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PortAventura: General Discussion

This is also where they will rely on the IP more than the actual ride experiences. At the end of the day it's the IP that will draw in the crowds. Your average guest won't notice the similarities between ride types.
 
Behemoth is a straight line airtime / pos G out and back, where as Leviathan is a high speed twist-fest. Very different layouts, it's like comparing Shambles to Silvia. ;)

But anyway.... ;)
 
A few comments from my trip to PortAventura last week:

  • Stampida is most certainly improved significantly with the retracking efforts. The first 40% is now pretty smooth and quite a bit faster. They now need to complete the rest, and perhaps consider new trains.
  • Operations remain very poor across the park. Hourly throughputs were around 500 on Furius Baco, given that 6 seats are out of use on each train. The flat rides, such as Volpaiute (opposite Tomahawk) was dispatching, quite honestly, once every 14 minutes. This resulted in a throughput of around 190 per hour. I could go on, but it is one of the poorest operated theme parks in Europe. Also - with 7pm ride closes (which is early in the case of the park), there should not be rides opening at midday.
  • Fastrack remains essential on all but the absolute quietest days to enjoy all the rides. The park distribute far too much (a fact that is somewhat of a joke amongst executives in other parks) - with up to 1/2 of trains being entirely fastrack. Visiting the park without it is a complete misery.
  • Food and beverage is very, very mixed. The cost of alcohol and some snacks is reasonable, but with around half the park outlets closed - you simply could not find a coffee before 11am and struggled even after this time. There were hour long waits for some restaurants. Some food quality issues also surround the resort, with cold cheese on pizza, wafer thin pork chops and poor quality breaded cheese both experienced by myself during the stay in what were supposed to the best restaurants in the resort.
  • The new Gold River extension (Callaghan's) is very good. The rooms are large, the bathrooms good, and the extras provided are top quality. I would really recommend it. The breakfast was probably the best theme park breakfast I have seen.
  • Christmas decorations are good in Meditteranea and Far West but are almost non existant in other areas. I was quite suprised at how little there was compared with Efteling/Phantasia/Europa to be honest.
  • Shows/entertainment remain varied, although the park need to extend street entertainment heavily.
  • The new Ice Age attraction is appalling in every way. Sea Oddysey has not been rethemed apart from some characters and some snow spray. The ride is dire. The queue and throughput awful. It does not fit at all in the Polynesia area.
  • The parks most high quality indoor experience, Templo del Fuego, remains closed most of the time and was on our visit. I have still not experienced it in ANY of my 3 stays at PA!
So yes... PortAventura remains a complete mixed bag, but the worst thing for me has to be the major lack of good quality rides! I am afraid that after 3 visits (2009, 2013, 2015) - the operations have not improved and I regrettably remain ambivalent towards the resort as a whole in spite of some of the most delightful area theming in Europe. I know some individuals find this hard to take, but it is my view!

EDIT: I have been advised there are 18 bars at the hotels in PA... I don't know where I was looking but I didn't see many of them.

:)
 
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Very interesting to read. I'm glad to hear that you have reviewed the resort fairly rather than some members of this forum who seem to have a campaign of hatred against the place.

On my visit in November I found that, whilst the shows were all excellent, the number of performances was inadequate. I was keen to watch the Vampires show in the saloon bar but with only three performances a day in a 350 seater venue there was no way I was going to wait over an hour just for a 20 minute saloon show, this does need addressing. I'm surprised that you didn't see much street entertainment, there's always been loads when I've visited.

Operations don't seem to be getting much better sadly and even with Express passes is often find myself waiting around 20-30 minutes and the main queues looked like horrible places to be.

As for the 18 bars I have no idea who said this but, even if you include the summer only pool bars, it's still nowhere near that. The lobby bar at Gold River is very nice but on the whole bars is certainly an area where the EP hotels are leagues ahead.

Fortunately when I visited Ice Age wasn't running due to the Halloween maze, doesn't sound like I missed much, I know that they have two simulators but I strongly suspect that they were only using one when you visited.
 
One very hilarious thought that occurred to me regarding my trip to PA is costume characters.

At Disney, one would never encounter Mickey Mouse in one area and then find him immediately elsewhere moments later. PortAventura however boasts two Woody Woodpeckers less than 100 yards apart, one performing outside Temple Del Fuego and the other on the nearby ice rink.
 
In reference to the Resort Bars, they're all listed below and can be found on the website under each Resort Hotel, some as EnterValhalla said, are only open in peak seasons / summer. A few of the bars in my experience aren't very good / probably not open, but they are there:

Hotel PortAventura
Bar PortRegata
Il Caffe di Roma
Cal Pep

Hotel Gold River
Gold River Saloon
Lobby Bar
River Bar

Hotel Mansion De Lucy
Bar Mansion De Lucy

Hotel Caribe
Puerto Viejo
Salsa Bar
El Tinglado
La Bogeguita del Miedo
Mango Bongo
Bar San Juan

Hotel El Paso
Club Maya
La Bahia
Bar Maya
El Laberinto
El Coyote
 
Hmmm I've stayed at all of the PA resort hotels and really haven't seen that many bars. The pool bars seems to be included which are more snack bars. The best hotel for bars is Gold River, the worst in my opinion is Hotel PortAventura, a hotel which has much more of a childish atmosphere than the others in my opinion.
 
The Fast track system is at PA is.... unacceptable really.

For example Shambhala had a 3 hour queue. It was running two trains, BUT every other train was used completely for fast track customers... The really ironic thing is, without the fast track queue, the normal queue would have been at least halved.

It's obviously than they're running rides on lower capacity to get more fast track custom.
 
Much as I hate to say it, because I do love PA, I have to agree. Back in the Universal days, fastrack was free for all hotel guests and Dragon Khan used to run three trains pretty much every weekend. Operations have seriously gone downhill and I'm surprised that it's being allowed to continue in all honesty. I know that if that happened at British parks the staff would be yelled at, sworn at and Guest Services would have a queue half way round the park. Somehow PA seem to get away with it.
 
Not long back from a couple of days at the park so here are a few updated thoughts from me.
  • The park remains beautiful, it has some of the best area theming in Europe.
  • Shambhala wasn't quite as good as I remember but I put that down to the December temperatures as opposed to when I last went in June 2013. Still think it is better nearer the front of the train.
  • Operations are woeful, the worst I have seen in any theme park by a long stretch. What makes it worse is as ride close approaches Shambhala and Khan suddenly starting banging out the trains at a good rate as clearly the staff want to get home. This was made even more laughable at the end of the day on Shambhala; we were on the last train of the day and as we came into the brakes we noticed that the train infront had not yet been dispatched (empty) to allow us back into the station. Down the brake run we went and we came to a stop just before the station. The train in front still hadn't been sent and then the two staff members come out onto the brake run and manually release us all one row at a time and walk us off the ride. Bizzare!
  • Stampida re-tracking has made a real difference, if they re-track the whole layout it could actually be a decent woodie.
  • The new trains on Tomohawk are brilliant!
  • The 'new' Ice Age 4D is by far the worst 4D attraction I have ever done.
  • Food was generally poor across the resort (excluding the fantastic breakfast).
  • Gold River was just as good as I remembered it, just a shame that it is let down by the bland and bright Lobby Bar which has no atmosphere. Some music wouldn't go amiss.
  • There really are a lack of major rides in the park; this should have been addressed before adding a second theme park gate.
I won't be hurrying back to PA. It's a nice park with serious flaws. I know it's not going to happen but I would love for Universal to buy the park back as they could do something amazing with the already solid foundations.

:)
 
I couldn't agree more about Ice Age 4D, utter pants. I couldn't see half the screen and the movement is just nauseating.
 
Good news!

PA are re-tracking more of Stampida this closed season:

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Source

Hopefully they can get a large portion of the ride done (I doubt they'd be able to complete it all) and then finish it off next closed season. Then all they need to do is get some Millennium Flyer trains and they could be on to a winner! The fact they have got new trains for Tomoaawk from GCI hopefully shows that there is a decent chance of this happening.

:)
 
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PortAventura WORLD - Parks & Resort​

Today PortAventura re-branded from 'PortAventura (European Destination Resort)' to 'PortAventura WORLD Parks & Resort' in preparation for the launch of Ferrari Land in 2017. As part of the re-launch, the Resort and Parks now have new logos and names which can be found on the new website https://www.portaventuraworld.com/en, media channels and 2016 brochure https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...captacion2016-29-15-low_online.pdf?1453065093.

A re-structure of the Resort has also taken place with Hotels being divided into Resort Areas, and the re-acquisition of Lumine - Mediterranea Beach & Golf Community to the Resort line-up.

Parks and Activities
- PortAventura Park
- Caribe Aquatic Park (Formerly Costa Caribe Aquatic Park)
- Ferrari Land Park (Opening 2017)
- Cirque du Soleil
- PortAventura Lumine - Mediterranea Beach & Golf Community

PortAventura Resort Area:
- PortAventura Hotel PortAventura
- PortAventura Hotel El Paso
- PortAventura Hotel Caribe
- PortAventura Club San Juan

Gold River Resort Area:
- PortAventura Hotel Mansion de Lucy
- PortAventura Hotel Gold River
- River Bungalows
- The Callaghan's

2s93y1j.png
 
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PortAventura World!? Erm ok then! Resort sounded good enough to me as it is just that, a great resort. Is it an entire world a la Disney? No.

:)
 
Earlier today a video of a miserable looking Dragon Khan queue appeared on my facebook news feed. The queue was mostly full with express also to the entrance. This led me to a petition started by people visiting in October last year due to how poorly the park coped with crowds.

Here's the complaint in image form:
KsteXmDFQcnlrgM-800x450-noPad.jpg


People moan about Thorpe being a complete omnishambles on busy days, but it seems they've got nothing on a packed PA.
 
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