Friday 8 May 2015

La Feria de Chapultepec

When driving into Mexico City with GPS we quickly discovered that getting the right road was quite tricky. The GPS doesn't work so well when there are lots of roads running parallel and we kept missing our turns as a result. We eventually had to have someone reading the GPS screen and calling out turns before the system did. That seemed to do the trick.

La Feria de Chapultepec is a large amusement park on the edge of a large forest park in the centre west of the city. Greeting us at the entrance to the park is Montana Triple Loop, another Schwarzkopf coaster and the one I alluded to earlier in the trip that used to be in Flamingoland in the UK before coming here. I was fortunate enough to ride this in 2008 when it was callde Montana Infinitum. Back then it was coloured yellow and blue with its name coming from a national phone company that they'd done a licencing deal with. Now the deal had expired, the ride had been renamed and quite interestingly the ride had a new and very tidy,looking paint job.

Also visible from the car park opposite was their Schwarzkopf shuttle loop which was called Cascabel (Rattle) back in 2008, but now it was called "Cascabel 2.0" so I'll assume it had been given some sort of reboot.

This is a very impressive ride and Thomas was very keen to ride it. Having been here before I was hoping to be able to ride their wooden coaster which was down on my last visit.

So we got a nice welcome from the park and and a not-so nice welcome from security who told us not to take photos. He must have been 4 and half feet tall and well into his 70s so there was no way I was going to be intimidated by him so a curt response of "yo soy un tourist" and I continued to take a couple more in defiance. He then wandered off realising he'd picked a fight with the wrong tourist, whilst I contemplated whether "tourist" translated to something different in Spanish.

The notice board that notified us which rides were down unfortunately upset two of us. Montana Triple Loop was the ride that Thomas was so looking forward to riding, and Montana Rusa was the wooden coaster. A quick chat with the staff revealed that the wooden coaster was only down for today but would be open tomorrow. They didn't know about the triple loop but given the paint job was so brand new it didn't look like a train had run on it we decided to turn back today with a view to return the next day.

Whilst we were driving off to our next destination I fired off a message to their Facebook page where they confirmed the wooden coaster would be open but not the triple loop coaster. They were unsure when that was going to open. Why this was disconcerting news and the second Schwarzkopf missed on the trip I do have to thank their social media team for responding so quickly. They were the only park to do so, and we'd contacted many ahead of the trip.


No comments:

Post a Comment