PHOTO TR: Winter Wonderland

[nynehalem]

Hello all!

 

I moved to London about three months ago from Boston to go to grad school. It's been a bit of a whirlwind but I'm off for Christmas so had some time to check out Winter Wonderland in London's Hyde Park today. If you don't know Hyde Park is right in central London and its pretty cool seeing all these giant rides plunked down in the middle of the city.

 

Winter wonderland is meant to be a German style Christmas fair, and as such featured a large market with all manner of sausages, sweets, pretzels, beer, mulled wine etc. The rides generally had a winter theme and many of the larger ones appear to have been imported from Germany for the fair.

 

There were six coasters in all including the Wild Maus XXL which is a terrifyingly large version of the standard mouse. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking other than to mention that if you wanted to get all 6 credits it would have set you back 31 GBP, as most of the larger coasters were 6 credits a ride (1 pound per credit). There was also a giant wheel, a starflyer, a drop tower and a Mondial Turbine.

You can even go curling here

no English fair is complete without a helter skelter

Because Jager is requisite at any German Christmas market (Or is it?)

Here's a map of the fair

The entrance to the Christmas market

yes, nothing says "French fries" like Germany

Chocolate fountains

my spirit animal in front of the christmas tree

For some reason it features carvings of hideous looking angles

Market midway

This is Wild Maus xxl

As you can see its a much larger version of your typical mouse

It has a lot of track and is quite long

with a few huge drops

It was pretty awesome actually, almost no braking on the corners, which is damn frightening on a portable coaster at these heights

The entrance features these animatronics

The station

The queue line was set up like a funhouse with moving walkways and obstacles

Next coaster, this funky suspended coaster

You can see the corners have some very wacky looking banking

These are the single car trains

side view

Third coaster is this spinning mouse in a box, with a winter theme (plastic tarps and icey lights with some random polar bears and snowflakes)

It was actually pretty long, but this is the only section that traveled outside so it wasn't possible to get many photographs

The station- I realized after I got home that this was actually my 100th coaster. Somewhere along the way I got off in my counting and didn't even realize I had hit this milestone.

Snow themed flat rides

This one themed to a ski jump

The Two giant swing rides (KMG xxl and Mondial turbine) I didn't ride either sadly

The turbine had a roman theme that was awkwardly overlaid with the name "Blizzard"

The star flyer

Which I also didn't ride, as It was a bit too cold to be blowing around 60M above london

nice overview of one of the kids areas and the giant wheel- I don't know why the giant wheel appeals to people when the worlds most famous wheel is only a few miles away in a better location, but here it is.

The fourth coaster, yet another spinning mouse

Fifth coaster was this Pinfari masterpeice

Basically a bunch of helixes

and rough as you'd expect

and of course unnecessary OTSR's to amplify the suck

and most terrifying of all, a cable lift hill

Confusingly the ride seemed to have a Himalayan theme

overlaid with an alpine theme

and featuring a giant talking troll (Norway??)

Finally this wacky worm themed to Santa's Sleigh- kind of adorable actually

I didn't ride it because I'm not that big of a credit whore (which is why I just hit 100 and i'm 30)

Finally- the view walking out towards Oxford Street- lovely day all in all

[KarlaKoaster]

Thanks for the photo TR, I love this place Looks like you caught it on a good day as it is always CRAZY busy (in a good way) when I go. For me the best thing about WW is the food and drink with places like the Carousel Bar, Bavarian Village etc... ride wise I really like the giant mouse, the mouse in a box, plus rides like the XXL and Power Tower.

[Nrthwnd]

What a wonderful set up for London and the holidays! We have only a plaza sized 'market' with one ride - the carousel. Would love to bring this to Playland even with family fave rides running...and our Coaster of course, lol.

 

One photo did catch my attention and that's of the XXL that we're going to be getting, called The Beast, next Playland season! I have had only one friggin boring photo to see it, and it was so nice for you to catch one in action, as well.

 

Great report! And I want this Holiday Market-Rides setup! In our Stanley Park!

Oops. EDIT to add the great photo of the XXL in Hyde Park! (o:

Edited December 12, 2014 by Nrthwnd

[cfc]

The Wild Maus xxl does, indeed, look terrifying. The only place I've ever seen one of those single-car inverted coasters was in a game of RCT.

[mousch]

Even more terrifying when you see the footers!!!

[cfc]

^

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw

[nynehalem]

I noticed the jenga block footers but chose to pretend like they didn't exist for my own self preservation. I wonder if its designed to normally rest closer to the ground but they chose to elevate it to make it look more intimidating?

[cfc]

How was the food at this fair--particularly those German French fries and the chocolate fountains?

[nynehalem]

the only thing I actually ate was a pretzel, which was above average- it's here for a few weeks so i might go back and do some more eating

[RoCo]

Man, I wish we'd get something like this in the U.S., with all the funky Euro attractions like Helter Skelter and that insane mega-Mouse. Cool report; thanks!

 

Also, Dramatic Chipmunk never fails to make me laugh.

[gisco]

How long is it going to be there? My daughter is headed to London for school after Christmas. I think she would like to see that.

[Guy T. Koepp]

Dude! That Mega Mouse looks amazing! Huge want! That hang and bang looks crazy insane! And by crazy insane, I mean painful. Did you ride it?

 

Great pictures. Thank you for sharing.

[HAZE]

Coolest fairground I've seen in years. One of my credits is a Pinfari RC-48. The ride is extremely rough unless you ride in the back. And it has a rather steep cable lift hill, with cars that have only a few inches of leg room. It pulls off quite a bit of Gs in the helices and has awkward OTSRs.

 

Yet I ride it over and over because it is a rough-out of control ride. Was the large Pinfari you encountered somewhat similar? Am I the only person who can ride a Pinfari over and over and NOT come out with battle scars?

[nynehalem]

To answer a few questions:

 

The fair is on until January 4th so if your daughter is coming right after Christmas she should be able to go, there's no admission fee I should mention- But she might want to know that this year they are charging for the fireworks at the London Eye on NYE so if she's planning on going to that she needs to buy tickets asap.

 

I did manage to ride all of the coasters (except for the wacky worm)- The wild Maus xxl was really very good, smooth, intense laterals, very long. The hanging coaster was as weird as it looked, probably sort of like the family version of the Volare. I couldn't tell if the cars swung at all but I suspect they had a mild swing. The pinfari was awful- halfway down the first drop I thought "Oh this isn't so bad" and then bam! non-existent heart lining and the OTSR's combined to make a very rough ride.

[rctneil]

I visited Winter Wonderland a couple of weeks back too. It's really nicely done and there is a good range of rides available and some very highly themed too!

 

Wilde Maus XXL is a superb ride. One of the smoothest wild mice I have ridden. The way it is perched atop the footers is very intimidating though. The Alpine Thriller Pinfari Cable lift monstrosity rode terribly and i'll be happy never to ride it again. The spinner in the box was actually really decent too and the Euro Coaster suspended one I, like Chuck, had never seen one outside of RCT so I did choose to ride it and it wasn't horrible but not great as the corners do not naturally swing the cars and you are forced rather suddenly around them. Ah well, another coaster type tried out.

[HAZE]

I visited Winter Wonderland a couple of weeks back too. It's really nicely done and there is a good range of rides available and some very highly themed too!

 

Wilde Maus XXL is a superb ride. One of the smoothest wild mice I have ridden. The way it is perched atop the footers is very intimidating though. The Alpine Thriller Pinfari Cable lift monstrosity rode terribly and i'll be happy never to ride it again. The spinner in the box was actually really decent too and the Euro Coaster suspended one I, like Chuck, had never seen one outside of RCT so I did choose to ride it and it wasn't horrible but not great as the corners do not naturally swing the cars and you are forced rather suddenly around them. Ah well, another coaster type tried out.

 

What model of pinfari is it, anyway? I ride a Pinfari RC-48 that goes to my fair every year.

[Philrad71]

Thanks for sharing - this looks awesome. I sure wish that we had something like that around here to enjoy during the holidays.

 

Hope to see another report along with a review of the German food and beverage options!

[nynehalem]

The main reason I didn't go crazy for the german market is because I'm going to Germany next weekend and am going to a few proper German Christmas fairs (and Europa Park!)

[KarlaKoaster]

It's well worth doing a Google Image Search for 'Bavarian Village Winter Wonderland' to see pictures of this amazing part of Winter Wonderland, plus the huge German-size Beerhall that they have there too. I might try and get some pics as I am going mid week next week

[Baffles]

Attached is a pic of the beer hall - amazing atmosphere.

 

The food is pretty genuine - bratwurst, currywurst, chocolate covered fruit etc - just damn expensive.

Bavarian Village

[eKs_Productions]

ohmmm... "Because Jager is requisite at any German Christmas market (Or is it?)" - no, not really...

 

and there is no christmas market with original german french fries "yes, nothing says "French fries" like Germany"

 

- and maaa(much?!)aaaany more mistakes...

 

 

But - yeahr - I like the XXL-Maus because the three extra-drops are very thrilling and the funhouse-part ist great. Normally in Germany at fairs, but nice to see it at England. Great!