Here's some Mexican notes, note that some of them have little windows that are a little hologramatic. I'd never seen that on a note before!Bidding a fond farewell to Mexico City it was time to head to the airport for a flight to Guadalajara. As part of the check-in process our suitcases had to be inspected. Whilst those belonging to the locals were thoroughly searched, ours got a mere swab test, which we passed cleanly :D The flight itself was just an hour and we got to fly on an aircraft that was amusing to us Europeans.
Well it made us laugh. I don't think the other people around us understood the hilarity.We got lucky with taxi driver who took us from the airport to the hotel. He spoke fairly good English, so we hired him for the day to take us to where we wanted to go. We'd arrived at the hotel way before check-in so were able to store the luggage and then get back into the taxi.
I had planned to visit two parks in Guadalajara and see some of the city, but time was tight. We arrived at the hotel just before midday and our flight was the following morning, this led us to have just half a day to get everything done.
A rather overly-adorned truck on the way to the hotel.
Balloons anyone?
Strange little graffiti, I like how the arms of one go through the mouth of the other. Escher-esque you might say.
A quite nice statue celebrating the Olympics which were held here in 1968. Those games were famous for the Black power salute that got 2 athletes banned from the games for life. They were also the first games to feature the Fosbury flop technique of High Jumping which is now prevalent.
This is the main Bullring in the city. Unfortunately there were no events on today.
Our first park is the main park in the city, Selva Magica. It's part of a complex that includes a major recreational park and a zoo. But we weren't there for those. There was a slightly larger crowd than at La Feria but still not enough to prevent us getting around the park quickly.
The park was small enough to not warrant a printed map but they did have a poster of it. You can see that all the coasters are around one part of the park and the kiddy rides around another. You can guess which way we went.
These kids were also seen at La Feria, they must be popular.
One of those weird Top Spin/Rollover variants, which we didn't ride. The coaster track in the foreground belongs to Titan, which we did.
The coaster is a basic oval design with lots of hills, and a rather peculiar straight section. On our first ride we rode it in the front and was surprised at how much airtime we got. On the second ride we were too busy chatting to put the lap bar down, and the ride op didn't check. Fortunately our hands were holding onto the handrail because had we not we would both have been launched out on the first drop. The airtime in the back was immense and we were both out of the car. After both of us panicking and letting out one of those half-scream-half-laugh noises we quickly pulled the bar down and enjoyed the rest of the ride. I think the couple in front were thinking we were a couple of foreign lightweights, they weren't to know we were unrestrained.
Catarina is a caterpillar coaster. It was closed :(
Jubile is a pinfari coaster. It was being hit with hammers :(
Tornado is a Schwarzkopf coaster. It was closed :(
So we weren't doing too well at this park and made do initially with repeat rides on Titan and checking out the rest of the park. We both liked Titan a lot even though it wasn't particularly fast or high and it's layout was as basic as you could get.
You can just make out the strange straight section in the background. They could easily have got an extra camelback hill in. I wonder what the reason is for not.
Bubble Zone was an indoor childrens play area that was playing some pretty strange trance variant.
The park's flying carpet ride. A rink dink dink dink, a rink dink dink. (Fatboy Slim fans, might get the reference)
No idea what ride this used to be, but I didn't fancy a go on it in its current form.
This is the Uma Thurman ride. You can get inside her pants and have a play.
See! I told you. It's some weird indoor playground thing for the little 'uns.
Cartoon child recommends the carousel.
More kiddy rides, particularly liking the Hind Gunships. "Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a Russian Fighter Pilot". "Si son - make your papi proud".
A very boring ride indeed, but I guess the kids would like it.
Now this was very very wrong, at least to us that live in a more politically correct society. But I still took a picture.
Another rather dull round-and-round-we-go ride. As you can see it wasn't manned. Quite a lot of the rides were either not being run or the ride operators were hiding.
The kiddy jumping ride, that statue just walked in my shot, honest!
Casa del Terror is the park's haunted walkthrough, and this park was the first one I'd seen with people hanging from the trees outside it. Simple theming that would probably be too scary back home. It was also the first walkthrough with about a half a dozen exits. The majority of our group pegged it out of the first one leaving just Jeppe and I to negotiate the rest of it on our own. We thought we'd made it all the way round too only to find we'd exited through the penultimate exit. Ah well, it wasn't that scary anyway. Just a bit of a maze.
Aside from Titan the most popular attraction in the park was actually the Sky coaster with lots of school kids queueing up for a go. Having done a few before including the ridiculously tall on in Kissimee I had no intention of doing any here.
Headed back around to ensure we hadn't missed anything we were pleased to see the caterpillar coaster was open for business, even better the mechanics had stopped banging the pinfari and that was now running, and even better still they'd also opened the Schwarzkopf. So what started out to be a bad park ended up being fine.
At the entrance to the zoo is this pretty cool sculpture featuring the heads of all the animals that had died in their captivity. Not really, just a piece signifying the range of animals that you could see if you could be bothered to enter, which we couldn't. After a quick search of the carpark we located our taxi driver. Rather embarrassingly we'd told him we'd be two hours in the park, we were out in under half that time. He didn't mind, we were paying him by the hour anyway.
This is the entrance to the park, just so you know. Our taxi driver did actually get lost on the way in and had to ask for directions. Admittedly he's used to airport runs and he'd still do a better job than us.
A random church. Go vespa rider, go.
Quite liking the architecture on the corner building, not so sure about the upside down pyramid behind it though. After a short drive and our driver taking us to the wrong park we ended up at the second park. Park Rehilete.
This is a much smaller park, and we were the first club members to visit it. I like it when we do that, and I don't mean for the bragging rights. We'd done it in Russia last year and in researching this trip noticed that this park, which only had a small kiddy coaster recorded, actually had a second. Entrance to the park was very cheap costing around 70pence for the all-rides wristband.
It was instantly apparent that this park wasn't busy at all. There were around four members of staff all pretty bored. The girl in the ticket booth had clearly got so fed up waiting for people coming in that she had left her post to sweep up some leaves. We thought the park was closed until she came running over to let us in.
If the number of staff was low, the number of visitors even more so. There were two having sole use of the boating lake and we later spotted a father and son too, and that was it. Six public (including us) and four staff.
The park didn't really have any theming, just a selection of random items that had probably been salvaged from other parks. Is Disneyland missing an R2?
Love the Liberty paint job. Think if they did this to New York? The ride is called Manhattan.
and it made me giggle that people who point can't ride. I'm sure they could easily accommodate a wheel chair though. There's clear space between the vehicles they could sit in.
This is Rehilete, the coaster that I'd found (I can say that as it was me who got it added to RCDB.com) It was alright actually, nothing amazing, but pretty smooth and a ride I don't think I've seen anywhere else.
Or is it called Montana Rusa? Perhaps they procured that from somewhere else. Actually on their website they call it Rehilete.
We did have to wait a little while for the operator to open it for us as he was dealing with the father and son elsewhere, but to make up for the delay he let the train go through the station a few times.
In all the excitement of finding Rehilete I forgot to take photos of the known coaster at this park. Nessie. The only one I did take was this one of Jeppe enjoying it.
More kiddy rides. What is Orca doing to that poor dolphin?
I quite like the paint-job on this one.
The park has a go-kart track. The two guys from the boat had a race on it and the karts weren't that quick.
The only roundabout in Mexico where the traffic goes around it in the same direction, just like back home.
Doesn't look like this one is running.
I have no idea what this is about.
The Rehilete logo. Quite Mexican methinks...The park was tiny, and barren and lacked any kind of charm, but we were the first to visit it so that alone makes it memorable. Any concern we'd had about getting around Guadalajara in time were quickly dismissed as we'd got around both parks in less than 3 hours. This left us plenty of time to check-in and have a look around the city.
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