We ventured back to what’s perhaps Germany’s most impressive theme park: Phantasialand. Home to highly-detailed multi-level themed worlds in a rather small concise park. Let’s take a tour around Phantasialand and see how our impressions have changed since our previous visits.
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There’s no denying that Phantasialand is one of the prettiest parks around. This isn’t usually due to natural beauty as world-building is the main gig for the park. However, the China area has some beautiful mature foliage.
Let’s head over to the Africa section of the park, home to the 2006 B&M Inverted Coaster: Black Mamba. This Inverted Coaster just hits different. We remember liking it a lot on our last visit, but it really stood out this visit to us as one of the best coasters in the World. The ride has some amazing pacing, incredible theming and integration, and is an overall very satisfying experience. In a park that’s home to rides like Taron and F.L.Y., it’s nice to have a headliner with quite some foliage as part of the ride’s theming and landscaping. While there are several great queues at Phantasialand, Black Mamba‘s really stood out this time for us.
While you really don’t have much time to take in the details, the theming around the coaster is next level. 
Only Phantasialand can hide a major inverted coaster. 
The amount of detail around the ride’s queue and rockwork is impressive.
New for us on this visit was Crazy Bats, the third incarnation of the Space Center/ Temple of the Nighthawk Vekoma coaster. While it wasn’t on the priority list for the day as we’d ridden it as Temple of the Nighthawk before, the queue was decently short and we suddenly had the urge to reride the coaster we dub as “Temple of the Lift Hill”. This coaster is 1175m long and features three lift hills. The coaster easily operates three trains while having a decent wait between trains entering the station, it’s that long. However, the ride really doesn’t do much. They took of the VR due to COVID-19 restrictions and now the ride is experienced in pitch darkness. Having said that, we actually enjoy the ride. The layout is unpredictable and the pacing is pretty solid. There aren’t too many forces but at least the ride is lengthy. The coaster runs like a dream and to be fair, instead of it being demolished, I would love for Phantasialand to keep it but add an insane amount of theming inside the show building to bring it to the standard of their more recent coasters.
Crazy Bats’ station is actually quite a nice upgrade from the previous version of the ride.
While the park’s Big-3 new coasters usually take the coaster enthusiasts attention, we must give a shoutout to Colorado Adventure, which may easily be considered the best mine train on Earth. This 3-lift hill Vekoma Mine Train is integrated with Chiapas (water ride) and features several different spaghetti-bowl sessions, gorgeous theming and rockwork, and has some solid forces. For Alex and I personally we consider it a Top 3 ride at the park. It was even better than we remember from previous visits.
This is the original new-age Phantasialand star. 
Colorado Adventure and Chiapas share an area (sort of).
Phantasialand is one of those parks where best-in-class rides are the norm. Colorado Adventure, Winjas Fear & Force, Taron, Black Mamba, F.L.Y. are all considered by some to be the best coasters of their type. Chiapas is no exception to this rule. Chiapas is themed to the Mexican region with which it shares a name, and is a marvelous high-end Intamin flume with a lengthy layout featuring backwards drops, switch tracks and a spectacular finale. Don’t ask me exactly how the layout is configured because that is a mystery. The rockwork, theming, soundtrack, and overall ride experience are top-notch. On this trip we walked through and around the ride (public midway that was closed last visit) and it made us appreciate the ride even more.
Taron is perhaps the reason most enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to Phantasialand nowadays, but to be fair, Taron did not amaze me the way it had in the past. I must admit the presentation, integration and overall aesthetic of the ride is absolutely magnificent, but the ride experience itself is not entirely my gig. I love a coaster with some variation and I feel like Taron‘s layout, while handsome, lacks variation. Filled with decent airtime and lateral transitions, the ride doesn’t have any other highlight elements. The launches are solid but I just crave an inversion in a ride as long as Taron. Admittedly this opinion has grown even stronger ever since Universal Orlando Resort’s Jurassic World: VelociCoaster has opened, which has a much more varied lineup of elements including inversions, airtime, drops, and similar theming. Having said that, there truly are no terrible rides at this park. Taron is still one of the most impressive launch coasters ever built.
On to Phantasialand’s newest World-class addition, the Vekoma custom flying coaster, especially pioneered for the park: F.L.Y.. The new-for-2020 coaster is located in a new themed land named Rookburgh, which is one of the most impressively laid out themed lands in the World. The area is home to a hotel, a candy shop, and a dine-in restaurant. They still managed to also weave a giant queue through the land. Typical Phantasialand magic! – As for F.L.Y. itself, it’s a lengthy coaster with a revolutionary boarding process where guests board the seat directly in front of them, then the seats and track will rotate 90 degrees post-dispatch. F.L.Y. is also the World’s first launched flying coaster, adding to the immense thrill.
Just when you thought Phantasialand did it all, they created one of the most detailed themed lands in the World. 
F.L.Y. has passengers riding side by side on a jet-pack themed flying machine. 
Rookburgh is a steampunk-lover’s dream and takes place close to Berlin, the next area over. 
F.L.Y.’s theming is up for interpretation, but the station, pre-launch theming, and queue convey a story of public transit and jetpacks in a fantasy steampunk future. 
The coaster’s queue winds all over the area, providing spectacular views of the new coaster. 
F.L.Y.’s trains are 10-vehicles long, creating VASTLY different ride experiences between front and back cars. 
F.L.Y.’s launches are fiesty and really add to the already impressive ride. 
F.L.Y.’s quite intense and not as rerideable as I imagined, but it is so spectacular we had to ride several times. 
There are lots of near-miss elements, tunnels, and acrobatics that make this coaster so unpredictable. 
And unlike most flying coasters, riders spend the majority of their ride facing down. There are only 2 inversions! 
When I wrote near-misses in a caption before, I meant it. 
Steampunk heaven. Rookburgh is easily Phantasialand’s best work. That’s saying a lot.
Speaking of the Berlin area, we finished our evening with the park’s amazing ice cream at the park’s center plaza, which is one of our all-time favorite theme park snacks.
Visiting Phantasialand is always a pleasure, and despite the heavy crowds and longer-than-usual wait times, we still got all coasters in and got some rerides on the favorites. We’re already looking forward to our next visit. Phantasialand truly has the best of the best, all crammed into a small park. It’s impressive, and while I am sure it’s already on everyone’s to-visit list, it truly should be.