We based ourselves in Cologne for a week mainly due to its proximity to Phantasialand. When planning this trip we also discovered another park – Movie Park – was commutable from this distance so there will also be a blog about that on its way soon. I hardly took any photos here and the ones I did take aren’t the best mainly due to it being a bit of a grey day, but also because I am a terrible photographer, so apologies in advance!
From Cologne main station or Messe/Deutz where we were based you can catch either the line 18 S Bahn to Brūhl Mitte or one of the regional services to Bruhl main station. Both of those stations are served by the Phantasialand Shuttle bus. The bus starts at Bruhl and picks up at Bruhl Mitte as the second stop. We were unsure of how busy we were expecting it to be so we decided to head for Brühl (the RB48, RE5 and RB26 all stop at Brühl) to have the best chance of getting a seat.
The bus costs €6 euro per person for a return ticket and is payable only in cash. If you don’t have cash you wont be able to ride. We had also read that you should have the correct change however I was relived to be able to pay for two of us with a €20 note and receive change. We went for the first bus of the day at 8.25, it was already waiting at the stop when we arrived at the station and we were at the park gates for 8.45am. It did get busy with a lot of people standing up after the 2nd stop. The whole thing took about twenty minutes from the station, and less than ten from Bruhl Mitte.
We had to wait around outside until the gates opened and from there it was easy to scan our tickets and enter through the turnstiles. The theming here is some of the best we have ever seen and the main street at the start is reminiscent of the Disney Parks. We had a quick explore of the main street in the area known as Berlin (including a visit to the extremely clean vintage train station-themed toilets) while we discussed what would be our strategy for the day.
We had heard that Black Mamba opened before the other attractions so we headed to the Africa themed area. We walked around the queue and got almost straight on. Black Mamba is a B&M invert like Nemesis, Nemesis Inferno etc. I would say the track is more similar to inferno with the full loop coming at the start of the ride. It was very fast and I could feel myself moving around in the seat a lot. As it was walk-on we had three rides on this before the rest of the attractions opened, two rides in the middle of the train and one at the back. The end of the ride sees you sitting in the pitch black for quite a while, I couldn’t tell if we were still or moving slowly which was a nice additional part of the the ride theming.
Next up was F.L.Y. I have only ever been on Galactica as a flying coaster which I find quite relaxing and gentle so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. We were waiting about 20 minutes including the walking and I was not disappointed – it’s gone straight into my top five! Theming was excellent. You have to have everything out of your pockets for this one, so there are lockers which are free to use. You are given a wristband and you can use any locker with a green light. Store your belongings, touch the wristband on the locker to lock it and carry on toward the loading area. After the lockers you will go through metal detectors and a manual search if needed after which you are directed to join the queue according to which colour wristband you have. There is also a front row queue which was pretty busy – we decided not to waste time as we were only there for the day.
The trains are in rows of two and you start out sitting upright. As the ride starts you are still sitting upright and moving sideways, then as you turn onto the lift hill each row in turn twists so you are hanging. Then the speed kicks in. I absolutely loved this ride, especially the second launch. I will say although the restraints weren’t uncomfortable for me I really felt how much weight and trust I was putting into it! We did three rides on this throughout the day and the most we queued was probably 30 minutes.
After this we had a bit of an explore of the themed areas. Berlin is stunning with its 1920’s style shops and its centre piece, the Wassenflug carousel – not a ride for me, but fun to watch! We are coaster fans so we don’t do really drop towers or flat rides, but there are a few of those here – Mystery Tower is a drop ride in the dark and Talocan is a bottomless top spin (like Toxicator or the old Ripsaw at Alton Towers)
We did a fun little family ride called Maus Au Chocolat which was a reminiscent of Dual at Alton Towers (its our home park so yes, I do compare everything to it). You sit in cars with icing sugar bags in front of you that you have to pull a string on and fire balls out of to catch the mice. You go around the track for a bit and then it stops in from of a window and you have about 30 seconds to shoot at the numbers and targets to score points. It stopped at about 6 different windows and I really enjoyed it much more than I expected to. If we had been there for more than a day I would definitely have done that one again.
After a quick stop for loaded fries (yes we did find some gluten free offerings – and there is good allergy information available onlibe/on the app) we headed to Winjas Fear & Force. This is a kind of indoor version of Spinball Whizzer. You pick if you want to go on Fear or Force as they are two separate coasters. The queue for this was quite long and splits into two lines about ten minutes before the loading area. It said thirty minutes but the Force side ceased operations while we were there and they merged the two queues. We had chosen Fear anyway. This was so fun. I hadn’t researched this one at all so didn’t know what I was in for. There was a vertical lift, a backwards part and a track change as well as part of it being in the dark. Great experience and I wish we could have tried the Force track as well.
Taron was what we had come for and again, we weren’t disappointed. The queue was around twenty minutes so we did two rides back to back. Loved the launches and felt really safe in the restraint (I am slowly getting over my psychological issues with the new style lap restraints). We were somewhat confused about the Taron queue line as the entrance to it was at the bottom of a flight of stairs. One half was cordoned off with a rope and you had to walk up one side and round the rope then back down the stairs to enter the queue. As the queue was not out of the building at that stage people were ducking under the rope to go straight in the building which seemed like the sensible option.
After this we got “stuck” in Klugheim for what felt like an eternity. We kept walking between Klugheim and Mexico and couldn’t find the way out for some reason. The routing in the app was also a little unclear here. We figured it our eventually – you had to go back up to the top of the Taron steps that weren’t part of the queue and then head right.
We wanted to do one of the water rides – it hadn’t been the warmest morning but the sun had come out in the afternoon and we had a couple of euros to use the dryers. I didn’t give a second thought to the fact that I was wearing my Converse as usual and they are very much not waterproof.
We opted for Chiapas and I would say it is the best water ride I have been on to date. We were the middle two in a boat of six. There are lap restraints which are really really secure. I would advise you to get your legs where you want them before the bar locks because it was very hard to move after it did and I am quite small. We had a couple of small drops, a backwards one and then the big one. We got absolutely drenched and to top it all I found I had lost the two euros I had (probably left them in the lockers at FLY). I did get a few funny looks when I sat on a bench to remove and wring out my socks! It didn’t ruin the day though – it was worth it. We didn’t attempt River Quest after this as we didnt want to be soaking wet in the train back to Cologne.
Raik is a short but fun boomerang coaster – not much to say about this one.
Colorado Adventure is your classic mine train style ride. This is billed as a family coaster but be warned it is fast and quite rough – you really do get thrown around. We were excited to be given seats in the front carriage. We really enjoyed it and its a long enough ride to justify a bit of a wait.
In Geister Rikscha we weren’t sure what was going on – it seemed to be a ghost train but based on Chinese mythology. I’m pretty sure I would have cried on this one as a child – some of the characters had quite scary faces. As an adult it was quite a relaxing sit down. I feel an interactive element would improve this one.
We ended the day with a final ride on F.LY, then went to queue for the bus just before 5pm. We made it back to Brühl with no problems and then onto Cologne after a short delay. The trains are very busy at that time fo day so be prepared to stand all the way. The park is so easy to get to – we will definitely be back as its easy to do this one as a weekend trip from the UK and go straight to the park from the airport.
There were quite a few shows that we didn’t have time to see and I would have liked to have had more time to explore the different themed areas. Each area has a shop but its so well themed that they are quite well hidden! We went to the main shop in Berlin on the way out where I acquired a F.L.Y. fleece and a fridge magnet. Prices were pretty reasonable compared to the UK (this weekend I just paid £8 for a pin at Alton Towers)
What we really liked about the park was the fact that everything was low down. Nothing really went up high – the only time I really felt at height was on F.L.Y. and even then it isn’t that high. Everything is really cleverly integrated into the surrounding buildings and theming. The park is surprisingly small as well so you can walk say from F.L.Y. at the start to Taron at the back in around 10 minutes which is excellent and allows for a lot of re-rides. We visited on a Friday at the end of April (outside of the UK school holidays) and the park was not crowded at all.
Look out for our Movie Park blog- coming soon.
compass and coaster 
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