Park: Ferrari World

The next park was the main reason for most of the 100 being on the trip, Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi, home to the fastest rollercoaster in the world, Formula Rossa. This was my second visit to the park having previously been here a few years ago when it had just opened.

and home to a lot of cars. This is more a car museum with rides than a theme park with cars. 

We had got a jump on the club and made our way into the park before they did. The idea of 100 plus people all queuing for this ride was a concern. We'd all been given queue jumping gold wrist bands but that wouldn't provide any advantage to us; it would just turn a queue jump into a queue.

The ride was really good but the restraints are really really short now (more me getting bigger than them reducing the belts). I had no idea how the operators were able to get it to reach, they were a good 6 inches apart and I thought I wasn't going to get a ride but credit to them for getting it to connect. 

I made my way back to the entrance whilst Jeppe rode once more. There appeared to be some issues with the security letting the group in so I gave up, left them to it, and went for a wander. 

Benno's Great Race is a simulator on rails ride that features a mouse taking part in a race. There's a good mix of screens and physical scenery interactions. 

Viaggio in Italia is a Soarin' type ride featuring flying over Italian landmarks. This wasn't ready on my last visit but having ridden it this time it's not that great. I'm more impressed with the tech in how you're raised up towards the screen more than the content.

Like Hub Zero there are a number of driving simulators. These big fancy ones cost more money to experience. I didn't bother.

The park are adding new rides to the park. That red track is part of a multi-launch ride that is supposed to be opening in the Summer. There's another ride, a launched shuttle with a spike emerging from the centre of the building where the tower ride used to look. We missed that one by a couple of weeks. It opens at the end of the month. 

 

There was another new coaster for me to ride. Flying Aces is a plane themed ride.

They'd done a really good job theming the queue line. Even the walls had had ribbed wings installed along them.

I had to convince the operator at the gate that I would not continue to the ride with my camera and I just wanted to take the photos.

The racing coaster, Fiorano GT Challenge is a pair of cars that was being run really badly. There seems to be a lot of confusion with people all going into one station leaving the other one empty. It was also apparent that some of the visitors to the park had no clue how things worked in a theme park and were messing up the queuing systems and generally annoying the staff who tried their best to keep calm.

The coaster is superb with no dead-spots from when it leaves the quick lift hill all the way back to the station. With a single train it doesn't have a mid-course brake or trim, which is rare for coasters of this size. The only criticism is that it makes no sense to have a non-inverting loop when there's a single inversion towards the end of the track. Like a movie executive telling a director what to do I can only guess marketing had some say in the design of the attraction. It doesn't need to go upside down.

Like Formula Rossa, the ride has a viewing gallery, which doubles up as a smoking section. It's the best place to get shots of the ride more so as the sun goes down.

Made in Maranello is a rather disappointing factory tour type ride. I was disappointed with this last time I rode thinking there was stuff missing. It turns out that's not the case and I had seen everything.

The Speed of Magic is another simulator ride based around a chase through a number of different environments in pursuit of a little elf who has made off with your keys.

A very old Ferrari.

They have some really impressive, and special editions of their cars on show.

The go-kart attraction in the centre of the park.

and that was Ferrari World. It's an OK park but no longer the best park in the area with both Motiongate and IMG now taken over. The park is let down with poor operations but the park staff are genuine and friendly; they just need to move people through their rides a bit quicker. Formula Rossa is now a coaster I won't ride again despite it being a record breaking ride. I do really like Flying Aces though; that ride is great.