Belantis

Back to the parks now at the next one was Belantis that I thought was a fairly new theme park south of Leipzig but in fact has been around for 8 years already.

First impression was that the park was sparse with a small number of rides in a very large area. Turns out it has more rides than you'd assume but is much bigger than you think too. The mascot is friendly though :)

The big coaster here is Huracan, a Eurofighter model that was originally going to go to a Formula 1 theme park in Dubai before the bubble burst there. That explains the very bright red colour that dazzled our eyes first thing in the morning.

The park had laid on a champagne reception for us, amazing hospitality.

But we think the alcohol may have been to counter the headache that the ride was giving. I don't seem to like these rides very well especially since riding Saw at Thorpe Park which left me with what felt like a concussion. This ride had a reputation of being even worse partly due to the different trains and them not running as close to the track as they should.

Martin sits out the ride session and resorts to planking in the shade.

Close to the ride was this wonderful educational tent that documented the history of the rollercoaster industry and explaining the physics behind the rides. Clearly aimed at school kids visiting the park, I spent a little bit of time in here checking the exhibits out whilst hiding from the sun. More parks should have this in their parks. Learning can be fun and fun can be learning!

We decided to have a competition to see who could ride this the most. Usually these competitions are fun but this one was an actual challenge. I lasted the full hour but some more, literally, mental members out did me by running round for the next ride rather than the walking I did.

The second coaster in the park is a Bobsled coaster, similar to the one in Tripsdrill that would come later in the trip. Themed around an English castle the ride was much more fun than Huracan

The best photo spot was where the coaster dove under the drawbridge.

The park had kindly reserved us an area for lunch however due to a planning mistake we would have to leave the park before lunch in order to get to the next park in time. Again we should acknowledge what this park had done for us.

Now this was my favourite ride in the park and I would happily consider coming back just for this. It's a winged flyer where you can control your rotation by tipping wings back and forth. I managed to get it to spin quite wildly but the car was a little more loose than mine and when that one got caught in a ridiculous spinning spin cycle I stopped fearing the guy in front was going to come off dead. As it happens Nick was fine but extremely dizzy, he tried to run to get his bag and found himself running sideways into the centre fence :)

JC preparing for flight.

and here you can see how the ride operates.

This is the park's flume ride with some very strange boats that rolled in the water rather than on the water. This added a strange rhythmic sensation to the ride.

Whirlpool tilt-shift.

A view from the fume area into the centre of the park. It's a very pretty park but needs way more rides.

Having gotten wet on the flume we relaxed in this little african themed hangout, and what's Patrick up to? Looks like we've gone from soaking to sucking in the souk.

Gardens are nice, and they must spend quite a lot of money on keeping the gardens green. Today was a pretty hot day.

I quite liked Belantis but its a big park with a disproportionate number of rides. What's quite clear is that the vision for the park is long term and in time I think the investment will expand the ride list to match that. What most people didn't realise on the day is that the park is a mini version of the world, a little bit clearer if you check the satellite imagery.

The entrance in the south is North Africa with the pyramid of Egypt in the South East corner. In the centre of the park you can make out Spain and France. The Eurofighter coaster in the north is the British Isles and the maze is Ireland. The concept was broken a little bit to make way for Huracan, which would be in the south-west corner. That's Mexican themed so would be South America.

So knowing that you understand why there's so much land to walk around. Perhaps if they had started with Central Europe and expanded out as the ride count increased that would be a more normal way of expanding the park.

Having said that I quite liked Belantis for its quirky way of doing things, and that spin ride was reason alone for not forgetting the visit to this park. I'd also like to thank the park staff for their welcome to us.

Did someone say "arse"?