Trip Reports
Liseberg 03/07/14
Europe is by no means lacking in top notch parks and attractions, but it can’t be denied that we don’t quite match up to our American cousins when it comes to the very best roller coasters on earth. So any park with a ride considered to be right up there amongst the best, and is only a few hours away, is high up on my bucket list. For this reason Liseberg, in Gothenburg, Sweden, has always been in my peripherals when planning trips. But when the park announced its new-for-2014 ride and it became apparent that they might have two such rides, it jumped right to the top of the pile.
Gothenburg is Sweden’s second largest city, after the capital Stockholm, and flights are very easy and regular from London. The main airport, Landvetter, is about 25 minutes outside of the city centre, where the park is located, and you can either get a taxi (as I did on the way there) or a bus (as I did on the way back) straight to the entrance of the park.
I know there are a number of real ‘city centre’ parks around the world, but this was my first, and compared to a park like Alton Towers it’s quite a welcome change. From driving along a typical city flyover you suddenly come side-by-side with Balder; the park’s large wooden roller coaster. The huge drop tower, AtmosFear, is taller than any building in Gothenburg, and the brand new Helix wraps around the entirety of the namesake Liseberg hill.
Gothenburg is Sweden’s second largest city, after the capital Stockholm, and flights are very easy and regular from London. The main airport, Landvetter, is about 25 minutes outside of the city centre, where the park is located, and you can either get a taxi (as I did on the way there) or a bus (as I did on the way back) straight to the entrance of the park.
I know there are a number of real ‘city centre’ parks around the world, but this was my first, and compared to a park like Alton Towers it’s quite a welcome change. From driving along a typical city flyover you suddenly come side-by-side with Balder; the park’s large wooden roller coaster. The huge drop tower, AtmosFear, is taller than any building in Gothenburg, and the brand new Helix wraps around the entirety of the namesake Liseberg hill.
You can barely tell what's what on the jam packed hill, especially with the new Helix (dark green)
The park is fairly easy to navigate as it’s quite small, and feels like it has two distinctive sections: one is the hill, which is home to two of the coasters and a hand full of flat rides, and then the lower section, which houses the majority of restaurants, stalls, music stages and a kids’ zone as well as the two water rides and other two coasters.
I began by trekking up the hill and onto Uppswinget, an S&S Screaming Swing. It’s exactly the same model as Rush at Thorpe Park, ie. literally a huge swing, but it’s much better than Rush because of its location. It’s perched right on the edge of the hill and so you are staring down a sheer 200ft drop on one end of the arc, and on the other you are completely surrounded by the roller coaster track that engulfs the hill. Add to that a lengthier ride cycle and you have one fantastic ride.
I decided to put off the much anticipated coasters for a bit longer and next hit up AtmosFear. This ride was originally an observation tower, but in 2011 the park decided to convert it to a colossal drop ride. Standing at 381ft, with a drop of 300ft, it’s Europe’s largest, surpassing Hurakan Condor at PortAventura. Add to that the fact that it’s perched right at the top of the hill and you have a very meaty drop ride. The theming is excellent; the name gives little away as to what it is, but it’s very clearly supposed to be some kind of secretive scientific experiment. It’s an atmosphere much like Saw at Thorpe Park but a little more detailed and thorough. The drop itself isn't out of this world, mainly because the carriage is a large ring suspended a few feet out from the tower, meaning it has large wind resistance, but the sheer height makes it terrifying enough.
I began by trekking up the hill and onto Uppswinget, an S&S Screaming Swing. It’s exactly the same model as Rush at Thorpe Park, ie. literally a huge swing, but it’s much better than Rush because of its location. It’s perched right on the edge of the hill and so you are staring down a sheer 200ft drop on one end of the arc, and on the other you are completely surrounded by the roller coaster track that engulfs the hill. Add to that a lengthier ride cycle and you have one fantastic ride.
I decided to put off the much anticipated coasters for a bit longer and next hit up AtmosFear. This ride was originally an observation tower, but in 2011 the park decided to convert it to a colossal drop ride. Standing at 381ft, with a drop of 300ft, it’s Europe’s largest, surpassing Hurakan Condor at PortAventura. Add to that the fact that it’s perched right at the top of the hill and you have a very meaty drop ride. The theming is excellent; the name gives little away as to what it is, but it’s very clearly supposed to be some kind of secretive scientific experiment. It’s an atmosphere much like Saw at Thorpe Park but a little more detailed and thorough. The drop itself isn't out of this world, mainly because the carriage is a large ring suspended a few feet out from the tower, meaning it has large wind resistance, but the sheer height makes it terrifying enough.
AtmosFear is not a ride to be messed with
Finally my excitement could be contained no longer and I got into the queue for the shiny new Helix. Helix is one of the most exciting roller coaster projects in Europe ever, and understandably there has been a great deal of hype since it was announced two years ago. The ride is built by Mack and is a model they dub a “Megacoaster.” This name usually refers to very traditional rides around the 150ft mark with large drops, airtime hills and no inversions, but Mack’s definition is quite different. The first of its kind was Blue Fire at Europa Park (who are owned by Mack and thus showcase all of their prototypes, those successful and those not), which featured a magnetic launch, four inversions and most crucially an unbelievably smooth ride in its armchair like seats, equipped only with lap bars. Despite the launch and the loops, the ride is very much a family friendly thrill ride, and is very highly rated because it’s just pure fun. So popular was it that Mack was commissioned to build no fewer than three copies of it around the globe, but until now none with new layouts. Helix is the first to explore more of what the ride type is capable of, and Liseberg really have gone all out with the design.
Originally they had planned a colossal 280ft version, with a standard chain lift, which would’ve become the tallest coaster in Europe. They felt that it would’ve dominated the skyline too much, and although it certainly would’ve been a fantastic ride, it really does seem like the version they settled on is much more balanced and probably better. The queue line begins in the same indoor hub as AtmosFear (and of course a Burger King, see later on) and has a very uber-modern, techno vibe about it. The line does feel a little bit like a garden centre, but it’s all perfectly pleasant. There’s even a downloadable app just for the ride which you play in the queue; your scores come up on the screens as you move along via the ride’s very own wifi. Running two trains, the line moved very quickly and I was soon sitting in the very back seat of the train. The seats are extremely comfortable; they really engulf you, and the simple lapbar pulls down from above you and has a nice hand rest to grip on for dear life to.
Originally they had planned a colossal 280ft version, with a standard chain lift, which would’ve become the tallest coaster in Europe. They felt that it would’ve dominated the skyline too much, and although it certainly would’ve been a fantastic ride, it really does seem like the version they settled on is much more balanced and probably better. The queue line begins in the same indoor hub as AtmosFear (and of course a Burger King, see later on) and has a very uber-modern, techno vibe about it. The line does feel a little bit like a garden centre, but it’s all perfectly pleasant. There’s even a downloadable app just for the ride which you play in the queue; your scores come up on the screens as you move along via the ride’s very own wifi. Running two trains, the line moved very quickly and I was soon sitting in the very back seat of the train. The seats are extremely comfortable; they really engulf you, and the simple lapbar pulls down from above you and has a nice hand rest to grip on for dear life to.
A huge airtime hill straddles Lisebergbanan's lift hill, with the Norwegian loop in the background
The ride’s station is elevated and so the train starts by dropping down straight away and into a corkscrew. At the back the drop is excellent and the corkscrew is nice and jerky. There are then a couple of meandering helices, which are bizarrely a little rattley, before you hit the first launch. This is the slower of the two launches, and it really doesn’t feel...well, like anything to be honest. These magnetic launches are not supposed to be a competitor to Intamin’s or S&S’s massive hydraulic/pneumatic versions; they’re really just to generate speed in a short space quite efficiently and get the ride moving. There’s then a zero g roll before the first signature element; a huge Norwegian loop that drops right to the base of the hill. This double inverting element looks like a pretzel, and pulls some very mean forces. There’s then the first dosage of real ejector airtime before another Helix and then the main launch, which hits 62mph. It’s still very weak, but that’s really not the point of the ride. You rocket up into the inverted top hat ( think Stealth at Thorpe Park, but upside down at the top) which gives a stunning upside down view of the park. There’s then the mega airtime hill, which really launches you out of your seat and then some excellent s-bends before the very final inline twist.
Helix's highest point: the inverted top hat
As you can tell it’s a very long ride (4531ft), and it doesn’t let up from start to finish. The blend of positive g, negative g, laterals and speed is unlike anything I’ve done and it has shot right up into my top 5 coasters. If I’m being brutally honest, there isn’t a part of the ride that really blew me away. Nothing is bad, but the launches were a little slow, the airtime isn’t as powerful as a ride like Goliath at Walibi Holland and the inversions not as forceful as a B&M multilooper. Obviously its stand out feature is that it actually does all three of those things, whereas the other rides I mentioned only do one, so it’s only a minor criticism. In fact, if it did them all that well it would probably be the best ride in the World. I hopped back on and tried the front seat, which only has a few differences: the drop out of the station is virtually non-existent, but the three airtime hills are a lot stronger. Obviously the view is much better too.
Before AtmosFear was converted to a drop ride the park had two standard S&S drop/shot towers, and for some reason it has decided to keep both despite them being a little redundant now. The shot tower is typically rubbish and feels about half the height of AtmosFear (both S&S versions are quoted on the map as being 200ft compared to AtmosFear’s 381ft) but bizarrely the drop version feels gigantic. I think it must just be because it backs onto a forest and the highway behind the park, which is much lower than the park itself, and the drop is very powerful.
Kanonen is the park’s Intamin accelerator coaster, the model I mentioned earlier as having powerful launches. This one is actually pretty much the smallest and slowest, and it gets a lot of stick from the roller coaster community. I can’t see why; it is very small, but that’s just how it is, and it does a lot more with the track than many of the bigger versions, which just launch, send you up, send you down and finish. This tiny ride crams in a loop and an inline twist as well as bumps and turns into the circuit and is well worth a couple of rides.
Before AtmosFear was converted to a drop ride the park had two standard S&S drop/shot towers, and for some reason it has decided to keep both despite them being a little redundant now. The shot tower is typically rubbish and feels about half the height of AtmosFear (both S&S versions are quoted on the map as being 200ft compared to AtmosFear’s 381ft) but bizarrely the drop version feels gigantic. I think it must just be because it backs onto a forest and the highway behind the park, which is much lower than the park itself, and the drop is very powerful.
Kanonen is the park’s Intamin accelerator coaster, the model I mentioned earlier as having powerful launches. This one is actually pretty much the smallest and slowest, and it gets a lot of stick from the roller coaster community. I can’t see why; it is very small, but that’s just how it is, and it does a lot more with the track than many of the bigger versions, which just launch, send you up, send you down and finish. This tiny ride crams in a loop and an inline twist as well as bumps and turns into the circuit and is well worth a couple of rides.
Kanonen's baby top hat, with Balder behind
One of the most intelligent bits of money extraction is the carnival-style stalls. These are omnipresent at UK parks; Thorpe and Alton are littered with basketball hoops, hook-a-duck, and ‘knock the cans down’ style games, which are rarely won and to be honest rarely played (although you always see the odd few people carrying around gigantic soft toy sharks or Rastafarian bananas). Liseberg has a few of these, with similar stuffed toy prizes, but they were also virtually deserted. However the other kind of game they have was much more popular. The idea is simply roulette: a huge wheel is spun and lands on a certain number. There are about 10 places in front on the stall, each with five numbers. You can pay for a place, or you can pay for just one number. But the trick is in the prize. Instead of offering boring stuffed toys, each stall offers a brand of chocolate, and the prizes are huge. I mean really big; the Toblerone was 2.1kg. There were about ten of these scattered across the park, all always very busy, all with a different chocolate brand. For that reason there were a lot of people walking around with these massive snacks, so it made it seem like everyone was winning. I wasn’t particularly in the mood for eating a newborn baby’s weight in M&Ms, and also didn’t really have room to store what looked like a cinderblock of Milka in my hand luggage, but even I was seriously tempted to play. I didn’t. I settled for a regular Ben and Jerry’s instead from the Helix/AtmosFear hub:
I got a medium because I was feeling healthy
The eating set-up in Liseberg is bizarre. If you like Burger King (I don’t) then you’re in luck: There are no fewer than four locations within the park, and unbelievably every one of them was packed at all times of the day. However, there are then a number of more upmarket sitdown restaurants: some buffets, some flame grills and even an exclusively vegetarian restaurant. In between there are some typical candy floss and hot dog stalls. The entire park is beautiful; there are vast number of tiny little shops, some selling regular merchandise tat, others selling genuinely interesting artefacts and trinkets. It’s well worth taking half an hour so just to explore every nook and cranny.
At last I got into the queue for my most anticipated ride of the day: Balder, an Intamin prefab woodie. This is the other ride that is considered to be one of the very best in the world, and has been consistently voted as being a top 8 wooden coaster in its 11 years of operation. It’s not as big as some of its rivals, and it honestly doesn’t look like much, but it is simply phenomenal. These prefab woodies are special because they’re laser made in the factory and snapped together like steel roller coasters at the park, unlike traditional wooden rides which are hand laid on site, and it means they’re very smooth. Some people claim they’re too smooth and aren’t really wooden coasters, but Balder is no smoother than Tonnerre de Zeus, my favourite traditional woodie. From the start of the first drop until the brakes you spend half of your time being crushed into your seat and the other half flung from it; it’s just airtime hill after airtime hill, and although it isn’t ridiculously powerful (I imagine this is why it doesn’t quite compare to its bigger brothers, but I haven’t been on them yet) it is very consistent. It isn’t quite as good as Goliath at Walibi Holland, and so has gone into my number 2 spot, but it is still a world class ride.
At last I got into the queue for my most anticipated ride of the day: Balder, an Intamin prefab woodie. This is the other ride that is considered to be one of the very best in the world, and has been consistently voted as being a top 8 wooden coaster in its 11 years of operation. It’s not as big as some of its rivals, and it honestly doesn’t look like much, but it is simply phenomenal. These prefab woodies are special because they’re laser made in the factory and snapped together like steel roller coasters at the park, unlike traditional wooden rides which are hand laid on site, and it means they’re very smooth. Some people claim they’re too smooth and aren’t really wooden coasters, but Balder is no smoother than Tonnerre de Zeus, my favourite traditional woodie. From the start of the first drop until the brakes you spend half of your time being crushed into your seat and the other half flung from it; it’s just airtime hill after airtime hill, and although it isn’t ridiculously powerful (I imagine this is why it doesn’t quite compare to its bigger brothers, but I haven’t been on them yet) it is very consistent. It isn’t quite as good as Goliath at Walibi Holland, and so has gone into my number 2 spot, but it is still a world class ride.
The final ride of the day was Lisebergbanan; the park’s oldest major ride. It’s a Zierer built, Schwarzkopf designed coaster considered by many to be a classic, and it is very decent ride considering its age. The first time I was caught up in a deluge of biblical proportions and had to physically shield my face with my hand it was so painful, and because of the wet the ride ran ridiculously quickly. Later on when it had dried up it wasn’t as fast sadly, but it’s still a fun, and extremely long ride.
Lisebergbanan maybe 24 years old, but it's no kiddie ride
I had prebooked my park ticket online, and one of the perks of that is that you get free fast tracks for three rides of your choice. I chose Helix, Balder and Kanonen and because of the small morning queues I didn’t actually bother to use them until the afternoon. Once I had finally been on everything I wanted to, and with the lines now bigger, I reached into my pocket to get my fast track, only to find that I had somehow lost it. Although annoying, I realised I have lost far worse things around the world, so I actually felt pretty heroically proud that it was only free fast tracks. Even so, the queues still were all less than half an hour, so queuing full time for any ride I wanted wasn’t a problem in the slightest.
Even on a summer’s day, with the Swedish schools broken up, I got on everything I could’ve possibly wanted with plenty of time to spare and I headed home having been in the park for about 7 hours. It’s a fantastic park overall, one of the very best I’ve been to, and the top tier rides are superb. It’s well worth the trip from the UK, and much further afield in fact, and puts a number of UK parks to shame. Liseberg has showed with Helix that they’re not afraid to invest in serious attractions; they picked a ride that no UK park would go for, because there’s no gimmicky marketing point. There’s nothing to shove on the advert and say ‘the world’s first...,’ and it really doesn’t need it: it’s just a damn good ride. There are a lot of UK parks I won’t be visiting this summer because their rides simply aren’t that good, whereas I will definitely be visiting Liseberg again in the not too distant future. Especially since they claim they have something exciting up their sleeves...
Helix and Balder: 10/10
The Atmosphere (No, not the ride): 9/10
AtmosFear: 8/10
Kanonen and Lisebergbanan: 7/10
Overall: 9/10
Even on a summer’s day, with the Swedish schools broken up, I got on everything I could’ve possibly wanted with plenty of time to spare and I headed home having been in the park for about 7 hours. It’s a fantastic park overall, one of the very best I’ve been to, and the top tier rides are superb. It’s well worth the trip from the UK, and much further afield in fact, and puts a number of UK parks to shame. Liseberg has showed with Helix that they’re not afraid to invest in serious attractions; they picked a ride that no UK park would go for, because there’s no gimmicky marketing point. There’s nothing to shove on the advert and say ‘the world’s first...,’ and it really doesn’t need it: it’s just a damn good ride. There are a lot of UK parks I won’t be visiting this summer because their rides simply aren’t that good, whereas I will definitely be visiting Liseberg again in the not too distant future. Especially since they claim they have something exciting up their sleeves...
Helix and Balder: 10/10
The Atmosphere (No, not the ride): 9/10
AtmosFear: 8/10
Kanonen and Lisebergbanan: 7/10
Overall: 9/10
