All The Fun Of The Fair - The Nausea Quandary & Phantasialand

Hello there

It has been such a while since I wrote one of these pieces, but I was recently reminiscing about a theme park I visited 36 years ago and never went back to.

Now, as I briefly chatted about in the Loopholes podcast this week, I first went to Disney World in 1980, returning in 2020, which made it 40 years between visits. So that still holds the record, but I reckon I’ll be able to hold out on the other one to beat it.  I have, however, had a real hankering to go back to Phantasialand recently, but further investigation ended in disappointment.

I shall explain.

Around 2009-ish, I went to Chessington World Of Adventures.  I’m not showing off.  I was dragged there by a former pal, sort of under duress.  When I first passed my driving test, there was a period of time where I would go to Blackpool Pleasure Beach most weekends, so there was rather an intensive time of “rides”.  I was a big fan. After my formative years being mainly obsessing about "dark rides" like the Ghost Train or Alice In Wonderland ride, I had grown into a thrill-seeker. The more exhilarating the ride the better, and it wasn’t unusual for me to stay on The Big One for a few hours.  I know I’m not helping myself on the double entendre front, but please resist the urge make this sound dirty.

By the time I agreed, through clenched teeth, to go to Chessington, it had been a long while since I’d been on any sort of roller-coaster.  That day came as quite the shock to me as, despite me not wanting to be there, I was equally up for going on the “big rides”. The spirit was very much willing.

A couple of them past without incident, but then I noticed I was starting to feel a bit queasy.  I powered through, but it eventually tipped into full-blown nausea and being very unsteady on my feet.  What I would now recognise as extreme motion sickness, just confused me.  The last straw was a swinging ship, hardly the most intense or unsettling of things, but when I got off it I felt absolutely terrible.  So much so that after a brief sit down with some water, the nausea not shifting, I made the call to leave early.  I have very vivid memories of being sat in a huge traffic jam on the M25, just desperate to get myself home.  Water wasn’t helping, and being stuck in a car was the absolute worst.  When I did eventually get home, it took a very long sleep for me to feel anywhere near normality again.

I thought it was just an off day, but about a year later I spent a day at Blackpool Pleasure Beach again.  This was the day, for those of you who know about such things, that myself and Ed ran riot through the park trying to get in trouble.  It was also the day that we rode the Valhalla 23 times in a row.  It would have been more but I started to get the motion sickness again, and we opted for mischief in dark rides instead.  Not like that.  It’s like I’m doing it on purpose sometimes, huh?

Now, taking into account that it was 23 times in a row on the Valhalla, you may feel that this was the cause of my symptoms.  I totally accept that.  I don’t think these rides are designed for long residencies.  However, on the journey up I had been talking about my concern that there would be a repeat of the Chessington incident, and mused on how awful it would be if my body just couldn’t handle extreme rides any more.  Something that I’d loved so much growing up, might be physically out of my capabilities now.  Like Rugby League, which would kill me stone dead if I tried to play a match tomorrow.  By the end of the day, this was two consecutive times at fairs that I’d ended up feeling really poorly (although I’d managed to catch the second time quick enough that it didn’t become a reason to leave the park – as it turned out, a vindictive/justified security guard fulfilled that for me).

We went back the following year, and it happened again.  Then a day at Thorpe Park produced the same result.  Now it was a trend.  It was definitely the rides.  I’ve no clue whether this is common, or whether there is something in our physiology that alters as we get older, but it was official.  It wasn’t just the nausea, it was the actual experience.  I mean, I really didn’t like it.  It felt ghastly.

So by the time I hit Disney World in 2020, I’ve no desire for big rides full stop.  My suspicion was finally confirmed when I acquiesced to going on the Expedition Everest ride.  Now, for the record, this – like all Disney Parks efforts – is a very impressive ride.  It’s a roller-coaster within a mock-up of Everest (not to scale, but still terrifically imposing as a thing), beautifully designed with sightlines that tick every box.  It also has a tremendously interesting cultural ritual, which I may have told you about before, but shall mention it again…

There is a moment early in the ride where it is designed to look as though the track in front of you has been torn up (spoiler alert – it’s by a Yeti) and the ride stops, only to then continue backwards.  There are two things to look out for here.  Firstly, there is – for some riders – a bird that pops out in front of the vast view over Orlando ahead.  It doesn’t happen for every car, so it a proper Easter Egg of the ride, but many people miss it because of the second thing to look out for.  The snow to the left of the car is covered in hairbands.  A lot of hairbands.

My assumption was that this was just a thing of people leaving something of themselves at the park.  Knowing that, after they’d left, something would still be there.  A sort of reverse souvenir.  Joe Rohde, who was the lead designer on the entire Animal Kingdom park where the ride is housed, likens it to the real mountain where climbers have a ritual of leaving a rock up there. Which, I guess, is kind of the same thing I was thinking, but I didn’t know about the rock litter on Everest.  I did ask a cast member at the park about it when I was buying something or other, and they said it was a ritual that was predominantly American-Asian girls who had just graduated from school, like a rite of passage that had developed (the cast member was American-Asian and seemed to know exactly about it – I really liked her and remember her despite spending no more than five minutes in her company – good customer service again, innit).

But anyway, I digress with trivia.  

The point is, predictably, Expedition Everest set me off again.  Really, horribly unwell from it.  I think that was the last significant thrill-ride I risked on the visit.  Not that Disney is particularly full of them, but that felt like the moment of admitting defeat.  The rest of the visit was spent re-establishing my love of dark rides and being completely comfortable with this being more than enough for my cravings.  I’m not saying I’ll never go on a roller-coaster ever again, but I know for certain that there’s a high-risk it will end in tears.

So I got to thinking about Phantasialand, which is a theme park in Germany.  I visited Germany on a school trip in the olden days, and often think how daft it is that I’ve never been back.  I really loved it as a place.  It was aesthetically right on the money for my taste, extremely tidy (I saw no litter at any point), and it felt oddly safe all the time.  I know that nowhere is, but that’s the memory it left me with.  Part of the trip was a day at Phantasialand, and as somebody who was - at that point - halfway house between kids rides and thrill rides, I was very much looking forward to it.

I have no photos of my day there, but I have been able to piece it together as I do still have the brochure and there’s some YouTube stuff on it.

Firstly, it was very Disney-influenced, which was of course a treat for me.  It was dated-Disney even then though, and very much missing a few million in funds to get close. Actually, Disney-influenced is probably being kind.  It was complete thievery in many ways…

“Jumbo” apparently.  All you had to legally do was change one letter. Blatantly taking advantage of the fact that, back then, only 10% of Americans had a passport.

It wasn’t just Disney though, there were many debts owing. In fact, it was as though Disney World had a baby with Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  As you can see from the cover, they’d managed a monorail which is prominently branded as with Disney Parks, but as you’ll see from the map I’m about to show you, it also had aMine Ride like Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  

Not without its charm like…

Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s mine ride was called the Gold Mine (I’m still cross that it’s now gone), but if you can zoom in enough to see, Phantasialand’s mine ride was the Silver Mine.  They were at least acknowledging that they were a budget copy.  I do very much remember that ride though.  It was really slow.  Which isn’t a complaint. I feel that dark rides should be really slow.  You should get a proper look at tableaus and animatronics, not a quick whizz past them.  And speaking of budget copies, it’s worth mentioning the Ghost Train, or Geister-Rikscha (Ghost Rickshaw – more acknowledgement of budgetry constraints).

The Geister-Rikscha is not a rickshaw at all.  It is a full on, direct copy of the Doom Buggies from the Haunted Mansion.  Identical except for the German version having three seats, and a clam-shell design on the back.  Other than that, it’s the same Omnimover as Disney.

It’s also incongruous in that it’s not really ghost heavy. There’s barely a ghost in it.  It’s all Chinese Mythology, which may be what the paranormal is in Germany but it’s a little odd to brand it as a ghost train dark ride rather than just a themed dark ride.  I mean, there are ghosts, but they’re mainly where the ride has lifted from the Haunted Mansion again.

It even ends with these fellas.  Hitch-hiking ghosts, who then end up in your “rickshaw” using Pepper’s Ghost trickery, just as their counterparts at the Haunted Mansion do.

All of this is retrospective assessment though.  On the day, I adored everything about the whole place.  It was gentle and calming with nice rides, lovely aesthetics, and it was the first time I was brave enough to ask directions in German.  There was a log flume (“Waterfall Ride”) and even an Octopus and Cine 2000 (both of which were ubiquitous in UK theme parks too).  There was also an amazing little walkaround attraction/show called Casa Magnetica, which messed about with perspectives and balance.  It was all built on weird angles to provide optical (and physics) illusions.  I remember it clearly. It was the only fairground attraction that made me feel woozy in those halcyon days.

In short, Phantasialand was the perfect place for somebody who loves theme parks but can no longer handle extreme rides, hence me thinking about it a lot recently.  I remember hearing that there was a large fire there a few years ago, and wondered if the park even existed anymore.  If it did though, I was giving serious thought to a revisit.

Here’s how I remember it;

And here it is in 2023;

It’s roller-coaster after roller-coaster.  Of course it is. Extreme ones too. It may have developed its own identity as a thrill park finally, but it would likely kill me and my sensitive status quo.

So the potential trip looks like it’s off.  All the old rides have gone.  The Silver Mine has followed the Gold (and every other) Mine into the history books, the Waterfall Ride has morphed into a water rapids extravaganza, and one would presume that Health & Safety finally caught up with the – frankly lethal - Casa Magnetica. Nothing for me there now.

Well…except for the Geister-Rikscha.  That’s still clinging on.  I’d very much like to ride that again but wearing a Haunted Mansion t-shirt.  Just to see if anyone at the park could make eye contact when I did.

Hope you’re having a brilliant week

Much love to you

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