simon8899

^There are some: www.rheinkirmes.com - Funhouses - www.rheinkirmes.com - Darkrides Highlight this year is the refurbished 1947 Kristallpalast (Crystal Palace) - the first new mirror maze opened after WWII. Also a classic is the 1950s Siemens Rotor.

^July 12th to 21st.

I'll be on Ruhrgebiets biggest Kirmes in Düsseldorf in mid-July for a whole weekend visiting some friends. Construction has already begun - www.rheinkirmes.com Highlights: 4 coasters - Olympia-Looping - first stop this year with it's new paint - Alpina-Bahn - Spinning-Racer - MaurerSöhne spinner - Wilde Maus 2 waterrrides - Wildwasser 3 - huge portable MACK logflume, 40x60 meters, 30 meters tall, with forward and backward splashdown, 2 turntables - Rio Rapidos - rafting ride Flats - 2x Huss Break Dancer - Schwarzkopf Monster 3 - Mondial TopScan - Mondial Shaker - Huss Magic - Maurer Drop-Tower 66m - KMG Afterburner XXL - Kalbfleisch Nessy - a Pirate clone from the 70s - StarFlyer 55m Observation rides - portable Mondial Gyro-Observation Tower 75m - Premiere!

^ I prefer the Traumboot over the Ranger as the cabin is taller - being 1,95 it's not quite comfortable upside down inside a Range while I can hang freely inside a Traumboot.

The Schwarzkopf Thriller in it's original layout had two nearly circular loops at the beginning - so it's possible with good calculation. Honestly I've to say that thses coasters look well mantained.

Great! Looks like a German carnival from the early 80s! Except of course for the two woodies. EDIT: The Enterprise is a former German carny ride as the sign says: "Loopingspass im Enterprise!" Schwarzkopf Looping Star, Enterprise, Apollo and Zeppelin. Also lots of Huss goodness and one has to love a park who had a Weber Traumboot - here called Mary Rose. ^I can't rightaway spot an Intamin ride though...

The bats are circlling the drop tower - maybe the coaster will do the same...

You'll find the following in the current park map... Flying under the wings of vampire bats???

During two days at Liseberg I rode Balder only once and wasn't majorly impressed. It's a fun solid coaster but Colossos at Heide-Park or Twister at Gröna Lund are IMO better woodies.

Visited Heide-Park in the last week before Germany's main holiday season. Never before had this many ride malfunctions: - Huss Enterprise (closed all day) - Intamin Rafting (closed all day) - Huss Dancer (closed till midday) - Klaus Roundup (closed from midday) - Huss Flipper (closed from midday) - Intamin Woodie (only one train operational) So visitors spread out which resulted in BigLoop and Limit running two trains due to popular demand. And there were even lines for flats like Schwarzkopf Monster, Huss Magic and Huss TopSpin. Due to this I only got in a few rides and took some more photos... Colossos - 2x Desert Race - 3x BigLoop - 2x Krake - 1x Grottenblitz - 1x First ride in the morning the great Colossos. A 10 minute wait - but was over 60 minutes during the day. This feels like an Intamin Mega that is accidentally made of wood... Heide-Park is full of theming remmants. Grottenblitz and Monorail have a nice Siwtzerland theming. Desert Race is fun but (very) short. Best operations kept the line at 10-15 minutes. Schwarzkopf Monster Krake - ähem Okti - is running smoothly as always. Even kiddie coaster Indy-Blitz had a line today! Desert Race features a short Figure-8 layout. All rafts accounted for but the canals are dry. Colossos is the only world-class coaster - but maybe there's hope they'll another next year... Huss-Land - ähem Maya Tal These coasters look so innocent... Who can guess were this is??? Lots of construction going on the future Wingrider site. By this point most riders regret choosing this coaster... Foundations drilled/rammed into the ground. What could the concrete things in the back be? - Station? Splashdown?? Train building??? Hope the station is not on the small hill - always a drag to labour up there in the summer.... The only waterride running today - so it was packed. Random kiddie-flat. While Limit is plain adns imple horrible Big Loop hurts but is at least rideable. Huss Magic Break Dancer running a quite family friendly program compared to carnival Dancers.

The roughest Vekoma is always the last one... Only Vekoma coasters with the newest trains - with rubber OTSRs - are excepted.

Colossos at Heide-Park - first and last ride of the day today.

^ A park who does bathtubs for a log flume....

The trains mainframe are looking like standard Eurofighter trains like on Fluch - so I expect no major technical problems on this one....

Movie Park is the only park in my homeland I've no drive to visit. Germany has great parks with a good coaster line-up like Europa-Park, Tripsdrill, Phantasialand or Hansa-Park. But only looking at the model and make of Movie-Park coasters makes me shivver...

Only judging by the pics on many rides you cant judge if it's defunct or not....

Thanks for the TR! What do you have against wooden footers? They use them here all the way to compensate not level floor on the fairgrounds - many of the smaller carnivals here are built on grass fields with gravel walkways so they have to use them. Could the carpet be a Weber Carpet - if so it has travelled a long way from Bremen...

^ Yeah, why not putting up a site for Theme Park Toilet Wait Times... Fun aside: Smiler seems to be stopping on the lift(s) quite often - thought coaster tech would be beyond that by now. At least I haven't heard anything like this from any other coaster recently...

At over 35 degrees Celsius I wouldn't mind such a fresher....

Would love to see this. This year there's a kind of shortage for rollercoasters: Olympia and Alpina - Rheinkirmes, Düsseldorf Teststrecke - Schützenfest, Hannover So for Sommerdom there can only be Höllenblitz and MouseXXL...

As I'm invited to visit Düsseldorf during Rheinwiese and the on-off technical issues with Smiler I've made a change of plans: July - Rheinkirmes with Olympia Looping AND Alpina-Bahn - plus new this year a portable 75 meter gyro observation tower by Mondial September - Munich, Skyline Park - Heilbronn, Tripsdrill, hopefully with Karacho - Cologne, Phantasialand, my first visit since the age of 5 Alton Towers most likely in spring 2014...

With all its twistyness its looking like being The Smiler's smaller brother...

I think and hope that coasters like Cheetah Hunt and Helix are the future. With this tech you can built coasters which a nearly unlimited in length - the only limiting factor is the bank account of the park ordering it and space available.

Thriller on the carnival. The compression between the first and second loop was amazing.

I like to prefer magnetic launches over launch systems using cable/pusher Magnetic Intamin - Cheetah Hunt Mack - Blue Fire - can't wait for multi-launch Helix Gerstlauer - launched Eurofighter - Fluch von Novgorod Cable/Pusher Schwarzkopf - Shuttle-Loop flywheel Intamin - Xcelerator/Kanonen/... Vekoma - Rock'n'Roller Coaster