simon8899

The advantage of a day with some light showers is that parks are mostly deserted - and you can park yourself for hours on a coaster...

The park looks really good - even if rides are mostly on the older side. I refrained from visiting Tijuana tough as a) you're not allowed to do this on Visa-Waiver instead you need a regular US and Mexico Visa to do that and b) german State Department warns on its website to enter nothern mexico due to very high crime rates. I may do Mexico-City someday - for which there is no travel-warning so far...

Great pics as always...and that Nacho dish is insane...no wonder we cant eat up on you no matter how much Bratwurstle, Sauerkraut and Beer we put into ourselves....

My advice would be: If possible try to get to work and cash in some extra holiday/sunday pay - then take off some days in a week where there're no public or school holidays and enjoy the non-existant lines at amusement parks! Well thats what I'm doing. It's Labour Day over here and I'm maning the supervisors desk alone - but will take the whole week off starting May 7th (no holidays then here)! Hansa-Park and Heide-Park in sight....

mmhmmmm....looking forward to next spring....

Hmmm...I once read in a german forum its about to be sold to somewhere eastern europe or russia. Well could be wrong rumors then....nevertheless: the only Looping Star within easy reach for me....

Nice to see Queen Mary again - my last years LA hotel....

Slagharen is a great park with lots of former netherland/german carnival rides from the 70s/80s - plus the only surviving Looping Star in western europe. Last year I could see only one sign of maintenence - the Huss Troika was down - but all other rides were running and all operators booths sporting the yearly TÜV test patches. Hope they keep the classics....maybe adding some 90s carnival rides...

Thanks god for the smartphone!

Will see to Twister in June....

Its funny to see that on the Big Splash construction site the beverage supplier has the same-sized board than planning and engineering - but on the other hand the "Richtfest" is always quite a big party with lots of beers and snaps.... We trade it with Thriller in Mexico...

Damn you had Artistico first.... But at least we in Hamburg had the Olympia Looping for a month - I wonder were Alpina Bahn is hiding as its sometimes visiting Aachen in spring.... And after seeing your great impressions from Phantasialand which I last visited as a kid I need to visit again, maybe next year - this year is for Europa Park that I also last visited as a kid when they only had a powered coaster and a bobsled coaster....

I need to visit this someday - and as Finnair is allowed to go over russia and the arctic the flight time isnt THAT intimmidating anymore from europe....

You wetted my mouth for my June trip - hope to see all coasters then! This was something new: to see the tower lifted while it wasn't spinning. Strange you say that - at carnivals here most ride programs start with no spinning which kicks in afterwards.

Always like to see parks that are - most likely - way beyond my reach.

Its of course better to do the parks with many coasters and rides on a weekday - however Knotts could nevertheless be quite full as they drop kids by the busload there. No Disney while you're in LA?

Honestly I also prefer Hansa-Park over Heide Park. Whats good in Heide Park: - Colossos - the only top coaster in this park - Huss-Land - always good to have all this great flats - Scream - top notch drop tower Whats not so good about Heide Park - incoherent theming - mostly due to the change of ownership, liked the "old" family-run park far more than what Merlin is doing - bad and expensive food options - so-so standard coasters (Vekoma SLC and MK-1200) and "cheaper" small-time coasters (Krake and Desert Race) - they could've add a costom Schwarzkopf, a B&M Invert or a Xcelerator-clone over the years, maybe there would a smaller number of coasters but they went for the mediocre-yet-cheaper coaster options IMO just to lead the coaster-count here

Cute ducklings make every place just freeze in position.... And as for dorks: Where are the Scorpion shots for the Schwarzkopf-dorks???

Great PhotoTR so far - cant wait for more... I agree that Efetling is just mesmerizing. Even if the rides are at times midrange the whole theming and storylines are plain wonderful - like with Vliegende Hollander were the queue, station and darkride section are far better than the coaster part. I spent there one day and will go there some upcomming year for two days, loved the show Ravelejn and now they'll get a Bellagio-style watershow... P.S.: Did you also spot the "Teasure Box" ATM?

I dont know if its the same but Soft Ice is very wide spread here....but the best Soft Ice - like Hot Dogs - come from Denmark!

Reminds me of wildlife parks here were you're allowed to feed deer which grew up in captivity - but there on slow crowd days about 50 deers start to siege you and stick their heads into all your pockets...

Maybe also interesting for you as I right now plan to add Tripsdrill to my Europa-Park trip in September: Even if some parks dont have very good public transit connections - like only every 2-4 hours or limited to weekends - if you can get to a trainstation 20 kilometers away you can also use a Taxi as last resort but its recommended to call ahead. Like for Tripsdrill it would be Heilbronn and all german Taxi operators take reservations for rides up to 50 kilometers out of town if you book ahead - prices should be around €1 per kilometer. The downside might be that most Taxi hotlines are likely not fluent in english...

Well they also sold Krake as world-premiere as this smaller B&M vertical-drop-coaster was never done before - for me its only a "light" or "low-coast" version of a good coaster....

but the sun was really shining hard, so half the time I just clicked and hoped I got something Know that as the sun now here in northern europe is still quite low and with sunglasses you can forget to see something on camera displays. I mostly try to take pictures with three different programs that mostly deliver good results and choose the best picture on the PC back home....