Theme Park Discussion / Tusenfryd 25-05-'13

As some of you may know, I've been to Oslo in May and I visited Tusenfryd there. The first significant new park for me in years. My expectations were relatively high, and the park did not disappoint me. Tusenfryd has quite a lot of rides, is larger than I expected and the area is pretty. Tusenfryd is really expensive though, but that applies to all of Norway except for the muffin I bought at the airport. And bananas were okay.

Because I didn't have proper breakfast and I hate buses in general, I didn't really feel 100% when I arrived at the park. After years of experience with this health problem, I luckily overcame this in time to fully enjoy the park.

You've probably seen the park entrance before. In my opinion it's one of the most iconic theme park entrances in the world. The coaster-escalator interaction is simply brilliant!



Because I needed time to recover, we didn't immediately head for Speed Monster unlike the many 15 year olds that flooded the park. Instead, we went to the back of the park. On our way there we ran into Thundercoaster, a Vekoma wooden coaster. My expectations weren't very high despite the fun looking layout, because I don't like Robin Hood at Walibi World much. Thundercoaster, however, was surprisingly good. The layout is really cool, with a good mix of turns and steep hills and drops. Moreover, it makes good use of the hilly landscape. Based on this coaster, there definitely should be more Vekoma woodies.







The next stop was SuperSplash, my first experience with a coaster of this type. The ride is fun, period. The splash wasn't very wet, period. Just fun.



Speed Monster is calling me in the distance...



Uphill, we found a surprinsgly cute western village, on this picture without any other visitors as they were probably all in the queue for Speed Monster still. The village featured a fun kiddy coaster, Western-Expressen. Nothing too spectacular.



Didn't bother to wait for the train.



Speed Monster, again.





We skipped this coaster.



If you wonder were all the people are in these pictures... Most pictures above were made in the morning in the back half of the park. The next picture shows what it was like most of the day: quite crowded, lots of 15 year old kids.


So when the people started spreading, we headed for Speed Monster. Speed Monster is by far the most interesting coaster I've done in recent years, with the exception of Goliath which I've known for ten years. In order: lovely launch, lovely norwegian loop, lovely fast turn, lovely airtime hill through the loop, two lovely bückels with airtime in a row, lovely corkscrew and a tight turn to end the ride in style. Overall the ride is just lovely and I said 'wow' out loud a few times. We waited 40 minutes, but it was worth it definitely. And if that's not enough, the coaster is really photogenic.











Not everyone enjoys Speed Monster...



Our group



There's a cool winding path right under speed monster as an alternative for the escalator (wheelchairs), which offers some great photo opportunities. I recommend taking this path. Ironically I fucked up pretty much all the pictures I took here and the only pic in this report is one from Thundercoaster, not Speed Monster.



The only non-coaster major ride we did today was the log flume. It seemed boring at first, having a long flat section at the top and only one drop. However, the 'flat' part turned out to be a fast downhill section. I never saw that on a logflume before and it was definitely good fun. It's like log flume meets rapids. This ride wasn't all about the drop!


There were some major flatrides in the park, but we skipped them. Tusenfryd is full of nice views like this. The park is minimal but well composed, as we would say were this an RCT-park.



The only non-coaster non-flume ride we did was this small obstacle course/adventure trail with polyester trolls. This pic is not very representative of the trail, but I included it because it looks so retarded. We didn't have to wait for this ride.



This is the only time in my life where I saw activity at a balloon sling stand game thing. There were game stands all over the park and people were actually playing the games. I already knew that Norwegians had lots of money (because everything is fucking expensive), but apparently they spend all that money on absolutely shit. Besides wasting money on water balloons, everyone was carrying weird stuffed animals, plastic hats, stupid drinking cups and more shit like that. Depressing, really.



The last coaster we did was Loopen, an older compact Vekoma looping coaster. I did its twin Tornado at Hellendoorn years ago, and it wasn't a very smooth ride. I prepared for the worst, but somehow the ride was actually really smooth. I don't know how and why, but it was actually a good coaster. Surprise of the day!





Lastly, some more pics of Speed Monster because it's so badass.









Back from the park, I finally blew the dust off my coaster-count account and updated my favourites list. In honour of my briefly revived rollercoaster hobby, here are my new roller coaster top 10's. The wood list is finally starting to look like an actual top 10...

Wood
1. Troy (Toverland)
2. Rutschebanen (Bakken)
3. Joris en de Draak (Water) (Efteling)
4. Joris en de Draak (Vuur) (Efteling)
5. Thundercoaster (Tusenfryd)
6. Coaster Express (Parque Warner)
7. Robin Hood (Walibi World)
8. Rutschebanen (Tivoli Gardens)
9. Pegasus (Efteling)

Steel
1. Air (Alton Towers)
2. Nemesis (Alton Towers)
3. Goliath (Walibi World)
4. Superman / la [spanish crap] (Parque Warner)
5. Black Mamba (Phantasialand)
6. Speed Monster (Tusenfryd)
7. Batman la Fuga (Parque Warner)
8. Daemonen (Tivoli Gardens)
9. Teststrecke (travelling)
10. Tarántula (Parque de Atracciones)


This is a joke for people who understand Dutch.

Tussenfriet.

That second picture.

Nice, Liam. Looks like fun. That second to last picture is a cool pic, if a little disorientating.

Good stuff Liam. Enjoyable to read and nice pictures. The colours and greenery kinda reminded me of something I would like if built in RCT

I remember one super hot summer day at Europapark where they were battling with these water balloon sling shot thingies like crazy.

The picture of the Vekoma looper is fantastic! If only there was another train at the top of the lift. And Speed Monster has some serious path interaction there. 10/10.

Nice pictures! I love the Norwegian Loop, though I think Fahrenheit's is more appealing to me. If your favorite coaster is Air, I imagine you would LOVE Tatsu.

great report, somehow I'd not realized tusenfryd had a woodie so it was cool see that

i envy you europeans, mainly because you live in europe. and there are just so many amazing theme parks there! (also, somehow you all speak like 3 languages )