My review of Voltron. There are spoilers, obviously!
So I forgot to do a nerdy review of Voltron, which I went on for the first time Sunday before last and rode six (?) times in total.
It is, put simply, a bloody good time.
The theming is yet another step up for EP, and although obviously the surrounding area is no Rookburgh, it's a thoroughly thought-through experience from beginning to end.
The main queue-line hall – which I had no idea about and wasn't expecting at all – is the most impressive section of queue-line I have seen on any ride, anywhere (inc Gringotts). I involuntarily gasped walking into it.
The Tesla animatronic! The window into the launch area! The video of the Macks waving to you from the train! The giant spark plug that sends each train on its way! Voltron singing its little song through the roof-mounted Tesla coils! Wow wow wow wow wow.
But *that room* is only one part of a masterful build-up of tension throughout, thanks to the clever and subtle use of music, design and lighting – they've finally mastered the art of creating, what you might call in Phantasialand parlance, 'a banger'. By the time you get to the station with the elegant conveyer loading, you're pumped.
The ride itself is an assault on the senses in the best possible way. The little jump trick before the main event is neat and effective, and the beyond-vertical (?) launch is the first of several punch-the-air moments.
The coaster itself is relentless, intense enough, tight (in a Smiler way) and LONG. It's bloody long. The rolling launch is another 'fuck yeah' moment, and the turntable into the (tiny) slingshot launch is a lot of fun (though could do with a bit more theming).
The biggest surprise is the absolutely *bags* of airtime throughout – there's tons of it, and proper ejector too. It's about as smooth as a coaster this intense can be, though rougher if you sit on the wing seats.
The intensity combined with the length and the audio-visual bombardment in the queue means that it can be, as Simon put it, "a lot". I can see how for some people it would be too much, but for me it's just what EP needed: a really intense banger.
I had high expectations and was preparing to be slightly let down, but it actually exceeded them. It's a close call between the 'big three', but it's probably straight in at #2 for me in the park (behind Wodan). In many ways it is the ride The Smiler should have been.
An absolute stonker of a coaster from the best to ever do it.
Feel free to ask any questions
--
Oh, a very nerdy postscript about OPERATIONS
and DOWNTIME
OPERATIONS
Absolutely incredible, as you'd expect. The thing is built for throughput. Every new coaster should have conveyer loading (with a long station) by law. Not only is each dispatch as fast as it possibly can be 95% of the time, the constant movement creates a great sense of dynamism and drama in the station. You can set your watch by the dispatches (precisely two seconds after the train swoops past the Croatian plaza, another one should hit the vertical launch, all being well). In six rides I think I saw the conveyer stop briefly, once. Otherwise maximum throughputs. The time you have to get on the train is luxurious. Only very tiny flaw is that for some reason they batch you into fours (and merge with SRQ) about 20 metres before onload, meaning that inevitably people ungroup themselves or forget who they're sitting with in the intervening two or three minutes. But you have so much time to get on it's not an issue. Despite it being brand new and the park being absolutely rammed, we didn't wait longer than an hour for it (apart from the first evening when it went down for 30 mins). Most times we waited 45. The thing eats people.
DOWNTIME
Never seen anything like it. It's a highly complex new ride, and it opened a few days before we arrived. We expected it to be down a lot. We were there for an evening and three full days. The total downtime we saw was it cycling empties for 30 minutes while we were in the queue on the first evening, and then Richey and Simon being stuck on the brake-run for 15 minutes another day. Apart from that, didn't see any downtime whatsoever, which is incredible really (I'm sure it did go down in that time but we didn't see it either in person or on the app). Half a dozen techies pouring over laptops in the station the entire time (in addition to the op). Patrick Marx there most of the time too, and Thomas in the op cabin at one point. Never seen anything like it.
