I’m not going to pretend like Schweinfurt’s Volksfest was impressive, because it wasn’t. At least not after we’d already been to the larger ones in Würzburg and Nürnberg. I was also a bit upset when I realized the people running the Schweinfurt Facebook page were using photos of the Volksfest from the previous year (without stating that they were doing so), which led me to believe there were different rides available than there actually were.
But it’s not every day that you can walk out your front door, cut across town on your own two feet, and arrive at a Schwarzkopf roller coaster, so that’s what we did. The coaster I’m referencing is Alpina Bahn, and Mr. Meena was very excited about riding it.
In case you missed my previous spiel about Schwarzkopf coasters, the name means that it was made by the German engineer Anton Schwarzkopf and makes coaster enthusiasts go kind of crazy. This particular coaster is special because it’s the biggest non-inverting traveling Schwarzkopf coaster. It’s a family oriented roller coaster that first started touring German festivals as Himalaya Bahn in 1983. While I’m impressed with these massive portable coasters that Germany loves so much, this one was very rough. You could say it was sponsored by Advil.
It provided a great view of Schweinfurt from its height of 89 feet, but I wouldn’t ride it again due to the pain factor. However, I did enjoy the theming that seemed to focus on spring time in Bavaria.
After the Al-pain-a Bahn we wandered over to the huge Roth Bier drinking area, because, as I’ve mentioned before, these festivals are a huge excuse reason to drink. I mean that with plenty of love, Germany. We ate bratwurst mit pommes as we watched the (once-again) too pricey Ferris wheel turn.
American pop music was playing loudly from speakers on the swings. These festivals usually have great sound systems. But we decided not to ride anything else because we are planning on spending lots of money at Weiner Prater in Vienna this weekend. We did a circle around the Volksfest and saw everything there was to see in about five minutes, including this really creepy violin player.
He was next to a haunted ride where suspended trains were operating with their own motors; imagine a miniature, scary version of Arthur from Europa Park. I’d never seen anything like it, especially as a traveling ride. We felt like the cost for the ride was quite high, considering, so we didn’t ride it. We won’t be nearly as stingy on our impeding trip to Prater in Austria. Let me tell you how excited I am about it.
There are so many reasons that we want to visit the Wiener Prater amusement park in Vienna, Austria. One reason is that a section of the park, called the Wurstelprater, is the oldest theme park that is still in existence today. It opened in 1766 and has a world famous Ferris wheel called the Wiener Riesenrad. It’s free to get into the amusement park because you pay per ride, much like a Volksfest. Various traveling rides come and go from Wiener Prater over time, but there are currently 13 roller coasters there and (of course) Mr. Meena plans to ride every one of them. However, none of these reasons are the main inspiration for our trip… this is:
Photo by Michael licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
That beauty, my friends, is (have you guessed it yet?) a coaster called Olympia Looping. It’s the crème de la crème of Schwarzkopf coasters and it’s been touring Europe since its debut at Oktoberfest in 1989. It’s considered by some to be the most iconic roller coaster in the world. Not only that, but it’s the largest operating transportable roller coaster in the world, it has five (count ‘em!) loops, and it gives you just over 5 G’s (which is enough to make your vision dim at the edges). Olympia Looping is an incredible feat of engineering that I can’t wait to ride. We’ve budgeted €100 for it alone – so that we can ride it at least five times each. Once per loop, ja?
Photo by Oliver licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
The coaster has been at Wiener Prater since March of this year and will remain there until August, which is an unusually long stay for the traveling coaster. While the coaster is promoted as part of the 250 year anniversary celebration for Wiener Prater, there are rumors that the cost of transporting the coaster has become so high that it may either retire or stop traveling after Oktoberfest this year. I certainly hope that’s not the case, but we didn’t want to wait any longer to ride it anyway!
What do you think? Would you ride it?
We were just on Vienna last month but sadly we only rode the Weiner Reiesenrad, def need to go back and try out some other coasters!
Well, riding the Ferris is certainly important! But I also hope you get to try out some of the coasters as well. 🙂
you do a lot of roller coaster parks?:)
Yes, my husband is a coaster fanatic. He's been on over 200 different roller coasters!