Tag: Challane of Tutankhamen

Advice, Blog

Our Eurotrip – Summary

Loops&Lapbars

I wanted To write this blog to not only summarise our trip, but also give a bit of advice where I can about travelling around Europe.

The highlights

Thinking about things that stuck out on our trip, I’d have to say that most of Efteling, Rookburgh and the Charles Lindbergh, most of Toverland and The Ride to Happiness as a start. So to make it a bit more fun, I think I’ll go through highlights of anything and everything starting with the coasters.

The Coasters

Fury and Ride to Happiness are the clear standouts here. I was expecting Ride to Happiness to be great but wasn’t expecting as much from Fury but it sure delivered! Anubis was also noteworthy, as was Typhoon and Taron. Kondaa was quite impressive too, Revolution and Psyke Underground were very interesting and Troy is the best wooden coaster I’ve ridden so far!

The Flats

But rollercoasters aren’t just all a park has to offer, there’s the flat rides too. Here, the clear standouts was Talocan. I looked forward to this for a long time before going and it held up all I wanted it to be! I wish the fire had been working on our visit but it didn’t take away from what is a phenomenal ride. Mystery Castle is also a ride that I’ll never forget riding the first time either! Then there’s King Kong at Bobbejaanland, Le Rondes des Canards at Plopsaland and Scorpius at Toverland for how great it looked.

The Dark Rides

Then there’s the great selection of dark rides we had a go on! Popcorn Revenge, Challenge of Tutankhamen, Maus Au Chocolat, Carnival Festival, Droomvluct and the almighty Symbolica! Efteling truly is one of the dark ride capitals of Europe!

The Water Rides

Finally there’s the water rides, though Pulsar and SuperSplash are rollercoasters, I think they stand out more for their water elements. Though the rapids rides we had a go on are definitely memorable, River Quest being the absolute champion of rapids rides! Chiapas is the best log flume we’ve been on, but Flashback and Terra Magna were great too!

As for the park that stood out as the one that impressed me most, it’ll definitely be Toverland. Though Efteling and Phantasialand were the better parks, I felt that Toverland was so well done and we enjoyed everything there was to do at the park so much. I feel Efteling could do with a few more thrill rides personally and that would make it easily top of all parks I’ve visited. For now though, Toverland is up there along with Efteling and Phantasialand, with Walibi Belgium and Plopsaland being tied and Bobbejaanland being slightly behind those two. That’s definitely not to say Bobbejaanland was bad or anything, far from it! It’s better than the vast majority of parks here in the UK! It’s just competition is stiff!

All the hotels we stopped in were not much to write about besides the Loonsche Land Hotel and Charles Lindbergh which were very well done. It is worth noting though, that most of the hotels we stopped in didn’t have tea and coffee making facilities and the beds all seemed to use foam mattresses too. I suppose I should really mention Schwerelos Suite here as the host of this overnight stop went truly above and beyond with how they accommodated us!

Some advice about Europe

I’ll have an accompanying video for you to watch here if you prefer, but I’ll try and go into a bit of detail here as it’s easier to write!

The first piece of advice I’d say is to make sure you plan what you’re doing to within an inch of its life! I had an Excel spreadsheet with all sorts of information on it while we were going through the motions of deciding what parks we were doing, what hotels we were stopping at and our route. We ended up deciding on 6 parks and 9 hotels in total (2 being booked alongside their park tickets). The route we decided on was the most fuel efficient way that I could find as I used Google Maps to decide what was best.

Once we’d gotten our actual hotels and tickets booked, we turned our attention to what we’d need. This includes your V5 for the car, travel insurance, car insurance details (including European cover), passports and such. I’ll make a list at the very bottom to help out with what you might need to make it much easier to plan! It’s also worth noting how you’re getting there. By road you’ll have 2 choices, ferry or Eurotunnel. We opted for the Eurotunnel as it was a lot cheaper, but the ferry might have offers on or be more suitable to you.

Driving in Europe wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be as you are guided straight onto a french motorway as you leave the eurotunnel and it sort of clicks as you go. The first few roundabouts are interesting as cars are coming from the other way and you are used to looking right instead of left.

Having a basic understanding of French/Dutch or German will help you out plenty in France/Belgium/The Netherlands and Germany and it certainly helps if you have allergies or specific needs as we had a little issue with onions. I’m not allergic to them per se but they can seriously upset my stomach and it’s much easier to not eat them at all. We did had a few issues trying to say ‘no onions please’, but it didn’t always come across, which is on us for not knowing how to speak a foreign language!

Obviously the currency is Euros and I took a bank card with me, where Tracy went entirely cash. Either works fine and depending where you’re going depends on what you’ll need. Bobbejaanland for example is entirely cashless so you can convert cash into their own on park currency, but Phantasialand was easier with cash as some of the vendors didn’t take card.

Things you’ll need for driving in Europe

  • Passport
  • Travel Insurance
  • Car Insurance
  • V5C
  • High Viz Jacket for each occupant of the vehicle )reachable from within the behicle)
  • First Aid Kit
  • Warning Triangle (for breakdowns)
  • GB Sticker on rear of car
  • Beam Deflectors
  • Clothes
  • Toiletries
  • Suncream
  • Medication
  • Camera(s)
  • Travel Towel
  • Bottled Water
Blog, Reviews

Walibi Belgium – The first visit

Loops&Lapbars

I’ll preface this blog by saying that the only things I knew of Walibi Belgium was that it was a Six Flags park and featured on Roller Coaster Tycoon, a game I grew up playing (and still play to this day), and Kondaa. That was it!

We arrived at the park nice and early as our hotel was only 10 minutes away and even though we arrived at about 9:15, the car park was already starting to fill up.

We got through the gates into the park and had a wander around the shop before joining the mass of people waiting to enter the park proper. We looked around and thought there was a lot of people here and made the executive decision to look into fast passes for the day. Their offers are incredibly reasonable and we paid €50 euros for our speedy passes. This equates to about £43 and it got us onto 18 rides, including Kondaa so I cannot fault the value here!

Our first stop in the park was Loup Garou (Werewolf), the parks Vekoma built wooden coaster. We’ve started each park that has a woodie with that woodie so didn’t break tradition here! Loup Garou is a decent ride with very comfortable seats that are well padded and very roomy too.

The ride experience is good, it’s not the best wooden coaster I’ve ridden, but it’s far, far from the worst! It does rattle about a bit and is somewhat forceful, but felt a bit more rattly than thrilling. Still a good time though, especially as it’s my first Vekoma wooden coaster.

After Loup Garou, we headed towards Vampier (Vampire if you didn’t guess) which is a standard layout Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster (SLC). It is identical to Infusion at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and rides just as well as Infusion. Though I do think Vampire was a little more comfortable than Infusion, maybe it’s the front row or the fact I’d braced myself for a beating but I found it to be decent, especially for an SLC!

Next up was the parks carousel and then onto the next big ride, another Vekoma! This time a mine train coaster called Calamity Mine and this is the same model as Phantasialand’s Colorado Adventure. Though not quite as good as Colorado Adventure, this ride is still great fun and arguably the second best runaway mine train I’ve ever done. It’s nice and smooth and a little tame but this does make it good for people who don’t like too much intensity!

While we were in the area, we had a go on Dalton Terror which is the same ride model as Apocalypse at Drayton Manor once was. It even has 5 towers like Apocalypse, though no standup towers here. It is taller though at 252ft (77m) making it the tallest drop tower we’ve done so far! This was exactly as you’d expect, slow ascent with a thrilling and quite lengthy descent too!

Our next stop in the park was the newest addition, Kondaa. This is an Intamin built coaster and features no inversions but does have a one of a kind non inverting cobra roll. The ride is fairly tall at 168ft and features a lot of whippy transitions and airtime hills. The trains are comfy and the restraints are very open allowing you to feel all the ride has to offer. I thoroughly enjoyed Kondaa, so much so that it had managed to break the top 10 of my all time favourites (at least currently!).

Also in the Kondaa area is a little junior ride called Kondaala and it slowly rotates you upwards and then back down again, it’s very tame and perfectly suited to smaller guests who can’t yet ride Kondaa.

Challenge of Tutankhamen was next up and I hadn’t really looked into this one too so didn’t quite know what to expect. What we did get though was Legolands Laser Raiders on steroids though! The ride system is almost exactly the same, though the rid wish trackless but the guns make the same sounds and the targets are identical. How it differs from Laser Raiders is how it feels more mature and serious I’m it’s presentation. Not only does it look good and work perfectly, but it also takes different routes on subsequent rerides. We managed two during our time here and got a few new scenes on the second ride around. Definitely worth a visit!

After Challenge of Tutankhamen, we stopped off for some dinner in one of the restaurants. We had what was essentially Walibis version of KFC and it was good, if a little pricey. What is nice to see though is the refillable drinks cups they offer. Though not as good as coca cola freestyle, the offer here is that you pay slightly more for your first drink and then can trade the cup back in for a return, making your drink much cheaper. I think it was something like €3.80 euros for a drink and returning The cup got you €1 back. You can of course keep the cup, which is what we ended up doing.

Tiki Waka was our next stop and I was looking forward to this one as it’s a Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster, similar to Cobra at Paultons Park, but a bit longer. This is a very smooth ride, not too thrilling but fun none the less! I love the theme of the area it’s in, the ride itself and the ride vehicles too!

Once we’d had a go on Tiki Waka, we tried Golden River which is a boat ride around the lake, before heading to Flashback for the first of 2 water rides.

I do remember flashback being in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2s version of Six Flags Belgium, so I was looking forward to riding a ride I only knew from the game. I wasn’t disappointed with it at all as it was just good fun all the way around. It features 3 lifts and drops, 1 is done backwards and it has a few lengthy sections in tunnels too. The final drop is quite a thrill too and despite it’s splash, it didn’t really get us that wet!

The same can be said for Pulsar, it looks intimidating and like a thorough drencher but it ended up being very pleasant and didn’t soak us through, which made the ride all the more enjoyable! Pulsar is essentially a shuttle launched water coaster and is the fastest coaster in Belgium! It uses linear induction to push the train backwards and forwards 3 times along it’s length with the final part being a splashdown into a big trough of water. What is quite unique about this ride, is not only the turntable loading system, but also the trough the boat passes through

The turntable means a boat can be on the track and another in the station, once both are ready, the align next to one another and the turntable rotates, taking on into the station and vice versa. As for the water trough, the boat passes through it 3 times when the water level is low and as it’s about to pass the 4th and final time, the trough floods quite quickly and causes the boat to splash down into it, slowing it down too, it’s quite clever and fun to ride!

Now that we’d finished on the water rides, we got dried off (travel towels are a must) and had a go on Spinning Vibe which is a Huss Breakdance, though not quite a full size, full throttle model. I was expecting to be a bit ill with all the spinning but found it to be quite pleasant though maybe a little repetitive by the time our cycle was done.

Pyske Underground was next up and what a ride this is! The station is quite unassuming and very calm, but when the ride starts, there’s a video that plays with some characters trying to initiate the start sequence for the ride. The countdown starts, then speeds through and the train launches into a dark tunnel, a loop, up a spike and back again in reverse. It took us completely by surprise as to how well executed this shuttle loop is!

We then decided to wander over to Fun Pilot and Palis Du Génie, two family rides towards the back of the park. Fun Pilot is a bit bigger Farmyard Flier, it has the same trains and a similar layout, though this is a bit longer. Rides as well as Farmyard Flier though! As for Palis Du Génie, this is another Vekoma Madhouse and though we didn’t quite understand what was going on in the preshow, the madhouse part was well executed rode well.

Further around the park we went until eventually we got to Popcorn Revenge, a trackless interactive dark ride that is probably the most wacky idea in Belgium, if not the whole of Europe!

The ride takes you’re through a lot of screen based sets that are made to look like cinema screens. The idea is that popcorn, that is apparently thrown at screens during terrible films has come to life and is getting it’s revenge so you have to fight your way through the cinema! Now this ride is definitely memorable and incredibly fun too! There’s just something about shooting popcorn versions of Marvel characters and other film icons!

The fun doesn’t just start on the ride though, the queue has plenty of mock posters advertising films such as The Corn of the Rings, Avacorn (Avatar) or Harry Popper. From entering the queueline to leaving via the gift shop, we had a blast on this ride!

Finally we had a go on Cobra which is a Vekoma Boomerang model, and is identical to Wipeout at Pleasurewood Hills. Not much to say here that I didn’t talk about with Wipeout but it was comfortable for the most part and very thrilling, especially backwards!

Once we’d done on Cobra we had a wander back around the park and had a few rerides on attractions we liked the most such as Challenge of Tutankhamen and Popcorn Revenge. We were hoping to have another go on Psyke Underground but it seemed to break down after we’d had a go and didn’t get back running again

The gift shop at the very end was well stocked with plenty of park specific merchandise as well as lots of other stuff such as Funko Pops and things for the kids. It was one of the more expensive parks but as I alluded to in the video log we took, I don’t mind paying more for things when I’ve had a great time and Walibi Belgium was definitely a great time!

I look forward to getting back there to re-ride Kondaa, Psyke Underground and the other coasters and since we’ve gotten back home, planning permission has been sought to build another rollercoaster too so I look forward to that!

With this brings the end to our European Parks. I don’t think there has been a single thing to properly moan about the whole way around all the parks we’ve been to, at least nothing that really matters all that much! I’ll be doing a blog going through highlights of the trip as well as a lot of advice to anyone who wants to do a trip like this for themselves!