Gardaland

[andy127]

Hi has anyone been to gardaland i am going to venice in may thought i might go with the kids for the day.

[Louise]

I've edited the topic title to make it a little more descriptive, and you might want to re-read the TOS and try and improve your grammar and punctuation if you can!

 

I'm sure some of our posters will chime in on this thread, but if you do a quick search for "Gardaland", it brings up two or three photo trip reports that you might want to look at too.

[Shockwave]

I went there about 3 years ago and had a really good day there.

 

There's not one huge flagship ride, but there's a very good river splash ride called Fuga d'Atlantide, a good suspended looping coaster called Blue Tornado, a good drop tower called Space Vertigo, a few really well themed dark rides and a flying island so you can get a great view of the whole park. The food is also very good in the restaurants, but there's always fast food if you don't want a sit down meal.

 

The Sequoia Adventure (Screamin' Squirrel) ride will get long queues because it only takes 4 at a time, so it may get busy, so you may wanna get that done straight away or save it for later.

[viking86]

From what I have read, people have very different experiences at the park. I myself had an excellent time there. The coasters are average at best, but the rest of the park is fantastic! Amazing theming and lots of stuff to do. DON'T MISS the pirate dark ride. The entrance is through the pirate ship!

[robbalvey]

You can see our Photo Trip Report here:

http://www.themeparkreview.com/europe2005/gardaland/gardaland1.htm

 

Our experience was very mixed. Overall I though the park was "nice", however really didn't have many "stand out" attractions. Coaster-wise it was VERY average at best. An SLC, Arrow Loop-Screw, Screamin' Squirrel (which we thought was pretty lame), etc.

 

The dark rides which people had told us were the end-all be-all of dark rides we thought were "ok", but only "slightly better than average" at best. There were better dark rides at Europa and Phantasialand.

 

It was the customer service we thought was horrible. We stayed on property at the resort hotel (at about $300 per night) for 2 nights and the 1st night we went into the park we were met with fairly moderate crowds on some rides with minimal operations on most rides. In fact, they actually REMOVED a train on Magic Mountain when the wait was already over 20 minutes. And we were told it was because the park was "closing early due to weather." LAME!

 

So that night a fairly large thunderstorm blew by (about 30 minutes of heavy downpour) and then after that it was VERY clear. The park was supposed to remain open until midnight, but ended up closing about 8pm. Which made no sense to us because the storm was over by around 6:30 and it seemed totally clear.

 

The park sold a 2-day pass, and when we left the park we asked if we could upgrade our ticket to that pass since we had only been in the park a couple of hours and the park closed early. We were give an VERY rude "no."

 

Even back at the hotel where we basically explained that were spending $600 over two days and wanted to know if there was ANY WAY possible they could please either upgrade our ticket, and again, "NO!"

 

Basically, we had paid for a full day admission ticket, and we only spent about 3 hours in the park because they were closing early. IMO, the park should have at VERY LEAST allowed us to upgrade to a 2-day pass. We weren't asking anything for "free" we wanted to PAY for a pass that they did offer, but they would not allow the upgrade.

 

Our original plan only called for us to be at the park that day, because we felt that 5 to midnight was PLENTY of time at the park (and it would have been for us). We only needed 3 rides (the SLC, the Intamin water ride, and the drop tower) and honestly, with how rude they were to us, we were NOT about to buy another full priced ticket for what would have been about 90 minutes in the park.

 

In total our group spent something like $1500 for our stay at Gardaland, if you include our 2 night stay at the hotel (2 rooms), 6 admissions to the park, food, snacks, etc..... and the park was NOT even willing to consider upgrading our tickets after what was a display of some of the worst park operations we'd ever seen.

 

SCREW THAT!!!

 

Having said all that, though, we WOULD give the park a 2nd chance on our next trip to Italy. Like I said, the park was "nice" but IMO overrated. And our experience was certainly NOT a good one.

 

So that's our story....I do hope you have a better visit to the park!

 

--Robb

[Meteornotes]

^Let's not forget our totally bizarre experience in the restaurant, where they would not let us BUY additional drinks. Yes, that's right, we wanted to purchase more drinks (as it was about 100 degrees outside), and we were refused. Yeah, that made sense.

 

The park was nice looking, but there wasn't anything there that was a standout attraction, or anything that I'd want to ride again. There are a lot of parks in Europe I'd rather return to for another visit before this place.

 

dt

[matteocrepaldi]

Gardaland is the closesd decent park to where I live. I think that it's pretty nice.

 

- The coasters aren't so good but when you don't have anything better around they are ok. (the double looper is Vekoma; not Arrow)

- The Intamin drop tower is pretty small,only 110 feet but it's one of the most intense I've been on.

- Fuga da Atlantide is a really well themed water ride even if it has a couple of dead spots between the first and the second drop. Also the log flume is pretty nice but less themed.

- The dark rides are really nice. I personally like those one better than the one in Europa Park. Sometimes some of the effects don't work really well but they are always very good.

- There's also a kids'area called Magic Kingdon. It's one of the best themed area of the park. There you can find some rides for kids and a Mad House.

- For 2007 they had introduced a new 4d cinema. It's pretty good even if yesterday the outside theming was not completed. The show is nice anf filled with special effects like wind and water.

- Finally if you like to watch the shows the Broadway Celebration is a really good one.

[Gutterflower]

i went just as i was becoming an enthusiast a few years back.

I loved it back then in my innocent un-opinionated form.

 

Id love to go back now to see what i think now but as far as im concerned it was a lovely family park with some good (just not great) rides.

The area itself is lovely too and its worth heading around lake garda.

[matteocrepaldi]

I don't want to ppen another topic just for this but today Gardaland sent out 10'000 emails to ask for advices for the 2009 season.

 

The main announcement, according to Parksmania.it is that Magic Mountain: the Vekoma double loop + corckscrews is going to be themed as the surrounding area and its name is going to become BIGFOOT.

 

You can find all the details here: http://www.parksmania.it/parco_news.php?pid=1&nid=3464

The new logo.

This is how Magic Mountain looks now!

Another encounter with the Big Foot. Where did the rest of the train go?!

This first encounter with the BigFoot will happen just outside the station before the lift hill.

Some details of the possible theming.

[handy-andy]

Ok, this is going to get me going, I went in the summer (if you are thinking of going in the summer DONT). The rides are not good, service is appauling, the queues are a joke and its generally a bad park, seriously I almost died. Im sure you would far prefer, eventhough there are no really coaster credits to go to Movie Land (http://www.canevaworld.it/movieland/) this park is right next door and is a better exeriance. Whatever you do enjoy your holiday!

[matteocrepaldi]

I'm sorry you had a bad experience but I like Gardaland and I think that it's not so bad.

 

This upgrade to Magic Mountain sounds pretty good. I really hope they get the new trains with the new type of restrain system.

[handy-andy]

I'm sorry you had a bad experience but I like Gardaland and I think that it's not so bad.

 

This upgrade to Magic Mountain sounds pretty good. I really hope they get the new trains with the new type of restrain system.

 

Sure the park may be better now it is owned by Merlin and I just personaly didn't like the park. However I have to say many people I know had a bad experiance going in the summer. I am sure the park will be fun if it's not the summer! Also I have to agree the Magic Mountain re-theme looks quite good, hopefuly they will try to smooth it out a bit too!

[matteocrepaldi]

New for 2010 at Gardaland will be a horror walk through attraction called Inferis. It's nothing important but since there will be a TPR trip this year that will hit this park I thought that this might be interesting for someone.

 

It's going to be located inside what it used to be the convention centre between the Mammut roller coaster and the Space Vertigo drop tower. According to some rumors the whole building will be painted black which doesn't sound as a good idea if you think about the temperature of Italian's summer.

Here's a preview image.

This is the convention centre as it was last year.