At the end of November, we visited Parque Warner Madrid for the first time. We visited as part of Your Experience Guide’s event which gave us access to the park, a meal voucher and 1 hour of exclusive ride time on Gotham City Escape after the park had closed. We thoroughly enjoyed the Your Experience Guide part but what about the rest of the park?
The Rides
The park is home to a good lineup of coasters, thrilling and gentle flat rides and a good area for children too. The biggest stand out is Batman Gotham City Escape, which is also the newest attraction the park has, opening in 2023 and the first investment in 10 years if Coasterpedia is anything to go by!
Other standout attractions include Shadows of Arkham, a clone of the original Batman Bollinger and Mabillard inverted coaster, Correcaminos Bip Bip (Road Runner Beep Beep), a Mack rides YoungStar Coaster and Coaster Express, one of only 3 Roller Coaster Corporation of America wooden coasters still running.
They have a Floorless coaster called Superman: Ride of steel. I felt this one was a bit flat though, especially considering it’s size, inversion count and prestige as a floorless coaster. I didn’t feel like it being floorless made much difference to the ride, it’s layout was pretty decent on paper but I don’t really remember much from it. It does have on ride video and photography which is a very nice addition but it’s forgettable nature was disappointing.
Scooby Doo was another ride that I was looking forward to but felt it wasn’t quite as good as I’d have hoped. It felt like a more modern and interactive version of Flamingo Land’s Mischief Manor and not much more. It was great to see interactivity between the animatronics and the targets but so many of them didn’t work and it feels like there’s so much more that the attraction could have been!
The Loony Tunes area, though designed for kids, was a lot of fun. Here you’ll find your usual line up of kids attractions such as teacups, jet rides, roundabouts and a monorail. You’ll also find the excellent Road Runner Coaster! This is a great coaster with more force than it needs, a fun layout and a good nod to the source material.
The only real negative of the Loony Tunes area is it’s condition and state of repair. It desperately needs a tidy up and some investment to glow it up! This goes for a lot of the park too though, many queue lines feel unfinished and stations are very bare bones. It’s as though they spent 95% of the budget on the hardware and then had to make do with a smaller pot of money to finish the rides. Superman and Scooby Doo are prime examples of this.
Then there’s all the closed attractions while we were there. I understand the water rides being closed as it was very cold in November. This meant the Log Flume, River Rapids, Splash Battle and Chute rides were closed. This is on top of Lex Luther’s Invertatron (Top Spin), Stunt Fall (Inverted Vekoma Boomerang) and Hotel Embrujado (Vekoma Madhouse) which we’re all closed.
This coupled with the staggered opening of attractions during both the days we visited leaves a lot to be desired! Very much like Portaventura, the park doesn’t seem to have attractions ready for opening, which is fine to some extent but at least inform people about what’s not ready or going to be delayed!
We did waste about 20 minutes at the start of the first day trying Stunt Fall, then Superman and eventually settled on Shadows of Arkham as our first ride. 20 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot but I feel it shows lack of care or attention to the guest experience!
The Food
The park does make up a little here as the food we tried during our visit was tasty enough and wasn’t a rip off. On the first day we had burgers from Porky Pigs diner (this was included in our ticket as part of the Your Experience Guide event). These were quite simple burgers but they tasted fine and were filling.
The second day I’d seen there was a place that did sandwiches and I ordered a bacon and cheese sub while Tracy tried their chicken strips. Same here, tasty enough, didn’t break the bank but also nothing too amazing either.
That’s about all I can say about the food options as there were a lot of places closed too, such as the buffet restaurant that we’d heard good things about. The park does seem to offer a varied selection and they even have a restaurant dedicated to people with intolerances and allergies, but this wasn’t open when we were there.
The park also offers Coca Cola freestyle machines and cups so you can drink as much as you like during your stay. Their cups operate on a 60 minute lock out, which has it pro’s and cons.
One the one hand it stops you going nuts on it and saves them a little money, but in the other hand if you get a refill you don’t like (as I’ve had a few times), it means you have to wait 60 minutes for another. Overall I don’t think 60 minutes is awful but I would like to see the machines fully stocked and working properly so you can actually get what you paid for. A few of the machines were only half full or less which limited your choice of drinks.
The shows
All good here thankfully! We watched the Gotham Stunt Show and the Police Academy show and both were entertaining, noisy and a lot of fun!
The Gotham City one was much more story based and the actors playing Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn and Robin all did an excellent job. It was all in Spanish so we didn’t get much of the dialogue, but we understood enough to get the idea.
The Police Academy show was much more of a spectacle though. Featuring modified cars, a lot of tyre smoke and wheel spins and noise and it was just good dumb fun! I would advise getting there earlier than we did though as you’ll want a seat closer to the left side of the arena or the middle as the action was focused up that way.
Merchandise
Merchandise was extensive if you like Loony Tunes and DC. There were some decent cross overs too, seeing the Loony Tunes characters dressed as DC heroes. We found loads of T-Shirts, hoodies, cups and costumes for kids to dress up in. They also have an extensive selection of flat pennies and fake notes that Tracy collected during our visit.
The biggest disappointment here was there was really nothing ride specific! We found 1 Gotham City Escape T-shirt and that was it! Nothing for Shadows or Arkham, Coaster Express or Superman. Nothing for the Loony Tunes rides, and very little Parque Warner Madrid specific merchandise which was very disappointing to see. This did save me some money though so there is that!
Overall impressions
I’ve been quite negative overall I feel. The park looks tired in a lot of places, the theming felt a bit flat in places and rides not being ready really didn’t help. However, I would visit the park again.
It’s not all bad, Gotham City Escape is well worth a visit on its own and Stunt Fall (when it runs) and Coaster Express are very rare examples of their ride type. The Hollywood Boulevard, Movie Word Studios, DC Super Heroes World and Old West areas look great, with very little work needed, if any at all to improve them.
Merchandise was extensive, and incredibly affordable starting at €2. Food was fine and offerings were enough to cover what we wanted.
I would like to see it in the height of its operating season though. I wonder if the park looks so tired because it was the last 2 days of its main season, or whether it’s underinvestment that we saw? I want to go back and ride the attractions we missed, such as Lex Luther’s Invertatron and Enigma Drop towers, as well as re-rides in Gotham City Escape and Superman to see if I missed something!
Overall we enjoyed our time at the park, there’s no doubt there, but I think we were expecting a lot more from the park. I felt that Portaventura, though it also has problems, was a much better time than Parque Warner Madrid. But please, go for yourself, make your own mind up on the park and see for yourself! It’s hardly the worst park we’ve visited and I’m sure there will be worse still to come!
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