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Hanse-Flieger is now open. A newsletter from Hansa-Park says special water and lighting effects will be installed during the off-season, as well as seats for larger guests.

Disney: Expedition:Everest Universal: Battlestar Galactica (Cylon side) SeaWorld Entertainment: Manta Merlin: Krake Parks & Resorts: Wildfire

I wouldn't bet on it being open before May/June.

Kvasten at Gröna Lund

Twister at Gröna Lund

Am at Kolmården right now, Wildfire's been up and down all day. Right now the second train (I think?) is running with the front row closed off. Coaster itself is super awesome though.

The Shanghai TSL was in the cards around the time Hong Kong started work on their version though, so the idea likely was that they could be easily cloned between both parks, even if the plans ultimately didn't pan out. Only semi-related, but wasn't there an Everest clone spotted in recent expansion plans on the north end? Personally I think it would be a good fit for Shanghai.

I'm very late on this but your TR on Heide-Park hit the nail on the head by calling it the "Thorpe Park of Germany". I never thought they wouldn't bother at all with the Q-bot system and the single rider lines though, it was much less crowded than this when I went in April and they had both lines open (although they handled it very sloppily by for example not opening the Q-bot lines until after noon). Love the TR on Kolmården though. Makes me all the more excited for Wildfire!

Kolmården on Wednesday followed by Gröna Lund on Thursday

Kleine Zar has been delayed to early 2017. Issues with the approval process between the manufacturer and the TÜV regulations board means coaster parts won't be delivered until November at the earliest. The soundtrack CD and various souvenirs will already be available for purchase this month at the main gift shop near the park entrance, and parts of the soundtrack will be played near the construction site. To make up for the delay a small children's ride will be installed shortly in the western area of the park. Meanwhile Hanse-Flieger is almost finished and awaits the green light from the TÜV to begin testing, and the park hopes to have it up and running within one or two weeks. Source: Hansa-Park Newsletter In other news, work on Kärnan's outer wall sections begins. Source: Coasterfriends.de

Provided it's a weekday crowds shouldn't be too bad. Balder, Helix and Mechanica would likely have waits ranging from 35 minutes to 1 hour during the day (AeroSpin may have longer waits since it's new), everything else should be 30 or less. Be careful as to which food joint you go to though, lunch lines can be massive and move very slowly. Staying in the park from opening to closing is more than enough to see the whole place, plus the park is stunningly beautiful at night. I recommend you buy the Allt-i-ett (All-in-one) package online since it lets you skip the wait one time on three attractions of your choice within designated hours. Don't wait until the last minute to purchase it though since express tickets can run out on the most popular rides.

How's the average wait for Wildfire? I'm thinking since Kolmården is more of a zoo than an amusement park maybe the lines for the rides would be a bit shorter than they otherwise would've been. Also I'd really want to go there within the next few weeks and it would be helpful to know in advance.

POVs always make a coaster look slower than it actually is/feels when you ride it. That said I don't really know what people here are on about. This looks hard to beat even from the POV. I mean those launches, holy cow.

I highly doubt that since Tsunami had been operating for twelve years (and had been travelling in South America before that) without serious incident while Mindbender derailed after only a few months. Design flaws like that would have doomed the coaster years ago.

Current status on Iron Man Experience. Looks to be nearing completion. Source

The old Peoplemover/Rocket Rods track being converted into an outdoor version of the Tron coaster.

Euro-Mir was the second disappointment of the trip. I tried to have fun with it, but it was just too violent and nauseating for my tastes. After all the hype for this and Wodan, I really wanted to like both more than I did. The disco lifthill was pretty cool, though. Poseidon has seen better days (it's pretty jolty and the track is a bit rusty in places) but it's a fun water coaster nonetheless. Kinda makes you wonder why they built Atlantica SuperSplash though when it's basically Poseidon's second half with larger boats. Oh well. I will say finding the entrance to Poseidon was harder than it first appeared. My first instinct was to approach the main building, but that only takes you to the exit. You're actually supposed to enter from the opposite end, which meant walk around the entire bay. And even when you finally find the entrance the queue itself is a long walk. Through the net! One thing I haven't touched upon yet is that Europa Park is seriously dedicated to keeping the operations as fast as possible, which is great since it keeps the lines moving and the wait times short. Sometimes it's even a bit too fast, especially when you need to place stuff in the storage cabinet (see Blue Fire, Wodan and Silver Star). With Poseidon they solve the capacity problem by loading two boats at once. I was gonna make a joke here, but the photobombing employee ruined the frame. This was the line for Pegasus without VR. No really. Meanwhile the VR line was 45 MINUTES! Of course it is when you only dedicate the last four rows to VR while the rest of the train departs half-empty. Coming up next: Swiss and Stars

Fast & Furious: Supercharged has been officially delayed. Source

They seem to have traded that with Atmosfear though since it was open last year but isn't on the list this year.

This has to be one of the most bizarre coasters ever put together. I can't tell how any of it is supposed to work.

You thought the first ride of the day was going to be Wodan? Nope, it's Blue Fire. Having been on Helix just a month prior I went in with very high expectations. Safe to say Blue Fire met all of them. Is it as good as Helix? Well, it doesn't have the two sweet airtime hills that put Helix over the edge, but it's a close second among my favorite steel coasters. The launch is great, the soundtrack and themening are all great, and the inversions give some surprising hangtime. It's a fantastic coaster. Same couldn't be said about Wodan though. I was a bit disappointed with Wodan. It ended up being a bit too violent and shaky for my tastes and the loud awful noise it makes didn't really help matters (I could tolerate that with Balder as the coaster itself was still excellent). It's not a bad coaster, in fact once you adapt to its joltiness it's pretty fun, but it's not the top 10 material I hoped it would be. Some Portuguese pirate I actually really liked Atlantica Supersplash I don't even really know why, I just thought it was a lot of fun. Time to do VR on Alpenexpress Europa Park charges two euros for the VR googles. The VR was okay, but I prefer the regular ride. Some mushroom-themed chairswinger I didn't ride I really enjoy log flumes, and Tyrol was no different. Not the best one out there, but it was very well themed. I didn't know what to expect from Arthur... I haven't seen the film it was based on, but I ended up really enjoying the ride. It's very impressive as a dark ride, and the coaster sections while short aren't half bad either. I wouldn't mind seeing more parks make use of this technology. Coming up next: Greeks and Russians

The only time Kärnan ever approaches rough is when it rattles for a bit in the outer section.

Travel arrangements followed by the rest. Part of it is because all the images I took take forever to upload to Onedrive and I didn't want to wait. The view of the park from the hotel. Good morning, Silver Star! First order of business was to buy a 2-day ticket. I still have it in my wallet. Since I arrived at 8.15 A.M I thought I would have to stand and wait for the park to open at 9... But they actually let us in 40 minutes early! A piece of history stands near the entrance gates. A piece of the Berlin wall to be exact. I don't know why the park decided to bring a symbol of the cold war into what's otherwise a cheery and happy place, but it's an interesting piece of memorabilia. Italy is the first "country" you enter after the German area and it looks pretty nice. Then your tour is suddenly halted by this. It's the same as when Heide-Park lets guests in an hour early but only lets them enter the entry port, but at least with HP the entry port is walled off from the rest of the park. Here they just stop you at a random street corner with a sign basically saying "oh, you want to see the rest of the park? Too bad, you have to wait." Euromaus comes out and tries to put the moves on this random chick Meanwhile the DJ elephant up on the roof is clearly high on something "You can tell that American corporate bastard I'm coming for him next!" The rest of the park opened up and it was time to take the E.P Express. But first a view of the ticket booths from the main station. Rolling into the club Approaching our target... You get some pretty good views of the as of yet under construction Ireland area from the E.P Express. Looks like it'll be a pretty nice area once it opens. Coming up next: 12 coasters (and one log flume)

This was the big trip of the year for me. Europa Park was a park I've wanted to go to since the day I first got interested in coasters, and as each years pass my excitement only grew larger (but the financials didn't). Last year I started college and the loans granted gave me the financing needed to buy a plane ticket down to Frankfurt (I would have preferred Strasbourg since it was closer but there were no direct flights from Copenhagen) and experience this word-class theme park for the first time. Did it live up to the hype? We shall find out. But let's first detail the journey before we get to the destination. I'll start by thanking Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Without their youth fare this trip would not have been possible. The gate and flight number Clear blue skies. A good day for flying. My home town Malmö seen from the air. By the time we got to Frankfurt things got a lot more cloudy. VERY cloudy. Frankfurt Airport is a kinda crappy airport (as I can attest by spending a whooping six hours there on the way home), but it's excellent for plane-spotting. Terminal 1 is basically Lufthansa territory with occasional partners sprinkled about. How many airports can you spot three A380s (the worlds fattest commercial airliner) parked in a row? The train that will take me to Offenburg From Frankfurt it's a fairly long ride to Rust, but as I said before the closer airports just weren't available. Approaching Karlsruhe I spotted this fairground. They had a Wild Mouse coaster which was to the right of this picture. Arriving to Offenburg it was time to take the regional train to Ringsheim Ringsheim basically serves as an entry gate to Rust. It's a fairly standard German village otherwise. This late in the day (9 P.M) the bus to Rust only departs once every hour. In fact this was the last bus of the day. Tried to get a picture of this fountain but the bus was driving so fast that only this blurry image came out. Good evening, Silver Star! Here's the hotel I stayed in over the weekend. The thing about Rust is that most of the hotels outside the park resorts are limited in availability. I booked this hotel all the way back in March before I ever decided to make my other two trips so far this year (Heide-Park and Liseberg). Coming up: First day of Europa Park!

I wasn't a big fan of either Wodan or Euro-Mir last weekend. One nearly gave me a headache with the constant shaking and the other violently threw me around and made me nauseous, which for a coaster to do that to me is an impressive feat I must say. For all the hype both coasters get I was underwhelmed. Silver Star was freakin' awesome though and I don't care what anyone says.