Richard Bannister

My timings for today failed to allow for the fact that I'd be departing my hotel in the centre of Hamburg at rush hour. It took me over an hour to cover the first five kilometres, and while it was reasonably free after that heavy rain meant that it wasn't possible to put the boot down on the autobahn. As a result I was almost an hour behind my planned schedule when I finally arrived at Sommerland Syd.

Himalaia (#1799) is the latest addition to the park, occupying the space formerly occupied by Tornado. The new ride is clearly second hand, as the control panel is in Italian and the only three cars are numbered three, five, and eight. It didn't make much difference today, though, as there were only a handful of guests in the park. I rode twice, once in the front and once in the back, before making a rapid exit.

 

Cutting the previous park short meant that it was only a few minutes after opening when I arrived at Bakken, and it was immediately obvious from the car park that the dark clouds had kept the crowds away. With almost two hours to play with in a mostly empty park I elected to buy a wristband rather than individual ride tickets, taking advantage of the Club TPR discount for a reduced price, and this was definitely the right decision; there was time to do a total of eleven rides without rushing, and I'd easily have gotten more in if I'd wanted to.

My first stop was at the latest addition to the park, a Mack-built Vilde Mus (#1800). The lift hill on this ride has been enclosed, presumably to protect it from the elements, and it also runs much faster than the norm for this sort of ride. Other than the lift, however, the rest of the ride was exactly as every other similar ride, making it a little bit dull. I'd have liked to arrange a slightly more significant coaster for the eighteen hundred landmark, but it's pretty hard to orchestrate exactly where credits will fall when you generally only need one new one per park!

I decided to skip repeating the Mariehønen, but worked my way around the other coasters. Tornado has gotten softer restraints since my last ride, which partially fixes the whiplash issue that I wrote about last time, but it's still not a coaster I'd do more than once per day. On similar lines, I'm now forced to list the Rutschebanen in the once-per-day category, as the new restraints really do start to hurt after the first few drops. Racing is fun to ride once but isn't exciting enough to repeat. That honour has to go to Mine Train Ulven, which is now the best coaster in the park, both on its own merit and also because it manages to thrill without hurting; I managed several rides.

Beyond the coasters, I tried the Hurlumhej fun house, the Spogeleslottet ghost train, and the Safari target shooting dark ride. It quickly became apparent that neither of the guns in my car worked. It was moderately amusing to note that the left hand gun managed to accumulate several hundred points while resting its holster!