In June I went on my second Coaster Breaks tour, taking in plenty of new coasters plus revisiting Liseberg and Grona Lund.
Day 1 – Road trip
The tour started with a ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, followed by a drive to Germany via Drievliet and Slagharen, two pit-stop parks to break up the road trip and get a few creds – the highlight of these two being Gold Rush at Slagharen, a surprising find – a Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster featuring a multi-pass LSM launch.
Day 2 – Heide Park
Heide Park is one of the few Merlin parks in Europe, we had a great day here. The stand out coasters for me were Colossos – an Intamin woodie which has been recently refurbished along with the addition of a great theming set piece (pictured below), and Flug Der Dämonen – a B&M wing coaster with a decent ride length.
Day 3 – Hansa-Park
What could probably be called “Gerstlauer Park” due to the number of their coasters – this park is home to the world’s tallest free-standing drop tower, an LSM Eurofighter, a cool 1980s Schwarzkopf called Nessie and the headline coaster, Schwur des Kärnan (Oath of Karnan) – a Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster with a 240 ft vertical lift hidden inside a giant tower, and a crazy layout to follow.
Day 4 – Djurs Sommerland
Day 4 brought us to the first of two Danish parks and my first time in Denmark. I had a really good day here, the stand out coaster is Piraten (pictured) – an Intamin Mega-Lite with a surprising amount of airtime. Other coasters included DrageKongen (a Vekoma SFC) and Juvelen (an Intamin tyre launch, with quad bike style trains).
This was a very warm day, and we had such fun on Solguden (pictured below) which is basically a jumbo elephants flat ride, where you can control whether you go up or down with a lever inside the elephant, however this was themed in an Aztec style and sprayed water for you to dodge (or not, as it was so warm!)
Day 5 – Fårup Sommerland
The fifth day happened to also be my birthday, and we visited such a lovely park set in the woodlands. There wasn’t background music at this park but it was better without it – you could hear the sounds of the wildlife. This park had a rare S&S wooden coaster, Falken, along with an excellent Vekoma Wildcat, Fønix (pictured). This really was a great coaster with some good airtime and very comfortable seats. Also of note was Lynet, a Gerstlauer launch coaster.
Day 6 – Liseberg
I won’t go into any detail as I wrote about Liseberg last year, but it was great to get back to Liseberg again and enjoy some rides on Helix, Valkyria, Balder and Loke. One of the rides I hadn’t done before was a really cute dark ride in the kids bunny themed area, Underlandet.
Day 7 – Kolmården
This day was supposed to be less about coasters and more taking in a really nice zoo. I’m not really a fan of zoos however this one had much larger enclosures than in the average zoo. Unfortunately this was the day where the weather wasn’t on our side, as after the first hour or so it started raining and didn’t stop until after we had left, heavy rain. We ticked off the kids coasters in the morning and then had a go on Wildfire, a wooden RMC, before it started raining. I ended up staying on Wildfire in the rain later on for about an hour and a half, able to stay on as nobody was wanting to ride in the seat I was occupying. On occasion we would move to a different part of the train. A very fun although extremely wet experience. Wildfire instantly went into number 1 spot for me, it had a perfect amount of airtime – there was a lot of it but it wasn’t the overly forceful ejector that causes thigh pain.
Day 8 – Grona Lund
Another park I have previously visited, however last year the wooden coaster Twister was closed, but this time it was open! It was fun but nothing too special.
Following our day at Grona Lund, a few of the group went to look at the Vasa Museum – we had about 90 minutes before it closed which was just about enough time to check out this awesome ship.
