This year's family holiday was supposed to be Italy, but I convinced the parents to switch to Holland, given that I'd already been to Italy twice. It's a shame really. I forgot about Mirabilandia...
Even so, there was still a cracking theme park to look forward to, in the form of Walibi Holland!
We arrived at Center Parcs De Eemhof on Monday afternoon, with a spectacular view of the wind turbines on the dyke. Here are a couple of the pics that I got:
The edge of the dyke was beautiful. We were really lucky with the weather, considering the weather forecast said it would rain all week.
They were spinning quite fast actually.
I took this one when we cycled along the dyke on Tuesday. We went through a route that went under the turbines, which we later worked out we weren't supposed to be in. Well, the no entry sign was in Dutch...
The Wednesday was our Amsterdam day. We saw the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank's house. It was a surprisingly good day out, despite the confusing road system.
Thursday was the day I'd been waiting for: Walibi World!
We got there at about 11:00. The park was open until 8pm, so we weren't in any rush.
The new brand looks quite cool, if a little cheesy...
I was confused when I saw this, but apparently it's the name of one of the competing mascot bands at the park. I wasn't really interested in that.
We went straight to Goliath. It was a stupidly long walk. They could have made a more direct route, but at least we got to see some of the other rides.
This is their ferris wheel. It was pretty big and you got some great views of the park, but we walked straight past it initially, due to the presence of some annoying mascots directly in front of it.
We finally got to the entrance, and there was a really short queue. However, the ride was only running on 1 train because of this, so we did have to wait a while. (I like the purple train more than the green one, but you can't always get what you want...)
Beautiful logo...
Beautiful coaster...
Wow. This thing is AWESOME! It beats Oblivion to the top spot on my favourite coasters list.
(My dad found it a bit too thrilling, but he seemed happy...)
You get so much airtime on these bunny hills. It's amazing!
Our next stop was El Condor. Halfway through our queueing, they added the second train, which sped things up a little.
This was my first SLC, and I hate to say, but it will probably be my last. It's hard to enjoy a coaster when the sides of you head are being raped by the restraints.
I think I'll stick to B&M inverts in the future...
After lunch in the Sherwood Forest area, we headed to Robin Hood. By now, the sun was out, and we were hoping for a decent ride.
It didn't disappoint, but it didn't amaze me either. It's like a smaller, wooden version of Goliath that hurts a bit. Not my favourite to say the least.
We headed towards the north-east end of the park, and stopped off at Merlin's Magic Castle on the way. It's one of the better Madhouses, but I couldn't understand the story. All the characters were speaking Dutch, but I didn't care.
It looks quite pretty. They did a good job with the theming.
We also passed Excalibur, the park's Huss Top Spin. I was still digesting my lunch, so I gave it a miss. I've been on Ripsaw anyway.
We found Crazy River, and I have to say, it was one of the best log flumes I've been on. I love the backwards section!
The double drop offers some decent thrills. While I didn't get particularly wet, it was enough to cool me down a little in the summer heat.
The sun suddenly disappeared behind some nasty looking clouds, and we thought it might rain, so we headed back towards the entrance.
Tomahawk was closed, much to the disappointment of my sister, who wanted to ride it, but that's life...
By the time we got to the new area of the park, the weather had turned once more, offering up some more sunshine (among a few grey clouds), so we headed to Speed of Sound, the park's revamped Boomerang coaster.
This was my first boomerang coaster, and it was great! I'm sure some of the other models are much worse, mostly because this one is brand new and modern now. It's 'La Via Volta' days are well behind it now.
The ride has been repainted with a great new colour scheme, and some onride audio has been added. It really enhances the ride in my opinion.
Oh yeah, they also added a tunnel on the lift, which is surprisingly cool!
Such a gorgeous vekoma loop...
Ah, and the new vekoma trains are on this one. They've done quite a lot to this ride.
We returned to the entrance area, and were greeted by a show under the ferris wheel which was seriously cheesy...
We took a ride on the ferris wheel while my sister went and sat down inside because it looked like it would rain.
You can see most of the larger rides from the ferris wheel. The smaller ones hide in the tree scape.
You get a great view of Xpress from here as well. It was closed, as it will be for the rest of this year. They're going to reopen it next year with a new colour scheme and name, much like what they did with La Via Volta.
After a ride on El Rio Grande (articulated rapids), we were a little bit soaked, so it was time to get dried off with a speedy ride on Space Shot.
We passed this in the morning on the way to Goliath, and I decided to ride it later on.
It's a decent ride, but they over-hyped it a little with the atmospheric music and tense sounds.
While my sister and my mum went back to the car, we took one more ride on Goliath before we decided to finish for the day. We went for the front seat, which took an extra half hour at least given that they were still only running one train.
The front seat is good, but I preferred sitting further back, as you get better airtime and the acceleration feels more powerful. It's a truly great ride that isn't to be missed if you're ever in Holland.
Now I can add Intamin mega-coasters to the list of hyper-coasters that I really want in England, along with B&M.
The rest of the week was spent at Center Parcs doing activities such as Scuba Diving and Climbing. The swimming pool is really good. They have a new slide called Turbo Twister which is certainly worth a ride.
We spent the last day and a half in Belgium, where we saw the battlefields and had a great cycle tour of Bruges.
That was the end of a great holiday, and I'm sure I will return to Holland in the future, whether it be for another holiday or just to ride Goliath again, or perhaps even to go to De Efteling or Duinrell.
I leave you with a pretty picture of the ferris wheel behind the scenic fountain in the middle of the park.
Thanks for reading, and I'll post another TR of my weekend at Chessington and Thorpe when I go later this summer.
