Ode to a space coaster

One reason to appreciate growing up in South West Germany is the Europa Park which happened to be around the corner to where I was living. As teenagers we were there a lot and on every possible occasion and our feet were running blindly the not-so-simple arrangement of ways through the park.

I could describe my love for the countless attractions in the park on some pages, but let's stick with some favourites:

A ghost train where you were passing through a haunted castle with mirrors showing invisible skeletons riding on your side.

The pirate train where you were riding a boat through the Indonesian night under a sky of stars, with bamboo houses, colourful lanterns, a smell of exotic plants and an ape emerging from a barrel with a spyglass, spitting water at you. (The whole building - ironically - burnt down just a few days before my last visit in the park. Reading this completely ruined my day... I was sure it was dead, hesitating to call it a sad, but somehow appropriate ending for a glorious pirate legend... but seems they sailed all the way to the realm of the dead to take it back to life, and obviously they did awesome work!)

Then there is Poseidon, a water rollercoaster taking you right into the old Greek hero myths, letting you pass through an amazingly detailed scenery of stone figures and waterfalls.

And then, in the Scandinavian area, there is the swinging ship. And the fjord rafting, which always is a reliable way to get completely wet during a cold, windy autumn day, including your backpack and your shoes. And which probably is not in big risk to burn down. Even if you try hard.

I was hesitant for quite some time to board the high speed rollercoasters (trying to be "reasonable", as my parents said, which seemed a good thing to be). But finally someone convinced me to try. It was a dark rollercoaster with a space scenery called Eurosat (it still exists today but they seem to have changed it into something completely different). Back then, I walked through an entry under a big, terrifying robot giving safety instructions... into a space shuttle with dark neon light and trance music playing, and I just knew: This is madness. A human being should not go to (this) deadly space but stay on earth. I should not be doing this. This is for reckless older kids.

I really love how they created this feeling which is, in a way, indeed a bit of an astronaut boarding a space shuttle.

Well, after getting my feet back onto earth after my first ride, alive and in (more or less) good health state, I was totally hooked. Possible that we just ran straight back to the entry of the coaster again (probably the taste of being reckless or being reasonable got a major shift at this point). Gosh, I loved this rollercoaster. And I loved its music.

Pretty unspectacular in the living room, but imagine this inside the scenery of the rollercoaster with the dark neon light, shining asteroids, green flickering lasers, the reverb of the giant tower, together with the machine noises of the circling carts and the (reverberated) screams of kids in mortal fear and amazement. This simple music is perfect for this. The designers also made something which was just incredible: While circling upwards in the cart, they had split the music so that you seemed to dive slowly from the beat loop (played by the speakers in the lower part of the tower) into the pads (played by speakers further upwards) etc., then leaving them behind under your feet and circling upwards into the next loop. Relating with the motif of orbital transition, this really made an impression of super natural spaciousness. Especially when you're, like a teenager or probably most adult guests, not aware of the magical techniques, but just confronted with this feeling of mindblowing amazement each time you sit in this rollercoaster (and even share this experience with friends at the same time). This was, most probably, one very strong factor which got me hooked to Trance music very early ^^

Knowing that I will never be able to board this coaster again to revive these emotions literally breaks my heart... it's one thing to have something burnt down, but another thing to decide to kill it and make something else with the bones. It's, in a determined way, final. The only comfort is that there is still the Euro Mir coaster, which is a little similar and a little different (with the carts rotating while circling around the tower tops), which has also Trance music playing and which I also love a lot :) So nice to know that some parts of my memories are still alive in this park, making memories for others every day... I definitely need to move my butt back over the border and have a visit again as soon this virus is gone. May the Euro Mir live forever!

What's the best way to become a theme park concepter? Anyone? Just in case I need to find a new activity one day :3 Studying architecture maybe? Or engineering? Or art? Probably not... I'd just end up working for others. Wait, I know! Studying business / management to learn how to gather fundings and make others build my ideas ^^

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PS: Just found a video from back then. Take a headphone, the effects of the sound installation work surprisingly well in this video (2:30). No idea how it was possible to hold a filming device during that ride, but thanks a lot, TheCoasterWolf, for taking the challenge ^^ This is how I remember the ride :) Down ride starting at 3:55

Hard to believe that I'm kind of an adult now, when did this happen...? Feels like it was yesterday that I was running in there with some friends and my crush :] Ah, maybe it was yesterday. I think I was dreaming (again) of the park after working on this article and finding the videos ^^

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