Located in the west of Edmonton is the ridiculously huge Edmonton Mall and within that is an amusement park called Galaxyland. Now people who know me know I obsess around finding parks on google. I thought I'd take that to the next level to surprise the group by researching the best way to enter the mall.
If you enter through entrance 10 this is what you get. Tal was most impressed...and I was taken aback too. It's only when you see the ride for yourself do you realise quite how big this ride is.
The Mindbender is the largest indoor coaster in the world and is a Schwarzkopf ride, seen within the enthusiast community as the best ride maker of all time.
The ride is reliant on horse collar restraints which also reside on its sister ride Olympia Looping and the main reason why I don't rate that coaster, so it'd be interesting to see how this one worked out.
How banked a drop is that?
On getting the tickets I spotted this sign and instantly panicked. The ticket seller smiled when he spotted what I'd seen and told me that it was back up and running before taking the poster down.
Something to bear in mind if you only have a small window to hit this coaster is that the ride is closed for maintenance during the day. I don't know if they do in-day maintenance checks on the back of their accident from 1986 where the train derailed killing 3 people and seriously injuring a 4th.
So having bought the wristbands we gave the ride a go and unfortunately it suffers from the same problems with the restraints as Olympia Looping. Don't get me wrong it was one of the best rides on the trip but it would be so much better if those spine crunching restraints were removed. The forces were easily the strongest on this ride.
The structure is amazing though.
The rear car has been turned around to offer a reverse ride which I can only assume would be stupid. We didn't get to find out as they weren't opening that row today.
The second coaster is a spinning mouse thing called Galaxy Orbiter. As its name implies this ride does go around the park and being longer than most and having a custom layout to fit around everything else this quite an impressive ride too.
Autosled is a large Zierer coaster that goes around a large part of the park. It's fair to say that this isn't as intense as the Schwarzkopf :)
The fourth coaster is a Dragon Wagon and whilst some people have said they've ridden it we didn't even bother trying. The ride does have an upper height limit and we know how these places are.
Galaxy Quest is a 7D shooting attraction located within the Mindbender structure. I'm not sure what the extra Ds are but we had some flash effects, guns and a simulator seat that moved around. The game we played was a House of the Dead zombie shooting story, which was a load of fun...and I'm not just saying that because I won.
Space Shot is reportedly the largest indoor tower attraction in the world. I thought Ferrari World had the record but I guess not. This was surprisingly good and I'm pleased Tal encouraged me to give it a go as I wasn't going to.
Next to the tower ride is a shooting dark ride which wasn't bad, not as much fun as the 7D one though.
The rest of the guys finished up the park visit with more rides on the Mindbender. Me? I was done and didn't want to put more pain on my neck.
Elsewhere the park had a good selection of well maintained attractions.
This is the entrance to the park via the mall. I'm not sure the rides impact would be the same as entering the way we did.
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