Date:5/17/2025-5/28/2025
Destination: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg
Goal: Coasters, Culture
Distance: 4079 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight
Potential Credits: 39
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A steel coaster with maroon track and white supports does a banana roll element, with gold trains with steampunk theming navigating it. |
Dag 3/Jour 3
I woke up feeling like there was acid poured down my throat. My throat was incredibly sore and I had a headache, I hoped I had just snored too loudly and a little water would clear it up. It was bright early in the morning as we drove all the way across the great nation of Belgium for Plopsaland De Panne, and a ride ranked among the best in the world!
As soon as we got behind the wheel, the trouble started. A wreck on the highway rerouted us through these little Flemish villages with maybe a lane and a half’s worth of width. And we’ve got tractors, combines, and full on semi trucks driving right at our tiny Toyota Yaris as we’re hugging the shoulder trying not to get smashed into head-on! Furthermore, I was starting to tell that it wasn’t just a sore throat from snoring, it felt like early cold symptoms complete with a runny nose. I masked at the airport in crowded spots as always but I guess I still got something. So fingers crossed I’m not dying of the plague or some shit that’ll ruin my trip!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A park turnstile building says "Plopsaland De Panne Celebration Parade" accompanied by pictures of colorful cartoon character costumes. |
After 2.5 hours of driving turned into 4, we finally arrive in De Panne to a Plopsaland deader than Phil Robertson! There was no wait for anything, no crowd, this is my kind of park!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A town square across from a splash pad shows some buildings, a pointed castle tower, and a twist of maroon coaster track. |
Plopsaland De Panne has a Main Street entrance under one of those tall glass awning things, but it’s a bit more on the cartoon side than a typical park’s Main Street. And it’s nice but gives the perfect first impression for this place: this is a classy European park, but a kid’s version of that. It’s gonna be colorful, there’s gonna be jarring cartoon characters and corporate tie ins and lots of stuff to sell toys, but it’ll still be nice and we’ll still put effort into it.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A colorful green arch of gears and flowers leads back through a green, overgrown landscape to a twisted maroon and white steel roller coaster. |
There was no question as to what we would do first. We’d practically been drooling over Ride to Happiness since we planned this trip, and my sick ass just lugged us clear across the great nation of Belgium to ride it. As we entered the colorful, beautifully landscaped, trippy plaza for Tomorrowland: Ride to Happiness, it sunk in that I was about to ride what’s generally agreed to be one of the most intense coasters out there, and suddenly I didn’t care about the sniffling or sore throat. It was time to ride!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A golden globe prop surrounded by rings and topped with a Tomorrowland butterfly insignia, atop it is a twist of maroon steel coaster track with white supports. Spinning golden cars themed as gears twist in various positions on the track as the coaster leaves the inversion. |
WTF just happened??? I don’t know what’s going on but I think I liked it! Sometime after that drop off that little wind catcher thing I think the shit just hit the fan and I had no idea what was going on. It’s super intense, there’s powerful airtime, inversions are phenomenal (as with any Mack product), and the soundtrack just adds to the chaos that is Ride to Happiness!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A maypole with different European coats of arms and Swiss flag banners rises in the foreground of cabin. |
After a few more rides, we left one of the world’s most intense rides past a cutesy little spinning duck to explore the rest of this kiddie park. Heidi: The Ride was next, located in this adorable Alp-themed plaza.
Heidi is a clone of White Lightning at Fun Spot Orlando, themed to some kids’ TV show set in Switzerland or some shit. It looks a lot nicer and has a cute little Mystic Timbers shed thing at the end, but Heidi on a full train packed less of a punch than White Lightning running empty. Maybe it was my middle seat, I don’t know, but this was one and done. Cuts coaster, though.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A roller coaster train resembling a dragon crosses red track into a castle. |
This powered kids dragon thing was next, and it was honestly just a standard powered coaster. I’d have been indifferent to it regardless, but Max and Moritz made this experience so underwhelming as we’d seen how good these can actually be.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A golden gear-themed train navigates out of a vertical loop of maroon steel track, held up by white supports. |
“Wait, this thing has a loop?” John asked as we made our way past a closed K6 Roller Skater. Looking up at Ride to Happiness, beautifully rising over this water feature, he noticed a vertical loop he didn’t even realize was present on the ride. Honestly, I likely wouldn’t have either had I not looked up the layout going into this. It’s that disorienting!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A checkered red and white tablecloth holds a plate containing a bowl of brown stew garnished with green onions, a wire basket of frites, and a stemmed glass of Leffe beer. |
Both of us were hungry, so I asked where to get the best food in the park. “Monsieur Spaghetti,” the man escorting the creepy mascots gestured us. “Flemish food.” I got this Belgian beef and onion stew with frites and Leffe, John got some cheese and ham noodle dish. This food was great for park fare! Didn’t break the bank either.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A small brick mockup of a school reads "SAS, SCHOOL AAN DE STROOM." |
Plopsaland we were beginning to notice was more about IPs than we realized, but the next coaster had a theme I recognized that you wouldn’t expect to find on a coaster- Belgian Glee: The Ride! They turned the queue into a high school dance party!
John had seen the coaster but was unaware that it was a TV show. I had a lot of explaining to do.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A mockup of a high school hallway has lockers with "Party" painted across them in green. |
#LikeMe is, more or less, a Flemish adaptation of America’s tv show Glee. And I had even seen a few episodes trying to learn Dutch, knowing that both TV and music are great tools for learning language. It’s cute, very overly positive, I was a theater kid so I'm used to that but I get it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It was honestly fun and entertaining, the music was catchy, plot is a little bare bones and it’s a lot more sanitized and less mature than Glee was, but it works. Dubbing a show about high school in Ohio for a Dutch audience probably wouldn’t have the same effect for cultural reasons. The #LikeMe kids seem like they want to be at school, they’re a bit more professional about it, nobody’s sleeping around getting pregnant, and there’s no mass school shooting episode. But I grew up a theater kid and a Gleek that graduated the same year that Rachel, Finn, Kurt, Mercedes, Puck, and all those guys graduated, so I’m game for this.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Through the green woods travels a blue and yellow train on blue track, with a yellow "SAS" school crest painted onto the side. |
Oh yeah, the ride. The coaster itself is just a normal Zierer Tivoli coaster, I feel like I’ve ridden one like it in terms of layout but I can’t place it. It goes around twice and it isn’t a bad ride, but aside from one light by the lift hill, nothing about the actual ride has anything to do with the show. Onboard audio would’ve made this even more fun!
John wanted to do the Starflyer next. I don’t do those, so I shot this photo of #LikeMe while he rode.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A tall hexagonal wooden tower has a piece of red coaster track dropping from it, a boat rolls down the rails. |
Supersplash was next! Is it a credit or not? I’d seen Plopsa had some kind of flume thing coming out of a wooden tower, but didn’t think much of it. Turns out it’s a water coaster with a single airtime hill! It’s the bare minimum, but we took the plunge and the +1. Didn't even get splooged on!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A small brick manor with blue roller coaster track exiting the left side. |
“What’s that cool-looking building?” I thought as we approached some kind of slightly cartoonish mansion. And then I saw the blue track leaving the side of it and it dawned on me: this was the thing I dreaded most here.
Rewind to a little less than a year ago. I’m at beautiful Fårup Sommerland, Danmark’s funnest forest, enjoying a quiet, beautiful day. Saven’s ticked off, Fønix is ticked off, mine train is ticked off, and I find myself at one of their more unique rides: a Gerstlauer launch coaster called Lynet, one of only two ever built. This rare ride system features six-seater cars similar to Dare Devil Dive and a launch, catapulting these log-themed trains through the woods of North Jutland. And it starts out great! Good kick to the launch, good air, I’m liking it! But then we get to the brakes and the shit hits the fan. Transition after jarring transition, my head is paddled around the OTSR. Imagine the "bad Eurofighter" stereotype taken to the literal extreme.
I was so relieved when it was over, I did not return to give it another go, and I thanked my lucky stars that there were only two in the world! I had a negligible chance of ever running into one of these pieces of junk ever again and no longer had to live in fear!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A twist of blue coaster track with gold supports. A single gold, Egyptian-themed car twists upside-down through a barrel roll element. |
…until now! Two of these were built: Lynet at Fårup, and Anubis right here at Plopsaland! And we are ready to be badly beaten up!
And apparently this is a TV show too. The station is supposed to be some African explorer’s mansion, I think.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A golden Egyptian-themed coaster car dives downward through a loop into some tropical foliage, with a red pirate lantern in the foreground. |
First ride I strap in, already with a bit of a headache so I know this is gonna suck, and braced for the worst. But it didn’t suck at all! It was a little rough and I did get hit here and there, but it was no worse than what my ex did to me. Riding it again, and knowing how to move with and brace for the layout, I actually really enjoyed it.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A golden coaster car with an Egyptian eye and wings on the front dives through green foliage. |
My second ride on this was, honestly, really awesome! The headache from the congestion was a little worse after getting knocked around, but I braved it and took a second ride with John, and knowing how to brace made this ride actually really awesome! It's like an intense 2000's Intamin and deserves every bit the notoriety that Maverick has. What a great ride, and I was expecting it to be absolutely horrid!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A length of maroon track leaves a station adorned with ornate gold and a colorful stained glass butterfly art, twisting around a curve through a barrel roll. |
K, creds are knocked out, neither one of us cares about K6 Roller Skater (it was testing but who gives a fuck), let's keep riding to Happiness!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A green, flowery field has a few twists of maroon coaster track twisting behind a colorful steampunk building. A flying snake dive element has twisting golden cars diving back to the tall grass. |
I felt like dog shit at this point, but Ride to Happiness was a solid walk on, I did not give a damn. I was going to whore this coaster so much they would have to pull my cold, dead corpse from the seat and zip it into a body bag!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A gold steampunk-themed coaster train dives down from an inversion of maroon track. |
The more I rode it, the more I fell in love with it. It's not perfect, no coaster is, it's got a bit of a rattle in spots and I had laps where the angle maybe wasn't where I'd want it to be, but it's really damn good. If you're one of those people that sees Mack as weak launches and inferior RMC airtime, Ride to Happiness is here to change that. This coaster provides something nothing else can: pure and unique chaos every time you step aboard it. That "different ride every time" slogan used to market every spinning coaster system ever is actually a relevant selling point for Ride to Happiness.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett smiles in front of Ride to Happiness, as a train behind him traverses the jojo roll. |
When one lap ended, we got back on. Maybe one of us would go pee, the other might need a break, but there was nobody at a coaster that has been consistently voted this highly at the global level, we weren't getting off.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Ride to Happiness flies up into its flying snake dive amid green trees. |
So John and I get back in line, hop in the back, and take what we (stupidly) expect to just be another lap on Ride to Happiness. It's mostly dead, the train is largely full, but we're fortunate enough to have nobody opposite us to leave our car off balance.
(Wise Words From An Industrial Balancer: To get a spinning coaster to spin the hardest, concentrate all the weight to one singular point as far away from the axis of rotation as possible.)
Oops we broke the laws of physics.
WTF did we even do??? We'd been riding off balance all day, but something about this ride just kept grabbing the heavy angle the right way over and over again. The result? We hit the brakes spinning so hard that I could feel the restraint resisting it from just flinging me across that trippy plaza by the end of the ride! It took me a good four seconds to even realize how quickly we were actually spinning, and shortly after, these kids onboard the train were dying with laughter as our train violently whirled uncontrollably.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: From the Ride to Happiness station, two cars tumble through the Jojo roll, the second car on the right is a man in his 30s in a Hyperion shirt. |
We decided to ride one or two more times, when the ride started getting a bit more traffic. Opposite of us on our last ride, we find this German couple and they start chatting with us. Usually back at home I despise thoosies, they're unemployed drama queens that commit criminal acts and blame others to start internet drama. But in Europe? You won't find a nicer bunch to go and ride coasters with, and every time I've strapped in with a European enthusiast I was honored to do so.
The German couple talked more to me, meanwhile John was chatting wit this cool guy in a Hyperion shirt. We had to leave, but the guy John was talking to introduced himself as Youri and we shook his hand.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A Ride to Happiness train dips down over a lake, with a swan boat on the water and a colorful castle in the background. |
"Skip Plopsaland, it's for little kids," I was told. "You'll be disappointed in Plopsa." "It's all rides for children," repeated into infinity the echo chamber in the Belgium travel group I had shared my plans in. And they're right. A park with rides like K6 Roller Skater, Heidi, and #LikeMe surrounded by cutesy spinny kiddie flats is definitely for kids. But they also have super intense Anubis and, for some reason, one of the best coasters in the world. Many polls ranked it here, and while the two ahead of it varried vastly, I follow the global consensus that Ride to Happiness is my #3 coaster. But what the hell is a super intense spinning coaster doing with Heidi and Maja the Bee and those guys??? It beats me. But my $1 is a big scary RMC I-box at a pizza and go kart park, and my #2 is a big epic fjord-riding wooden coaster at a rural Swedish zoo, so I suppose my favorite rides being out-of-place is just going to be a tradition that continues, as Belgium becomes the third nation represented in my top ten!
Honestly? The park is adorable. If I had kids, I'd gladly take them here. But you don't try to sell the kiddie park angle when you build things like Ride to Happiness and Anubis. But based on my reception int he Belgium group, people still see it that way. Maybe Belgian kids are just hardasses that don't get traumatized by rides like Ride to Happiness, maybe they haven't shown the rest of Belgium that Plopsaland means business, but for a kiddie park, their best attraction is a big boy toy if I've seen one!
A Ride to Happiness shirt will run you $50-$100 and probably isn't available in your size, to our frustration. So I got some merch in the form of a hat (we won't talk about the price) and a keychain, and we headed out.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett stands before Plopsaland De Panne's billboard entrance. |
John and I had planned to spend the evening in Bruges, so after this lap, we headed out, swung by a pharmacy where I was given 48 pills of good cold medication for $10, and drove an hour to Belgium's crown jewel: the medieval fairytale city of Bruges!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A tall cathedral of reddish brick rises into the blue sky, flanked by colorful medieval flags. |
UP NEXT: How can a fucking fairytale city not be someone's fucking thing??? John and I head to Bruges and its famous medieval quarter. What is more likely to kill us? The cold? The "stairs" in our AirBNB? Not having Wifi to call for help? Having a heart attack from eating pork belly stamppot? Tune in next time as we bike quite the gauntlet through this beautiful town!
