Kooky

i use this thread to share some news on the abandoned ThemePark "SpreePark" in Berlin... A Group of german and american students started a Kickstarter-Project to get this park to new life:

many changes were done at the park! plopsa builded many new little family- and kids-rides,shows, a new entrance,mainstreet and overall many theming elements and buildings! At the moment the park is opened but they are building and working on every corner, so it`s more a soft-opening and many of the small rides seems to be not finally themed and placed. But the home of EGF gets nicer and nicer, so here is little update on the park with random pics of the last few weeks from http://www.holly-info.de/newsblog:

nice video from the whole ride.... haven`t found it here, so post it! But spoils the whole ride, so be warned: Admin Edit!!! LINK REMOVED!!!! You should know better not to post "illegal" videos on TPR! Cameras are NOT ALLOWED on this attraction! So please, do not encourage others by posting videos like this. This will be your only warning!!!

first test video:

^ your right, but this one definitly looks like it will brake you down... it has a little curvy edge in the middle of the brake with absolutly no banking! so i don't think you will got through there with 20 mph... but it looks like if the boats came to close to each other, that 2 boats can be in the block brakes at the same time, because they are so long and maybe they designed it that way for more capacity and better evacuation options. Or what came to my mind is.... dream mode on: If you look close in this picture, you see that the friction wheels are only in the first part, in the second part there are only LIMS... may be to simulate the boat races, you get a little "Kick" launch out of the block brakes... that would be cool! Or they will add the missing friction wheels later... that would be sad here is an old pic which shows the brakes better:

yeah, it's an april prank of course! But i think they were going to really add it, maybe as easter-egg hidden in the simulator. Because the 3d-modell looks really good and programming i think will not be so hard... hopefully they will add this

really nice pics from today... tomorrow i will add a offride and some other video shots from the queue! so a short coaster review: Was a nice day and after half an hour wait we got onto the ride. The queue is really nice themed. You walk along a (very long) gangway with nicely added lamps and really intresting theming. On many parts of the queue you walk directly under the lifthill and the first drop which is really impressive. Then you walk through the indoor queue which is like hanno said, very well themed,too. Very less light and really nice atmosphere... The whole in a wall which hanno showed is a smoke screen were a 3D-Hammer is projected and the surrounding building construction start to shake earthquake like (animactronic), which many people shocked the first time (us too ) - Here a video (sorry a little bit shaky, but you can see the nice effects and the building shaking at the end): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpRHbYHtUUA Then you walk through some more nicely themed scenes and arrive in the station. One of my favourite little details of the ride-theming was that the statues in station startet to turn the head in the direction in which the train was leaving and when the train was gone they looked in the direction from which the trains arrives... awesome!!! Here a short Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbGgMXgR6RQ So to the ride... after leaving the station it gets a little bit speed to get first turn with a wrong banking! Especially in the last car i was really suprised about it. Then up the Lifthill (fire was off) and down the first hill has nice air, especially in the last row. The rest of the ride is just like hanno said a fast chain of curves through which you ride with some decent speed and some pops of air on some points. What i liked most is the sometimes little bit weird banking and the nice unpredictable strange bumps in curves -a lot of fun and gives a nice turblent ride feeling. So overall not in my top ten for airtime but definitly in the top 10 for fun and theming on a woody and a all ages family friendly funride. First ride in the second row was fun, the next two times i get a ride in the last row which really added a little bit more fun to it, so ride it in the back if you were introduced so(no own "choose a row"). And talking to the chief spokesman he told the ride will get faster and faster overtime, can't wait to ride it on my next visit in one month again. Overall it is a really great addition... the only problem of this day was operation speed, which was in my opinion a big letdown. With 300-400 people on the ride and two trains running, operations were really slow and you moved very slow in the queue for EuropaPark standards. But i think they tested a lot and today they trained the workers very well, so maybe after some weeks and with three trains running they will get the operations as fast as we were used to

There is a second soft opening for 300 riders on the 30.th march were they just open the wodan coaster for fans and the rest of the park stays closed. After this i will write a review here...

Perfect date to go to the park... normally in this time between the easter holidays and the "Pfingstferien"(holidays at the end of may) the park has very little crowds! Especially on midweek days, but on wednesday the park is often more crowded with french people, because they are not used to work on this day. So maybe on Wednesday there will be more people, but it will not be extremly full. On Thursday it should be a very empty park, maybe be with walkthrough the lines. And like the post before said, even on massive days with crowd records the park manages to get a massive amount of people through the lines very fast. They really have the fastest operators out there. And staying at a hotel ia absolutly worth it. If you just want to ride the main attractions (coaster,water- and dark-rides) you can do it in one day. But if you want to enjoy and explore all the rides and park area then you should stay in a hotel. the hotels are very nice themed too and overall a fantastic experience(i just know the Coloseo, but i think the others are good too. just give it a look on the homepage). food is delicious and prices are ok. and there are some other (cheaper) options. For expamle you can rent a covered wagon, camp in tipis or rent a lodge in the western city... but if you are going to camp, you should bring warm clothes... it could still be cold at this time (but last year it had over 25 degrees, so maybe not ) ! Here are more informations about the resort: http://resort.europapark.com/lang-en/Camp-Resort/c676.html?langchange=true So have fun and enjoy the park

after a long time... here is the first official onride video from this little gem:

"Früling in Deutschland" always fun when american parks change our spelling.... i often see this when parks use german expressions it's kind of funny for us! But here they only lost n "h", the correct spelling is "Frühling" But i like this little failures... It's like many european parks make many mistakes with english expressions,too! it's kind of sympathetic EDIT: ^you were a little bit faster or i have overlooked it

There is a nice new report with pics from http://freizeitparkweb.de/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&forum=DCForumID4&om=7412&omm=17&viewmode=. Some informations from the report.... There is many to do because they want to open it in 2-3 weeks for the public.... The Theming will come within the next two years, if they get enough people into the park maybe they will add it next winter. It's planned to put animatronics on the ride, two were already ordered and many more should follow. They will add some water canons and some little suprisings they don't want to share at the moment. While you were lifted with the elevator the the lift turns around 180 degrees to get you a nice view over the landscape. Then you go the 25 meters downwards with a highspeed of 80 km per hour a 56 degree steep drop. But before you drive over a little airtime hill. A little letdown is that they will break the trains down on the airtime hill so that you get maximum negative g's of -0,2. They mention that they use "eddy-current brakes" to slow it down, because if they wouldn't do it, the g's would be so high that you were lifted out of your seat (sounds after nearly -1,0g's) .... and because of they want that it stays family- and child-friendly, they made this decision... Not good news for us coaster enthusiasts, but for a small park like this and the families which are visiting,imo the best choice. One last thing to mention is that some of the residents seem to complain about the yellow-painting, so they were going to change the color of track to fit better in the area. But now some pics: source: http://freizeitparkweb.de/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&forum=DCForumID4&om=7412&omm=17&viewmode=

There are some nice photos from test that haven't been postet here and which show some intresting details (source: http://ep-fans.info/?id=3628&lang=& ):

there are some new photos... on one of them you can see a train... so maybe testing already started or they just did a kind of pull-through: source and more photos on: http://forum.theparks.it/mirabilandia-f4/divertical-novita-2012-t6720-4950.html#p229790

ok... now my last try...every thing very glowy and artistic, photo and every effect are made by myself...i hope this is a bit more your style and this is the fastest pic i ever made... i mean look, the train is burning like a meteor :

^ one question, which font did you use? haven't found it anywhere! i want to give it a last, very different try

ok... read the critics too late... so i created even a more artistic one! But i used another font for it too, because i want to get NEON-Look a like style! may be you like this a little bit more but don't be upset, because i post this...i just want to show it even after your critics, because i put many hours work in it! To my first picture... i refered to an image that you like... The TPR, gets a stone look to fit on the wall... have to admit not best decision. i wanted to go away from standards, so i think -NO direct link just an experimental design.... you didn't like it, so maybe it try something else

my entry... I used one of my pictures of BlueFire and photoshopped a font that it look like a stone TPR-Logo, than added shadows and a massive a amount of color correction and a some blur to give it a better look: my entry

the first artworks of the trains were published: source: http://www.ep-fans.info/?id=3626&lang=&

really awesome looking.... if you look at this picture you can see how huge this construction is and that the ship goes upside the track... it seems to come really close to the first artworks... that is what all the fanboys waited for: source: http://www.heide-park-world.de/images/news/Baublog/2012/12_03_01-c.jpg

^not worth the time of translating it but sometimes i am to enthusiastic when i read something like this, that i don't start to really think about it before i put much work on a topic so learning by failing

that's what i thought and edited the text, while you were posting your answer i looked at pictures from other gci coaster and don't see more twistyness or specialitys as in other ones. And all the Millenium Flyer trains were looking like two seaters... so looks like that is a little bit of bad journalism or translation that is responsible for this article.

There is an interview in our regional newspaper with the engineer of the "Wodan"-coaster Joe Dravers and he mentioned a intresting point... he said that the coaster is so twisting and has so many shifts in direction that they had to construct new trains for this one... they build trains with only twoseater wagons with very flexible joints that connect 12 of them together to one train. And he mentioned that 3 trains will operate at this coaster at the same time... i am little bit confused now, i never ridden gci before but as i remember from pics here in this forum the normal Millenium Flyer trains are two seaters,too!? or maybe I am wrong... or maybe the german jounalist translated something wrong. here is the original part in german (full article and source on http://www.badische-zeitung.de/rust/europa-park-wer-steckt-hinter-der-neuen-holzachterbahn): My translation try: and they listed some intresting facts about the coaster:

the postet the first onride on their facebook page:

A complete surreal theme-park in the middle of a city... really nice fantasy video... respect to the creators, the effects and it's artistic looking is really nice: [vimeo] [/vimeo]