Freizeitpark Plohn

Freizeitpark Plohn was another run-of-the-mill family park until 2009 when it opened a rather stunning attraction called El Toro, putting it firmly on the map. This park was the first must-do on the trip for this reason and we had a full day here.

The entrance is tiny and gives a false impression of what lies within; much like the Tardis.

We were welcomed with animatronic goats that were amazingly detailed.

This is at the entrance and you can play the keyboard until you realise that only a single octave restricts the tunes you can play. The statue also has a nice surprise if you hang around long enough...long enough.

I hope that's not a female clown.

And here is El Toro, the best pizza place in the world. Unfortunately my 2011 pizza ban meant I couldn't participate and I had to watch whilst the rest of the group enjoyed themselves.

The beer here is particularly strong.

El Toro, for the uninitiated, is not a pizza parlour but is actually a wooden coaster built by GCI, which my coaster friends will know about and my non-coaster fans will think "what is he talking about". The ride is amazing and the park did an astounding job in running the ride. Some of the group rode this in excess of 50 times, not me. I think I did 10 figuring I'd go and spend the time exploring the park.

At one point I thought the ride was on fire with smoke coming up through the train as we were boarding, but it was just a sneakily positioned smoke machine.

The rodeo themed breakdance ride was good although why would a cow be rounding up other cows? Does that make him a turncoat?

There are some other coasters in the park too. This is quite a nice flitzer coaster. The sort of ride that makes you spine go "crunch" at the bottom of the drops and where the turns challenge your resistance to lateral-Gs. This particular one used to be in America before moving through several parks in Germany trivia fans.

The cookie-cut caterpillar coaster has a rather unfortunate name of "Raupe" but that's actually German for caterpillar.

The newest coaster to the park was called Familenachterbahn when we visited but since then has been renamed to Plohseidon. As a fan of puns I quite like what they did there. This was a cute ride with a very nice train that made it impossible for kids in the front to see anything.

The carousel had some very intricate theming.

A couple of the pictures were a little bit saucy in a "seaside postcard" sort of way.

Nice detail in this.

This is the centrepiece to the new part of the park that reminds me of the entrance to Efteling but on a diddy scale. It's a pity it's just a coffee shop though.

A group of reprobates who were on their own little tour of Germany decided to meet us here with an aim to partake in our Exclusive Ride Session on El Toro, but I think they spent more time getting drunk here instead.

Creepy ghosts escaping from the top of the haunted walkthrough attraction, which was a little odd althought not being able to translate what the old German animatronic was telling us didn't help. Not knowing German ist nicht gut.

Beneath the walkthrough is perhaps the smallest, darkest dodgem ride ever.

Back in the early 70's in some parts of Germany the pigs learnt how to escape their stys by jumping over the fences, and that's how wild boars came to be. One famous pig called "boaris" once tried to do that through a wooden wall and got stuck. This story was symbolised with this piece, but I think most people didn't know the reference.

After this picture was taken Patrick had to be forcibly removed using a jar of vaseline and three crowbar wielding members of staff. See how I used "vaseline" and "members" in the same sentence and didn't make a smutty comment at all.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Can you guess which one is "Sleepy"?  A little tip, behind this if you can find it is a nice little bar where you can sit in a nice shady spot and drink loads of weissbier.

There's a jungle river type ride with dinosaur theming. I don't know what caught Mette's eye (a fool with a camera perhaps) but she ought to pay more attention to the other side of the cruise.

Now I tried to translate this but all I could get was that "fell" is "fur" which I'm hoping is a reference to what the caveman is wearing. But "pisser" is "pisser". Knowing this reminded me that at Chessington "Dragon's Fury" is an anagram of "Furry Gonads".

On the North West Side of the park is this cute little boat ride. Across the other side they used to have a Ring of Fire ride, which given it was still on the map would indicate a recent departee from the park. That's not Nessie as he's a waterbased imaginary creature and this one is clearly land based.

Germans wouldn't find this funny. Americans would likely find this funny. Brits would also find it funny but in a different way.

Another animatronic animal. This is reputedly more expensive than the goats. Well they said it was dear.

Plohn is a great park but would we have included it on the itinerary if they didn't have the wooden coaster? I guess we'll never know. I'm pleased we visited it though.

Another city visit