AstroDan
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance, Cedar Point
We recently spent a few days at PortAventura. Although by no means the greatest fan of the resort in Salou, I was keen to get back after a break of 3 years to see if anything had changed and, of course, ride the tallest and fastest coaster in Europe. We'd been impressed with the Callaghan's bedrooms last time around, so made the booking for the same hotel this time. At €300 per person for 3 nights including bed, breakfast, admission (1 day FL + unlimited PA) and unlimited fastrack use, the price was, as is usually the case with PortAventura, good value.
Here are my main findings:
By and large, I find PortAventura to be a chaotically run theme park resort. As part of a longer beach holiday, it's probably fine, but as a standalone place - there's so much it falls short on and if anything - it has got worse, while other major resorts in Europe get better and better.
Here are my main findings:
- The Callaghan's Hotel remains of good quality. The rooms are large and comfortable.
- Breakfast at the hotel is generally very good, although the hot counter food was consistently cold or warm on each morning.
- The bar in the hotel was closed entirely. As a result, the only indoor bar option available was the Lobby bar which, quite honestly, is rubbish.
- The main park remains well themed and generally well maintained.
- The Christmas evening show in Mediterranea was very good.
- Christmas decorations were generally good - although far less than Phantasialand/Efteling/Europa-Park
- Ride operations were very poor, with exception to Stampida. Shambhala was achieving around 700/hour on 2 trains. Platforms were chaotic. The countdown timers for throughputs seem utterly pointless.
- On one evening, we joined the Tomahawk queue 10 minutes before ride close. A ride host saw us and shouted down from the station to leave. We remonstrated with them quite forcefully, but they continually shouted to us and pointed to the exits. No idea why.
- Food was largely average or poor. The TripAdvisor scores for PA restaurants aren't great, so we weren't expecting the world - but many meals were either badly cooked or luke warm. Having been to Madrid on another holiday, I also found food there to be average - so perhaps it's just Spain. The buffet at Gold River was really quite unpleasant. The vast room gave a poor atmosphere, too.
- Restaurants which we had reservations for were closed which meant we had to make last minute bookings for other restaurants. When we arrived at Opera with 13 people having made a booking just 30 minutes earlier, the welcome host was clearly not happy with us at all.
- Ferrari Land is pretty poor to be honest. Although some rides are OK (Red Force, Flying Dreams) - others are laughably bad (the simulator) and the scale of the park is a complete joke
- Stampida has noticeably improved. The track work on this coaster has now made it OK. By no means a "great" coaster - but certainly rideable and I reasonably enjoyed it.
- Lots of rides were closed (Templo del Fuego, Cobra Imperial, Yucatan, Silver River Flume, Tutuki Splash, Angkor) or on limited hours. Given it's 15C in Spain at this time of year... this seems weird. The park was by no means quiet.
- Fastrack is essential to enjoy PA. At least 50% of ride throughput was going to Fastrack. Without it, welcome to hell.
- Plenty of entertainment as ever in PA. This would seem to be their strong point.
- Dino Escape 4D is a joke.
By and large, I find PortAventura to be a chaotically run theme park resort. As part of a longer beach holiday, it's probably fine, but as a standalone place - there's so much it falls short on and if anything - it has got worse, while other major resorts in Europe get better and better.
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