Viking Tour Part Two

Our Viking Coaster Tour continued with the fourth park of the trip, Farup Sommerland. This was another fantastic park, with great natural scenery. It also happened to have what ended up being my favorite coaster of the trip, Fønix. Our day started with a behind the scenes tour of the coaster, where we were able to visit the maintenance room and talk with the head mechanic before riding. The rest of the park had a lot of attractions, including things like canoes and kayaks that were common across many of the parks on this trip. One of the highlights was an extremely long obstacle course that wound through trees and over water. It took more than half an hour to complete. One part had a bridge over a small canal, but also a monkey bar option. We saw a very unfortunately teenager who made it most of the way across on the monkey bars before falling into the waist-deep water! The day ended with more exclusive ride time on Orkanen, a very comfortable family suspended coaster.

Welcome to Farup!

Touring the maintenance bay.

Me with some blueprints.

Walking around the track.

Just holding a coaster wheel!

Fonix is a beautiful ride.

Twisting out of the stall loop.

The adorable kiddie coaster!

Gliding over the water on Orkanen.

Self-serve canoes are common in many Scandinavian amusement parks.

The obstacle course.

It went through a pirate ship at one part!

You get a diploma for completing the obstacle course.

Log flume time!

Orkanen has an underwater tunnel on the first drop.

End of the day group picture.

We had one more adventure that day - the ferry to Sweden! Our bus drove to the port city of Frederikshavn, where our bus accidentally backed up into a car (oops, just a slight bump!) before we boarded the ferry. It was a pleasant 3.5 hour ride across the Skagerrak, with sunlight still visible by the time we arrived in Gothenburg after midnight. Luckily it was a short ride to our hotel, the Grand Curiosa. This is a spectacular new hotel right next to Liseberg park. Each floor has a different theme, mine was mythical monsters.

Getting ready to board the ferry.

Sunset from the ferry.

The sunlight lasted well after midnight.

Arriving at the hotel late at night.

The rooms are very nice!

The massive art piece in the central atrium. Each part reflects the theming of the floor.

After breakfast in the hotel (in the extremely large breakfast room, complete with carrousel), we met as a group for our morning tour of Liseberg. We got to walk beneath the Balder wooden roller coaster and sign our names on the wood, before some exclusive ride time. During one of our rides they had to manually reset, meaning multiple employees came out to our train on the brake run to pull it forward into the station. Haven't had that happen before!

Liseberg is a fantastic park. It looks great and has great rides. The urban location on a hillside adds a special charm, and many of the rides (including Helix, Lisebergbanan, and the log flume) utilize the terrain. We had a fantastic day at this park, capped off with an evening ERT on Helix while we could kind of hear a Bruce Springsteen concert at the stadium a few miles away.

Yes, there's a carrousel in the lobby.

Scary things on the walls of the 5th floor of the hotel.

View of the park from the hotel. It's very close!

Our walkback around Balder.

Signed our names on the wood.

Morning ERT on Balder. Excellent ride!

Liseberg is a beautiful park.

Haunted lunch location.

Overview of the park from the ferris wheel.

Closeup of Helix. Amazing how it weaves through the trees on the hillside.

A big office development next to the park. Check out the pool halfway up the middle building.

Gothenburg overview from the ferris wheel.

Liseberg is a beautiful park.

Valkyria's first drop.

The park is heavily themed - this is Valkyria's station.

Dinner time.

Me and Kyle on the log flume.

Helix in the evening.

Exclusive ride time!

After a long day at Liseberg, I had a good night's sleep at the hotel. Our next day was a long one, with a long drive back to Denmark and two park visits. I'll cover just the Swedish first half of the day in this post. To break up the four hour drive to southern Sweden, we played bingo on the bus, with coaster prizes. We arrived at Tosselilla late morning. It's was probably the "least good" park of the trip - still a lot of fun, but this growing park needs time to settle in. For now it's like a sprawling filed with some fairground rides sprinkled in. It's mostly geared toward families and children. We also missed a credit here, as unfortunately Mad Mouse was closed. After a few hours in the park, we boarded the bus again and headed back to Denmark across the Øresund bridge, the longest road/rail bridge in Europe.

So many breakfast options.

Tim's what?!

Waiting to enter Tosselilla. I like their crazy duck mascot!

First missed credit of the trip.

The family coaster was unfortunately a bit rough.

Pirate ship and water park.

Crossing the bridge.

Next stop - Copenhagen!