Hide the Park

Current books read: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, 1996 - expected tv program: KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI, tomorrow!!

Right. I was spending last two weeks like a crazy bastard who's been working constantly twenty four seven. But actually I have not. So did I deserve it? Hmm.. Let's have a long meditation session to answer the question. But for me personally, it doesn't really matter whether I deserve it or not, but at that time, I wanted it.

One of the days of the two weeks is taking a visit to called Soltau that was reached by less than an hour drive, and dropping by Heide Park. The reason? Of course because I want to 'taste' the feeling of being dropped 60 degrees in the biggest wooden roller coaster of the world: Colossos, and the feeling of being dropped vertically from the highest tower drop of the world: Scream. The feeling was superb and to be honest, scary. Respectively.

Colossos

Colossos has a theme music. You know in order to build the mood of excitement/fear/anxiety at the same time. Too bad (or in this case, luckily) I can't enjoy that music for long, because there was no line at all as we were there. Waiting time as I arrived is 0 minutes, and waiting time as I rode it the second, third and fourth (fourth!!) one is 3 minutes. Before you enter the train you can see statistically how Colossos was built. Intimidation.

As I told you, the ride itself is superb. Combination of the drop, speed, turns, just make Colossos a very enjoyable ride. ENJOYABLE??? It's not scary, because you step on something. Well, it's not nauseating, since it doesn't have any loop, and considering that my nausea rate is very very low, I like it. And again, I got some trouble for not sitting down still on my seat, because the wind and the force tried to rip my head off off my body. :)

Scream

Now this is scary. I always make noises when I ride amusement park rides. You know, to make it more excited. But on Scream, I screamed. Involuntarily. Just to make things straight (no pun intended), it was not a high-pitched scream like Ross's. Hehehe.. I thought I knew when the drop will be. But still the drop was amazing. It was one of the scariest 5 seconds of my life.

Scream brought us up with enough velocity, that when in stops, no feeling of being weightless is achieved as we were on top. The voice on the ride suggests we waited 3 seconds, and you are dropped. And this is the amazing part. Your seat goes down with you with the same velocity and accelleration with your ass. I mean body. For around 5 seconds. Gosh.

I know, I'd only been in a drop tower for twice before, but still Scream, deserves to be one of the best ride I've been on. Eventhough I thought previously it will be boring.

The Park

The park itself offers a lot of different rides (well, of course). However, some of the rides are not much scarier that other rides that I had been on before. Heide Park has two Schaukelschiff. Both of them are smaller than Kora-Kora. Other than Colossos, the Park has four roller coasters. Twist is amazingly cool, Big Loop is nauseating, the Swiss sled thingie is interesting, and the mine roller coaster is scary because it's dark.

Still there are two Wildwasserbahn, both of them smaller but much wetter than Niagara-gara. One rafting ride, drier than Arung Jeram. A lot of slow water rides, that if they are all combined into one ride, will be bigger than Istana Boneka. Again, the park is bigger than Dufan, and of course, cleaner, more sophisticated, and more Europe-ish.

The other references were rides in an amusement park in Indonesia. Dunia Fantasi (= Fantasy World or is it World of Fantasy? Hmmm...)

There are still some interesting and cool rides, but still it's missing simulator theater. Ah well, you can't win 'em all can you?