PortAventura June 2008

So here I am after spending a full week at Salou, the best place for sunshine, sea, alcohol and rollercoasters. Even though many of you find those first three subjects very interesting as well, for this thread I'll stick to the rollercoaster-part. With our hotel passes we had unlimited acces to the PortAventura themepark.






Our hotel was simply beautiful. The rooms were not as great as I had expected, but the breakfast and dinner made up for that big time. Anyway, this introduction is way too long and most of you have most likely scrolled down already, so here it goes:




Welcome to PortAventura! With a view like this after just a few feet, I had great expectations for the rest of the park. It did not disappoint. Besides Europa Park, this is definitely the prettiest park I've ever been to. Everything is clean, beautiful nature everywhere and the themeing is great. We've been to the park every day for a week and it still didn't get boring at all.

The most annoying and perhaps only downside; the staff. Bad-tempered, lazy, not-a-word-of-English-speaking idiots who do nothing but putting their thumbs up for the entire day. Also not being able to choose your own seat bugged me, but the correct timing and the 'me-not-understand'-tourist method can be helpful sometimes.










I've never like those rides where you have to wait hours and hours for 30 seconds of fun. At Furius Baco, I couldn't care less. Yes, the ride is over in just a few seconds but the pleasure afterwards lasts.. infinite. At least, that's what I thought after my first ride, frontrow inner left seat. The ride after, last row outer right seat, the words "f*cked up ride" crossed my mind several times. Anyway, I think it's something you'll just have to get used to, since I've had multiple rides after in the outer seats which were also very enjoyable.








After 12 rides, I think it's a great coaster. The themeing and story with the funny preshow definitely add to the whole experience, the launch feels great, the pace is perfect and that inversion is awesome. Frontrow are the best places no doubt, but everywhere in the train you can enjoy the speed and low-to-the-ground layout just fine.












Well.. what can I say about Tutuki Splash.. You'll get wet for sure. If it aren't the splashes, it are the sadistic onlookers with their stupid supersoakers. The themeing was nice, but I can imagine it looked a lot better before the lets-put-gum-everywhere period.










Tami Tami is also a nice ride. Nothing more than a standard juniorcoaster, but those are always quite enjoyable in my opinion [:)] .




I've been doubting for a long time if I should post the next series of photos, but 20 images of the most photogenic coaster ever isn't that bad. I advice those who do not like Chinese to skip this next part [;)] .

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Dragon Khan, what an amazing ride this is. A full minute of sheer pleasure, with a great pace over a track that's smooth as butter and has wonderful inversions. Better than Furius Baco? I don't know and I don't feel like comparing, since both rides are great in their own way.




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Hurakan Condor, a ride you can't miss. My dislike for "wait-an-hour-enjoy-a-second"-rides did apply here. The ride.. well.. nice view for the entire second you're up there. The feeling of freefalling was there, but it was nothing compared to the ridiculous shaking on the way down. No, I felt no need to wait in line for this again [:)] .










There's not much to say about El Diablo. It looks nice, but the ride itself is even more pointless than a waterproof sponge.








Stampida is the third amazing coaster of the park. A brilliant layout with great race-parts. I didn't find it extremely painful, just a nice rough ride which I like. But I can imagine that some people, or at least a few of my friends, will never ride it again.








At this spot I could stand for hours. A beautiful lake with a beautiful coaster with a train passing by every now and than. And if you turn around you get this view, what more do you want [8D] .




Finally, a few more pictures of an amazing, special coaster and an attempt to a panoramic photo of a beautiful spot in this amazing themepark [:)] .









For a larger size panorama, click below, for a larger size of any of the above photos, just ask.

http://members.home.nl/extraxyz/portave ... norama.jpg

Excellent PTR, some really cool photos of Dragon Khan.

cool trip post. I hope one day i can visit Port Aventura!

awesome pictures!!! i wanna go there!!! [:D]

thanks for sharing [;)]

Great PTR Paul.

[gouldy]

You actually enjoyed Furius Baco?

I thought it was terrible! It felt like you were being raped by some kind of doomsday machine! Unbelievably poor engineering standard, like colossus at Thorpe Park, only much faster and hence, much more painful. Although the launch was cool, a really lengthy push of acceleration as oppose to a sudden burst of acceleration at the begining of the launch on other rocket coasters I've ridden, so it was different, which is good. But I felt that was the only good bit about it.

Your experience of the park seems to differ quite a bit to mine actually:
http://www.coastercrazy.com/forum/topic ... C_ID=15512

Gouldy I heard you like pie.

[gouldy]

this is indeed the case, pies am the best.

I do, however, fail to see what this has to with port aventura, other than the three days I was there is the longest period of time I have gone without a pie, since the dawn of time

[TheArchitect]

I went there a while ago (year or two; before Furius Baco) and i cant believe the amount of rides i missed out on. The water one, the two kiddies, the mine...

Do they still do the water show? Despite Furius Baco being in the lake.