I've been to Holiday Park a few times now and every time I've been I've been underwhelmed. Since my last visit the park had been bought by Studio100, the owners of the Plopsa chain in Belgium. It's a kid's TV company famous for some shows that are known on the mainland but hardly known in the UK.
That has to be the worst looking James Bond ever! They have a Bond themed stunt show, which I didn't get to see. Hopefully the dude is a better stuntman than look-a-like.
There's only one reason to visit this park really and that's to ride Expedition G-Force. For those that don't know this is deemed one of the best roller coasters on the planet.
It's been in the top 3 for the last few years, a perennial high scorer. Despite this it doesn't matter how good the ride is, if it's run badly then the overall experience is rubbish. To be fair they were much better this time around.
This is a new section to the park and a new coaster. Holly's Wild Autofahrt actually started out at Margate, then moved to Scotland at Loudon Castle before finding it's way here.
How not to use a poster with head holes.
Slightly better this time around. Kat in particular scores highly!
The final coaster in the park is their Corkscrew ride which despite it's name "Superwirbel" isn't super at all. We had a slight problem with this ride in that they refused to let one of our group, Darren, ride because of his autism. We snuck him in later on in the day and distracted the ride-op by being stupid and making a load of noise in the hope he'd just send us on our way...It worked a treat and Darren got his ride.
The park is blessed with plenty of tree cover and fortunately there are a couple of rides that break that should you feel overwhelmed with CO2.
Somewhere in that building complex there's a really cool dark ride that is famous for featuring a little tit, and I don't mean Danny de Vito.
Try taking this keg to your frat party dude!
We hung around the water play area in hope that the fountains would catch some poor kid out and get him soaked. It didn't happen. They need to work their fountains better. With a bit of a redesign, they could open and close walls of water to move people through the squares like a water maze, and occasionally block them in.
These characters are from a TV show called Maya the Bee. Studio100 have re-themed most of the kiddy rides with characters, it's an easy first step I guess. I actually remember Maya from when I lived in Germany as a child. I remember that grasshopper dude getting trapped in a venus fly trap and he was rescued by Maya. That's not Maya by the way, he's the one on the poster in the first photo.
Other retheming touches included repainted walls with characters such as this. I've no idea who this one is but their cooking is bad for your cholestoral levels.
But the visit was all about Expedition G-Force. Yes, it's great but I've been on it too many times to be amazed by it any more, and I did get some ridicule for having such a view. This is the super twisty first drop.
Still there were more people on the trip loving the ride than not and it was safe to say that most of the group ended up here. Me and a few others attempted to go off and visit another park but the taxi took too long to arrive and we gave up.
Ooh! Check you out! If you want a pasty sister then this is the place to go darling! (I don't know how to speak camp fluently)
Naughty naughty man with the camera! If the footage convinces others to ride then perhaps it's not a bad thing.
No, thank you!
I'm always unfair on Holiday Park, it does things well but I can't help think if it wasn't for the one coaster we would never come here. Since the new owners had taken over the changes introduced had been fairly cosmetic and we'll see in a few years how the park changes to fit the new branding. One thing we do know is that the park doesn't plan on changing it's name to a Plopsa branded name. The cost in changing the road signs to get to the park alone would cost a fortune.
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