Dirk's Tour through a bootifull Italy

[Dirk_Ermen]

Time to start working on all the TR's I've still got to write out from the many parks I've been to. Starting with the latest coastertrip I've done: Italy!

Trip schedule:
14th August 2015 - Flight to Italy, Leolandia and Luna Park Idroscala
15th August 2015 - Movieland Park
16th August 2015 - Gardaland
17th August 2015 - Factory Tour Zamperla, Ai Pioppi and Venice
18th August 2015 - Astoria Village, Santa Fe, Paperopolis & Various Luna Parks
19th August 2015 - Mirabilandia & Luna Park Riccione
20th August 2015 - Fiabilandia, Adventure Park Cimone
21st August 2015 - Pisa & Cavallino Matto
22nd August 2015 - Cinecitta World, Zoomarine Park, Fantasiland & Parco Morelli
23rd August 2015 - Rome, Oasi Park, Baby Park & Eden Park
24th August 2015 - Rainbow Magicland
25th August 2015 - Miragica, Zoosafari Fasanolandia & Gomma Park
26th August 2015 - Etnaland
27th August 2015 - Etnaland Waterpark
28th August 2015 - Oasi Del Bimbo, Pompeii, Liberty City Fun & Arcolandia
29th August 2015 - Flight back home & Efteling

[Coasterkidmwm]

I am so jealous of your travels.

[hyyyper]

Just a single day for Mirabilandia? Blasphemous!

But otherwise a very promising trip, looking forward to your reports.

[Dirk_Ermen]

14th August 2015 - Flight to Italy, Leolandia and Luna Park Idroscala

After years of waiting. Finally back to Italy. My last visits date back to 2005 and 2007. In that time there have been put plenty of new rides. But also plenty of old experiences to renew! This time we were joining along the ECC on their bootifull trip through the entire country. Since we couldn't match on the trip flight, we flew in a day early. Great way to pick a few more parks in the area that the ECC wasn't going to hit.
Too bad I completely forgot my proper camera at home. So the biggest bunch of photo's have been taken with my mobile.

Our flight left early to Milan. Luckily it's a less than 2 hour flight or so.

At the airport the first thing we've arranged was an Italian Simcard with data and a rental car. As quick it was said, as quick it was done. Too bad they can't even park a car at the rental car office. This was a challenge to get in!

About half an hour drive later, we arrived at the first park. Leolandia. The entrance looks good for a start.

It was a pretty cloudy but humid day. So those sprinklers were a great way too cool down!

Spotted the first coaster, it was one of those small Zamperla coasters.

Let's get this over with, these rides are usually pretty rough.

Smooth helix, only to die few seconds later on those transitions

Heading for the next coaster in sight was a spinning Zamperla. Apparently the ride broke down or so and the ride ops signed us something about coming back later. A bit of a bummer but we had plenty of time left.

Right next to coaster was this fun little shot 'n drop tower. Not very intense but it was a lot of fun. Had a cool theme as well. The entire area was some kind of circus theme and this was themed to a human cannonball.

We continued our walk to the other side of the park. Walking straight into some kind of western themed area.

For another coaster, this time it was a powered Zamperla!

It was a pretty fun one as well with some good speed throughout the ride.

It curls around the log flume as well. I haven't seen it happening but with some good timing I can see people getting wet due the splash

This little rapids ride looked interesting. Especially that drop!

Time to give it as spin! This ride was fully themed to the crazy contraptions from Leonardo Da Vinci.

Well, this is definitely one that can be added to that list. The drop spins like crazy making the splash soak a bunch of riders.

The park also had a very nice themed splash battle.

And a bunch more Zamperla rides like this standing rotating surfboard ride.

Back to the spinning. At least now it was operating again.

Drops and spinning was disappointing. Even with a proper weight distribution for a good spin it barely spun round.

The park also had one of those disk'o rides. I didn't bother to ride this one, but it's pretty funky to see the huge track with just that small disk.

The best surprise from this park was the complete miniature version of Italy and all their sightseeing spots. That was pretty awesome to see.

If I remember it correctly I think this was one of the spots from Torino.

The famous cathedral from Milan.

The alps were recreated pretty nicely as well!

Even though we are going there. I've already done my tourist thingy~

Vatican City

The park also had a "zoo". Well, it was more a huge bunch of bird cages with a lot of different breeds of parrots.

Oh, and they also had some sort of petting zoo area with chickens and goats.

That was it so far for us in this park. Was a pretty cool little park to start of the trip with. It did contain a bunch of Zamperla rides but the theming was done very nicely.

After a bit of resting in the hotel and eating some pizza delivery it was time for us to continue our journey to the rusted down Luna Park near our hotel.

It certainly did change a lot since our last visit in 2007. Back then it was a few carnival rides on a dirt floor and one little cabinet for tickets.

We started off at the biggest coaster of the park. This crazy interpark wild mouse coaster.

The layout certainly looks completely different than any other wild mouse. This could be a fun surprise!
But too bad it wasn't. Very rough on the cornering and even the banked turns were taken terrible. At least I've had my good laugh for the day!

Hmmm... I remember I've seen this one traveling around the German fairs. Apparently it's been sold? Program they ran was pretty rubbish, so I didn't bother to waste money on this.

Cool, the swinging ship with cages is still there!

This haunted house looks a lot better on the outside than on the inside. Too bad this is the case with about 95% of the exisiting ghost trains.

The swing bob looked like it gave a nice ride away.

But first, another big apple. Because it's not like Italy doesn't has any of these.

Wheee~

The park has a nice collection of rides and even games.

Cool, a chairswing with a ball with some kind of trophy attached. If you can grab it during the ride you'll get another ride for free. Never seen it before on this type of ride.

Another one of those haunted walkthroughs that shamely looked more than it was.

And then I gave another look at the decorations of the wild mouse. Sooo many pictures of rides we know

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure this ride animation looks familliar

Or how about this one?

Wait, did they just modify a Huss Condor to make a star flyer? What a shame of a good ride.

This frisbee ride looked good. Until it started to run. Omg, even more rubbish. Took forever to get it on decent height only to be over shortly after.

Pok??mon, Dragonball Z. It's everywhere!

Another picture of this crazy wild mouse. A bit smoother layout would make this a pretty fun one.

And suddenly there is the Norwegian group from the ECC that are doing the tour as well. I didn't expect them to be here. But then again, I should have. They have been touring for about 2 weeks around Italy, Swiss and Austria. And that's just prior the trip!

And the last picture of the day.

This was a brilliant day and there are plenty more to come.

[Dirk_Ermen]

hyyyper wrote:

Just a single day for Mirabilandia? Blasphemous!

But otherwise a very promising trip, looking forward to your reports.

One day was plenty of time for us. If we went 2 days, the 2nd day would just be used to re-ride iSpeed and Katun all day long. (Which we now already did)

[mkingy]

I'm looking forward to the remainder of this topic!

[Dirk_Ermen]

15th August 2015 - Movieland Park

Our day started pretty relaxed. Taking time in our hotel. Get a proper breakfast and then go back to the airport to return our rental car and meetup with the ECC at the arrivals gate.

Personally I thought we were pretty early at the arrivals, but that was a good thing. Because we weren't the only trip-goers that flew in earlier, so we had a good opportunity to catch up with plenty friends.

About 1,5 hours later, the rest of the group arrives and we can finally move on to the bus. Apparently there are only a few bus parking slots around the airport so we had to call and wait for the exact location of the bus. It didn't took long luckily and we were soon on it's way to the first park!

Our trip badges for the tour. The rest of the trip goodies were somewhere in between the UK and China. Apparently something went wrong during delivery. So no trip shirts/polo's for us I'm afraid.

About 1,5 hours later. We arrived at the park it was quite the walk to the entrance of the park. Even the entrance from the waterpark next door was further than I remembered. Eventually arrived at the entrance the group pretty much splitted up in 2. One went immediately to the right for the big Vekoma Invertigo and the rest went all the way to the back of the park for the other rides. I was part of the 2nd group.

Walking past the U571 simulator. I've heard some kind of horror stories of this ride on how soaked it apparently was. Too bad the weather was too cloudy for my likings to get extremely soaked. Also the rest of our group didn't felt like doing it. Bummer, perhaps on a next visit with much better weather.

Ahhh... a good ol' classic Schwarzkopf Jet Star. They can be a little rough if badly maintained, but one never seemed to disappoint me.

This one looked like it was running pretty good. Too bad it was running Italian style: Single train operation. So it did take a while before one train was unloaded, reloaded and send around the track.

One of the trip goers with a ton up. 600th coaster!

I love the backseat first drop on this type of coaster. It has some serious airtime before you're thrown into these curves.

Also there was one evil thing about this ride that everyone forgot. The flat banking at the end. Everyone braced for the final brakes, but not the crazy lateral turn.

I certainly enjoyed this ride a lot.

Best thing about coastertrips with fellow enthusiasts. You'd get to see all these crazy people waiting in line for a kiddy coaster. I already ticked this ride off in 2007. So I could let this one go for today.

Time to get back up in the park and ride the Invertigo: Diabolik. For a newly placed ride it ran pretty okay. I've ridden smoother Invertigo's but again, the slower operations in the park took forever to just dispatch one train.

We gathered some people together and went off to see Terminator 5D. They totally killed all the awesomeness this ride used to have. They have changed it into one big 50 player shootout all on one terrible screen. (Which got blinded occasionally by a fireball nearby). The awesome show this used to be is totally killed. RIP Terminator.

Up next were the Magma Tours 2.0. Still as awesome as forever! Put a crazy Italian behind the wheel and let them drive through an obstacle course. Still one of the best rides of the park! Highly recommended!

We've also done a ride on the Police Academy driving school. That ride is just indescribable bad that it starts to become funny. Don't expect anything of quality here, just ride it for the randomness that all happens

Having such a classic Intamin Freefall in the park just makes it itch for me to ride one. So we eventually did!

Still smiling

Ohhh.... Those effects really get to you when you're up there. Too awesome!

In the distance you have the entrance from the new KITT Superjet ride in the park. All day long it had pretty big queues. Also again, some of the group didn't want to get too wet.

At least I'm going to do one more ride on the Jet Star. These classics need more love.

This were I pretty much splitted up from the rest of our little group. They wanted to ride the lame monorail ride. So I took my chance to ride some waterrides. Start off with the log flume!

When not paying attention you even could get soaked while being in the queue. The ride itself was pretty nice. Not as wet as I hoped. (Or perhaps I lucked out?)

Meanwhile the rest was still queuing up for that monorail. I went for it and took the queue for the KITT Superjet. Luckily for me, there was a single rider queue with 0 minutes waiting time! I got handed a lifevest and I could almost immediately hop on board! Fricking awesome!

When getting on board I found out soon enough that there were no seatbelts. Just a handrail to hold on. So when you're careless enough you could easily fly out and take a swim in the water. This ride itself is located in the theater of the Rambo show. The thrill of flying by several props and objects on high speed was just clearly insane! Again, put a crazy Italian at the wheel and let them do their thing! While doing so various watercanons and other effects go off, soaking you while doing. This is far out the best ride in the park! The sheer thrill of having no seatbelt, flying high speed over water and doing insane turns and twists can't top anything else I've done so far. Definitely another ride that you just have to ride!

Couldn't had any better timing as well. As soon as I got off the ride, the rest of our group through the park got off the monorail ride. We looked at the clock and it was slowing getting time to go and meet the rest of the ECC back at the bus.

Bye Diabolik. See you in a couple of years!

Just before exiting the park I almost forgot about this little top spin which is hidden in a corner at the front of the park. Looks like they stopped using multiple programs because you used to get off this ride only one way: Soaked.

But hey, the anti-climax fireball ending is still there.

Well, we had a great time in here. Hope to return back again in a couple of years. They have a few unique rides that just ask to get re-ridden every time I get there. Hopefully next time we're doing the waterpark again. The crazy airtime slide over there, is something that must not be forgotten in this area.

Great trip reports so far!

[Paradox]

I've heard that U571 is actually an amazing ride! I would love to experience it.

Thanks for these really "bootiful" pictures! I know Italy is also called the "boot" country!

[Paradox]

lol240 wrote:

Thanks for these really "bootiful" pictures! I know Italy is also called the "boot" country!

Omg I didn't even realize the pun until you pointed it out lol.

Great trip reports Dirk! Can't wait for more

[Dirk_Ermen]

16th August 2015 - Gardaland

Another day, another park. This time we had our fun in Gardaland. My last visit to this park also dates back to 2007. Back then we saw the Mammut Mine train still under construction. Plenty of new coasters have been build, so a good enough reason to come back.

Bus arrived nice on time, so we all had plenty of time to walk to the entrance of the park. Feeling like doing some good rides!

Rainbow tunnel!

Before the park opens they are doing some kind of welcoming show. Get over with it! We wanna ride some coasters!

After we finally got in we took the walk all the way to the back of the park to the newest ride. Oblivion: Black hole. Pretty much the biggest reason why we went there.

The queueline was pretty funky inside the tent. A bunch of flashing lights and screens with all blackhole type of scanning stuff. I'm so glad I don't have to queue in that tent.

Empty trains start cycling the course. Shouldn't take very long now.

This was an extremely fun ride. I think even the best coaster from the park as well. With this coaster just being a little taller than his little brother in the Efteling, makes this coaster a whole lot better. The drop does what any typical dive machine does. The immelmann floats beautiful and the airtime hill that follows after is just another gem with even slight ejector. Helix is nice and forceful only to finish off with that lovely roll at the end. That one just lifts you just enough out of your seat without being uncomfortable. Too bad all these dive machines have one issue: They are too short. We are seriously going to re-ride this a lot later on.

The theming around the hole is done too awesome. Although personally they have added too much. The construction pictures with fewer objects looked a whole lot cleaner. The extra headchoppers were a nice plus though!

Time to ride the next new coaster for us. A simple Vekoma Minetrain. Always good fun on these.

We didn't had to queue up that long luckily. Mom wanted to get some fastpasses for the entire day. Saved about half an hour queue on this.

Wheee~

We walked back to Oblivion to do a few more rides. Why? The rest of the park apparently opens at 11.

And not very much later, everyone gathered to go to the rest of the park.

Took us quite the walk to Raptor from that side. But since we had the fastpass, it didn't really matter much. Time to ride the final new coaster for me at the park.

For it being a prototype of the B&M Wingrider it was a pretty fun ride. Nice first drop in the back, some lovely rolls and a few pretty cool close calls. The downside from the Fastpass line was that you'd always get put on one side of the station. Luckily with some asking some ops let us try the other side as well. I think the left side is my favorite side.

Ramses, I remember it being a pretty cool darkride which received a overhaul. Plenty of time in the park today so a ride could easily been done.

It got a bunch of blaster guns to shoot at stuff. Too bad I had the problem that I didn't know which targets would give more points. I can't remember reading any information in the queue about this.

Lovely sight on that area. But apparently only the Screaming Squirrel was open. The Vekoma with the new generation trains and the area behind it opened at 12. Tough luck we had!

Back to Oblivion it is, what a punishment.

The sky started to clear up as well, would be great to get some more sunny pictures!

And soon it was noon and the area opened as well. Time for mom to get her final coaster in. The wacky worm XXXXXXXL

It truely is, a whole lot bigger than any of the common wacky worms.

And since we're in the area as well, a ride on the Vekoma isn't too bad either. These new trains are a delight for the ride. More Vekoma's need to be upgraded with these trains.

Time for some more rides on Raptor, trying out various seats. It is really a fun ride.

We have skipped this one for today. Done it years ago and the added helix is good for the gimmick but I'd still prefer the airtime ending on our own El Condor in Walibi.

I don't know why, but I really like the theming from the Atlantis area. Perhaps it's the good memories from our previous visits.

The park was pretty quiet today. Causing them to randomly cycle empty trains and cars to build up at least a little queueline. Pretty weird and unfriendly method but I guess they really want to push their fast pass sales through this way.

Another ride on mammut meanwhile we're passing it anyway.

Wanted to do a ride on the tiny drop tower as well. The ride attendant wasn't sure about my length if I'd fit or not. Done plenty of these and as expected. No problems with this one as well

Look how tiny it is! The actual drop is extremely short.

At the exit of the ride we had a good view of the lovely roll from Oblivion. Too bad about the cloudy weather though...

And as noticed elsewhere in the park as well. They were rotating empty trains around. With 2 running trains on the track they were only using one train. I can't find a proper valid reason for them to do it as well. Since on random moments they just started to use both trains again. The original queue got up to something like 45-60min. Good thing mom really wanted that fast pass.

Right next to Oblivion is one of those Intamin Flying Island rides. Great moment to snap a few aerial shots.

Oblivion looks good from the top.

Lake Garda just being next door.

Hey look at that, We've been there yesterday! (Yes, Movieland is that close to Gardaland!)

Out of the Raptor area there were also a few nice spots to take some photos.

This roll is lovely when you're on the left side of the train.

Dark skies were rolling over Gardaland and even some rumbling from thunder was heard. But strangely enough, they just kept cycling all rides. The only ride that stayed put was the flying island.

Not much later a good rainstorm fell from the sky. That was a good chill down in this humid weather.

I remembered something about a darkride in one of the ships. Since it was raining anyway we went for it.

The rough story I've got from it was that you're traveling along on a pirateship on it's journey, passing caves with gold, harbours and even full combat against a fortress.

This underwater scene was done pretty awesome. I guess our boat sunk

Having filled up the entire day with a bunch of coastering. Time to do at least one more ride. I know there was a haunted swing type ride in the kiddy area from the park.

It's location, underneath that tree! We've ridden it something about 8 years ago. But all I remember is that I couldn't understand anything about the story. Perhaps now I can.

After getting down in an elevator and hearing a story from probably a magician or troll we got into the main characters room. Showed some simple magic before it got interrupted again by the troll. I think he was mad or something about that simple magic and was going to show it some real magic by flipping his house upsidedown.

Some cool jumping fountains.

And that concludes already the final picture from Gardaland. Too bad everyone wants to be standing in front of the logo instead of standing beside it. Time for us to get back on the bus and travel further down the country. Some cool surprises were waiting for us tomorrow.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Great TR's so far Dirk! That rapids ride in the first park looks hilarious, and I do think the world needs more Jet Stars. Whizzer has always stood out to me as the best family ride ever, and I'd imagine the littler versions are about the same.

Glad Oblivion wasn't totally forceless. No idea why they'd randomly not load a train unless they were clearing it for some kind of government certification, although it's WAY late in the season for that.

Also I had NO idea Movieland was so close to Gardaland. Hopefully Gardaland wins in that economic duel if they ever have one. The "presentation" of the newer rides looks far better at Gardaland. Again thanks for the photos and keep em' coming!

[Mikey]

You always go on the most awesome trips Dirk. I am jealous.