NemesisRider
Roller Poster
Intro
Picture the scene: it's late March and you're a stressed engineering student deep in the throes of revision. You just found out that Hyperia at Thorpe Park, who's opening was one of your potential theme park highlights of the year, will now be delayed until dangerously close to the start of your final exam season. You make the sensible decision that you should wait until exams are wrapped up before heading to the Island Like No Other, but you're pretty bummed out about the increased wait to experience the most exciting attraction to debut in the UK for a decade. How do you get over this?
In a moment of reckless abandon, I decided to book return flights from London to Katowice to do a day apiece at Legendia and Energylandia in late April. I'd actually already booked some time in Katowice in June as a stopover enroute to Norway, where I planned to hit both Energylandia and Legendia for the first time. However, even at the time I thought my plans were slightly too ambitious, including only two full days to attempt both. Fortunately, this stop has since instead become a handy opportunity for me to revisit Energylandia and mop up the remaining creds, as well as see some local Katowice sights at a more leisurely pace. I really enjoyed my time in the city on this brief trip; especially the food was a very good and quite inexpensive. Overall, I paid £45 for return flights and £37 a night for a nice central Airbnb - not bad for a trip abroad.
My trip began with a crack of dawn journey to Luton Airport. I was greeted with a massive, slow moving security queue that took me 50 minutes to pass through, forcing me to spring through the terminal to reach my gate within 5 minutes of last call. Fortunately, I did make my flight, and landed in sunny Katowice only a smidge late. Arrival at Katowice Airport was mercifully smooth in comparison, except for some delays and faff caused by my need to acquire some Zlotys, due to the card machine being broken on the bus ticket dispenser (which also only took exact payment in cash, to add another layer of faff). The public AP bus is frequent and works well for getting into town, so there's no need to worry about getting a transfer in my view.
Around 1:30pm, I arrived at Katowice Sadowa, the new and very well-equipped bus station. Here can you find pretty sizable, free (!) lockers to deposit your things for seemingly as long as you want - ideal since my Airbnb wouldn't let me check-in til later. In the same building, there were also toilets and a café who were happy to refill my water bottles for free. When I've visited Poland previously, I've always enjoyed the local cuisine, so that day I hit Pierogi Swiata for a delicious and very filling traditional Polish lunch. Fully refuelled, it was time to commence coastering.
Day 1 - Legendia
Located only 10-15 minutes tram ride from the centre of Katowice, Legendia honestly makes a great first impression. The entrance street looks very pretty, framing perfect views of Lech Coaster across the lake. The surrounding area is surprisingly lush and green, despite its proximity to the urban center of Katowice. The park is very clean, despite some attractions maybe being in need of a new lick of paint. Unfortunately, as an overall impression, this doesn't last. Legendia was ghostly quiet during my visit on a balmy Tuesday, leaving me genuinely worried how much money they would have lost by opening that day. The park was peppered with closed rides, with Dream Hunters Society and the Basilisk dark ride shut for at least the day of my visit and Scary Toys Factory remaining SBNO, in addition to several flat rides in pieces. As I wandered towards the back of the mostly empty park, I began to worry that this whole park was doomed to be a huge disappointment.
Luckily, I was wrong. Lech Coaster really plays to what I like in a coaster; it’s the kind of thing that I’d have dreamed up in NoLimits and wished could be built.
Lech nails more or less every aspect of its presentation. Despite the generic appearance of much of the park, Lech anchors Legendia’s valiant attempt at a medieval themed section, with a stylish station and queue area. Similarly to my current number 1, The Ride To Happiness, much of the coaster is situated directly over water and visible from nearly anywhere in the park. The sections on land mostly criss-cross above the pathways of the area, offering some great angles to watch the ride soar overhead. My favourite presentational feature however is the barrel roll station fly-through, which has now become something of a calling card for Vekoma on their modern designs.
Due to the desolate crowd level, Lech was running one train. Despite this, it remained walk on all day, with many trains dispatching with 8 or less riders aboard. I was pleasantly impressed by the restraints on Lech – whilst a lap bar would be better, the vests are massively more comfortable than those used by B&M and do not hinder the ride experience whatsoever.
Lech’s layout is beautifully choreographed, maintaining a natural flow amidst the intensity. The ride experience starts with a turn onto the lift hill, which swiftly brings you to the top before slowing to a crawl. The drop that follows is incredible. Whilst front row gets to hang over the edge of the shockingly steep incline, back row is rapidly yanked over. In the back right seat (my personal favourite), you experience a total ejection before rapidly rotating to the right and diving under the rocks. This breakneck speed continues through the entire first inversion, which applies sustained positives that left me greying out nearly every time. Lech then kindly fixes your grey-out problem by flinging you into a fantastic, twisted airtime hill, offering sustained ejector. This leads into another great ejector camelback, before the train barrels through the station and into an overbank. The intensity continues through a tight ground-scraping turn, a satisfyingly aggressive twisted hill, and a fast corkscrew. Some surprisingly rapid turns and a couple of additional floater airtime pops at last lead you to the final brake run. Like most modern Vekomas, Lech is glossy smooth throughout (impressive assuming the state of most of the rest of the park) and highly rerideable.
I spent the last hour of my time at Legendia lapping Lech. As the sky began to dim and the abrasive afternoon temperatures subsided, only a handful of guests were left riding the coaster. I had a world class coaster practically to myself, and a perfect evening; what more could I want?
Oh yeah, the rest of the park exists too.
The rapids are one of the more recent additions to Legendia, which is obvious due to the reasonable attempt that has been made at some kind of theming. Their bark is far worse than their bite, however – I came off practically bone dry, a slight disappointment on a day with temperatures cracking 27 degrees.
Continuing my loop back around the lake, it was time to take on Diabolik Petla. Freshly scarred from my poor experiences on King earlier that month, I was not exactly excited to ride this Soquet looper. I gave it a try on both the front and the singular backwards row; both were ****e, though backwards was at least more unique. Most of the layout is tamely profiled, leading to an awkward and uninteresting (but not actively unenjoyable) ride. The loops, however, are sudden and jarringly forceful, which slammed my head around and made me vaguely nauseous. Really a horrible coaster: avoid if possible.
After a stop at the main entrance shop, which had a surprisingly extensive range of merch, I meandered to the ferris wheel which offers decent and unobstructed views of the park and the nearby city. This was followed by a ride on Dream Flyers. I found it quite fun - despite it’s ugly appearance is basically a slightly faster and more modern version of Blackpool’s Flying Machines. I concluded my circuit at Diamond River, a decently presented flume that unfortunately did it’s best to destroy my shins on the drop exits.
Legendia is a convenient park well worth experiencing on an afternoon or evening in Katowice. It’s certainly not a full day experience - after 4 leisurely hours I felt more than satisfied I’d done it justice - but Lech Coaster alone is worth the price of admission. I am genuinely a little worried for the future of the park, as I’m certain they would have been running at a significant loss on the day of my visit despite the favourable weather and central location. Though Krakow has superior transport connections to Energylandia and various other places, the ability to visit Legendia further solidifies Katowice as a really good location to start or end a trip to this part of the world.
After hopping back on the tram to the centre, I got dinner at Zurownia (another lovely restaurant serving local Polish cuisine, would recommend), grabbed some breakfast food from Zabka, then finally settled down for the night in my Airbnb.
Picture the scene: it's late March and you're a stressed engineering student deep in the throes of revision. You just found out that Hyperia at Thorpe Park, who's opening was one of your potential theme park highlights of the year, will now be delayed until dangerously close to the start of your final exam season. You make the sensible decision that you should wait until exams are wrapped up before heading to the Island Like No Other, but you're pretty bummed out about the increased wait to experience the most exciting attraction to debut in the UK for a decade. How do you get over this?
In a moment of reckless abandon, I decided to book return flights from London to Katowice to do a day apiece at Legendia and Energylandia in late April. I'd actually already booked some time in Katowice in June as a stopover enroute to Norway, where I planned to hit both Energylandia and Legendia for the first time. However, even at the time I thought my plans were slightly too ambitious, including only two full days to attempt both. Fortunately, this stop has since instead become a handy opportunity for me to revisit Energylandia and mop up the remaining creds, as well as see some local Katowice sights at a more leisurely pace. I really enjoyed my time in the city on this brief trip; especially the food was a very good and quite inexpensive. Overall, I paid £45 for return flights and £37 a night for a nice central Airbnb - not bad for a trip abroad.
My trip began with a crack of dawn journey to Luton Airport. I was greeted with a massive, slow moving security queue that took me 50 minutes to pass through, forcing me to spring through the terminal to reach my gate within 5 minutes of last call. Fortunately, I did make my flight, and landed in sunny Katowice only a smidge late. Arrival at Katowice Airport was mercifully smooth in comparison, except for some delays and faff caused by my need to acquire some Zlotys, due to the card machine being broken on the bus ticket dispenser (which also only took exact payment in cash, to add another layer of faff). The public AP bus is frequent and works well for getting into town, so there's no need to worry about getting a transfer in my view.
Around 1:30pm, I arrived at Katowice Sadowa, the new and very well-equipped bus station. Here can you find pretty sizable, free (!) lockers to deposit your things for seemingly as long as you want - ideal since my Airbnb wouldn't let me check-in til later. In the same building, there were also toilets and a café who were happy to refill my water bottles for free. When I've visited Poland previously, I've always enjoyed the local cuisine, so that day I hit Pierogi Swiata for a delicious and very filling traditional Polish lunch. Fully refuelled, it was time to commence coastering.
Day 1 - Legendia
Located only 10-15 minutes tram ride from the centre of Katowice, Legendia honestly makes a great first impression. The entrance street looks very pretty, framing perfect views of Lech Coaster across the lake. The surrounding area is surprisingly lush and green, despite its proximity to the urban center of Katowice. The park is very clean, despite some attractions maybe being in need of a new lick of paint. Unfortunately, as an overall impression, this doesn't last. Legendia was ghostly quiet during my visit on a balmy Tuesday, leaving me genuinely worried how much money they would have lost by opening that day. The park was peppered with closed rides, with Dream Hunters Society and the Basilisk dark ride shut for at least the day of my visit and Scary Toys Factory remaining SBNO, in addition to several flat rides in pieces. As I wandered towards the back of the mostly empty park, I began to worry that this whole park was doomed to be a huge disappointment.
Luckily, I was wrong. Lech Coaster really plays to what I like in a coaster; it’s the kind of thing that I’d have dreamed up in NoLimits and wished could be built.
Lech nails more or less every aspect of its presentation. Despite the generic appearance of much of the park, Lech anchors Legendia’s valiant attempt at a medieval themed section, with a stylish station and queue area. Similarly to my current number 1, The Ride To Happiness, much of the coaster is situated directly over water and visible from nearly anywhere in the park. The sections on land mostly criss-cross above the pathways of the area, offering some great angles to watch the ride soar overhead. My favourite presentational feature however is the barrel roll station fly-through, which has now become something of a calling card for Vekoma on their modern designs.
Due to the desolate crowd level, Lech was running one train. Despite this, it remained walk on all day, with many trains dispatching with 8 or less riders aboard. I was pleasantly impressed by the restraints on Lech – whilst a lap bar would be better, the vests are massively more comfortable than those used by B&M and do not hinder the ride experience whatsoever.
Lech’s layout is beautifully choreographed, maintaining a natural flow amidst the intensity. The ride experience starts with a turn onto the lift hill, which swiftly brings you to the top before slowing to a crawl. The drop that follows is incredible. Whilst front row gets to hang over the edge of the shockingly steep incline, back row is rapidly yanked over. In the back right seat (my personal favourite), you experience a total ejection before rapidly rotating to the right and diving under the rocks. This breakneck speed continues through the entire first inversion, which applies sustained positives that left me greying out nearly every time. Lech then kindly fixes your grey-out problem by flinging you into a fantastic, twisted airtime hill, offering sustained ejector. This leads into another great ejector camelback, before the train barrels through the station and into an overbank. The intensity continues through a tight ground-scraping turn, a satisfyingly aggressive twisted hill, and a fast corkscrew. Some surprisingly rapid turns and a couple of additional floater airtime pops at last lead you to the final brake run. Like most modern Vekomas, Lech is glossy smooth throughout (impressive assuming the state of most of the rest of the park) and highly rerideable.
I spent the last hour of my time at Legendia lapping Lech. As the sky began to dim and the abrasive afternoon temperatures subsided, only a handful of guests were left riding the coaster. I had a world class coaster practically to myself, and a perfect evening; what more could I want?
Oh yeah, the rest of the park exists too.
The rapids are one of the more recent additions to Legendia, which is obvious due to the reasonable attempt that has been made at some kind of theming. Their bark is far worse than their bite, however – I came off practically bone dry, a slight disappointment on a day with temperatures cracking 27 degrees.
Continuing my loop back around the lake, it was time to take on Diabolik Petla. Freshly scarred from my poor experiences on King earlier that month, I was not exactly excited to ride this Soquet looper. I gave it a try on both the front and the singular backwards row; both were ****e, though backwards was at least more unique. Most of the layout is tamely profiled, leading to an awkward and uninteresting (but not actively unenjoyable) ride. The loops, however, are sudden and jarringly forceful, which slammed my head around and made me vaguely nauseous. Really a horrible coaster: avoid if possible.
After a stop at the main entrance shop, which had a surprisingly extensive range of merch, I meandered to the ferris wheel which offers decent and unobstructed views of the park and the nearby city. This was followed by a ride on Dream Flyers. I found it quite fun - despite it’s ugly appearance is basically a slightly faster and more modern version of Blackpool’s Flying Machines. I concluded my circuit at Diamond River, a decently presented flume that unfortunately did it’s best to destroy my shins on the drop exits.
Legendia is a convenient park well worth experiencing on an afternoon or evening in Katowice. It’s certainly not a full day experience - after 4 leisurely hours I felt more than satisfied I’d done it justice - but Lech Coaster alone is worth the price of admission. I am genuinely a little worried for the future of the park, as I’m certain they would have been running at a significant loss on the day of my visit despite the favourable weather and central location. Though Krakow has superior transport connections to Energylandia and various other places, the ability to visit Legendia further solidifies Katowice as a really good location to start or end a trip to this part of the world.
After hopping back on the tram to the centre, I got dinner at Zurownia (another lovely restaurant serving local Polish cuisine, would recommend), grabbed some breakfast food from Zabka, then finally settled down for the night in my Airbnb.
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