Rollercoasters

It's been a while since I've gone on a rollercoaster binge, and I suspect I'm getting over my rollercoasterholicism (probably because I got annoyed with the whole thing). Being in Montréal though, we couldn't resist (more on that later).

Today A and I spent the day at La Ronde, located fairly centrally within metropolitan Montréal on Île Sainte-Hélène. It's a metro stop or two from the city centre plus a short 15 minute walk through the pretty Parc Jean-Drapeau. With it nearly the end of the season, we had to go and check out this unique park!

Tonight we visited Walibi for Halloween. For a change, “we” not only means friends, but sadly half of my office came along tonight as a gift from one of our vendors.

I'm sorry Walibi: You had me, but you lost me.

Rollercoaster Season has once again rolled around as marked by the opening of the Walibi season for 2008 this weekend. As with last year, an early glimpse into what's changed within the park — or what's not working yet — is somewhat necessary.

This season opener didn't highlight anything spectacular to report, except that the Vertigo was once again being tested and wasn't taking passengers. There was once unique aspect of this visit though: It was snowing!

Whilst in Melbourne, a trip to Luna Park^[RCDB] was inevitable for me. This is the park that introduced me to the buzz of amusement rides in 1986, by way of the Gravitron (which was unfortunately removed from the park in 2004). Naturally I was horrendously ill after the ride, and vowed (rather unconvincingly) never to do that ever again!

Four Gs is a bit much for a five year old, but never-the-less it was not long until I took up the challenge on all Wittingslow (now Amusements Australia) rides at Moomba, the Melbourne Show, Hobart Regatta, and the Hobart Show. Needless to say, both the Gravitron and Luna Park have significant sentimental value to me.

Today I took my nieces, Neve and Millie, to visit this tiny but amazingly historic little park.

I've been pretty busy with work lately, so today a day was taken off to do something not many people would do: Drive up to the Netherlands on a work day and go and visit a new amusement park. In this particular case, John (who also wrote a trip report), Aline and myself ignored the warnings of bad weather and headed to Walibi's sister park, Walibi World (not Wally's World — ahem).

With the exception of a few large electrical storms and brief showers, the glum weather of the morning pushed off and we were lucky to enjoy mostly blue skies in the very green but awkwardly laid-out park. The park seems to be roughly the same size as Walibi Belgium, however designed in a more hub-and-spoke manner with most of the paths being dead-ends.

To its credit though, the heavy greenery and the winding path layout hides many rides and pathways without becoming a labyrinth, effectively making the park seem larger and quieter.

Walibi have spent a fortune on advertising over the past week, keenly promoting themselves by way of their new Walibi Heroes campaign. Essentially the idea is that you rock up to the park, buy lots of crappy merchandise, ride on a bunch of prescribed rides to collect little stamps in your “hero portfolio” in order to become hero of the day, month, or year. Ultimately, this all depends on how many of your friends you can convince to vote for you pretending to be a statue of yourself within the park.

I did not return to Walibi for this reason, but rather to finally experience the first-of-its-kind Vertigo, which has suffered various set-backs for the past 18 months. The ride finally opened while I was in Greenville, so obviously I had to check this thing out.

After a reasonable drive, through peach and firework country, up to the border between North Carolina and South Carolina, I arrived early this morning at Carowinds (RCDB) accompanied by colleagues and their family. Fortunately despite the humidity, the weather wasn’t too hot and warnings of rain kept the crowds low.

The park is quite green however it is very dry, with very few fountains and no large body of water to take the edge off the heat. I imagine in summer the park would be stifling hot. This season marks the first year under the new management of Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, and surprisingly the park is very clean and in excellent condition.

I never knew there was a Disneyland in China until recently. Oh, wait, no, that's not Disneyland, it's Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park (北京石景山游乐园).

It turns out the aptly abbreviated BS Amusement Park have nicely epitomised Chinese attitudes to western copyright law, and once again made their own cheap knock-off version of something successful.

One month after Walibi started its 2007 season, and it seems the park continues to struggle. Rides are still failing, despite another busy day within the park during some stunning record breaking weather.

Thinking of visiting Walibi? Perhaps save yourself the disappointment and wait until July, presumably when all the problems are solved. My visit today left me feeling empty and has, as you can see, left a rather bitter taste in my mouth about this season.

Last time I wrote about Walibi, I detailed that the Vertigo was still unfinished, and the Turbine was still in disrepair. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then.

After being dragged back to Walibi after only one week, it's turned out the park still has many early-season problems. The park itself has been heavily criticised in the media over the past week, including a scathing report on the Belga news-wire, «Walibi a vu du monde, mais a connu quelques soucis».

The short of the article is this: While Walibi's opening patronage was higher than the previous season (10,500 people), many attractions were closed for “temporary” reasons. Some of the rides were particularly rough on the opening Saturday, and technical staff worked overnight to help fix the problems. This may go some way to explaining why some rides did not open until the afternoon of the second day of the season.

The article goes on to state that the park management have invested €4m with special attention paid to increasing capacity of the existing rides, which is indeed visible in many places, but it looks like some rides have been somewhat neglected.

How could I write an article about my rollercoasterholicism without returning to Walibi on the first weekend of the 2007 season? Well, as it turns out, I couldn't possibly do such a thing, so I went today.

The interesting thing about Walibi is that the start of the season is always quite dreadful. Last year I arrived on the very first day only to find a messy park full of jerky rides and incompetent staff. I'm happy to say many of these problems were solved during this opening weekend, but perhaps not quite in the way I would have preferred.

This is the final part of my response to the “Five things you didn't know about me” meme; following parts one, two, three and four.

I thought my final entry in this five things serial should be something a little less morbid…