Coaster Dorada 2003: Days 6 & 7 - Warner Brothers Movie World

Day 6 & 7 - Warner Brothers Movie World

The Park

We were here for one and a half days (a Saturday and Sunday) before heading off to the airport for home again. WB Movie World is a fairly small park (you can walk around in it around 10 minutes) but has a fair number of attractions for its size, and also contains the best coasters of the trip! The themed areas are: Hollywood Boulevard, The Studios, Super Heroes World (including Metropolis and Gotham City - since the park has Six Flags management, guess what coasters are there!), Old West, and Cartoon Village. The theming and buildings are very impressive, especially Gotham City which is the most sinister rendition I've seen yet.

The Coasters

Stunt Fall. Vekoma Super Invertigo. A story of evolution.... First Vekoma gave us the Boomerang, which is probably the most successful off-the-shelf coaster ever. It has a small footprint, is relatively cheap, and has a high thrill factor. A train is pulled backwards up a slope, then is let go and races through a boomerang element (cobra roll) then a vertical loop before rising up another slope where it is caught and pulled up to the very top. Then it's let go and does the whole thing again backwards. It was OK the first time, and newly-built ones are quite rideable, but usually they just succeed in giving you bruises on the sides of your head.

Then they gave us the Invertigo - exactly the same as the Boomerang except the trains are suspended below the track with your feet dangling free. I don't know why, but this is infinitely better than the Boomerang. It's smooth, and it's actually quite scary. And now comes the Super Invertigo. It's a lot bigger than the standard Invertigo, and also the slopes at either end of the ride are completely vertical. Two towers reaching 200ft into the sky in fact, this is actually a very impressive sight! On entering the park first thing in the morning, we all headed straight for Stunt Fall as we had heard nightmare stories about its capacity and breakdown problems. We saw it taking its test runs, and for starters I couldn't believe how slow it was going around the boomerang element! If there had been a slight breeze, I'm pretty sure it would have stalled. You can see this in the video below. Anyway, I took my first ride on it, and I was completely blown away. I can't believe that I actually like a Vekoma coaster!

stunt_fall.mpg 831K

I rode it in the front and back seats, and both were stunning. It's the vertical towers that make this ride. In the front seat, as you are pulled backwards, you are there lying face down with absolutely nothing beneath you. When you are let go, all you can see is a hard concrete floor getting close and closer. And on the return journey, you are lying on your back facing upwards with the end of the track within a few feet, and knowing you are just about to freefall backwards 200ft. And in the back seat at the start of the ride when you are pulled to the top, the 3 second freefall while lying on your stomach facing straight down is simply delicious.

However, Vekoma haven't got it totally right! Shuttle coasters have a capacity problem anyway, but this ride has two further problems. The first is the rather strange seating arrangement. Instead of pairs of seats in a single row, we have two seats in the first row, then two seats in the second row but staggered so that they are outside the seats in front. The third row has the two seats back in the middle, then the fourth row has the staggered seats. This is meant to improve the view for people not in the front row, which it does to some extent, but the seats on the far side of the train are difficult to reach when you're boarding. This causes confusion on the platform. Also, there are two seat belts to be fastened, as well as the usual overhead harness, and they must be fastened in the right order otherwise you can't reach the one that you haven't fastened. Again, this causes tremendous confusion and many delays as people work out what they're supposed to do. I'm sure a less complicated harness system could have been used.

Superman. B&M floorless. And another stunner of a ride! I had ridden two floorlesses before - to be honest, I think they're a bit of a gimmick and there wouldn't really be any difference to the ride experience if they were just ordinary B&M speedcoaster trains which are highly exposed anyway. And although B&M multi-inversion coasters all tend to have exactly the same elements, this one is a bit different. You can't see the ride from outside the entrance, so it's actually a surprise to find out what elements it has. The first thing that caught me unawares was the straight and very steep first drop, as I was expecting a curved drop. It also has one of those tiny little dips just to get it off the lift chain before the main drop - and if you're in the back of the train this serves to whip you over the apex at tremendous speed and you get a major amount of floating airtime. What, airtime on a B&M! Yes, it's very unusual and very welcome.

A huge vertical loop follows, then an Immelman (reverse diving loop), a zero-G roll, a cobra roll, and then an airtime hill. A couple of interlocked corkscrews, another airtime hill, and then a helix. A fantastic coaster, my favourite of the trip. An ERS first thing on the Sunday morning rounded off the trip perfectly. However, even though the ride entrance is well done, the the queue line is a very good interpretation of the Daily Planet's offices, the coaster itself is just plonked carelessly on a bit of waste land! See the pictures above. Also...

Six Flags Moment #5
As is unfortunately common in Spanish parks, this ride operates pre-assigned seating and you can't sit where you want. Also, there two sets of yellow lines in the loading bays. One just after the air gate, and one is at the front, at the opening of the bay. You get told off if you step onto or over the first yellow line and into the loading bay! I am at a loss to explain why the loading bays are so dangerous that you can't step into them. If being several yards away from the track is still not far enough to be safe, why don't they just move the loading bays slightly further back?

Batman: The Pursuit. B&M inverted. A Batman: The Ride clone, and one of the better ones as it seemed to be running faster and more intense than any of the others I've ridden. My Nbr 2 coaster of the trip!

Tom and Jerry. Zierer Tivoli junior coaster.

Wild Wild West. RCCA woodie. Impressive looking, but suffering from the same blandness of landscaping as Superman. A nice curving first drop, and some small airtime hills, but not a particularly inspiring coaster in my opinion. The theming of the queue line was also a bit lack-lustre. The first part consists of some bare corridors, then when you go through an open doorway into the main themed room (decorated in a Victorian style), you can see wallpaper wrapped around the corner and stapled to the wall, not very tidily. And decoration was only partly complete in the room itself, the floor and ceiling being bare. However, a nice touch in that there is a full-size coaster train there with what appears to be a seat having been ejected!

Six Flags Moment #6
It seems to be usual practice in this park to open the coasters with only one train. This obviously makes the queues lengthy and tedious. It's only when the queue line reaches 45 minutes that they decide to put another train on, and that causes another 15 minute delay. This happened while we were queuing on the staircase after the Victorian room, and many people who were waiting got very impatient when they realised the queue was not going anywhere soon. Some people left the queue, and others just sat down on the floor getting thoroughly cheesed off. I can't see why they don't have two trains running right from the start.

Other attractions

Rio Bravo is an excellent reversing log flume by Intamin. Not that you'd know that before getting on it, as apart from the final drop, the ride cannot be seen at all. But since the boats looked similar to Storm Force 10 at Drayton Manor, we thought that it might just have some turntables in there! It's basically quite a standard flume ride, and travels through some old west style ghost town scenes, and Indian reservations. The best bits are the final drop as you can see in the picture, which is extremely tall and steep, and even though there is huge splash at the bottom, it doesn't get you absolutely drenched which is a blessing. Also the reversing bit - skip quickly to the next paragraph if you don't want to know what happens there! After leaving the top of the first lift hill which takes you into an artificial mountain, the boat lands on a turntable, which turns it round and sends it down the next drop backwards. But a huge surprise in store as you expect a splash at the bottom. But instead, it's dry and it actually rises up again and over a bunny hop, which gives everyone some airtime. An airtime hill on a log flume no less! Then a further drop where you eventually get the splash. A really great element. But the queue for this ride peaked at 2hrs 40 minutes at one stage during our visit!

This is a Vekoma Haunted Swing called Hotel Embrujado. It features a very well-done queuing area of a rather sinister hotel foyer. The pre-show was in Spanish so I didn't understand what the story was, but the main ride consists of a huge wedding cake and ghosts, so I expect it's a wedding celebration that went wrong. It has exactly the same ride sequence as Hex at Alton Towers, my favourite haunted swing, but lacking in music and intricate decoration it didn't have quite as much impact.

Six Flags Moment #7
In another moment of capacity-reducing craziness, the operators were not taking groups of riders through each stage of the attraction in parallel. One group would be taken into the pre-show, then into the main ride itself, and only then would another group be escorted through. This means that the queue is static for 10-15 minutes at a time. The main queueing area inside the building was completely full, and for a good proportion of the day the queueing rack outside was full too.

A number of spectacular stunt shows are to be seen at the park too, and I went to see the main central one situated on a lake against a backdrop of an oil-refinery or something, and featuring a large crane. You can see this in one of the pictures of Stunt Fall above. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to see much of it as there were far too many people crowded around the viewing areas and there was no good vantage point.

There is a rapids ride called The Acme Factory Tour. This was a great deal of fun, and featured quite a few rough stretches of water. However, the major thrills come from water fountains being sprayed into the boat (from onlookers too...) and contraptions dumping water onto the boat, as opposed to the actual rapids experience.

Six Flags Moment #8
The ride was actually closed when we went over to it, but as we were walking away it suddenly opened. We ran over as quickly as we could as we knew the queue would get horrendously long pretty quickly. So we got onto it with no problem, but when the ride came to an end the boat in front of us got jammed after the riders had got out. So a queue soon developed of boats trying to enter the station. Our boat had stopped just poking onto the exit platform, but even though the ride had stopped completely, the operators wouldn't let us out. We were sitting there for about 15 minutes just doing nothing, looking longingly at the gap in the boat where we could have stepped out onto the platform. You can see this gap in the photo. Eventually, someone 'official' came onto the platform, walked around for a bit, then told us to get out! What a waste of time.

Completing the arsenal of water rides, a giant splash ride called Cataratas Salvajes. There was also a ride called Los Carros de la Mina, for which the description in the park guide reads "Have you ever been in a mine in the wild west?". We tried desperately to find a mine train, but there was none to be found. Eventually, we realised that this ride was in fact a Breakdance!

Somewhat confusingly, Batman Knight Flight isn't the park's floorless coaster as it is in Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, but a simulator ride. It has a couple of pre-show rooms, the first of which somewhat bizarrely shows an advertisement film for the ride's sponsor, and the second has an animatronic figure of Batman. The film itself is a computer-graphics adventure of Batman outwitting a dimaond robbery...I think.

Six Flags Moment #9
Like Hotel Ebrujado, this ride was not being operated to anywhere near its capacity. The pre-show rooms have two sections so that two groups of people can be in there at the same time, and there are 4 simulators. However, only one group was being taken through at a time, and only one simulator was being used. Therefore only running at about 13% of its capacity. We waited 40 minutes, with only about 100 people in the queue.

Somewhat confusingly again, Riddler's Revenge is not a standup coaster as it is at Six Flags Magic Mountain, but a triple S&S Space Shot/Turbo Drop combo tower. Very tall towers too, but we did find that they weren't all equal. One of the towers was actually extremely weak, with not a very powerful shot and no airtime at the top. And that just happened to be the tower that was continually open!

Six Flags Moment #10
Although we saw all three towers being tested first thing in the morning in Combo mode (both a Shot and a Drop cycle), when the park opens to the public two of the towers are shut down until the queue reaches about 45 minutes. And no towers operate in Combo mode, only giving a Shot cycle. What is the point of buying Combo towers and then not using them? When asked if we could get a ride in Combo mode, an operator replied "If the boss says we switch to Combo mode, then we switch."

Pat on the Back #3
Regardless of the very odd way in which the rides at this park are operated, it must be said that the ride assistants do their utmost to ensure every seat on every ride is filled. They will search the queue line looking for people to fill empty seats. This could almost qualify for a Six Flags Moment actually, following the rules when common sense would tell you not to, as they will exhaustively search the length of the visible queue line looking for just one person, when it would be quicker to give up and just despatch the train. But I'll let that one go!

All in all, this was a park of mixed fortune. It features some of the best rides in Spain, and certainly three world-class coasters, but there are far too many Six Flags Moments.

Also visit the official WB Movie World web site.

Coaster Dorada 2003

Day 6 & 7 - Warner Brothers Movie World

The Park

The Coasters

Other attractions

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