Two idiots, a wooden shed and 20 coasters

[Poisson]

So after the err....success(?!) of our last trip, it was clear we needed to be more organised and better at planning. So naturally our next trip, this trip, was planned in about half an hour by idiots who can't speak a word of the local language, to a country we've never been before, in a pandemic. Because creds. Many, many creds.

After 4 hours sleep coming off a night shift, in a stupor, I prepped by vaguely gathering some clothes and a passport and climbed in the noble steed of my Rover (star of the previous trip) and headed down to Stansted airport. After a thoroughly boring trip that definitely didn't include me getting lost, having to endure the misery of Birchanger Services, eugh, I arrived to collect @MattyH from Stansted. What followed was many laps and ending up with accidentally being in the expensive pick up bit and Matt having to wander around the airport complex like a muppet but we got there.

First port of call: food. Finest food. What followed was a trip to Maccies drive through where they failed to put the lid of the choccy milkshake on properly. A mess ensued, luckily I have rubber floor mats in my car and all the food boxes were coated. This is where I slightly lost my rag and food ended up al fresco, which meant using the roof of my car like tramps, very Misery Trip style.

I think Matt got electrocuted taking that. Anyway, pre-flight essentials

After that fiasco we noticed that there was about 357 bendy busses doing laps of the airport car parks. Climbing aboard we bogged off to the terminal and I introduced Matt to his first ever airport experience. The usual combo of boredom and discomfort, interspersed with a pint whilst watching the people mover. Following a rather uneventful flight and a quick wander through Krakow Airport, past some scary army folk, we found the Enterprise desk. Promising not to crash the car, we were told to head to floor 5.5 of the conjoined car park and we had a Fiat waiting for us.

This was my first time driving a left hooker. I'd driven a RHD Transit through the Netherlands before for work at Assen TT Circuit, but never a LHD vehicle (quad based Mule doesn't really count messing about in central London and on race circuits.) Following a large amount of screaming, Perwiggle, Uwaga and me wondering how much it would cost for Enterprise to repair a Fiat in a ditch, we arrived in Katowice and to Legendia. We had purchased our tickets online so Matt wandered in then I got stuck and had to get mine printed. Something about the phone not being very bright, a bit like it's owner really.

We had arrived at 11:30, half an hour post opening. Park close was 8pm but we found we were in a very quiet park. It was honestly deserted. We went for Lech and around its massive queue before finding a short cut we could have used and then it blew our socks off. A surprisingly intense ride and that first drop trying to throw you in the pond was a surprise. We followed this with heading over to Dream Hunters Society, the working Zyklon out of the 2 they have.

This needed 3 people to dispatch so Matt went first behind 2 others who then had a reride so I could go on it. We'd been in the country a scant few hours and were already getting close to Yew Tree'd by having to borrow children to get a cred. Afterwards we headed to a strange Flying Machines-esque ride, Dreamflight Airlines.

Riding this odd beast we completed a circuit of the park and around to Devil's Loop, the Soquet Looper ex LWV and American Adventure. Rather unpleasant forward and made some horrendous noises, we decided backwards was somehow a good idea. To our utter shock it was smoother backwards in the last car than it was forwards.

Apollo was next on our jaunt. Matt reckoned it'd be either great or awful. It was neither. Rather forgettable it was.

Apollo - Legendia by themeparksandfunfairs (Yvonne O.), on Flickr

We then proceeded to try and find food. Only to find 95% of the food outlets were closed. We eventually had fish fingers and chips, an odd setup for theme park food but pretty much the only option. After finding the cable car was outside the park or up somewhere we couldn't work out, we had a few more rides on Lech then to Giant Water Pump. An odd beastie but fun nonetheless. Then it was time for some more Huss weird mentalness in the form of Dragon Temple. Matt had deduced it was Huss and it is apparently a Huss Rainbow. Think a Miami but good crossed with a Flying Carpet.

Dragon Temple - Legendia by themeparksandfunfairs (Yvonne O.), on Flickr

We then tried to find some real food and after a scout, even less was open. We had a detour on to Magical Postal Service, because why not, not like anything had a queue. At all. Ever. Following this, another backwards shot on Devil's Loop and some chips because food was impossible. With the dark rides also shut, I'm not sure it wasn't part of COVID protocols or they just didn't have any proper catering. If I researched this trip it'd be far too sensible.

To cap out the day we basically spent it either on Lech or exploring the random derelict bits of the park. Such a strange place, a dump of a park with Lech in it. Upon leaving there was a leaving song that had excerpts of ITHOTMK in it bizarrely enough. We found the car and apparently we had free parking due to the tickets we had purchased online, not that we knew because we are idiots but there was nobody there to check it anyway. We headed towards our accommodation for the night, something we had taken to referring to as the murder shed. When we were 20 mins away I offhandedly mentioned we might see some of Energylandia. We then drove past Zadra and I nearly crashed the car. Again. Then we also saw Mayan and Hyperion. Impressive and an SLC which always fills me with dread.

We then reached Ryczow, where our accommodation was. Somewhere. We then spent 45 mins driving around trying to find it as it was hidden slightly behind a different property. We phoned our host who spoke no English so we had to message him to be able to translate and he guided us in and then I had to execute a reverse park in the dark, pouring rain and the car had 0 visibility. Somehow executed without costing thousands in damages we headed in and hit the hay. Day 1 completed.

+3 creds, ridecount of 35 including 25 laps of Lech

 

[MattyH]

"What else is there, errrrr"
"Can we find food? Errrrr"

If you get the Go-pass season ticket you can get discount in the food outlets to go with your free parking. Not that there were any food outlets to get food from though.

The park was that dead we weren't even needed to leave Lech's station instead we stepped onto to the off load platform and positioned ourselves in a different part of the train.

 

[JAperson]

Aaah I'd been looking forward to this trip report at @Poisson
Great as always. Legendia does seem like a really strange place in that it seems to have very little of note apart from Lech. Of course there is other parks like this but mosts headline ride is nowhere near as good as Lech. I really must get out there at some point.

 

[John_P]

Visited last Friday and the only food options we found open was Baba Jagas Chips, and the place inside the Basilisk dark ride building.

Such an odd park, yet all the stuff at the top end Lech, the shoot the shoots, the rapids, and the dark ride are all high quality recent additions.

The ferris wheel is genuinely the most scared I've been on any ride at a theme/amusement park.

 

[MattyH]

Gutted we missed the Ferris wheel that sounds very perwigglous. We missed the basilisk ride as we simply had no idea where it was. We saw what looked like a dark ride entrance but that was shut off.

 

[Poisson]

The ferris wheel is genuinely the most scared I've been on any ride at a theme/amusement park.

Sounds a shame we missed that. Most scared I've been is when I almost left the train on The Ultimate with very very lose restraints. Ended up perched momentarily on the seat divider. Many poos.

Baba Jagas is where we ate.

 

[Matt.GC]

Enterprise must have some sort of deal with those Fiat's. I had an almost identical one to yours from them on my last trip to Europa. It was dead easy to drive, but felt spongy as hell. It bounced round corners, the steering and clutch felt very loose (no feedback) and the seats were extremely uncomfortable. The kids and the Mrs loved it however.

 

[Poisson]

It wasn't too horrendous, visibility and mirrors aside. Then again I do drive every hire car like its a race car so I expect it to be rough. Not my car, not my problem.

 

[Poisson]

Day 2: Dinosaurs, A lack of friction and a few creds.

Day 2 dawned dry with sunny intervals. Today was the day we'd get to go and visit a park with our first RMC, an SLC with vests, an Intamin Hyper and the only operating Vekoma Shockwave. But first, dinosaurs. We headed from the shed of terror but not before a picture was required:

Onwards to Zatorland. We arrived and saw the coaster testing. Great! We then found out 0 English was spoken in the entire park. A challenge we relished. Armed with Google Translate, a stupid sense of self belief and 2.5 braincells between us we ploughed on to the coaster. To find it wasn't operating due to a lack of friction. I'm guessing the brakes being soaked were not working properly and Translate wasn't very good at translating. Joy. So we headed for their smaller rides. We started with the Mini Dance Party 120.

It turns out we had ridden its much much bigger brother at Southend (Axis, a Maxi Dance Party 360) and both were pretty solid fun rides, surprisingly so for the small one. After this we rode Crazy Raft, an SBF Visa Crazy Raft thing. Odd. Like a Rockin' Tug and a Breakdance 4 had a baby.

We followed this by walking around the surprisingly excellent animatronic dinosaur trail. Life size too, some were HUGE. A real surprise. We expected them to be awful.

It this like touching the knot on the Whomping Willow?

We followed this with a final attempt at the coaster but it was still closed. Spited. Ah well.

No IP Failures here. None at all.

We then left to Energylandia.

We were approaching cred milestones so we started on the SBF Wacky Worm and Vekoma Junior Coaster in the forms of Frutti Loop Coaster and Energus. We followed this with a wander to one of the parks two Junior Boomerangs and lunch. Kebab box for me, chicken burger for Holland. Actually very good,

Green Stuff. Do not recognise. Abort abort.

After lunch we did one of the biggies. Hyperion first, for Matt's 150th cred.

A very good ride indeed, it became our second favourite Polish coaster behind Lech. Not like it had much competition. This was followed by the vest restraint SLC, Mayan.

Mayan Roller Coaster by Matthew Wells, on Flickr

This highlights what has to be Arrow influence in Vekoma or just very Arrow style shuffling. The train shuffles noticeably when you aren't trying to avoid it trying to break your skull. As I have said before, the SLC layouts are great but there's something clearly wrong, be it the chassis (these vest trains use STC seats grafted to SLC chassis by the looks of them) or the track profiling itself. It's not unrideable but not exactly good.

Anyway, on to the biggie, my 175th cred and first RMC. Zadra.

Absolutely brilliant. Fast, pops of intensity that got better and better as the ride warmed up. It and Lech really are the top two in Poland, with Zadra at number one. It'll be interesting when I sort out my rankings during closed season.

This excitement was followed by Draken, Frida and Light Explorers. All pretty forgettable except for Draken for being uncomfy but also my first Preston & Barbieri. I like to think I'm a purveyor of truly awful rides.

Abyssus time:

An interesting ride to behold but in the end a bit disappointing. The launches aren't great, especially the first one that's pointless and the trims after the second launch ruin it but the rest of the layout is interesting enough. Very much Icon levels of meh launch coaster but a bit more interesting layout with some tiny pops of forces. Looks impressive half done.

Speaking of okay launch coasters, Formula was next followed by Dragon (after we found the hidden entrance), Speed where we learnt how to not only use the stupidly cheap lockers but how to rip off POTC music, Happy Loops being a slightly broken SBF extended spinner and then Mars. Mars attempted to break our spines on the drive wheels, making some horrid noises in the process. Very SBF Visa including a lack of brakes, just using gravity and reverse drive to stop in the station.

Rollercoaster Mars Energylandia by Artur Wojdak, on Flickr

We then saw what looked to be a closed SBF Dragon oval but Matt managed to find the op hidden in the cabin and we clearly made him grumpy by wanting the cred to avoid the spite. What followed was a joy of a very slow oval powered coaster. Then Viking. A foul horrid contraption of a Spinning Mouse. Violent, plodding and highly uncomfy with OTSRs. Not recommended but a +1 nonetheless. Almost as bad as a bad SLC.

Burn it. Burn it to the floor.

Following on we got a couple more hits on Hyperion then 3 more on Zadra including a lucky wait for last train of the day hanging about on the station and hoping the staff wouldn't tell us to walk round. We were then chatting about the ride when we were asked in a Dutch accent if we were enthusiasts. What followed was an hour walking back to the entrance under the subway and getting lost whilst chatting about coasters with said Dutchman (no flying though.)

After such an exhausting time chatting utter rubbish we headed to a fine restaurant. That was Maccies across the road from the park. After finally working out how to get in, a burger with camembert on seemed like the best solution. It was actually rather good, as was the raspberry and white choccy McFlurry. It's clear everywhere that isn't the UK gets a good menu.

Piling back into the Fiat of fun we headed back to the murder shed and called it a day. +17 creds.

 

[JAperson]

Day 2: Dinosaurs, A lack of friction and a few creds.

Day 2 dawned dry with sunny intervals. Today was the day we'd get to go and visit a park with our first RMC, an SLC with vests, an Intamin Hyper and the only operating Vekoma Shockwave. But first, dinosaurs. We headed from the shed of terror but not before a picture was required:

Onwards to Zatorland. We arrived and saw the coaster testing. Great! We then found out 0 English was spoken in the entire park. A challenge we relished. Armed with Google Translate, a stupid sense of self belief and 2.5 braincells between us we ploughed on to the coaster. To find it wasn't operating due to a lack of friction. I'm guessing the brakes being soaked were not working properly and Translate wasn't very good at translating. Joy. So we headed for their smaller rides. We started with the Mini Dance Party 120.

It turns out we had ridden its much much bigger brother at Southend (Axis, a Maxi Dance Party 360) and both were pretty solid fun rides, surprisingly so for the small one. After this we rode Crazy Raft, an SBF Visa Crazy Raft thing. Odd. Like a Rockin' Tug and a Breakdance 4 had a baby.

We followed this by walking around the surprisingly excellent animatronic dinosaur trail. Life size too, some were HUGE. A real surprise. We expected them to be awful.

It this like touching the knot on the Whomping Willow?

We followed this with a final attempt at the coaster but it was still closed. Spited. Ah well.

No IP Failures here. None at all.

We then left to Energylandia.

We were approaching cred milestones so we started on the SBF Wacky Worm and Vekoma Junior Coaster in the forms of Frutti Loop Coaster and Energus. We followed this with a wander to one of the parks two Junior Boomerangs and lunch. Kebab box for me, chicken burger for Holland. Actually very good,

Green Stuff. Do not recognise. Abort abort.

After lunch we did one of the biggies. Hyperion first, for Matt's 150th cred.

A very good ride indeed, it became our second favourite Polish coaster behind Lech. Not like it had much competition. This was followed by the vest restraint SLC, Mayan.

Mayan Roller Coaster by Matthew Wells, on Flickr

This highlights what has to be Arrow influence in Vekoma or just very Arrow style shuffling. The train shuffles noticeably when you aren't trying to avoid it trying to break your skull. As I have said before, the SLC layouts are great but there's something clearly wrong, be it the chassis (these vest trains use STC seats grafted to SLC chassis by the looks of them) or the track profiling itself. It's not unrideable but not exactly good.

Anyway, on to the biggie, my 175th cred and first RMC. Zadra.

Absolutely brilliant. Fast, pops of intensity that got better and better as the ride warmed up. It and Lech really are the top two in Poland, with Zadra at number one. It'll be interesting when I sort out my rankings during closed season.

This excitement was followed by Draken, Frida and Light Explorers. All pretty forgettable except for Draken for being uncomfy but also my first Preston & Barbieri. I like to think I'm a purveyor of truly awful rides.

Abyssus time:

An interesting ride to behold but in the end a bit disappointing. The launches aren't great, especially the first one that's pointless and the trims after the second launch ruin it but the rest of the layout is interesting enough. Very much Icon levels of meh launch coaster but a bit more interesting layout with some tiny pops of forces. Looks impressive half done.

Speaking of okay launch coasters, Formula was next followed by Dragon (after we found the hidden entrance), Speed where we learnt how to not only use the stupidly cheap lockers but how to rip off POTC music, Happy Loops being a slightly broken SBF extended spinner and then Mars. Mars attempted to break our spines on the drive wheels, making some horrid noises in the process. Very SBF Visa including a lack of brakes, just using gravity and reverse drive to stop in the station.

Rollercoaster Mars Energylandia by Artur Wojdak, on Flickr

We then saw what looked to be a closed SBF Dragon oval but Matt managed to find the op hidden in the cabin and we clearly made him grumpy by wanting the cred to avoid the spite. What followed was a joy of a very slow oval powered coaster. Then Viking. A foul horrid contraption of a Spinning Mouse. Violent, plodding and highly uncomfy with OTSRs. Not recommended but a +1 nonetheless. Almost as bad as a bad SLC.

Burn it. Burn it to the floor.

Following on we got a couple more hits on Hyperion then 3 more on Zadra including a lucky wait for last train of the day hanging about on the station and hoping the staff wouldn't tell us to walk round. We were then chatting about the ride when we were asked in a Dutch accent if we were enthusiasts. What followed was an hour walking back to the entrance under the subway and getting lost whilst chatting about coasters with said Dutchman (no flying though.)

After such an exhausting time chatting utter rubbish we headed to a fine restaurant. That was Maccies across the road from the park. After finally working out how to get in, a burger with camembert on seemed like the best solution. It was actually rather good, as was the raspberry and white choccy McFlurry. It's clear everywhere that isn't the UK gets a good menu.

Piling back into the Fiat of fun we headed back to the murder shed and called it a day. +17 creds.

Interesting to here your thoughts on @Poisson . I have heard it's not as good as it looks but it is a shame as I feel the ride had real potential. Do you think it's a bit to similar to forumula as it really isn't that different apart from the fact it's got an extra launch? (obviously there are key differences but the general idea isn't much different).

 

[Poisson]

I'm assuming you mean Abyssus? You've quoted the entire thing by accident.

My first suggestion is watch a POV. The first launch into the corner is as tame as it looks and adds nothing and seems a strange choice where a drop out the station and a turn around would make more sense, maybe with a corkscrew or something then into the second launch.

The second launch up the hill has fins on top of the hill, I believe to try and enhance the drop but it's all a bit pointless and sucks speed out of the layout. The dives under the station really save it and the inversions in shot help. It's a bad layout, no matter what market you've aimed it at it is a waste. So much more could be done with it.

 

[JAperson]

I'm assuming you mean Abyssus? You've quoted the entire thing by accident.

My first suggestion is watch a POV. The first launch into the corner is as tame as it looks and adds nothing and seems a strange choice where a drop out the station and a turn around would make more sense, maybe with a corkscrew or something then into the second launch.

The second launch up the hill has fins on top of the hill, I believe to try and enhance the drop but it's all a bit pointless and sucks speed out of the layout. The dives under the station really save it and the inversions in shot help. It's a bad layout, no matter what market you've aimed it at it is a waste. So much more could be done with it.

Yes I meant abyssus sorry about that @Poisson . Yes watching it I can see what you mean. I still think the ride had real potential and its a shame it's been potentially wasted.

 

[MattyH]

Interesting to here your thoughts on @Poisson .

He's a northern thing who plans trips which any sane person would say no to.

 

[Jonathan]

He's a northern thing who plans trips which any sane person would say no to.

Think that says more about you tbh, Holland.

 

[Poisson]

I think that Poisson fellow is an inept idiot who probably should be locked up for the sake of humanity.

 

[Poisson]

Right, 20 days later I should probably finish this thing. Not like I have another TR waiting to be written or anything.

The last day dawned colder and greyer than previous. We left the murder shed and headed back up the road to Energylandia. Upon entering the park we ended up bumping into fellow UK idiots @John_P I believe and some more. After the mission it was to trek from the entrance around the morning greeting show thing that blocks the main access, around the maze, under the road and down the 10,000 mile queueline for Zadra and we were on. In the end there was even more enthusiasts and we were 3/4 filling the trains with enthusiasts per dispatch.

Zadra-9 by David M., on Flickr

Shame it wasn't that sunny.

Several rides later and the quick re-ride gate near Zadra's lockers was closed so we headed out to do more rides. First we hit Abyssus and then we headed for a quality ride in the form of Monster House.

This was brilliant. It was awful. The ride system clearly was dying as the individual cars became a train of about 8 or 9, the themeing was mainly from Zlotyland or whatever the equivalent of Poundland is in Poland, the rest was blank walls and hilarity.

Next up was Apocalypto, some sort of horrid Top Spin knock off. Bodged together by Fabbri with exposed drive shafts and clearly using car or van brake discs to control the spin. Huss this ain't. The ride is horribly jerky and sharp and rather unpleasant with horrid seats and restraints too.



You'd never believe I used to be in TV with such awful filming, but never mind.

We followed this up with a slightly uncomfy but acceptable SBF in the form of Aztec Swing. Rounding out the day were a few rerides on Zadra and Hyperion.

Back in the Fiat of Failure we headed back to Krakow Airport and breezed in, dropped the car and through security. Much waiting and we were back in the beautiful comfort of PovertyScare and back to Stansted. Easy right? WRONG. We deplane and head into the terminal around the corner and into a queue that would make Thorpe Park at Halloween blush.

Infront of us were 2 women from 2 different flights and the group behind us were form different flights too, so COVID distancing was clearly dead despite them pretending otherwise. Agonisingly slowly we crept towards the border. To the right of the queue was the rest of the world (non-UK, EU, EEC) desks, all empty and staffed but we were not allowed to make full use of all the desks despite nobody being there. Baffling. Finally, a very long time later (I stopped counting at an hour or so) we headed out and I had to dive on a bus to the car park where Matt's mate was picking him up and the Rover was dumped because despite adding hours extra to the parking in the booking phase, I was very very close on time.

Heading home (and straight to work!) I realised I would miss my 05:45 start time and that I urgently needed sleep anyway so after telling my colleagues I got my head down in a service station car park for a bit. Refreshed, I some how managed to not put the car in a ditch/barrier/HGV and crawled home to bed. Stupidity over. Well over for this time......

 

[John_P]

Ha, yeah the morning 'ert' on Zadra was amazing. Seemed like every lap another group from the UK turned up.

 

[MattyH]

It was brilliant. Almost an enthusiast event. Was insane to think all of us had completely different trips and all ended up lapping Zadra together. I'm not sure if others agree but I found every lap on Zadra I enjoyed it more and more.

 

[D4n]

How incredibly harsh on Apocalypto. Literally one of my favourite flat rides - far more intense and extreme than its Huss cousins.

You clearly just couldn't hack it

 

[Poisson]

How incredibly harsh on Apocalypto. Literally one of my favourite flat rides - far more intense and extreme than its Huss cousins.

You clearly just couldn't hack it

I could cut it.....with an Oxy-Acetylene torch. Just a bit unpleasant. Not quite Talocan.