Whilst in walking mode I decided to walk to the main theme park in the City. It's located in the west of the city, a lengthy walk out of the old town. I know this because I did it.
As I got close I was able to walk around Tornado but there were no signs of it operating, confirmed at the ticket office on the sign that said it was down today along with a bunch of other rides, fortunately none of the other coasters. I was lucky that the one that wasn't running was the one I had done on a previous visit.
I came here as part of a Spanish tour with the ECC in 2003 but the park had undergone quite a lot of change since then, offering me 5 new coasters. The biggest park is Parque Warner, a train ride south but I wasn't interested in going there with just one new coaster for me to ride. I didn't want to do too much coaster activity on this trip but I had always planned on doing this one.
It was fair to say the park was very very quiet.
The biggest coaster is Abismo, a modified sky loop. This didn't look to be running either. Boooooo!!!
First coaster that I did get to ride and one I knew was running as I saw it on the way to the park entrance is Tarntula, a cool spinning coaster ride.
It was pretty good, not amazing but not dull. The 3 in our car did get a decent spin so can't complain.
The top of Abismo which is the main draw in this park. Still no sign of it running.
This is a Walking Dead walkthrough attraction, closed as it was too cold for zombies.
Second coaster was Vertigo, a mouse coaster which offered nothing out of the ordinary other than the output of the kid in front who decided to spit midway around. A stern look was enough for him to apologise, despite the fact he missed me.
The park has a famous old carousel, and it's not just horses.
The park's mine train coaster was closed too, a conversation with the staff indicated it would likely open later in the day. It was a bit cold to open it up. I sat outside and had lunch whilst watching countless groups of people entering the castle and being turned away almost immediately.
To kill time I negotiated my way onto the two kiddy coasters, Vagones Locos
and Padrinos Voladores which wasn't embarrassing one little bit.
A conversation with the mine train staff revealed that Abismo was running but the park's policy states to only send a car out when there are enough people to fill it. So I went over where a small gathering of people were waiting in the cold, joining the queue and we were quickly on board and riding.
and I wished I hadn't. The restraints were a real squeeze and the park were being quite insistent on getting the restraints down further than I'm used to. I'd obviously put on quite a bit of weight over the second half of last year which hadn't helped. I was alright up until the airtime hill coming out of the loop, that hurt!
Time to lose some weight Malcolm...
With Abismo done I headed back to the mine train and continued watching the crowds being turned away only to find after 10 minutes the crowds weren't coming back out. A quick check had revealed that the ride had opened and was taking passengers. Yay!
So a nice few hours at the park but a warning that as well as coming to Spain in January, I really needed to work on some other resolutions ;)
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