After our eye-opening trip to the Würzburg Volksfest we knew that we wanted to make the most of the larger one happening later on in Nuremberg. We decided to spend most of our Saturday there even though we were leaving for Amsterdam early the next morning – and I’m glad we did. We arrived early via regional train, stopped briefly at the (very disappointing) Nuremberg Easter Market, and then made it to the fairgrounds nearly an hour before the attractions opened, which gave us plenty of time to walk around, take photos, and decide which rides were going to be a priority.
We had barely stepped inside the fairgrounds before Mr. Meena saw something very exciting: a Schwarzkopf coaster called Teststrecke (Test Track). It was made by Anton Schwarzkopf, a German engineer and ride designer. As we approached the ride Mr. Meena enlightened me to the fact that Schwarzkopf coasters are kind of a big deal to coaster enthusiasts.
This coaster had been at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom (which we visited last year) until 2008 and it’s been traveling around Germany and the Netherlands ever since. These portable coasters tend to be pretty impressive (and this one taught us to scour the other Volksfest websites to look for them). I rode Teststrecke with Mr. Meena twice and then waited while he watched it for a while. This was the first time I heard lots of Germans cursing on a roller coaster.
Before this experience he had only ridden four Schwarzkopf coasters (for context, he’s ridden 37 B&M coasters). While there are plenty of Schwarzkopf coasters around, they are older, harder to find, and some of them are no longer operating. I’m glad we unexpectedly found this one; it was the highlight of the fair.
My favorite ride at the Volksfest was something quite different, and definitely something that Mr. Meena needed his dizziness medicine for. We’d never seen anything like it and I would wager it’s a rather rare type of ride.
Meet Predator Loffelhardt: absolute madness of the best variety. It lifts the carriage full of riders upwards through intense hydraulics and gears and then proceeds to spin in every direction you can imagine. You’ll get the idea from this video I took:
The ride, like others we’ve been on at German fairs, had an unusually long ride time. However, not many people were riding it. I’m not sure if we were just really early or if the ride was too intimidating, but the ride wasn’t quite half-full when we got on and there must have been nearly 100 Germans standing in front of the ride with gaping jaws and upheld smartphones. Mr. Meena was also going a little nuts (because he was happy) so maybe that was why they were watching so avidly.
What makes this even crazier is the behavior that we observed from the ride operators. We sat at the Die Grüne Bar directly across from the ride while we waited for them to finish testing.
We saw the ride operators smoking on the platform and walking around underneath the carriage as it was spinning – an absolutely terrible idea, by the way. They even walked around precariously close to the ride when we were on it and it was moving. They were so chill about doing something that is kind of dangerous and they weren’t the only ride operators that we saw acting that way. We also got a little extra ride time due to someone clearly not knowing how to properly start it, which was rather funny.
We saw more strange things that day than I can properly recount, but I’ll share one more extraordinary story with you here. Throughout the day we had spotted a woman in a blush wedding gown and a man in a tuxedo having a photoshoot at the Volksfest. They were riding the swings, walking around, and posing for photos everywhere – including this ride.
We got on the ride while they were taking photos and Mr. Meena shouted “Congratulations”! We smiled and laughed until we realized that they weren’t leaving… they remained standing directly in front of the ride as it started! What you need to know about this sleigh-themed ride (which caused Mr. Meena to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the top of his lungs) is that it swings outward as it speeds up, which meant that the two newlyweds were hardly more than a foot away from it!
I felt like this was especially dangerous (read: stupid) because of the brides long wedding gown and the wind that was being generated by the ride. One snag and she could have been seriously injured. I could have almost reached out and touched her if I had wanted to make a point. They took photos for about half of the ride before meandering off with their photographer. Shortly after they left I noticed a Mom and daughter casually walking close to the ride as they went up the ramp and talked with the operator. My only conclusion is that these people don’t understand how dangerous these rides could be! I’m amazed no one got hurt that day.
We only rode a few other things that day (these fairs can get expensive quickly) and truly had a great time. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out my photo gallery of the Nuremberg Volksfest!
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looks fun!