Attraction Review - Ghosterforce Part 1, Walibi Holland

It wouldn't be Halloween for me without jetting off for a few days to enjoy some European spooky goodness, so last week we jumped on a short flight to Amsterdam and hit up some of the best parks in Europe! First up was Walibi Holland, a park I hadn't visited in over seven years. In my opinion it's not amazing park-wise, but word on the street was that it hosts the best Halloween event in Europe, so I just had to see what was in store for myself!







Before night fell we had a few hours to enjoy some of the rides on offer. Something tells me this park got some sort of package deal with Vekoma, because these things are literally around every corner. When I last visited the park felt very dated, but since then there's been a few changes and a touch of turd polishing. It's not my favourite theme in the world but there's no denying it's breathed a bit of life into the place, and when on top of that you smother everything with pumpkins it's hard not to enjoy the space!





Another reason for our visit was the frankly bizarre looking Lost Gravity. Following the construction of this weird Mack creation. Total headscratcher, surely this can't be good, everything about it just looks wrong! This thing was insane! Loads of weird intense airtime, fun odd forces, the kind of ride where everybody is just laughing at how strange and unpredictable it was. Go ride, it's awesome!








Of course it wouldn't be a trip to Walibi Holland without a few rides on the legendary Goliath. Once the supreme ruler of the European coaster crowd and popping up on many a coaster enthusiast's Top Ten, I was intrigued to see how this would hold up after such a gap between riding and having broadened my coaster horizon in the time between then. Sadly what once had our eyes popping out of our heads is now the bare minimum expectation for today's modern coasters, so although the airtime on Goliath is still intense it just has too much dead space for it to be impressive anymore.




Soon it was time for night to fall and as the sun went down it was clear that shit was about to get very real. With seven scares zones and five scare attractions, there is literally nowhere to hide in the park after dark and it was INCREDIBLE. Fog machines aplenty, lasers, lighting, fire, water, wind and a cast of over 200 actors, this was the most impressive Halloween event at a theme park I have EVER experienced. It was everything I wanted it to be and more.









Jefferson Manor was easily the best scare attraction on offer. The entire thing painted in greyscale instantly set the creepy gothic tone and was packed with innovative and relentless scares. Actors would literally (and I mean literally) fly at you from every angle and as we made our way through we soon learned to expect the unexpected as this attraction took great delight in taking the usual tired of scares you see time after time in these things and completely twisting them on their head. Suffice to say I shit myself throughout the whole thing and I LOVED IT!

















Best of all though were the scare zones. Everything from hell on earth demonic uprisings to ghostly pirates to zombies to...dead game characters? (I'm sure they DEFINITELY had all the necessary IPs for that one!). My fav above all though was the Fire Pit, an outdoor bar themed to a redneck hoedown complete with confederate flags, chainsaw wielding prostitutes and incestuous siblings yelling X-rated insults at everybody entering (definitely one of those 'only in Europe' things!)