PhotoTR: A warm weekend in Madrid

Spend a great and very warm weekend in Madrid and visited both parks.

First off on the Saturday to Parque Warner which lies in the outskirts of Madrid. The park is easily reachable by public transport: Start off at Atocha train station - do not miss the tropic palms, flowers and turtles inside the historic steel hall - and head for Cercanicas surburban rail platforms. Board line C-3 towards Aranjuez and Exit at Pinto. As you exit the station cross over the smnall parking lot and find the bus stop just on the opposite side of the street. Look out for bus 413 "Parque Warner - Pinto" service. Note that the bus only accepts at max €5 bills and will not change larger bills! You have to pay €5,10 for a return ticket to Pinto at Atocha station and €2 each direction at the bus. Do not throw away the train ticket upon leaving the train, you have to use it to exit at Atocha the Cercanicas area.

Parque Warner greets you with a hub of green surrounded by mostly dry areas. On the one hand it is sad they have no observation ride - gyro tower, ferris wheel,... - to make aerial photos of the coasters and rides but on the other hand there is nothing to see around the park xcept for dry undeveloped land.

Parque Warner has a solid coaster lineup cornering all the basics but IMO no standout coaster. The flat collection is okay but programs tend to be on the shorter and not much thrilling side. Highlight are waterrides: Shoot-The-Chute and log flume will have you soaked nicely in the hot Spanish sun.

StuntFall: Vekoma GIB which had some light headbanging inside the Cobraroll but was a nice thrilling ride for me. Wierdly Parque Warner has closed the first and last rows for riders.

Superman: B&M Floorless looper being the tallest and longest coaster in the park. Big fun and reminding me a little of Scream at SFMM. Offered two moments of floating air.

Batman La Fuga: My first Batman clone so far and liked the intense ride quite unlike many newer B&M coasters. Best in the front as there is some light headbanging in the rollovers in the back of the train.

Western Express: Welcome to my new worst wooden coaster. Having Intamin wooden coaster trains but this is toally horrible and even slightly painful.

Tom Y Jerry: Standard Tivoli Large family coaster getting a little bouncy with age.

Bip, Bip: The by far smoothest coaster in the park is this fun little Mack YoungStar coaster, more parks should get it for their family coaster lineup.

Getting dropped by the bus from Pinto here is the money shot of the entrance

Inside Parque Warner the fountains offered drinking water which is not standard in Spain which has in the summer always water saving procedures in effect

View down towards the cicular midway of the park

The major coasters are all hard to photograph as they lie on the outskrits of the park. Here Superman going up its lift

Some animation going on

Thrilling Stuntfall goes loop-the-loop. I found it not as bad as others here have said. Better than a SLC but not as good as an Invertigo

Splash Battle right opposite of StuntFall

Not beeing slim myself I did not found the lift uncomfortable

Nice looking "Old New York Street"

StuntFall recommends Carpet Clean

One of the few glimpses of Superman track you can get from inside the park

Superman "Daily Planet" building with a waterplay area in front of it

Going up! They had two trains running making it a walk-on nearly all day

Who will not trust Lex Luthor with a ride?

Batmaaaaan!

Also running two trains with no line. Liked the forceful compact layout but also showing first signs of age

Always good to have a part of home away from home

The program sadly was quite lame with no multi-spins

Batman taking a spin trough Gotham City

Mr. Freeze had done his job well in "Pimp My Zierer Waveswinger"

Gotham City aside from the midway games area looking quite nice

Hit the wrong button so here is more from Parque Warner...

At 32 °C I was ready to get totally soaked by this great Shoot-The-Chute

Spanish riders make some great atmosphere on the rides. There is always some chanting and/or clapping going on

Huss Breakdance 3 stnading next to the dreadful wooden coaster

Intamin log flume getting you well wet complete with turntables and the backwards drop having a small airtime bunnyhop before splashdown

Happy riders

OUCH, this coaster just hurts. Do not let yourself fooled by the Intamin trains which make one think of Colossos or Balder - this coaster is really bad

Western city looking good. Time to find a Saloon for some...

...Beer!!!

Yes I managed to get the complete Zierer Tivoli train into one picture

Wettest rafting ride ever

Parks! Get a Mack YoungStar! Grabs the price for smoothness from B&M and is fun for all ages

Random waterplay area in ToonTown

Parque Warner recommends: Drink more beer!

Coming up next: Parque de Atracciones de Madrid

Nice TR!

That looks awesome!

And I agree with the Mack Youngstar, I have been loving them for years now!

Well, I see Coaster Express hasn't got any better

Nice photos, I haven't been to the park for a while now. Really need to go back.

The flat collection is okay but programs tend to be on the shorter and not much thrilling side.

Or perhaps you are just used to all of those awesome flats with their absolutely insane programs that they run in Germany!

Thanks for the photos (and the beer report)...you don't see too many reports from this park.

The spanish superman is my fav floorless coaster and I've been on a few - sfmm, sfGAdv, Dorney, KD, none of them have the pops of airtime and such a huge difference riding front vs back. It also has my all time favourite zero-g roll which actually feels like zero-g.

also I share the hate for coaster express (did they rename it western express?)

^On their website they say coaster express but I didn't go there recently so I'm not sure.

I wonder why the park only had 7 rows on the batman clone, and not the usual 8...

Parque de Atracciones ran for better programs on their flats - even while also quite short the TopSpin there offered a 5-7 multispin depending on the load. I did wonder why they both did not have water fountains on the TopSpins as that would nicely fit for warm Spanish weather.

Part 2 - Parque de Atracciones de Madrid

PAM is easily reachable by Madrid Metro line 10. Coming from the city take the line in direction Puerta del Sur and exit at station Batan. Follow the signs from the plattform to the park side entrance.

I started the day with covering the sightseeing basics:

- Plaza Del Sol with Kilometer Zero

- Historical Plaza Mayor

- Late second breakfast with Tapas and Beer at the historic Mercado de San Miguel

- A stroll past the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace

PAM offers a great ride selection for all ages with Nickelodeon Land for smaller kids as well as a solid flat selction for adults including a StarFlyer, a TopSpin, a Frisbee, a Disk'O and a Condor. The programs vary but are overall more thrilling than those at Parque Warner. Also very soaking is the Intamin Shoot-The-Chute Los Fjordos. Sadly as I got to the log flume they were just evacuating all riders from the boats after a total breakdown. The operations varied heavily and ranged from okay to toally nerve-wrecking.

Out of the seven coasters I ended up riding only three for various reasons: The two kiddie coasters in Nickelodeon Land allowed adults only acoompanied by a kid. The Wild Mouse had a ridiculous line: They had four cars running, filled these, dispatched them and then waited until all four cars returned to the station. And Tornado had a a ridiculous maximum height restriction with 1,87 meters - Sakaniemmi has none and I guess some member here can post if such thing exists for Volcano at Kings Dominion - and I was turned down at the station. I was about to leave in anger but then drowned a liter of beer and forget about it - you will find no pics of this coaster in my report as I tried to pretend it is not there afterwards.

Abismo: I love SkyWheels - and this long variant offers great upside down hangtime as well as good forces and nice airtime. This truely is the highlight coaster of this short trip.

Tarantula: One of the longest Maurer spinners around. Not spinning that much but nevertheless a fun coaster. It had among the best operations in the park, mostly due to the design of the continous loading plattform.

Tren de la Minha: Funny minetrain by design a Gerstlauer Family Coaster using the same system like Hansa-Parks's Schlange Von Midgaard but offering a much bigger layout. This coaster had the worst operations, the two girls were masters at the art of time suckage.

Arrived at the Batan entry

One of the two Nickelodeon Land kiddie coasters only rideable with a kid

Nice to see a new Telecombat ride

The Wild Mouse with the Crazy Attendants

The TopSpin had a short but great program: Offering a 5-7x multispin depending on the load

Hooray for upside down hangtime

About to be dropped

Unique insight into a Frisbee

Fountains and greenery among the StarFlyer who did a quite long program - great views of the park and the city

Lots of Huss rides here

Good forces coming out of the SkyLoop

Frisbee also ran a good program

More Maurer-Söhne goodness

Happy riders - line was mostly at 15 minutes all day

Good airtime at the drop into the station despite a trim brake before the drop

Got Tarantula at lunch time with only a five minute wait while it had at least 30 minutes the rest of the day

A Huss Condor named Rotor. This had a four digit postalcode on the serial number plate which are out of use since Germany's unification - so this Condor is at least about 25 years old

Some clowns on the move. The small car blared loud pop music

More Abismo airtime

It took them nearly 10 minutes to load a Waveswinger...

A small standard Disk'O

Twisty goodness

Lots of industrial fence around rides. Why not using some nice sandstones and cast iron - would look much better...

But then you can soothe your eyes with this view a few meters onward

Did I mention Abismo offers amazing upside down hangtime???

Wet chicas! Spanish girls often wear bathing suits under their tee and jeans - so tried not to stare...

This one soaks you as good as the one at Parque Warner

And if you do not want to stand in line there are other options to get soaked by this ride...

Fun little mine train with horrilbe operations.

Thats it for now. In about two weeks onward to England for Alton Towers, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Dryton Manor - if weather permits...

Nice pictures!

Love this one. Just looks... kind of wrong but awesome!

Haven't been to the park yet. I'll make sure I don't miss it next time I go to Madrid.

Yeah, spanish operator sucks, but the park looks really nice. I live 200km away from it, but I haven't visited it in years. I will try to go this summer. I'm looking forward to ride Abismo. About Parque Warner I agree in everything. Coaster Express is the worst coaster I have been on (apart of Magnus Colossus). They both should get the RMC treatment. Or, the Son of the Beast treatment.

Or, the Son of the Beast treatment.