Any tips for a first time visitor to PortAventura World?

[HectorLucas]

September is a great month to visit the park! Hope you have a great time there.

From what I’m hearing, in the closed season they’re upgrading the park quite a lot. We got an ex-Disneyland París as our new director so he seems to have a pretty good eye on small details (something the park quite lacked in the recent years) I think the park will be beautiful this next season.

 

[Manchester1894]

I've booked April 12th to 15th at Gold River. My thinking is for my first time (and we're a family of 4) it's better than the alternative of summer. That's the only reasoning

Any chance of it being dead? Easter is the end of the week or will every man and his dog be there regardless?

 

[Matt N]

With only around a month and a half to go until my trip to PortAventura, I had a question about Ferrari Land.

Realistically, how long would we need to allocate to Ferrari Land to get everything done? Will it require us to allocate a full half a day to a day, or is it doable in a couple of hours?

I mainly ask because I was pondering whether it might be a good idea to get Ferrari Land done on the evening we arrive. Looking at PortAventura’s opening times, it appears to be open from 4pm-10pm for our whole time there, whereas PortAventura Park shuts at 7pm on the day we arrive and at 6pm every other day. As our flight doesn’t land in Barcelona until 1:45pm and it’ll probably be at least 4:30pm by the time we’ve checked in at the hotel (I’m imagining it’ll take us a good hour to get out of Barcelona Airport and another good hour to get to PortAventura from there via shared transfer, at minimum), I thought that Ferrari Land’s opening times might make it a good choice on the night we arrive.

However, looking at the website, 9th September appears to be a day with “very high” crowds at Ferrari Land… whereas the other 3 days are listed as “medium” crowd days. In PortAventura Park, 9th September is listed as a “medium” crowd day and the other 3 days are listed as “low” crowd days. I’m not sure how accurate PortAventura’s website crowd calendar is, but it does seem odd to have 1 Monday in September singled out as having “very high” crowds and putting everything else in that week as “medium” without some reason to do so…

So my question is; how long does Ferrari Land actually require? Does it really matter if we go in there and it’s heaving, or is it a park we desperately need to visit on one of the quieter days?

 

[Poisson]

I wouldn't bother with either of the dark rides, or the drop towers. Red Force is the only thing worth doing and Junior Red Force for the +1. The main thing is how long would you queue for Red Force?

 

[Shaggy_Dog_]

I went to Ferrari Land on the evening of my first day and headed straight to Red Force. With the exception of one ride on the shot tower I didn’t even bother with the other attractions there (I think Junior Red Force might have been down but I wasn’t bothered about doing it anyway as I’ve already done the exact same ride at Gullivers). The way I see it is you are there for Red Force so go and get as many rides on it as you can, it’s a great ride and a brilliant experience the first time you ride it.

Definitely spend the full amount of time there, queues for it can be quite long at first and it’s not uncommon for it to go down for short periods. The last hour or so is where it gets really fun, the queue gets quite short enabling lots of rerides and if you are there at a time when the sun is setting it’s a beautiful ride (and night rides are even better).

 

[Matt N]

Am I right in saying that Ferrari Land only really has 4 major attractions anyway (excluding Junior Red Force, as I don't generally do kiddie coasters)? Off the top of my head, doesn't it only have:

• Red Force
• Racing Legends, a 3D simulator like Jimmy Fallon at Universal
• Flying Dreams, a flying theatre
• An S&S shot tower, whose name I can't currently remember

Please tell me if I'm missing anything, but even if we did end up wanting to give everything major a go, that's only 4 rides.

It is useful to know that Red Force is the only properly worthwhile ride out of these if queues do end up massive and/or we end up pushed for time in there for whatever reason. I quite like flying theatres and I quite like S&S shot towers, so I might give those a go if queues for them are short, but if they're long, I might just stick to Red Force.

On another note; am I right in thinking that you can only do the front row of Red Force and some other coasters if you buy Express? I seem to remember that being mentioned somewhere once...

 

[Poisson]

Flying Theatre is awful there and the queues for it and Racing Legends Do. Not. Move. they were running Flying Dreams on 1/3 capacity whilst we were there and this is not uncommon.

 

[Shaggy_Dog_]

Am I right in saying that Ferrari Land only really has 4 major attractions anyway (excluding Junior Red Force, as I don't generally do kiddie coasters)? Off the top of my head, doesn't it only have:

• Red Force
• Racing Legends, a 3D simulator like Jimmy Fallon at Universal
• Flying Dreams, a flying theatre
• An S&S shot tower, whose name I can't currently remember

Please tell me if I'm missing anything, but even if we did end up wanting to give everything major a go, that's only 4 rides.

It is useful to know that Red Force is the only properly worthwhile ride out of these if queues do end up massive and/or we end up pushed for time in there for whatever reason. I quite like flying theatres and I quite like S&S shot towers, so I might give those a go if queues for them are short, but if they're long, I might just stick to Red Force.

On another note; am I right in thinking that you can only do the front row of Red Force and some other coasters if you buy Express? I seem to remember that being mentioned somewhere once...

I’ve got lucky and had front row on Red Force from just the SRQ with no Express Pass.

With regards to the S&S Thrill Towers each tower gives a different ride, one tower runs as a drop tower and one is a shot tower.

 

[Matt.GC]

I visited Ferrari Land on a "busy" crowd calendar day, and between 4 and around 7 it was indeed pretty intolerable. We got the flying theatre done (shocking throughput but the queue line is well air conditioned) and one ride on Red Force (around 80 minute cattlepen queue with loads of Portadventura signature queue jumping). We spent a few hours in PA park beforehand. Was also packed but managed to pick up a few rides including Baco as we were heading away from the crowds.

It got particularly busy around 6pm. But come half 7 the crowds thinned out massively, even though the main park had closed then. The drop towers were pretty much 10 mins, Junior Red Force around 15. After half 8, the park was deserted. I managed 8 rides on Red Force in an hour and a half, and that was stopping 3 times to have my Estrella yard glass thingy refilled (I was pretty drunk by the end of the night). I met 2 friendly German guys and we talking about Europa, Nemesis Retrack, the Monkey coaster at Chessington, and how bad queue jumping in PA is! The same group of riders walking on again and again.

Not sure that helps as it's one snapshot of one day. But it was the second busiest day in the main park of our entire visit. We easily got everything done, not thar there's much there to do! It was busy early on but absolutely dead for the last 2 hours. Plus night rides. So it seemed to me the later the better.