The journey from Potts to Fort Fun took a little longer than expected meaning that our visit here was going to be a bit more hasty than had been planned. Fortunately I had been to Fort Fun before so the pressure was off me for a little bit.
The park has a number of coasters. This one close to the entrance of the park has a fun house entrance (not much fun if you're in a wheelchair however) and the ride itself was OK, improved in part by the ride operators willingness to send the train round for more than one lap.
The park is built in a valley with some rides sitting in the bottom and a number of those that offer views built up on the sides.
Shortly after our visit the park announced a new flying attraction that would have you start atop one side of the canyon and swoop over the park to the other side. This was the must-do attraction at this park and where most of the hardcore/stupid* (delete as appropriate) headed.
The ride itself wasn't too bad at all although the swoop down the mountain was a little slower than I had pictured in my head. I also was a little uncomfortable with the safety net under our harnesses that actually only served to catch us from the waist down. Whilst I appreciate that if I was to fall the ride would continue to move forwards and would catch me, I couldn't help but think for the duration of the ride looking down at it that it wouldn't work...Oh, and it also didn't help that I pulled a cramp in my thigh getting into the damn thing.
One of the other new rides at the park was the Trapper Slider Alpine Coaster which made great use of the canyon hillside to offer a ride experience that some people voted the best ride of the trip and that a bigger number deemed to be the biggest surprise. We'd ridden loads of these things on numerous coaster trips so for so many to have rated this one must mean it's a good one. It was also extremely kind of the park to allow us to have this for an hour after the public had left.
No time for the log flume.
We did however put aside some time for their rough as P12 grade sandpaper (that's very rough to save you looking it up). This ride was not improved in any part by the ride operators willingness to send the train round for more than one lap.
Let the dogs drink, so the park did.
Strange piece of theming. It's like a metal slug turned up today and chose not to leave.
These goats were clearly two tyred to pose for any photographs.
Now based on the name of this ride I was going to guess it was an indoor spin ride with lots of German Rave music and a decent light show inside, which would have made it a must-do. As it happened I didn't see it open in the little time we had there.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/72vCfv_JJzk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>(thanks to lazyrides for this clip)
But this is what it looks like inside. Quite a nice idea but they missed a major trick here. They should have had the cube from Hellraiser in the centre so that the chains looked like they were bursting out of that. They could also have done with a better light show.
We said goodbye to Fort Fun and made our way to the next hotel. On my first trip I quite liked Fort Fun but they've added some really fun rides since then making it even better now. Trapper Slider is a great Alpine Coaster and whilst the Flying ride wasn't quite as intense as I'd imagined it was still pretty good and also a ride that couldn't be put in most parks simply because they don't have the terrain to allow it to work.
Just a quick mention of the hotel that we stayed in that night. It was the Hotel Gladbeck Van der Valk in Gladbeck and it's how a hotel would look if JK Rowling had written The Shining.
Silly staircases, easy to get lost maze like corridors, 50's decorations, and even the walk to our rooms overwhelmed us with a sense of "didn't we just walk down here?".
All it was missing was moving portraits of ghosts and floating candles and we would have had our own Hogwarts.
All this writing makes Malcolm a dull boy. All this writing makes Malcolm a dull boy.
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