16 August 2018
This trip had more logistical challenges compared to previous fun park trips, which was in part due to my inability to read and speak German. For Hansa Park, we decided to fly to Hamburg, which seemed quite central to both Hansa and Heide parks. We knew we had to get a bus out to Hansa Park, but it looked like it could only be booked by people who had a German based phone number and address. Katrin again came to the rescue, organising this for us.
We awoke early in our funky little hotel (Prizeotel), to wander down to the train station, where we caught a Flix bus for the 1.5 hour journey to Hansa Park.
When Terror and I first started narrowing down which German parks to visit, Hansa Park kept coming up on all our internet searches. I had never heard of the park before, yet by the end of the day it was one of my favourites of the trip.
The journey to the Northern coastline was enjoyable, and we loved driving past the seaside resorts and beach shacks. We were so close to Denmark, Sweden, and Poland, but they would have to wait for another trip! At $60, the entry price was really reasonable. You could not buy any fast pass options, but oddly this didn’t bother me, as it just added to the relaxed environment of the place.
Upon entering at 9am, we got an immediate sense of how well looked after the grounds were. We were greeted by a cute little band, and a beautiful garden, that was changed daily to display the date. I did wonder what time the gardeners had to get up each day to change the arrangement??
Our first ride was called Crazy mine, a steel coaster which felt like a combination of a wild mouse and a traditional mine coaster. We waited for around 40 minutes which is pretty much the maximum of what I will wait for a kiddy coaster. It was as bumpy as you would expect, but with that one ticked off, we moved on to bigger and better things!
Hello Der Schwur des Karnan (the oath of the Karnan)! This was an awesome experience! I don’t really know who or what Karnan is, but there was a deep voice telling us all about some legend. Not being able to understand a word of it, we admired the attention to detail in the queueing area as we wandered up, over, and through a castle. There was plenty of stuff to look at as we waited.
The coaster starts internally, heading up a vertical lift before stopping for another animation. Because you can’t see this section before you ride, everything was a complete surprise! We then plummeted backwards, before heading back up and over the hill lift. As you hurtle in to the outdoors, Terror and I were laughing our heads off. This is the biggest coaster in the park and contained a great variety of drops and turns. It was worth the wait, and we had a few turns to get our fix!
What makes a roller coaster even cooler? Placing an inflatable jumping pillow under it! I do sometimes reflect the development of a six year old, and I loved that you could go bouncing on a queue-free attraction underneath such a spectacular ride. Yes, I was the only adult enjoying the bouncing pillow. Actually the park had perfectly integrated some of these playground style elements in the fun park. There were numerous sliding and climbing areas, that again really enhanced the fun family vibes of the place.
Taking a break from coasters, we next lined up for Karnapulten. I have been on a few of these rides before, where you have control over your independent flyer which sits on a large rotating arm. The idea is to use tilting and momentum to get your flyer to rotate 360 degrees. I have never been able to get my flyer to turn upside down – so shameful!
The novelty factor continued to be high with a cool looking ride called Die Glocke (the bell). This line looked really short, so I went for a turn while Terror gave it a miss due to the amount of spinning. The biggest downside is that the bell only seated six people at a time. So a short line still meant a really long wait. I was also getting annoyed when people were letting their friends jump the queue, because one extra person could add an extra 10 minutes of waiting. Still, it was fun enough to be sitting underneath a giant bell on the clapper, while getting flung around.
The park seemed to be pretty free flowing, and the change in themed lands was not obvious to us. Apparently, there were 11 separate areas, but we really only noticed Bonanza-City (Wild West) town at the northern tip. It is also possible that we just didn’t notice the themes due to the language barriers once again! We did appreciate that each ride area had Wi-Fi, which helped to pass the time in the lines, and keep us updated on wait times and closures.
After admiring more of the gardens, we went to line up for Fluch von Novgorod, which was to be my 200th unique coaster! However, the wait was more than 1.5 hours, so we decided to go back later in the day, and headed for a pretty old fashioned coaster called Nessie instead. Not even the lure of a ensuring the big 200 was reached in style, could persuade me to wait in line for that long!
Nessie was predictably bumpy for an old school looping metal track. I feel like most of these coasters are slowly getting replaced with more modern tracks and trains, but there is something charming about them. A nod to my childhood ride experiences perhaps?
We also jumped onboard the nearby Rasender Roland, which at first, we thought was part of Nessie, but then realised it was actually a different ride that cleverly intersected. Roland went through Nessie’s loop, but not even that novelty made up for the headache inducing experience of a rusty metal track that resembled something that your grandad would tinker with in his backyard.
We returned to Fluch von Novgorod (curse of Novgorod), which like Karnan was excellent! We enjoyed the animated windows and Halloween style gardens and props in the queue area, thinking that Novgorod must have been an evil dude. However, a Google search tells us this is a place in Russia. That’s awkward.
Once seated, there was some excellent operatic singing from the animations before a 100km/hr fast launch (the fastest ride at Hansa Park) in darkness which sent you out of the tower. Part way along the track, you re-enter the tower to a vertical hill lift. We were expecting a Karnan style backwards drop, but instead got a surprise inversion in the darkness. Way to go Novgorod!
We took some time out to see the park from above, by riding the Holstein-Turm which provided 360 degree views. This provided more confirmation that we were enjoying a beautiful part of Germany. We wished that we had allowed a few days to explore the area.
We spent the afternoon cooling down on water rides, which were all spread around in each corner of the park. These included Stortebekers Kaperfahrt (not even Google Translate can help me with this one.)
We waited for a long time for this rafting ride/waterslide combo, although you don’t actually get wet on it. Likewise, the Barracuda Slide was a single person rafting water slide where you stayed dry, but these little racers are good value considering the minimal amount of infrastructure needed for a little thrill. We also tried the Super Splash, which was a more traditional flume ride, with a fun drop.
Hansa Park is the kind of park that I wish we had in Australia. It is not too big, expensive or pretentious. They have a huge amount of variety with the attractions including a couple of great thrill rides to keep the big kids coming back. We loved that guests could bring their dogs along, as animals have a wonderful knack of keeping people relaxed. At first we thought they were guide dogs, but after seeing about 20 of them we realised they were pets.
The staff were really friendly, and there was a great family vibe as we all smiled and laughed beside the seaside. What a great day!
Roller Coaster Ramble 