Athens, Day Two

 Ah, jet lag. We thought we’d have an easier time of it this trip due to arriving at our destination in the evening - and we might, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Just easier than last time. Rob didn’t sleep well at all last night, so after brekkie here at the hotel (standard buffet fare with a mix of Greek and American foods) he went back to the room for another attempt at some shut-eye and I headed off to tick a couple of things off my list.

First bit of good news: they have Uber here. Unlike our cab ride from the airport, where the guy would only be paid in cash, Uber is done 100% in-app with the stored credit card on file. I appreciate not having money changing hands, especially when travelling by myself in an unfamiliar place.

Oddly, Uber here also hails taxis. That seems like a great solution for those cities that are complaining that Uber is killing their cab companies… put the taxis in the list of available cars for Uber users! Duh. The cab arrived about 2min after I tapped the button on my phone and off we went to the new River West mall. It’s a nice place.

There’s all the stores you’d expect, plus an IKEA and a Jysk and some Greek chains as well. Plus, they have Athens’ only official Lego Store. And that’s why I’m here.

The store is brand new and small, but nice.

I had a look around for a bit, then the lady working there asked if she could help me find something. I said, “No thanks, I just came to have a look and to get my passport stamped.” She said, “Oh, we don’t have a stamp, sorry.”

Well, crap.

All is not lost, however. I didn’t Uber out to this sketchy part of town (and why they put this nice mall in this part of town, I don’t know) just to get my Lego Store passport stamped. Just 1.5km down the road is this place:

Now, I’ve said many times that if I can avoid going to an amusement park on the weekend - especially on a Saturday - then I’ll do it. I’m not a fan of waiting in long lineups and Saturdays are the absolute worst for that. I had checked the place out on the Rollercoaster Database and it said there were three coasters: Mini Big Apple (LOL, wut?), Big Apple, and Loop It!

OK, so a few things to note: Big Apple is a generic name for a particular kind of coaster. If you see a coaster called Big Apple, you’re going to get a figure-8 kiddie coaster with a car shaped like a worm and a large apple-shaped tunnel. If you take the tunnel off, then you have a Wacky Worm coaster. So I thought I knew what to expect from the Big Apple. No idea what a “Mini Big Apple” is and “Loop It” is obviously going to go upside-down at some point. Gotcha.

The park opened at 10am and I’m about a 20minute walk away, so I headed off in that direction. I wanted to be one of the first ones into the park if possible. That would give me the best chance at getting in all three coasters in the shortest amount of time.

I learned a few things on that walk. The most important being that just because you have the green ‘walk’ signal on your crosswalk doesn’t mean that the traffic will stop. I think you get the green light whenever you have the least chance of being run over, but that’s as far as I’d take it.

Remember I said the neighbourhood was kinda sketchy? The walk wasn’t exactly scenic. It was mostly along a highway and there was trash everywhere.

It’s a good thing the park logo caught my eye on this fence, or I’d have never thought that this road would lead to a family amusement park.

I got to the park entrance at around 9:40, twenty minutes before opening. With the mild temps, blue skies, and it being a Saturday, I figured that this would be early enough that I’d at least be one of the first hundred or so people through the gates. I got there to find just two teen girls and a stray cat.

About ten minutes before opening, I could hear two of the coasters doing their test runs. The looping coaster wasn’t very loud, but the Big Apple was, and it went on for a long time. Which is weird. I mean, if it’s a Big Apple coaster, it should be a little figure 8 coaster manufactured in Italy by Pinfari but Pinfaris sound very different than what I was hearing, which almost had to be a Zierer brand coaster. I did a quick check on the database and found that the “Mini Big Apple” is their Pinfari figure 8 (sans apple tunnel, so it’s actually just a Wacky Worm) but the Big Apple coaster is a Zierer with a long layout, but operating with a 20-car Big Apple worm train. TWENTY CARS! This is going to be really fun and interesting.

Finally, the park opened and it’s STILL just me and the two teens. On a Saturday. The teens went left and I headed for the coasters, so it was like I had the whole park to myself. Very strange.

I must say, even though the park is in a sketchy neighbourhood, it’s spotless and very cute. It’s the largest amusement park in Greece, which is kinda sad for Greece, because it’s about the size of the park inside the West Edmonton Mall… or about half the size of Calaway Park.

First thing I noticed is that the log flume ride, which looked really good, was closed for maintenance.

But I’m in full creho mode right now, so let’s find some coasters to ride! (For those unaware: creho (‘cree-ho’) is short for ‘credit whore’. That’s a person who will ride any coaster, no matter how small or insignificant, just to add the ‘credit’ to their list of rides they’ve ridden. I am shamelessly in this category. The first coaster I spot is the Big Apple and it looks really nice. Nothing extreme, but these Zierer coasters are often silly, giggly fun.

I walk up to the entrance and I’m told by the nice ride op lady that the coaster needs eight riders before it can operate due to the cold weather. Later in the afternoon when it’s warmer, it can run with six. It needs the weight so that the coaster won’t stall somewhere in the layout.

I call bullshit. First of all, it’s 19 degrees. I’m standing here in shorts and a t-shirt. That’s not cold enough for the grease in the wheels to lose enough viscosity to stall the ride mid-course.
If that’s the park policy, then fine, say so. But you can’t claim needed weight when I literally just heard this thing make three test runs… EMPTY.
I said, “but there are literally only three people in the whole park right now. Can you run it anyway?”
No. So off I go to the Loop It coaster. By this time the other two people in the park have made it over here and all three of us took a ride.

I’m actually really looking forward to this, even though it’s just a mid-sized coaster, because it’s made by Interpark, an Italian company, and I’ve never been on any of their coasters before. Also, the layout looks wicked.

I hopped in the front seat and the two teen girls sat just behind me. Off we went, up the steep lift hill, around a slow corner, catch a glimpse of the Acropolis and Parthenon just before the drop. Nice! Then the drop and into the sidewinder element.

You can see in the photo that the cars are equipped with padded bars that come down over your head and sit on your shoulders. Your head sits between them. This is not a good thing for the ride experience, usually, because the ride needs to be smooth and perfectly engineered to keep your head from smacking (or being smacked) by those restraints. This one isn’t either of those things. In fact, it might be the most poorly-designed upside-down element I’ve ever ridden on any coaster. Period. Your head not only gets smacked by those shoulder bars, it gets sucker-punched. Hard. Not just once, but five times… JUST in that one loop. The rest of the ride isn’t much better, as that double helix spiral feels like it’s made up of random radii as you go around the circles and every change in radius results in another smack to the head. I honestly can’t believe they allow people to ride this thing.

According to the Rollercoaster Database, there are a few more of these in operation in Venezuela, Tunisia, Iraq, and the Philippines. That’s good, because I have no plans to visit any of those places any time soon. Upon arriving back at the station, the ride op said I could ride again if I wanted. I said, “Why?”

Back to the Big Apple. Still no people. So I went in search of the Mini Big Apple, which is across the street in another section of the park. It was standard Wacky Worm fare.

Strangely, the kids section of the park seemed pretty run down, which was a stark contrast from the beauty of the main park. They did have a nice double-decker carousel, though.

I head back into the main park and discover that a few more people have shown up. There are now SEVEN people in the park, a full hour after opening on a Saturday. Unbelievable. I asked the guy at the Ferris wheel why there were no people and he said, “it’s too early, nobody comes before 5pm or so.”

Greeks apparently skew late on lots of things. Restaurants that open for lunch often don’t open until 1pm - after the “lunch hour” I’m used to. Dinner-only restaurants often open at 5-6pm or later, but they stay open until 2am or later, even on weeknights. That seems really strange to me, but it’s the norm here. So given that, I suppose it’s not too strange that the amusement park only gets busy in the evenings.

I did go through the “Forest of Mirrors” attraction, which was pretty good, especially since I was the only one in it. They give you disposable plastic gloves to wear, to keep your fingerprints off the mirrors - which is needed, because this mirror maze has a catch: to get out, you have to find the one mirror that pushes open. Inside, it’s freaky and well-done.

I eventually gave up on expecting enough people in the park for eight riders to all end up at Big Apple at the same time. It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess, so my coaster count is at 905 now.

Am I sorry I rode that piece of garbage looping coaster? Well, my head is sorry. I took a couple Advil when I got back to the hotel but I’ve still got a headache and my neck is stiff. That said, I have a (drum roll, please)…. new least-favourite coaster of all time!!!! If the ride had been mediocre, I would’ve likely have forgotten about it in a few days, but this… THIS is going to be one of those memories that lasts a lifetime. And for anyone reading this who might be a coaster enthusiast themselves, I’ll tell you that YES, it was worse than Son of Beast (a massive wooden coaster that only ran for a few years because it was really that bad).

It was even worse than Goudurix (a gorgeous, but brutal torture machine set over a lake in France)

So even though my ride on Loop It was anything but enjoyable, at least I got a good story out of it. I can file it right up there with that Rodgers and Hammerstein “musical” revue in California a few years ago. This was more painful that that, but at least it was over quickly.

I’ll wrap this up for now… the rest of the day will be in the next post.

On to the next post!

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