Trip report: Bobbejaanland july 30, 2001 | |||
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One of the parks on our list of themeparks to go to in 2001 was Bobbejaandland. We went there july 30, 2001, a beautiful sunny day. Arriving around opening time, we parked the cars and got ourselves tickets for the park. Once inside the park, we had a look at a park map and decided to go for a ride on the monorail first, to have a look at the park. As it turned out, we had to wait some 5 to 10 before the first train arrived. We got in and sat down. It wasn't going to be a very long ride, since we got off at the next station and walked past Speedy Bob to El Rio (rafts). El Rio wasn't completely finished yet. The ferries wheel like structure which is supposed to lift the rafts up to a slide, was bypassed, because it wasn't finished yet. But it's got another very nice feature: a whirlpool. And they managed to construct it in such a way, that you really go round and down (not down in the middle though, but down and fast anyway).
After getting out of this great raft ride, we walked back to Speedy Bob. It's the standard steel wild mouse (rollercoaster), which you'll find in several parks in Europe, but this time, there's two. The second one is mirrored. Only one was running though. It was only a short wait, before we got on the ride.
The next ride we went on, was Air Race, a suspended coaster. It was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Bobbejaanland. Air Race is the only suspended coaster I know of in Europe (there might be more, but I wouldn't know). I've been on one in Six Flags Magic Mountain, called Ninja, and I like them a lot. This one is a lot smaller than Ninja and not nearly as fast, but Air Race got some nice tight turns and helixes to make for some g-forces. Since it was such a sunny day, the next ride we went on was a log flume, the Indiana River. Bobbejaanland has two logflumes. This one is an indoor one (darkride). It turned out to have some nice drops, which can really get you wet if you're sitting in front (lot of fun).
The two logflumes are located close to one another, so the next ride, was the other logflume called Water Slide. This one had a bit of a queue, so by the time we got into a log, we were all dried up due to the sunny weather.
This one has an onride photo shoot (the indoor logflume doesn't have one) as you can see in the picture on the left. From left to right in the log: Ernst, Bart, me and Henk. When we got out of the logflume, we checked the showtimes at the nearby theatre and went in search of a place to get something to eat. We found a nice little spot with some tables near the entrance of the park and some nearby food stalls.
We ordered some french bread and drinks and sat down for a while in the sun for our lunch. Finally having finished lunch, we walked back a bit towards the Bob Express, the Mack family coaster.
The queue for the Bob Express was one of the longer ones (along with the outdoor logflume) we encountered that day. This coaster doesn't have a lifthill (nor is it launched), but instead it is motorized. It really is a family coaster without any steep drops, but has some nice helixes. A nice (recent) addition to the park.
From Bob Express, we walked to the Star Theatre, to see one of the shows. As it turned out, this was our mistake of the day. We didn't really like the show at all. In fact, we liked every other show we'd seen in any other themepark better than this show. In our opinion, this show is nowhere near the ones we've seen in Universal Studios Hollywood, WB Movie World Germany and some other parks. Rather dissapointed after the show, we went to Looping Star for some much needed dose of fun. It's the only looping coaster the park has. It's a standard design by Schwarzkopf and you can find some more exactly like this one elsewhere in the world. This looping coaster doesn't feature the shoulder restraints (bars) you'll find on new coasters nowadays, but just the lap bars. Not that it matters that much, the g-forces will keep you in your seat anyway. But I found that, entering the loop, I was pushed forward by the g-forces (which newer restraints will prevent). Allthough old (1979), it's fun to ride. As we seem to manage to find the most technologically advanced (not) ride in any park and enjoy it (see also the Efteling 2000 tripreport where we had some fun in the kiddy playground), we got into the Trapeze Tower next to Looping Star. Well, not all of us. Where the others suffering from embarrassment? The Trapeze Tower is just a rope net tower, with slides going down. Our next ride was one we were looking forward to: Revolution. A custom build, one of a kind indoor coaster by Vekoma, with some nice theming. We enjoyed this one very much. Not very spectacular, but very original and we rode it a couple of times (not a very long queue). The start of the drop (there really is just one very long drop) is very different in the front of the train compared to the back. This is due to the very long length of the train (we first thought the station was build to accommodate more than one train behind each other, until the train came in and we got to see how long it was). If you sit in the back, the train will start accelerating before you reach the top and if you sit in the front, you'll be going down the drop for some seconds before it starts picking up speed (when more than half of the train is over the top).
Afterwards we went to the nearby Bobby Drop, which is a water slide with rubber rafts. It has one helix in the slide, which really throws you around (some bumping of heads was involved). We went down one other nearby slide and then it was time to go on all our favorite attractions again, since we had done everything we really wanted to.
We went on both logflumes again, went for a second time to El Rio. A couple more runs on the Bob Express and one more on Air Race. In between we ate some pancakes and watched a western riding show (better than the other show, but still not up to our expectations). We had a lot of fun in this family style themepark. Allthough we didn't like the shows very much, Bobbejaanland has some very nice attractions for everybody. There are still a lot of other themeparks on our list that we haven't been to, so it might not be soon, but we will be back one day. |
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