Trip Report – Day One
Following a very early start and a crack of dawn flight to Amsterdam Schipol, no time was wasted getting our hire car and heading over to Walibi World.
This park was formerly known as “Six Flags Holland”, and originally “Walibi Flevo”. It’s a superb, lush, green park, superbly landscaped and looked after, with some very good rides. Express (formerly Superman The Ride) a Vekoma launched looper which is much as you’d expect, not untolerably rough, but hardly smooth either.
The weather was hot – almost too hot – and much of the day was spent seeking shade from the relentless sun, however the rides I remember from my previous visit (when it was a Six Flags park) are all running well, and a few attractions which weren’t ready back then were tried – their Wild Mouse coaster is not the best example of the genre – fairly rough and brutal, however their Haunted Swing is fairly good, but the plot doesn’t make sense in anything other than the local language. There are good Haunted Swings out there which tell their story in other ways, however not understanding the comments being made by the characters during the ride turned what could be a superb ride, into merely above-average.
Anyway, wilting from the heat, we got back into our car and drove to our hotel for the night… which was baking hot. A nice meal in their restaurant however led the way to a sleepless night in a room with windows that barely opened and had been sitting in the blazing sun all day.
As we were to discover on later nights, that this hotel was merely hot would be the least of our problems with accommodation… (just wait till night 3 in Tilburg)
Tom
Looks like a nice park, apart from the observation wheel – how high is it??
I’m not sure – a quick google turns up 45m as a possible height – but it’s fairly well enclosed so isn’t anywhere near as terrifying as the one at Slagharen, which although not as tall (I think) is far worse as the cars are very open and exposed…
Ooh – what happened to the best ride at the park, Goliath? :-/
They’ve shortened the seatbelts a lot compared to the “normal” length for Intamin sit-down seat-belts. I couldn’t get in the test seat (not even close!) :’( , so didn’t attempt the actual train (where apparently the belts were, according to Richard and George, slightly tighter)
Ooer, that’s bad. They must be a lot shorter than normal. No-one on last year’s RCCGB trip had a problem on MF even though we’d been warned they’d been shortened.
Pity you didn’t try Goliath, the cars appeared to have elasticated straps and seemed to work OK, well Justin managed it, although Stuart didn’t.
The haunted swing story is that the owl thinks Merlin is a crap magician and asks him to prove how good he is, the pre-show tricks don’t impress him enough which angers Merlin enough to show you what he is really capable of.