Europe Part 9 - Port Aventura - May 25, 2008

Below are just some of the photos from this part. See all of them with high-res versions at Flickr.

57 Port Aventura photos - CLICK HERE.




Welcome to the ugliest day of the trip. The rain started coming down right before I boarded the Renfe train from Barcelona (like Europa Park, I cut it too close and missed my first train), and would continue throughout the day.



There won't be a whole lot of pictures from what seemed to be a very picturesque park.



Costa Caribe is the water park next door, but Port Aventura was essentially a water park on this day.



First ride of the day: Tami-Tami, the junior coaster.



Pull that hood tight and try to survive the rain pelting down on you.



Next, Dragon Khan, which was the first coaster to go upside down 8 times. Looks like a walk-on, right? Not at all. While the line wasn't bad, what you see here is that the last four rows of each train went empty all day. Apparently the park has a policy regarding that when it rains. 7 rows on the train... 3 filled...



My one ride on Dragon Khan was in the front seat. I'm sure it was a pretty good ride, but it's hard to enjoy in a downpour.



El Diablo Tren de la Mina, the mine train, may be my favorite coaster in the park. It is really long and pretty well themed. And since it isn't that fast, it's somewhat tolerable in the rain.



None of the food here looked too appealing, but I settled on the "Wild West" themed place.



This was the only time on the trip that I tried a cheeseburger, just for the sake of experimentation. It was, in fact, terrible.



They had this Spanish band on stage playing American country songs. It was HILARIOUS. All of the people were really getting into it, though.



After lunch was Stampida, the park's racing CCI woodies.



They were filling more seats than Dragon Khan, but still not filling the last couple of cars.



The two coasters have really cool layouts, and Stampida seems like it has the potential to be an excellent ride, but these trains just absolutely ruin it. Apparently they replaced the PTC trains with these abominations recently. These trains seriously give the old Son of Beast trains a run for their money as the worst wooden coaster trains ever designed.



This is the only part of the ride that isn't filled with pain.



The open air design of the trains is cool, but they are too solid and don't flex at all, transferring every single jolt in the wood into your body. The lapbars are unpadded and absolutely destroy you in turns. Such a tragedy.



Next door is a far superior woodie, the junior CCI Tomahawk.



This ride rules! It's really short, but gets pretty wild near the end and even has a couple good airtime moments.



I loved the do not enter signs they had over here. Some sort of space man salute.



The best ride in the park is the Intamin drop tower.



This thing is nearly 300 feet tall. There are 5 cars, some of which are the standard sit downs, and some the stand-up floorless. Some of them tilt as well, so there are a few different experiences.



For the briefest of moments, the rain stopped.



This is definitely one of the better themed drop rides out there.



Everything in this park is themed very well. The park was a joint effort between Busch, Universal, and Tussauds. From what I can tell, it is basically a Universal park without using it in the name. There were a few Universal Studios gift shops.



The mine train was one of the few rides that seemed worth a re-ride.



One consistent with European parks is that they all seem to really go the distance with mine trains.



Each one I rode on the trip was unique and a lot of fun.



Templo del Fuego was some sort of show from what I could tell. I went over to it twice at the times that were listed, and both times the line had already been shut off, so I skipped it rather than hanging around to try again.



A lot of times I enjoy going to amusement parks in the rain, but I would much rather have had clear skies and long lines I think at Port Aventura.



Sea Odyssey was a simulator ride, and a good escape from the rain.



A lot of money was clearly put into this, and it was fairly elaborate, but the actual movie was really cheesy and uninteresting. Some characters spoke in English, some in Spanish, and some I think in Catalonian, so I guess everybody gets to understand a small bit of what is going on.



I didn't ride any of the water rides, but I might as well have since I was already drenched.



Sadly, Furius Baco did not open all day due to the weather.



It looked really cool, but I had been told by a number of people that it is really rough, so I didn't feel too bad.



It still would have been nice to get a ride on it since it is the only one of its kind in the world and it just looked really interesting.



Up to this point on the trip, though, all rides had been open, so I really couldn't complain.



I left the park at 4:30 to take the train (which was late and overcrowded) back to Barcelona. The park was open much later, but I had done everything, and just wanted to get dried off. This seemed like a really nice park, but I think I need to go back again some day in nicer weather to truly enjoy it. It also lacks a great coaster, and I suspect that I would feel the same way even if Furius Baco had been open.

Next Up - Barcelona



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