of the plans: source: http://www.plopsafansite.be Oh yeah and they will keep the one rollercoaster in the park, and the coaster trains are scheduled for repainting in there own paint shop this winter. Yes, the group bought a paintshop for there parks! Not bad for a company that’s only been around for 7 to 8 years in the theme park world. It looks like they have a great future ahead. And they are already thinking of even more, perhaps they take over even more small parks or even build more new parks. They already announced some thoughts about opening something in the Netherlands. And it's also fun that they create parks for the entire family ... What do you guys think of the Plopsa group ?

There is news about the problems. Olaf Vugts (park manager of the efteling) confirmed in an interview the opening date of 1 april 2007. He also confirmed that Intamin has been called upon to fix the problems with the ride. Let's hope they deliver a safe and fun solution for this water coaster and its problems.

There sure are a lot of great slides in this topic. In belgium we don't have a lot of good waterparks, in fact we have a few smaller parks with mostly boring rides. But there is one slide i really love overhere, it's in Hengelhoef and is called "razende rivier". Traslated this means: very wid river. And that's exactly what it is. It doesn't matter how good you can swim under the age of 12 you are never allowed for safety reasons (as it should be cause it is dangerous at some places if you are small and not strong enough)! A few pictures to show what it is: I don't know if there are many of these on the world. I know only on good river like this and it is in hengelhoef. An easy part of the "razende rivier" is on the left of this picture: An easy part at the beginning of the "razende rivier": Don't be fouled, it get's better a bit further: A bit better overview of the first part in the picture: And another picture of the first part. You can clearly see how the slide gets more narrow and receives more speed in this picture: There is quite a strong flow overhere, it's almost impossible to stand up overhere: You can clearly see the current of the slide overhere: A nice example of a nice drop in the ride. Because of the narrowing of the slide (river) the speed of the water get's very high. You often go underwater for several meters after this drop because of the strong current. You never now where you will end up after this part. Lucky there is always a lifeguard watching over cause otherwise accidents would be occuring ! There is also a nice outside part, that has some decent speed in it: Also outside, the river goes in a small lake it's a bit easyer to stand up overthere but the current can easily take you in a circle to a place you don't want to be. There is a resting place overthere if you are to tired. Some more outide fun: It goes back inside under a few slides for some more crazy parts: Sometimes it has a very nice flow: And at other moments it becomes very crazy and wild: The length of the slide is quite perfect. Any longer would make most people to tired. And it's not to short to have several drops and very good turns. Plus the combination of outside and inside parts adds fun to the experience. And the combination of resting places and very high speed parts of the slide adds a lot fun to the experience for everybody. The pictures come from the following sites: http://www.extremerides.nl http://zwembaden.waterpret.info/hengelhoef/