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Satchboogie3 last won the day on April 16 2023
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About Satchboogie3
- Birthday 12/31/1987
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Belgium
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Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Last of the photos. Oziris feels a lot like a smaller version of Montu. Not as intense, but still really fun and just looks great! I quite like how Goudurix looks by the water, though I would have kept the original color scheme and just painted the rails black or blue instead of yellow. I also found Goudurix slightly enjoyable, though you really need to brace yourself for each transition, especially that pretzel loop unless you want nasty whiplash. I like the uniqueness of the whole ride, though I do have a soft spot for the old big and unique Arrow/Vekoma loopers (not the SLCs, those can go die in a fire). Pegase Express was a nice surprise, good theming and that backwards bit was a lot of fun! I really liked the theming around the station for the log flume, but unfortunately most of the ride was the typical elevated track with no theming. I'll never understand the point that. The indoor themed streets were really cool! Camera struggling in the low lighting. I couldn't find anywhere to get good photos of Zeus unfortunately. A very beautiful park. I'll definitely go back later this year if I head to Paris for a weekend (or just a day trip, Parc Asterix only 2.5 hours from me), I would like to revisit Zues to get a ride in the front or back and I need to get a backrow ride on Toutatis and just get some more rides as the weather heats up. If it's already kicking-ass in mid/front rows in early April, it'll probably be a monster in the summer heat! -
Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
The whole area is ifront of Hourra. I don't know how the queue was before, but now you enter to the west of the ride, the queue snakes through the ride and the exit is a bit further down the path. Queue entrance down on the right. Exit on the left. And just across from the entrance is the Toutatis plaza, a big restaurant on the left, the Tatoutis platform in that hill and the entrace up on the left. I could have just had a bad ride, I only did ride it once, maybe you'll enjoy it more! -
Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
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Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Yeah, you can see one of them in the background here: There was another in the area that I think was more kids oriented? I'm honestly not a big flats fan so I usually don't pay too much attention to them so I'm not even really sure what the one pictured does. Also, I like the touch of detail with the Easter egg in the nest on top of the giant Toutatis figure -
I've passed Walygator soo many times now driving back from the Alps, but just never worked out. Closest was during covid, I stopped by the park, but got denied entry due to the just instituted covid passport at the time. I actually would have stopped yesterday as I was driving back from Italy, but of course the park closes at 5pm so I wouldn't have had enough time. One day... (but honestly the Alps take priority )
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Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Apparently it's still considered a Holiday weekend as it was absolutely packed today, my bad. I ended up breaking down and getting their 'FiloToMatix' skip the line pass. It seemed a bit expensive at 45 euro for 1 single use skip-the-line on 10 attractions, Toutatis not included. I think I remember Walibi Holland having an unlimited use skip-the-line for 50 or 60 euro. I also ended up getting 2 single skip-the-line for Toutatis at 10 euro a pop, but between the crazy line and the ride being down all morning, it seemed worth it. I ended up getting 3 rides total on Toutatis; one front row, one 2nd row 2nd car, one 1st row 4th car. The morning started not so great. Heavy crowds, I arrived a half hour before opening and already there was a massive crowd waiting to rush to Toutatis. I joined the crowd, a big mistake, as Toutatis wouldn't be ready for open and even if it was, I was way back in line. I wasted about 20 minutes before deciding to head over to Oziris. By this point, there was already about a 45 minute line, but it is what is it. Oziris was great, more on that later. I then headed to Tonnerre 2 Zeus after a little wandering around trying to figure out how to get there . I walked past Goudurix, whose line was out the entrance and then saw that Zues line was also out the entrance, estimated over an hour. At that point I decided to look at what, if any, skip the line passes they had, hence above. Of course on the app, there was no link to use bancontact and I left my credit cards in my car so now I had to go all the way back out to order the pass. By the time I got back into the park, it was already 11:40 and I had 1 single ride on the day. As much as I love a quiet park, I absolutely hate a busy park. With the pass purchased I then headed to Goudurix and then Zues. More on them later. Once I got off, I noticed that Toutatis was showing as open. I purchased a pass for it and then hopped on Pegase Express while waiting for the slot to open. By the time I got off and checked my phone, Toutatis was down again. After checking it out in person, I went on Trace Du Hourra. I then hung around Toutatis for a bit and it started running again, around 1pm. My pass was showing as 'cancelled' since the ride had closed, as was almost everyone else waiting to go in by the Filotomatrix entrance. I noticed though the option to purchase another pass for Toutatis, so I simply did that and got an active QR code so I managed to get passed all the people complaining about their cancelled pass and head up to the station. I got my first ride in the 2nd car. I then jumped in line, which was about 2 hours. About an hour into the line I was able to purchase another skip-the-line pass for Toutatis, so I got pretty quick back to back rides between 3 and 4. After that the line looked to be down to 1-1.5 hours. I made the bad decision to go use up the rest of my rides on the pass (Oziris and the water rides) and wander around taking photos, instead of getting back in line for a 4th ride, because when I came back at 5pm, the line was the longest of the day, way out of the entrance, probably nearly 3 hours long (and the park closed in 2 hours). Besides the crazy crowds, I really enjoyed the park. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting it to be as pretty and well themed as it was. The only complaint would be the food didn't look very good, very fast-food/convenience store level and not a lot of variety. Completely different than the great food at most German/NL parks I've been to. Especially the sandwiches, they all had really bad looking generic bread. I really expected more for France! Another big pet peeve of mine that Asterix was guilty of: having single rider lines and not using any of them. Early in the afternoon the ride ops were dispatching a lot of trains with empty seats on Toutatis, probably only hitting 85% capacity for a while, meanwhile a perfectly good single rider line sat there roped off... To be fair, as the day progressed, the ops got into a better rhythm and did a good job of filling empty seats. They were very quick to dispatch as well (2 train ops), so props to that. This was the first park I've seen that wheels out big bins and collects everyone's bags while they are in their seat. They were pretty quick and I can see it being a faster solution than the typical bins, assuming the staff are moving quickly, which they were. Ok now on to what you're waiting for Toutatis: First, I have to mention the reliability issues. I knew it would be a risk going when the ride hasn't even been open 2 weeks, given Intamin's reputation with new rides. Still, it's getting a little ridiculous. It pretty much didn't open until after 1pm, with a few short downtimes in the afternoon. I'm just happy I got on it as it was looking pretty bleak in the morning. Now onto the ride. It's everything I hoped Kondaa would be. Nothing against Kondaa, it's great, but the flaws like that pointless non-inverted cobra roll and the kinda slow 2nd half simply don't exist on Toutatis. There's not a single 'that could have been better' moment that I can think of and it's still flying when you hit the brakes. It's claimed as having 23 moments of airtime, which might be generous, but not far off. On my last ride (in the front row), I counted 20 moments, including the hangtime on the inversions, spike, rollback, and start/finish of the top hat the 2nd time through. The two little bumps on the transfer track before the top hat gave really great airtime in both directions, the top hat gave surprisingly good pops of ejector air as well as sustained floater air. There were a lot more ejector air spots than I was anticipating and a number of the transitions were taken at a good speed with nice snap and aggressiveness (probably not the level of Maverick, I still haven't ridden that though). My home park got the wrong Intamin! I'm still not sure I can put this ahead of Expedition GeForce, cause I'm just a massive fan boy of the classic layout loaded with ejector air hills, but I think Toutatis will easily become most peoples favorite coaster in Europe with Untamed being the only competition. (If I'm honest, it's a better ride than Expedition GeForce in everyway minus not having that classic 1st twisted drop). I think Toutatis clearly puts Parc Asterix on the map as a must-visit. It might now have the best coaster in Europe with a solid #2 B&M invert and a few other fun coasters. Just too bad Zues sucks. Just a few photos for now, I'll upload more and my impression on the other rides later. And a quick note on Zues: the re-tracked sections are pretty smooth, though I didn't get much in the way of airtime really anywhere and the old-track sections are brutal. If the replaced parts were even worse, OMG I can see why some people would like Goudurix more than it. I really didn't like how the ride kept switching backing and forth from smooth to jackhammering. I'd almost rather they replace the entire track or none. The smooth sections seemed to accentuate the roughness of the old track, it was extremely jarring every time it switched. I normally can love rough wooden coasters but I have no desire to ever ride Zues again unless they completely re-track it. Yuk. Oziris themed section is awesome, pretty Montu esque, and the ride was really fun with a nice layout. Strong #2 coaster in the park. Pegase Express was fun to. The bobsled, I don't get the theme at all. -
Parc Asterix Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to sebastienstuff's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I'm heading to the park tomorrow for the first time. Very interested to see how Tonnerre 2 Zeus is and of course Toutatis. Not sure if I'm hoping it's better than Kondaa since Kondaa is 2 hours closer to me... but excited. -
This will be a bit lengthy of a post. I spur of the moment decided to head back to Germany last weekend to kill two birds with one stone: Get back to Phantasialand to get some night rides (the park is open until 8pm for the Wintertraum!) and checkout the Christmas markets in Köln and Düsseldorf. With the temperature around 5C and cloudy, I wasn't too surprised to find Taron and FLY running a little sluggish. They both seemed to be running faster after night fall, but that could just be the dark messing with me . Rookburgh looked great with a lot of steam/fog. Minimally placed Christmas stuff was a smart choice I think to keep with the theming. There are number of cute little areas with snow scenes around the park. It was around 5C and cloudy so the snow wasn't melting much. One of few Wintertraum chalets - flame grilled salmon. It was actually pretty good, very juicy and cooked just long enough. There's nothing worse than overcooked salmon Upside tree is a nice touch outside Hotel Tartuff Gluhwein! A few visits to chalet helped keep me warm throughout the day Hard to see in the photo, but there is a santa with a sack and gifts up in the little tower in front of Black Mamba. I thought it might not be a bad idea to go on Chiapas Die Wasserbahn. It's maybe my all-time favorite flume and a water ride in the middle of a cold December day seemed adventurous... yeah, I got soaked... maybe not the best decision. But nothing more Gluhweinn can't fix! Taron looked wild at night back on Halloween and was even better this night! Oh foggy night 20211218_173855.mp4 Berlin was basically a Christmas market! Last time at the park after sunset, Rookburgh didn't have much for lighting besides the normal lanterns and white lights. This time there were a lot of red, green, and blue lights, with some alternating from the tunnels. The two night rides I got were easily the best experience I've had yet on FLY. Killer night ride. The park really came to life at night. I'm tempted to take the train back out there in January before the Wintertraum ends. And for Bonus content. The Phantasialand bus departs from Bruhl station, just outside the center of town. I had a bit of time to kill before the first bus so wandered a bit. If you are taking the bus, it isn't a bad idea to take a look around. The Augustusburg Palace is right across from the bus stop and is a UNESCO site (I didn't take photos because of construction and poor lighting, but it's a site to walk around) and the center of town is pretty. The Christmas market was small but very charming as well. Heading into the center of Bruhl Bruhl Christmas market On to Koln: A stay in Koln wouldn't be complete without visiting a few Kolsch breweries! (After all my Kolsch experiences, Reissdorf is still best!) There are a number of Christmas markets spread throughout the city. I visited 3 of them over the coarse of the weekend (I think that means I need to go back to check out the rest... ) First up is the Koln Cathedral Market: Pretty good backdrop! Maybe my favorite thing of the markets: Raclette! Stellar board of cheese from the Swiss Alps Wood fire BBQ pork and chicken! Good food was abundant. Koln Harbour market: The harbour market was pretty unique and looked fantastic (plus the place to go for seafood), though my favorite was hands-down the Heinzel's WinterMarchen in Altstadt: Buble Alpe was a great spot to stop for a half litre of lager and enjoy watching the skaters. The mini ski lift of gnomes was adorable (and it moved and everything)! Mühlen bear with a tray of Kölsch Delicious Apfelkrapfen Brass section performing Lastly I stopped in Düsseldorf Sunday afternoon for some Altbier and more Christmas markets. First stop Schumacher brewery, the first brewery to use the name Altbier for the unique local beer back in 1838. Fuchschen hosted most of the markets in Dusseldorf. It's good too! More Gluhwein in a mug I had to have. Glass blowing Uerige Brewery. Claimed to use the most 'bittering constituents' of any beer in Germany. I'm not sure if it is the most bitter, but it is certainly bitter and absolutely delicious. My favorite Altbier in Dusseldorf. A magical weekend trip. I would highly recommend anyone that can to experience Koln and Phantasialand in December!
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Phantasialand Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to roeterich's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Just got back from the park today, my first time at a park during the Christmas season. The park was gorgeous. I also much enjoyed FLY and Rookburgh after dark this time. Early this year, the lighting seemed very basic with the old bronze light theming. Today there was a ton of red and blue lighting, plus great fog/steam coming from the tunnels. Really made for an amazing night ride. I'll post a TR when I'm back in Belgie, with some bonus German Christmas market content -
Phantasialand Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to roeterich's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I finally made it back out to the park on Halloween! I was excited to check out F.L.Y and the rides I had missed on my previous trip a few years ago. The weather turned out great (mild fall temps and the rain held off until the evening). I was impressed by F.L.Y. Based on reviews, I was expecting a very mild ride, but it was pleasantly forceful (there were a lot of dives where you really feel pulled down and a few good pops of airtime) and a ton of fun. The interaction with the area is really awesome. It is a great ride. If you are a steam-punk fan, it will blow your mind. I will say that I'm not, so I do still prefer Taron, ride and theming wise. I also preferred Taron at night, lit up with cool colors, where as FLY was just white-light, but I it did stay true to the theming. The park didn't seem too busy. The longest I waited was ~45 minutes for Taron around 11am. The lines completely cleared up after 12 (This seems to be a thing in Germany? Everyone seemed to queue up for lunch while Taron went from 50 minutes to literally 10 minutes from 12:30-1:30ish!). I took advantage of this and got a solid 7 or 8 rides on Taron between 12:30 and 2ish. Black Mamba was practically a walk-on all day and most other rides where at most 20 minutes. I think FLY was 30-45 minutes all day (I got 2 rides, 1 at the start of the day in the front row and another later afternoon with ~45 minute wait. I know the advertised capacity is more than Taron, but the line felt way slower. Taron was killing it with quick 4-train op). After around 12 rides on Taron, I would say front left seat is where it's at. The trims before the last airtime hill were on (I can't recall if this was the case when I was there a few years ago), it's really a shame as it completely kills that last hill (you still get floater air). Kind of like Konda, I feel the last 10-20 seconds of Taron leave a lot to be desired, and I just wish there was more airtime. I do other wise love the ride though. This was my first time at the park after dark and Taron absolutely was amazing at night! The dark and lighting really add the experience. I also got a ride on Black Mamba on the way out and it felt completely out of control in the dark! I tried to upload a video of FLY, but it won't load for some reason. On to some pictures: FLY as you enter from the main park entrance View from an open-air section of the queue On to Taron, my favorite part of the park Andech's Hell's break before heading back to FLY Back to Taron as the sun started to go down. I LOVE the red lit second launch! Anyone know how to flip this image? It inverted on uploading! -
Walibi Belgium Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to Dark Vampire's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I made it down to Walibi Saturday night for the start of their Fright Night. I got to say I was pretty impressed by the Halloween theming! I didn't do any of the paid things, but they look good, especially wicked woods. I went in the evening primarily to get night rides on Konda. The park usually closes at 6pm during the summer, but these two weekends the park is open until 10! So on to Konda. It was definitely a fun experience at night, as I almost always love night rides. It was chilly and raining most of the night though, so it wasn't running particularly fast. I was happy that the singles line was finally open! Ride ops did a great job of filling the trains and running an efficient two-train op. I got probably close to 10 rides in just a few hours before 9ish PM. As much fun as Konda is, when it hits the break run, I always feel disappointed that it missed out on the opportunity to be really special. Such great moments and an interesting layout on the 2nd half, but the second half just feels slugish and a bit tame, and I still find the non-inverting cobra roll pointless. I might head back next weekend for the last of the Halloween Fright nights (trying to convince my friends out here to go, but none of them are really into amusement parks or Halloween...). Konda at night! Queue entrance Mine train Rebellion land, a rave kind of outdoor party. It was actually pretty cool! 20211030_211817.mp4 Haunted Circus setup -
Phantasialand Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to roeterich's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
How are crowds in DE/Europe this time of year? I'm thinking of heading back to Phantasialand maybe next weekend, but don't really want to go if it'll be packed. -
Walibi Belgium Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to Dark Vampire's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
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Walibi Belgium Discussion Thread
Satchboogie3 replied to Dark Vampire's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I visited the park this morning and got 6 rides in on Kondaa. My initial reaction a month ago, Kondaa was the first coaster I had ridden in almost 2 years due to covid. Now having ridden Untamed, Goliath, and revisiting Kondaa, it was a little underwhelming. Granted, it's morning and I expect it will warm up a bit (it was a warm morning though). Pretty much my breakdown is the same, I love the first drop and two hills, the non-inverting cobra roll doesn't do anything for me (its just going too slow through the transitions at the top to give any good forces), and the last 3rd isn't very forceful. I think it losses too much speed and the elements aren't tight/extreme enough. It definitely pales in comparison to Untamed. And upon reflection, Expedition GeForce is still my #1/2 with Untamed. I don't think the first drop or first two airtime hills are as extreme as on Expedition GeForce either. It's still a really fun coaster and still maybe top 5 for me, probably my 3rd favorite in Europe so far. It's better than Taron for sure The ride ops at Kondaa are rock stars. They luckily are loading all rows, but consistently now with my visits, they have the train headed up the lift by as soon as the other train hits the breaks. Very smooth and fast . If your visiting Walibi, definitely get there as early as possible. I arrived at 8:31 from the train and the line grew pretty quickly. They set up a really long queue path at the entrance due to covid. It literally takes 10 minutes just to walk it! I managed to be 2nd in line for Untamed and got 6 rides in by 11:05.