Photo TR: Chilly? Go to Chile!

[milst1]

Cheryl and I spent our honeymoon in Chile and we've always wanted to go back. It's safe, there is a decent infrastructure (you can drink the water), and the people are very nice. It's even somewhat sedate, as Latin America goes.

 

Since we had that long Columbus Day weekend off, we decided to do the Chile credit run. Things are starting to turn colder here, but in Chile, Spring has sprung!

 

This is the longest report I've ever done. Thanks to Robb for the multiple photo uploading tool, which definitely made this go faster.

 

Adelante!

Fly to Chile. Get car at Hertz. See license plate? Chile.

Go to giant Las Condes mall with FEC inside. I kept looking up while driving and thinking "what a weird looking cloud" and then being like "that's a snow-capped mountain!"

Cool, the mall parking garage has lights to show you the empty spots. We saw this in Mexico too.

Welcome to Aventura Center, a small chain of FECs. This one has a credit.

Montaña Rusa!

Credit.

They also had kiddy flats.

And games and coin-op type rides.

And a Tagada? Cool!

This park and others we saw are big into the birthday party business.

There's bowling too.

And a bowling bar? And then the hostess told me I couldn't take pictures. I don't understand why some places give tourists a hard time. No thanks, you don't have to get your "jefe" to explain it to me. It happens all over. This reminded me of the time that an ice cream stand on the Jersey Shore Boardwalk yelled at me for taking pictures. Don't attract tourists if you don't want tourists taking pictures!

This Aventura Center is at the Las Condes Mall. I think we saw a movie at the mall afterwards...oh yeah, Kick Ass 2. Not as good as the first. We then drove back to our hotel, parked, checked in, and had a nice dinner nearby.

The next morning we headed to Fantasilandia, but the parking situation was really difficult (it adjoins a major city park and doesn't have a huge parking lot of its own). In retrospect, we should have taken public transit for this park, but since our other two parks were in outlying areas, we decided to hit them first. The first was Mampato Lo Barnechea.

Here's what you see when you come in. It's a small outdoor amusement park.

Here's the credit, Happy Mountain, a Brazilian Wacky Worm, according to rcdb.

Nice red train instead of the usual green.

There was also a variety of kiddie flats.

And another Tagada? Wow.

As I said, the birthday business is big here. They had a slew of these huts for birthday parties.

Yay, a dark ride!

Gotta love the Latina vampire bat women.

Unfortunately, the young female operator couldn't get the ride going. She got a supervisor over there, who flipped a switch that started the sound effects and seemed to get it started, but he didn't test it and left. She couldn't get a car to go. He came back and declared it down. Oh well.

This was a view of the mountains from the ferris wheel.

Nice slide.

Birthday party section.

Actual birthday party about to happen.

A sea lion show? I wish we had stuck around.

Steeplechase.

Cheryl as a blowfish.

Cheryl milking the cow!

Have we gone in a circle? No, we've gone from northeast Santiago down to Southeast Santiago for Mampato Las Vizcachas. It's on more land and has a few more rides, but we were surprised that it was more expensive. The first Mampato was $8; this Mampato was $9. It's about 500 Chilean pesos to the US dollar.

Credit! This is Montaña Dragon, Since rcdb didn't have any pictures, I sent a whole slew of them.

It's the birthday huts!

Pirate ship.

Parrot show.

Dolphin ride.

For Larry.

My 6 month birthday!

They have a powered there too.

Water game? Actually, we started to notice that the climate is incredibly dry.

We saw this at both of the Mampatos, a little giant-tricycle track for kids.

Kiddie Ferris Wheel.

Slide.

Drop tower.

Spinning Flat. Sorry about the boring repetition; I'm just documenting.

And another Tagada!!!!!????!!!!

So we then drove back to the center of the city, but we found parking well away from Fantasilandia and walked in. Yay, we made it!

The map makes it look open and empty but it's actually fairly compact and busy. Right now the park is open weekends and holidays. This was a Sunday. It was a decent crowd.

Patricio Mekis was a mayor of Santiago who championed large public infrastructure projects, including Fantasilandia. He died at 50 in 1979 when the balcony collapsed at his summer home.

As you can see, busy midway.

There's not much in the way of park theming. Here's the "Kids Zone".

And this was the one credit that we couldn't get on this trip. Cheryl asked about it but it sounded like it wouldn't open this month.

These signs were in the queues with the number for security.

Clowns suddenly appeared.

More of them!

WTF?

And these signs warned against smoking, jumping the barriers, or holding someone's place in the line.

There they go.

They were having dance parties all day.

Mississippi River Steamboat and bumper boats.

Ah, food and beverage. This was our big negative at Fantasilandia. Ride operations were slow, but not ridiculously slow. F&B, on the other hand, was ridiculous. By fast, they were referring to geological time.

Long lines at every outlet. And the lines didn't move. It was brutal.

This popular stand in a games section completely blocked the path for this area.

This looked better, but it wasn't.

Inside, you had to first pay the cashier (one queue), and then stand on another queue to give the paid order to the kitchen. I think my line was serving one guest every 10 minutes or so.

And there were several queues of this type. I've never seen so many employees fill so few orders. Half of the assistants and order helpers outside of the kitchen should have been inside the kitchen cooking. I'm not sure when lunchtime is in Chile, but it was late for us and we were starving. I remember seeing a much smaller crew at Silverwood serve just as many people much more quickly just last month; it was fresh in my mind because I mentioned that crew in the survey I received afterwards. They were overwhelmed too, but they busted their asses to speed it up. This just dragged on interminably, with the line never moving. But Cheryl and I were definitely the most bummed out about it. Everyone else seemed to see this as "normal".

And the actual food quality was not good. I think Cheryl said "They shouldn't allow this to be called 'pizza'". And I said, "It tastes like crap, but I've got enough Heinz ketchup on it to mask it." The mini cheese empanadas were essentially cheese-less. Okay, no more complaining about the food. It's a South American theme park, not a Food Network featured restaurant. I shouldn't have read Chuck's Food & Wine Festival reports before writing this.

Raptor was one credit, an SLC running two trains. Very popular.

The other credit was this spinning mouse. Good ops: They filled our car with a mom and her kid.

They had a top spin.

And a pirates boat ride!

Very basic boats.

You can see the Disko out the pirates window.

Classic. The best scene was a copy of the guy getting dunked by the pirates at Disney, right? But the funny thing was that he had no body below his chest. LOL. Tell us where the treasure is! Right after we saw your body in two!

Little outdoor section of pirates.

This was Monga. I had to drag Cheryl to this attraction. There was a gorilla statue outside, and I guessed, correctly, that this was a version of an attraction I saw at Playcenter in Brazil when I was there as a kid. There was a show every couple of hours or so, so we had to wait on a long queue to get in. Once inside, you see a beautiful woman on stage in a cage, and they tell a story that she's been cursed. You watch as she turns into a gorilla before your eyes! But then the gorilla escapes into the theater! At Playcenter, everyone ran out screaming, if memory serves. Here, they got her back in the cage and she reverts back to her former self. Crazy stuff.

Good looking dark ride from the outside, although the fake vines are deteriorating.

Cars repurposed from some shooting dark ride somewhere, but no guns anymore.

As it got later in the day (and chillier), some ghouls came out to promote the park's upcoming Halloween events.

The ghoul is the one on the right. Look, he got coffee after only waiting 10 minutes!

There was a frisbee thing. There was also one of those flats like a cheap version of the spinning Kennywood Arrows ride? I think I saw the same ride at Seabreeze. Sorry I don't know the names.

Wow, Fantasilandia's newest attraction, a Zamperla Air Race! I know this one.

Another Tagada!!!!!!????!!!!!?????

Thanks for visiting Fantasilandia with us!

Finally, we hit this park on a mountain with a few attractions. The alpine toboggan was fun. It's just called "Rodelbahn".

Then we went to "Vertigo Park", which had zip lines and climbing, but the first thing we saw was this ridiculous home made sky coaster.

This guy's feet popped out of the harness right away. Did not look fun.

Nor did the zip line adventure course. Sketchy.

These young paintball players seemed satisfied, however. We still took a pass.

Bonus park! We went to one last big mall near the airport on the way out of town to kill a few hours. They had a Happyland. No coaster...

...but they had a Tagada! Sorta.

Hope you enjoyed our report!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Monga!

Edited October 21, 2013 by milst1

[larrygator]

I believe tricycle racing is the national sport of Chile.

 

Did you ride any of the Tagadas?

Edited October 21, 2013 by larrygator

[milst1]

I believe tricycle racing is the national sort of Chile.

 

Did you ride any of the Tagadas?

 

Did not ride a single one of the Tagadas. Cheryl thought it would only be fun with TPR.

[Nrthwnd]

 

Sooooo many Tagadas, there!

You definitely hit that jackpot Martin, lol.

And the food services there at the parks....

 

[cfc]

I shouldn't have read Chuck's Food & Wine Festival reports before writing this.

 

Sorry to spoil the Chilean park food for you.

 

Too bad about that malfunctioning dark ride--you have to love a ride that's named "Casa del Terror." That pirate boat ride looked hilarious.

[PKI Jizzman]

OMFG that sky coaster! NO. Not once not never. No footbar? Uncomfortable. Scary. No. Bhahah. Thanks for the update, awesome!

[cfc]

At least I now know the answer to this question: "Donde este la casa del terror?"

[alwaysairtime14]

Homemade skycoaster? Hell, you couldn't get me to go on an actual name-brand one!

[gisco]

They used to have one of those gorilla shows at Circus Circus in Vegas. You can see it in the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever. That dates back to the early 70's.

[XII]

Nice Photo TR. I always enjoy reading Photo TRs of parks in parts of the world that most people don't go to for coasters. Sucks to hear about the food service at the park, but at least you've got all those Tagadas.

[WFChris]

That was a really fun TR. So jealous of all your travels!

[simon8899]

Always good to see PhotoTRs from parks far out - Thanks!

 

Fantasilandia looks goods with a decent flat collection. And the water at the boat dark ride looks cleaner than most of what I have seen from China. If one ever goes there one has to check if one can bring sandwiches and drinks along into the park to avoid those lines...

[milst1]

They used to have one of those gorilla shows at Circus Circus in Vegas. You can see it in the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever. That dates back to the early 70's.

Wow, didn't know about Diamonds are Forever! I think I was in Brazil in '75 or '76. Cool.

 

Yeah, I did notice a sign in front that forbade bringing in food or drink. You could probably sneak it in if you were really determined.

 

I guess what gets me is that they could make so much more money by improving the service and the quality.

 

Would it be bad form to share this report with the F&B manager there? I don't want to insult anyone.

 

And thanks for the love, everyone! GO TPR!

[cfc]

It was one of the best scenes in the movie, too.

[GrapesLie]

Awesome report! This reminds me that it's time for me to plan a off season coaster trip!

[milst1]

That was a really fun TR. So jealous of all your travels!

 

Well, I'm jealous of your crazy raccoon avatar.

[coasterferg]

"Patricio Mekis was a mayor of Santiago who championed large public infrastructure projects, including Fantasilandia. He died at 50 in 1979 when the balcony collapsed at his summer home."

 

A little ironic, dontcha think?

[bravo]

All of the chilean theme park lovers we always expect to hear that Fantasilandia will be move to somewhere bigger, but it would be a huge investment and people here doesn't want to pay more for fun, actually they think that the price of the entrance ticket (usd$20 around) is too expensive...

About the food service, yeah, it sucks.

I do not really know how many chilean TPR followers could be here, but I'm a big fan and is fun to know that you guys rent your car at Hertz, cause I work for Europcar.

So next time that any TPR member come to Chile, just send me a message and I'll give you a very good price. Also I know many good places to stay and good tour operators.

Greetings from Chile!!!

[milst1]

^^^

Vacan! TPR people in Chile! I like Europcar. Next time, Europcar! We have to go back for Boomerang!

[coasterschile]

Wow, I loved your report, im very surprised of your report because you visited all the parks here in Santiago, a normal tourist only would go to Fantasilandia, but you even visited Mampato, Aventuracenter, and Happyland! those parks are waste of time if you're a coasterlovers, but I see that you came many days here

 

Too bad that you read Chuck´s Food and Wine Festival but you can't expect so much from a south american amusement park Also, Fantasilandia is adding 2 new restaurants for 2014 season! Also if you want to avoid the park's food, just bring your own food in a bag (like sandwiches, snacks, beverages, etc.) nobody is going to notice that.

 

So bad that you didn't ride any of the Tagada's, I hope you come here with TPR and ride any of those Tagada's, try to not ride the one in Aventuracenter, I live near that mall and I go there often, but the last time that I rode that Tagada it wasn't fun at all, the ride operator made the Tagada go super fast and dangerously bumpy

 

Also let me give you an advice, if you want to come here again, come here in march! (or april), because the weather is nice and Fantasilandia is not so busy as in October. DO NOT come here in july (the weather is cold, and the park is ridiculously busy, I went on July and I rode 6 rides!

 

I hope one day Fantasilandia buy more acres of Parque O'higgins, because Fantasilandia nowadays doesn't have room for more rides or coasters

Edited March 9, 2014 by coasterschile

[Hoppy]

Great report, thanks for the share! I won't be in Chile any time soon but want to visit just for those Tagada's!