Photo TR: Thad's 2014 TPR Scandi Trip

[Barge84]

Day 0 - Intro

Day 1 - Travel Day and Exploring Copenhagen

Day 2 - Sommerland Sjaelland - Add On Park

Day 3 - Bakken and Copenhagen at Night

Day 4 - Tivoli Gardens

Day 5 - BonBon-Land, Ferry and Drinking in Germany!

Day 6 - Hansa Park

Day 7 - LEGOLAND Bilund, Part 1

Day 7 part 2 - LEGOLAND Bilund, Part 2

Day 8 part 1 - Djurs Sommerland and Tivoli Friheden, Part 1

Day 8 part 2 - Djurs Sommerland and Tivoli Friheden, Part 2

 

Hello, everyone! For those of you that don't know me, my name is Thad Bargman, and I live in West Des Moines, Iowa, coaster capital of the central Iowa area. The Scandi tour was my 3rd TPR trip (New Hotness 2012 and Texas/Midwest 2013), and it was far and away the best vacation I've ever been on. I love reading all of the trip reports on the board, and having never done one before, I thought I’d finally throw my hat in the ring and try to write one.

 

A little about me… I’m an avid sports fan. Football (the American version) and basketball are my two favorite sports. I love being a jerk to people, but I think most people figure out that I’m joking. I can be very sarcastic, so it can be hard to tell if I’m being serious or not. Obviously, I really enjoy riding roller coasters and visiting theme parks. Our family vacation was always WDW when I was a kid, and I’ve probably done somewhere around 50-60 trips down there over my lifetime. Am I a coaster nerd? Sure. No one would sign up for a trip to Scandinavia to ride them if they weren’t, but I definitely don’t think I’m as serious as most people are in the hobby. I WILL make fun of you for riding kiddie coasters. That’s just a fact. I’ll ride anything as tall as Grover at BGW, but that’s as low as I’ll go to get a credit. Sure, it can get lonely sitting on the bench while the entire tour group rides a Wacky Worm, but at least I have my dignity!

 

I signed up for the Scandi trip, not really knowing much about the parks/rides on the trip. A lot of my “two week friends”, as I call them, had done one of the Scandi trips in the past, and everyone told me that it was incredible. That was good enough for me! I sent Robb and Elissa my deposit as soon as I returned home from the Texas/Midwest trip last August. Usually, I have a pretty good idea of all the parks and rides that a TPR is going to visit, but I avoided reading much about the parks on this trip. I thought it would be really cool to be surprised. Sure, I knew about rides like Balder, Helix and Piraten, but I think everyone has heard of them. Staying in the dark about the trip was a great way to experience some new parks! I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a park without knowing anything about it. It was kind of refreshing because I was doing more exploring, instead of having a plan of attack before I set foot in the park.

 

OK, that’s it for now. I’ll try to update my arrival day tonight, but I’m not going to promise anything.

 

Who's excited?!?

Edited May 22, 2015 by Barge84

[Nrthwnd]

Yay Thad. I'm excited! Looking forward to your touring report.

In Bon Bon Land - you rawked, Thad! Also rolled and swung back and forth...

[Groteslurf]

Hey Thad, Looking forward to your TR. It was great meeting you on the trip. I too avoided reading about the parks before the trip. It was very cool to be surprised every day

[SuperShawn]

Oh great, here's comes all of Thad's drive tire photos.

[SharkTums]

Thad's commentary for our ride on Lynet was one of my favorite trip memories. It was made all the more better when he crashed into the tree as well.

[Swede]

Looking forward to this. I have been reading old TPR Trip-reports all day and I can't wait for the 2015 polls to open so I know what trip I will be on next year.

[PCW_Nut]

Oh great, here's comes all of Thad's drive tire photos.

 

Thad seems to be ultimate coaster upskirt photographer out there with a promise like this!

 

Can't wait to see your photos Thad.

[derwood]

Thad's commentary for our ride on Lynet was one of my favorite trip memories. It was made all the more better when he crashed into the tree as well.

 

I want to see the video commentary from Balder as Thad described all of the technical components and specs of Balder.

 

Daron

[Barge84]

Thad's commentary for our ride on Lynet was one of my favorite trip memories. It was made all the more better when he crashed into the tree as well.

 

I want to see the video commentary from Balder as Thad described all of the technical components and specs of Balder.

 

Daron

 

Ha! TPDave and I tried to do some commentary, but after the lift hill it turned into, "Oh s**t! Holy crap! Wow!"

[TPDave]

Ladies and Gentlemen...

 

In the name of balance I feel compelled to correct a possible misconception that you might have succumbed to by reading Thad's introduction. Now I know this man to occasionally tell the truth, for example:

 

A little about me… I love being a jerk to people

 

Do not be fooled however by the assertion that Thad is some kind of "cool" enthusiast who doesn't really care about all things coaster related. I shall be offering a counterpoint commentary throughout this TR of Thad's nerdy coaster exploits during the Scandi trip. So without further ado, I present Nerdy Thad Photo 1...

This is a lovely Country...

[Joe Cool]

OH YEAH HERE WE GO!!!

[Barge84]

^^ how many pictures of me taking pictures did you end up with?

 

Oh, and how's your phone doing? Is it still in immaculate condition?

 

[Joe Cool]

^LOL The best is TPDave asking you where his phone was at. Then boom hits the ground.

[Barge84]

Yep, don't ask the guy that just cracked his iPhone screen to hold onto your phone throughout the day!

[TPDave]

You'll know when I've run out of pictures when I lose interest in this thread

 

Oh yeah folks - don't leave valuables with Thad, he treats them like this:

 

[spongey]

Can't wait to relive the memories you grumpy bastard!

[Nrthwnd]

^ Speak for yourself, Ugly Bastard!

Will Spongey make it? Bon Bon Land 06-14-14

[Barge84]

Day 1 – Traveling and Exploring Copenhagen

 

When I’d originally made my travel plans to Scandinavia, my plan was to fly to Chicago early on the morning of June 11th. I was going to spend the day at Six Flags Great America with my friend Cameron (Cameron) so I could check out that new beast, Goliath. As luck would have it, it didn’t open in time, as I’m sure we all know by now. This left me scrambling about 10 days before my trip, trying to figure out what I was going to do. I ended up switching my flights until later in the day, and ended up working so I didn’t have to use PTO for that day.

 

My flight from Des Moines to Chicago took right around an hour, and gave me about 7 hours to explore everything that O’hare’s international terminal had to offer. After about 3 minutes of exploration, I ran out of things to do. I found an area that was completely empty, so I put my earbuds in and listened to some podcasts. Since I’m a pretty picky eater, I figured that I should probably eat something before my flight left at 10:15 PM. I just had a feeling that I wouldn’t be a fan of the airline food, and I was right! After checking out the options, I grabbed some food at a place called Big Bowl, and it was pretty decent. I had some pork potstickers and a bowl of some sort of spicy meat on top of noodles.

 

While I was eating, Jere (jbottgen) found me in the food court. Jere’s been on both of my TPR trips that I’ve done, so it was nice traveling to Europe with someone that I knew. We actually randomly ended up sitting next to each other on the flight. Luckily for me, I was able to get one of the bulkhead seats. I’m 6’6”, so I’d been pretty worried about flying coach on an 8+ hour flight. I popped some Dramamine to help me fall asleep, and I ended getting about 5 hours of sleep on the plane, which is very rare for me. Sorry, no pictures of the plane or anything like that. If you want to see planes, you can go check out Garbel’s trip report. He likes planes. A lot.

 

Our SAS flight landed in Copenhagen around noon, if I remember correctly. You could tell from the outside that the Copenhagen airport wasn’t really that big. It was much smaller than I expected, with it being a pretty large city. We got off the plane and made our way towards customs. It looked like a HUGE line, but we got through it in about 5 minutes. The customs process consisted of handing them my passport, having them look at me for 1 second, then stamping it. I love Europe!

 

Yes! I'm finally here! The happiest country in the world.

 

Jere and I made our way to the baggage claim area, which was just about the biggest clusteryouknowwhat I’ve ever come across. They were only using 2 of the baggage carousels, but had about 5 or 6 flight’s bags being sent to those 2 carousels. There were TONS of people waiting for their bags. While we were waiting for our flight’s luggage, I noticed that Victor (Vtafro) and Stacy (Shagan6) were standing just a few feet away. I know them from last year’s Texas/Midwest trip, so I walked over to say hello. Surely, with 4 fairly intelligent people we should be able to figure out how to get to our hotel, right? Well, I guess we aren’t as smart as I thought, because we looked like complete morons trying to figure it all out. I usually like to think that I’m not a stupid tourist, but this wasn’t my best hour!

 

Knowing that we had to make our way to Central Station, we walked up to the self service kiosk and tried to buy a ticket to Central Station. Hmmmm…. Central Station wasn’t listed as an option. OK, we’ll head upstairs to the main terminal and I’m we‘ll get this figured out. Nope. Just as clueless. There were a lot of people queued up in various lines, seemingly knowing what they were doing. We just kept walking around like idiots, not knowing which line to get in. Eventually, I saw my good friends Steve (spongey) and Priscilla (Priscilla) from Australia. Well, Steve is Australian, but Priscilla was born and raised in the US. Somehow he convinced her to move to a country where everything wants to kill you.

 

Steve seemed to have a good idea of what we needed to do, so we hopped in line for one of the self service kiosks. This was our first experience trying to use a credit card without a PIN. I’ll just say that it didn’t go well. We ended up using cash just so we’d stop holding up the line as the locals were getting pretty frustrated with us. Sorry, Denmark!

 

After our 45 minute adventure ended with us scoring some tickets, we made our way down to the platform to board the train. Luckily, it was sitting there waiting for us. Our train was PACKED! All the seats were taken, and even the people standing were really crammed inside the car. It didn’t help that everyone had luggage with them. The train ride took about 15 minutes and before I knew it we were in Central Station, located in the heart of the city. We lugged our heavy suitcases up the huge stairway to get to street level, and only needed to go about 2 blocks to find our hotel. This would be our base camp for the next 4 nights, which is a luxury on any TPR trip! We stayed at Hotel Ansgar, which was a nice hotel in a great location.

 

Home for the next few days.

 

The employee at the desk checked me in, and I was off to my room. Steve told me he’d get a hold of me to let me know what the plan for the afternoon was. I needed a shower after all of that traveling. One of the quirky things about Hotel Ansgar is how their elevator works. It actually stops in between floors, and you either have to go up or down a flight of stairs to get to your floor. Seems like an odd design, but I’m sure the elevator was added in many years after the hotel opened, or at least that’s what I told myself.

 

Floor 4 1/2?

 

All of the Scandinavian hotels have black out blinds, because the damn sun never seems to go down during the summer time. I lowered my blinds, having not turned the lights on yet. My room was pretty much completely dark. I stumbled around trying to find a light switch, but none of them were working. Great, my lights don’t work. On top of that, I must have pulled the shade down too far, because it wouldn’t retract. Yep, it was stuck. So there I am, in complete darkness, trying to figure out what I’m going to do. I ended up climbing up onto the desk, then over towards the window. If you know me, you can only imagine how graceful I was while doing this. In order for me to get the shade back into place, I had to manually turn the cylinder at the top of the window. Success! I can actually see now, and I didn’t fall off and break my neck!

 

My room was pretty small, but that’s to be expected in Europe. I could actually stand in the middle and almost touch both walls! When I first walked in I saw the bed and thought it looked pretty small, but it was actually really long and comfortable!

 

My room. If you look closely, you can see a pair of my underwear!

 

I finished cleaning up and went to meet up with some my friends. Steve had sent me a note telling me which room they were all hanging out in. Everyone was in Joe (Joe Cool) and Chris’s (deguy123). I’ve known Joe for a few years, but this was the first time that I’d met Chris. This was one of the few times that I Chris awake over the next 3 weeks (more on that later). Joe had already hurt his ankle somehow by just walking around the city, and was lying in bed trying to ice it. Great start to the trip, Joe! Shawn (SuperShawn) and Ross (rosscoe) showed up, and we started trying to make plans for dinner. Steve, Priscella and Joe (along with others) were heading to Noma that night, which is the #1 restaurant in the world. They’re all foodies, and Joe is a chef, so they wanted to make sure they went there while they were in town. I prefer to spend $250 on things besides eating flowers and fried moss, but that’s just me.

 

This is where I mentioned to everyone that my lights weren’t working, and someone showed me that you have to put your hotel key in the slot to make the power work. I’m an idiot. I’ve seen that before, but didn’t notice it when I walked in my room. So within 2 hours of me being in Denmark, I’d already made 2 “Stupid American Tourist” mistakes. Sigh.

 

A group of us left to go walk around the city for a bit, and to find a place to get dinner. Shawn, Ross, Chris, Jere, Jake (Nyteowl), James (coastercrzyjames), Adrian (Aglend42), Harrison (harrisonkohn) and I just kind of chose a direction and started walking. After a couple of blocks, we were standing next to Tivoli Gardens, the amusement park located in the city. I was really excited to check out the park, but we’ll talk more about that in a few days.

 

Tivoli Gardens - See you in a few days!

 

Ross had seen a steak restaurant earlier in the afternoon, so our group thought that sounded like a nice place for dinner. When we got to the restaurant we noticed the sign on the front door that said they were closed for summer holiday, and that they’d be opening again in August. Apparently, Ross hadn’t noticed that small detail when he was there earlier in the day. This was one of the weird things about Scandinavia. Everything is closed at night. I’m pretty sure most stores close around 5 or 6 PM, which seems very weird to me. America is such a 24/7 place, and I can get anything I need whenever I want it. That took some getting used to.

 

We ended up choosing an Italian restaurant that had outdoor seating. It was probably around 60-65 F, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. My short sleeve shirt and shorts weren’t enough to keep me warm by the end of dinner, but luckily most restaurants have huge blankets for all of their guests. I was able to cover my legs up and at least not freeze my ass off during our meal. As for the meal, it was fantastic. Honestly, probably the best pasta I’ve ever had. You could tell it was made fresh in the kitchen. Oh, this was also the first time that we’d seen tuna on pizza, because that’s what Jere ordered. This wouldn’t be the last time we saw tuna on pizza, though. Apparently they love it in Scandinavia! Everyone else loved their food as well, so I guess it was a successful night out!

 

Well, that is, except for one thing. The restaurant had a trio of musicians walking around. There was a singer, a guitar player, and a clarinet player. For the most part, it was fine, but there was just something a little weird about the singer. He just kept showing up at our table, almost like he knew that we were annoyed by him. Ross became pretty annoyed with the guy, so I’ve included some of the pictures that Ross took of the singer always lurking around our table. All in all, it was a great meal, and it was great catching up with some old friends and also meeting some new people.

 

Ross's friend, the singer!

Ross is no longer amused.

 

The group walked around a bit more after dinner, before finally heading back to the hotel. Some of us went out to the back patio area, and continued our conversations. Lots of TPR folks were starting to congregate, so it was great seeing a lot of people that I knew, and also being able to finally meet some people that I’d been talking with on the trip board for the last few months. I called it a night around 11, hoping that I’d be able to get some sleep. I was fine until about 4 am, because that’s when the sun starts to creep in. I’m a light sleeper, and it really bothered me. This would be a recurring theme throughout the trip, so get used to hearing about it!

 

Thoughts from the day:

- Everyone in Copenhagen is beautiful.

- I’ve never seen so many people on bikes.

- If I lived in Copenhagen I would be dead, because I’d get run over by a bicyclist.

- Copenhagen is a beautiful city.

- Scandinavia is really expensive.

- I’m an idiot.

 

Here are some random pictures from around Copenhagen. Enjoy!

 

Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Hard Rock Cafe, just outside of Tivoli Gardens.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Some really cool building.

Copenhagen

Cool building - different angle.

Pedestrian street in Copenhagen

Ross is happy to be here!

Fountain

This is where we ate dinner. Loved it!

[larrygator]

Thad - you might be an idiot, but you have a long way to go to catch up to the stupid things TPDave did on a TPR trip. That include the stupid things TPDave did to miss a TPR trip.

 

Thad - you might be a closet nerd, but did you ever have a conversation with TPDave about coaster brakes.

 

As one of your two-week friends, I approve of this Photo Trip Report. Thank you for NOT including pictures of any airports and planes.

[XII]

Good start to the Photo TR Thad. I can assure you that you were not the only dumb American who made the mistake about not realizing you need to use your key to get the lights to work. Really looking foreword to seeing the rest of your nerdy tire drive photos.

[SharkTums]

If you were the worst dumb American on the planet we'd be in excellent shape!

 

Can't wait to see more!

[rosscoe]

Loving the report so far, jebus I hated that singer!

[Barge84]

Thad - you might be an idiot, but you have a long way to go to catch up to the stupid things TPDave did on a TPR trip. That include the stupid things TPDave did to miss a TPR trip.

 

Thad - you might be a closet nerd, but did you ever have a conversation with TPDave about coaster brakes.

 

As one of your two-week friends, I approve of this Photo Trip Report. Thank you for NOT including pictures of any airports and planes.

 

By the end of this trip, I probably gave TPDave a run for his money. Just wait! And I'm definitely not as nerdy as he is.

 

Good start to the Photo TR Thad.

 

Thanks, Kevin!

 

If you were the worst dumb American on the planet we'd be in excellent shape!

 

I've told you this before, but these TPR trips just make me check my brain at the airport for some reason. You guys make it too easy!

 

Loving the report so far, jebus I hated that singer!

 

You were pretty riled up about him. I was loving it!

[SuperShawn]

It seems like today is relive Scandi day. I'd forgotten just how awful that singers hair was and how much he clearly hated our table.

[kidcoaster 2]

Nice start to the report!

 

Don't feel bad about the lights, I did that my first time to Europe on the Italy tour. Luckily my roommate was European so he could explain everything to me.