Rollercoastering!

Back in May when Poo and I went to Parc Asterix for mon anniversaire, a lot of people were horrified that I would consider that a suitable method for celebrating goodness, much less that I considered it fun. Not Christine - her reaction was one of glee and her saying, "This is great! I've been looking for someone to do the rides with me at Oktoberfest but no one wants to do it!" It was like fate. 


So on the second Tuesday of die Wiesn, we decided to leave work (relatively) early to get there at 6:30pm and ride as many things as we could before we got sick or they shut - whichever came first.


First up! The Cyber Space!

Seating only 8 people at a time, it would swing us through the air in an arc before doing a full loop in both directions! The seats also rotated so not only would you fly around fowards and backwards but also upside-down! WOOHOO!!!

Next, the Wilde Maus

I believe this is like the Manic Mouse, favourite of people at Moomba. It featured lots of jerky moves with climbs and then sudden stops like a good mini-rollercoaster. With wooden seats, we did a lot of sliding around and smashing into each other on those sharp turns. *thumbs up*

We then left tradition and headed onto the Top Spin.

I have figured out that this is the ride that features in photogalleries of screaming Oktoberfest revellers. Again, it involves being swung around in arcs on a spinning seat platform but the ride can also be suspended so you're held upside down over some water jets (thankfully, I didn't get wet). It can also be spun at varying speeds and there was a guy behind us screaming "Schneller! SCHNELLER!!!!" The ride operator complied. Awesome fun. 

Fourth, we headed onto the Parkour.

Now, we just thought it was a glorified Octopus or Spider ride and were highly amused to note that our soft-padded restraints had chunks missing as though someone had taken bites out of it in fear. Turns out that this was the ride that killed us. It was quite fast and a bit like being in an washing machine in that not only were were spinning around on a central axis, but our seat capsule also span around in both directions. As we stumbled off, Christine and I looked at each other and said *Okay, I'm feeling a bit dizzy now...*

Our next ride was the classic rollercoaster the Alpina Bahn.

Here we had the climbs and dips of a nice normal rollercoaster but after the spinning of the Parkour it was a bit much and I'm afraid to say, this was our last ride.

And so after a frantic less than 90 minutes of rides, we went off to the Ochsenbraterei to get an Ochsensemmel to eat and then a still warm apfeltasche with a bit of a stomachache (Christine) and a blistering headache (me). Still! It was totally worth the experience! 


For future reference, if people just want to ride the rides and not go into the biertents, I recommend going after 6:30 on a weeknight. When the sun sets, you get a nice view of the fairground and lights with the added bonus of almost no queues! Actually, the no queue might have been what killed out - we didn't get much rest time in between running to the next brain -shaker.