Well, I’m going to write a bit more about Strasbourg while it is still interesting. Starting with more Europa-Park! Aren’t you happy?
I’m going to write about my favourite roller coaster there. The Euro-Mir! This is quite literally the coolest ride ever. It is themed, for some reason, around the Russian space station Mir, which was still operational at the time the ride was built. Bet they’re feeling foolish now. The theming is incredible. To start, you go through a tunnel with stars on the inside past fictional space vehicles and stuff, until you reach the spiral lift tower, which is occupied by a HUGE rocket! And all this time you are listening to the best themed music you could imagine.
Boop, da-boop-boop-boop, da boop-boop-doop, da doop-doop-boop etc.
I hear the ride is themed around re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Kind of apt considering what happened to the real Mir. The theming is seriously incredible. None of the other rides came close. Even the queue was close to enjoyable.
There were other good rides too. For instance, the ‘Matterhorn Blitz’ was good but had the most annoying queue in the universe. You queued through a ‘traditional style’ Swiss house with an inordinate amount of automata people doing things. A fibreglass man in a bed snored loud enough to shake your skull loose from your neck. A woman waved a peeler in the vincinity of a potato. A girl brushed a goat so much that the goat’s plastic skin had a hole in it. It was all worth it in the end, however. The Matterhorn Blitz itself is set around a sort of skiing lodge thing. Sod the Silver Star. This thing feels so fast that your liver implodes.
Now, one person on the coach after Europa-Park refused to beleive that the Silver Star only went at 80 Mph. He said that it went much faster. No it didn’t. For those who have never ridden a proper roller coaster, it’s all about perception. 70 or 80 Mph in a car may not feel that fast, but the Silver Star was like doing 80 mph on an office chair. And the Matterhorn Blitz was like doing 200. For the Cadets reading, I can only describe it as like doing your AEF 20 feet above the ground.
More still to be written.
This blog written by James Plant. All trademarks acknowledged. A legal footnote? So it is!
