TheThemeParkGuy

Spain: great weather; wild-west landscape; swimming pools everywhere; warm, amiable and flirty people; wild kissing on the piazza; celebration of street life. And in the middle of all that, the American theme park outpost Parque Warner Madrid. Suprisingly, it blends in very well! Batman, Superman, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Marty the Martian all speak Spanish and entertain the kids, while teens and adults ride the latest roller coasters, dark rides, flume rides and river...

Spain's PortAventura resort contains both the PortAventura theme park and the adjacent Costa Caribe water park. It has a truly remarkable ownership history, having changed hands from Tussauds Group and Anheuser-Busch to Universal Studios and later from Universal to a Spanish banking group called Caixa. 'Universal Mediterranea', once Europe's only Universal-branded theme park, has since been abandoned by Universal Studios. Not sure what that should tell us. From the...

Disneyland Paris has made the news mainly for its financial lack of success and near-bankruptcies. However, there is nothing wrong with the park itself. This 1992-opened venture is the most beautiful and romantic ‘Magic Kingdom’ Disney has ever built. Instead of copying the structures and buildings of California's Disneyland, Florida's Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney Imagineers frolicked and created a refreshingly new and inspired design for...

Walt Disney Studios is Disney's thrill ride theme park adjacent to its more family-orientated sister park. It's small and not that inspiring design-wise, but don’t ignore it for the following reasons:
'Rock ’n' Roller Coaster' is the most thrilling Disney roller coaster ever. It accelerates from 0 to 100km/h in just a few seconds right at the beginning, zooming you into loops and spirals. The smooth tracks make you feel like you are flying and your...

Family-owned Europa-Park is the best theme park in Germany, no doubt about that. The theming of the park is original, world-class and atmospheric with European country-themed areas representing Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. These are the unmissables:
• 'Silver Star': a high and fast strapped-in-by-the-belly roller coaster that makes everyone scream
•...

Alton Towers, centered around the historic castle home of the blue-blooded Earls of Shrewsbury, is doubtlessly Great Britain's best theme park. Charmingly located in the middle of nowhere and ironically less accessible from London than Disneyland Paris, it contains all the major state-of-the-art rides including a flume ride, a river rapids ride, a drop coaster, a hanging coaster and a wonderful prototype of the now world-famous flying coaster.
The attractions are spread...

A popular German institution, Phantasialand south of Cologne contains everything a theme park visitor would expect: Roller coasters, flume rides, wild west village, lake, Main Street (looks rather German) and sweating staff in character costumes. It's all here and if there wasn't a 4,5-hour highway connection to Disneyland Paris just behind the park it would be even more impressive. While it won't dazzle a theme park connoisseur it makes for a good day out with the family!...

Heidepark's defining feature is the eye-catching Statue of Liberty replica in the middle of its huge lake. Errected on July 4, 1986 and applauded by then-president Ronald Reagan via telegraph, the statue had considerable political significance, due to the park being located merely 70 km (45 miles) away from Eastern Germany, then Soviet territory. Numerous roller coasters wind across the park landscape: wooden, steel, looping, hanging and magnetic coasters - a pretty...

This is a refreshingly different and fantastically bizarre water theme park in the heart of Europe. Situated in a huge hangar originally intended for the construction of zeppelins (though the venture went bust before any living zeppelin made it out of the hangar), Tropical Islands is just off the Berlin-Prague highway, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south east of Berlin, in the middle of a dark wood in Brandenburg. A Malaysian investor realized the potential of the...

Situated just 7 kilometers away from London's Heathrow airport, the only thing which makes this park unique is the amount of airplanes going over it. Don't mistake me, there's nothing wrong with the state-of-the-art roller coasters and rides throughout the park, but there's nothing particularly distinctive about them either.
You will enjoy the thrill of the coasters but beware of 'No Way Out', the backwards roller coaster, which might make you feel like passing a...

Costa Caribe is a solid water park, which contains a couple of good waterslides and is refreshing after a long day of walking through PortAventura next door. It still sports the Universal Studios brand, but isn't owned by them anymore. ...

The Netherlands' trademark theme park Efteling is said to have inspired even Disney Imagineers! Efteling is so vast and sprawling that you should really allow for two full days to experience all the rides. Built into the surrounding forest, it is a peculiar mixture of 17th century castle garden and theme park, making for a proper fairy tale experience. The attractions fit seamlessly within this setting, with one attraction deserving particular praise for its excellence,...

Once Warner Brothers Movie World, the renamed Movie Park Germany continues to deliver a solid theme park experience.
The two most exciting attractions are the Bermuda Triangle Alien Encounter flume ride and the Shrek 4-D movie. Bermuda incorporates some well-timed surprises in the dark and meticulous interior design, while Shrek, the same version found in the Universal Studios parks, is a great 3-D movie with some colorful water and wind effects. Complemented by...

Blasphemy is usually associated with biblical terms. But imagine an plasticky blue-red manufactured Tesco building replacing the authentic mine car chase rollercoaster of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! Does that make you cry?
It happened! In the mid-90s half of the famous Elstree Film Studios north of London were sold off to the British supermarket chain. Unfortunately this included the space where the Indiana Jones coaster was built in 1983. However,...

Siam Park Tenerife is a wonderful addition to the European water park family, which is pretty small compared to the United States. Three major attractions make this water park unmissable:
- 'Tower of Power', a nearly-vertical slide leading through an alligator's pool (at the time of writing the alligators didn't make it to the park as they didn't get through customs)
- 'Dragon', a funnel-shaped slide (it's called a 'ProSlide Tornado') which is the only...

Legoland has a very well-defined target group: on my visit I encountered a ratio of mothers with children between 3 and 8 that would cause a landslide election result for a party committed to better education. Endless carousels, rollercoasters with maximum speeds of less than 40 mph and flume rides that appear to be in slow-motion grace the landscape around picturesque Windsor next to London's hectic Heathrow airport, the busiest in the world. The rides are all brand-new;...

This is certainly the most cheerless, somber fairground I have ever visited. Due to open in 1986 in Pripyat, a little town set up for the workers of the neighboring Chernobyl power plant, one of the nuclear reactors exploded just days before the fairground was about to open. A radioactive cloud severely contaminated Pripyat and infamously affected a staggering 100,000 square mile area around it. By the time the town was eventually evacuated, many of its inhabitants had...

Walt Disney was here! Shortly after the Second World War the mastermind toured Europe seeking inspiration for his envisioned Disneyland park in Southern California. Neuschwanstein Castle, the dream castle built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria celebrating Richard Wagner's operas, opened as late as 1886 (many people think it's much older). Disney and his architects fell in love with the castle and emulated its turrets and many other features in their magic copy 10.000 kilometers...

Italy’s biggest and most popular theme park offers nothing less and nothing more than the usual collection of rides: mountain roller coaster, looping coaster, jungle river cruise, Atlantis-themed flume ride, pirate-themed dark ride, wild west town, dolphin show and 3D cinema. Yawn. The copy-and-paste concept doesn't make it necessarily bad, just a bit one-dimensional for the spoiled Theme Park Guy. The park's highlight is that it's full of Italians, who create a more...

‘The best roller coaster in the world’: that's what's drummed into your unsuspecting skull by every piece of marketing leaving the Holiday Park offices. Indeed, 'Expedition GeForce', created by ingenious Swiss thrill ride manufacturer Intamin AG in 2001, whizzes you through the lush wooded landscape of the park leaving you exhilerated. However, the latest Intamin coasters - found in China - feel smoother and other recently-opened adrenaline-rushes around Europe...

The pride of France's home-grown leisure industry, 300 kilometers south-east of Disneyland Paris, offers less than one would expect, unfortunately! I believe the future of mankind won't consist of cold glass-and-steel buildings with isolated individuals wandering lost between them. The creators of Futuroscope, inspired by Disney's then newly-opened Epcot theme park, obviously didn't share my view when the project was being planned in the 80s. Futuroscope's many crystal,...

Fasouri Watermania has less thrill slides than its close-by competitor WaterWorld, but it's nevertheless a clean and solid water park in the heart of Cyprus. My favorites were 'The Big Orange Wet Bubble' (keeps you fit) and 'Black Cannons' (makes you fly before you splash), both of which are usually not found in the average water park. ...

The Ancient-Greece-themed WaterWorld water park at the Eastern end of the island is Cyprus' biggest and best. Its thrill slides shoot you soaringly up into the air, hurtle you down at enormous speeds and shuttle you blindly around sudden turns in the dark - all overseen by the benevolent faces of plastic Greek gods. The only issue was the stale taste of the 'ancient' splash pool water, but remember: only fools linger in splash pools! Recommended and worth the trip from...