This is the first of a series of articles detailing our recent road trip across Central Europe. As a bit of background, the primary purpose of this trip was to pick up our new car, which we had arranged through Volvo’s Overseas Delivery program. In December 2011, we had done a similar trip, but because we were traveling during the winter months, we only drove our car from Gothenburg, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark and back (including a visit to Tivoli Gardens). Our son was not quite two years old at the time of our last trip, so he didn’t accompany my wife and I back then – he’s 14 now, so he was a big part of the planning for this trip. Also, we planned plenty of time in our itinerary to drive through five countries and visit a number of Europe’s most popular theme parks.
Since Volvo’s European delivery center is located in Gothenburg, Sweden, our journey began there, and the first theme park on our agenda was Liseberg. Similar to Tivoli Gardens and some smaller European theme parks, Liseberg is located near the center of the city, and is operated like a city park. Guests can pay a nominal fee to enter Liseberg and enjoy the park’s beauty, restaurants, and entertainment, but you need to pay extra to buy a wristband (or individual tickets) to access to the rides and attractions.
The park first opened in 1923, but has added a number of high-profile attractions and thrill rides over the past two decades that puts it on par with some of the biggest and most popular theme parks in Europe.
One of the unique aspects of Liseberg is the way the park is laid out with a main walkway bisecting the park in two, with a flatter section to the east and a large hill to the west. Because of the hilly terrain on the western side of the park, designers installed a series of escalators to help guests get to rides and attractions on top of the hill. It’s a very similar setup to Universal Studios Hollywood, but instead of a seemingly endless stairway parallelling the escalators, there a number of meandering pathways that crisscross the side of the hill (and allow for wheelchair accessibility). However, the escalators are by far the quickest and most efficient to the rides at the top of the hill, and there are a number of historical photos and descriptions of the park along the corridor to give you something to look at on the 2-3 minute trip to the top.
At the top of the hill, you’ll find the park’s best attraction, Helix. This Mack multi-launch coaster opened in 2014, but was definitely ahead of its time with a layout that is better than many of the launching coasters I’ve ridden in the US. The ride starts out with a slow corkscrew right out of the station (like Copperhead Strike at Carowinds, another Mack creation that opened in 2019), and then kicks into gear with an LSM launch and a high-speed corkscrew. Next up is a double-inverting “Norwegian Roll” followed by a zero-g roll. After a second LSM launch, the train goes through an inside top hat element, and finishing with a slow corkscrew. The best part of Helix is its use of the topography at the top of the hill as the track snakes around, over, and through itself so many times, you can’t tell which way is up. Helix is an excellent coaster and almost singlehandedly puts Liseberg on the map for any coaster aficionado.
However, Liseberg has some other coasters worthy of top tier status. Valkyria is a B&M dive machine with an appropriate Norse theme. The station is designed to look like a stave church, and the coaster’s 164-foot drop goes through an underground tunnel. As good as Valkyria’s first drop is, it’s the coaster’s final corkscrew over the city’s main canal that is the most dynamic and unique element. As B&M dive machines go, it’s not the best, but it does have a good layout and a great mix of inversions (Immelman, zero-g roll, and the aforementioned corkscrew). The one drawback to Valkyria is that it was the one major attraction we encountered throughout our trip that forced guests to place all bags (including fanny-packs) into pay lockers. The lockers were reasonably priced at around .50 for 2 hours of storage, but if we had visited Liseberg at the end of our trip after visiting a number of other parks that found ways to deal with bags and loose articles without resorting to pay lockers, we would have been pretty frustrated.
Next to Valkyria is another Norse-themed coaster called Balder. I was pretty excited for this Intamin wooden coaster, because El Toro is my top woodie. My hope was that Balder would provide a similar experience, but as they say, “size matters,” and Balder’s more diminutive 118-foot high hill (compared to 181 feet for El Toro) makes a big difference. The ride is noticeably more intense in the back rows on Balder, but nothing approaching what El Toro dishes out. I guess if you prefer a dialed-back version of El Toro, Balder might do the trick, but Liseberg’s woodie was a bit of a letdown for me.
Liseberg’s newest coaster follows the recent trend of parks adding more family-friendly coasters. Luna is a Vekoma family boomerang with a Victorian-era stargazing themed station. The ride starts by pulling the train backwards up an incline and then releasing it to roll back through the station and around a couple of curves before going up a spike and then reversing course back to the station. As family coasters go, this one is fine, but it’s a one-and-done ride for me, especially with so many of these type of coasters now being built in the US, such as Good Gravy and Snoopy’s Soapbox Racers.
The other big roller coaster is Lisebergbanen, which is the oldest coaster in the park, opening in 1987. The steel coaster looks like a runaway mine train, but it pulls some serious g’s through a series of three intense loops situated along the side of the park’s hill. I was pretty surprised by how good Lisebergbanen was despite lacking inversions. It was designer was Schwarzkopf, so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised, but given that it’s marketed as a family coaster with a locomotive-themed dead car on the front of the train, the experience was like a supercharged version of Big Thunder Mountain, minus the western theme.
Given we just had a single day in the park, we bypassed the smaller kiddie coasters and many of the flat rides that can be found at other parks like Loke (spinning pendulum), Hanghi (disc-o), Juke Box (scrambler with a clever classic car theme),
and Uppswinget (Screamin’ Swing, though located on the edge of the hill). We also didn’t ride Kallerado (raft ride), because we didn’t feel like getting soaked, but we did ride the park’s log flume (Flume Ride), which despite not being well themed, was a fun ride utilizing the park’s topography and finishing with a double drop.
The other notable attractions we experienced were:
Aerospin – a spinning flat ride that’s similar to Shell Shocked at Nickelodeon Universe (and coming to Isle of Berk at Universal Epic Universe), but because of the single vertical tower design, we weren’t able to get our cars to go completely upside down.
AtmosFear – an Intamin drop tower that is one of the tallest in the world at 300 feet (just a hair shorter than Falcon’s Fury) that’s located at the very top of the park’s hill (near Helix) that accentuates the ride’s height. This was a really good drop tower with excellent views of Gothenburg and a decent industrial theme, but in the end, it’s just a big drop ride.
Kristallsalongen – this is a classic mirror maze like you would find at a carnival or seaside amusement park and was a fun change of pace.
Turbo – a stock Zamperla spinning flat ride, but one I’d never seen before with motorcycle and sidecar themed seats that can go up and down when you rev the handlebars.
Underlandet – a kid-friendly dark ride where you visit rabbits in their underground den with an elevator pre-show room that similar to Gringotts. The ride itself is really cute with tons of clever effects and animatronics. The area around the attraction is also well themed with character appearances, smaller flat rides, and a fun climbing structure and playground for the kids.
Spokhotellet Gasten – this is a year-round haunted maze that opens later in the afternoon and not recommended for smaller children. This is a really well-done haunted attraction with many of the effects that you might find in an HHN maze, but because of the way it’s operated, the capacity is really low. The crew provides instructions to a group of @8-10 guests, and you are required to walk through the maze as a group by holding the shoulders of the person in front of you (literally in a conga line). I counted at least five actors in the attraction with some of them pulling double duty at corners and switchbacks, and plenty of practical effects that I always appreciate in haunted attractions. After it opened, this regularly carried the longest wait in the entire park, and we noticed guests lining up for it at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled opening.
Speaking of lines and crowds, Liseberg was pretty busy on the day we visited, probably because it was a really nice weather day (I think it had been cool and rainy the days prior to our arrival). In the middle of the day, many of the top attractions (Helix, Valkyria, and Luna) were carrying 30+ minute waits. However, the park does have a virtual queue system through their app that allows you to bypass some lines. We found the virtual queue system very easy to use, and since the park uses wristbands to identify guests with unlimited ride access, each guest in a party can reserve a spot in a virtual queue for the entire group. For us, that meant we were able to be in up to three virtual queues at a time, though as the day wore on, spots for Helix, Valkyria, and Balder were not popping up, and if they did, by the time we clicked on them in the app, they were already claimed by other park guests. Wifi was a bit spotty in some sections of the park, so if you don’t have a European sim card, you might have difficulty accessing the virtual queue system outside of the main pathway.
The other thing I noticed in Liseberg that was different from other parks we have visited was the number of games. There were at least two dozen or more game locations with spinning wheels where guests could pay play “wheel of fortune.” The prizes for these games were all giant boxes (or bags) of candy, chocolate, or snacks. Guests who won the games were walking advertisements for the games, because you’d see them walking around with these massive, branded boxes and would want to try your luck to win. We saw hundreds of guests walking around with prizes by the late afternoon, so I can only imagine how much revenue these games generate in a day (I estimated it was the equivalent of $3 for a 5% chance of winning). Zach played a couple of times without any luck, and we saw plenty of wheel spins where no one was on a winning number, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the park generates as much revenue from these games as it does from ride tickets and wristbands. I thought we might see more of these wheels at the other parks we would visit on our trip, but Liseberg was the only place we saw them.
Overall, I was pretty impressed with Liseberg. It has a really solid collection of coasters and other attractions with some decent theming. Helix is an excellent launch coaster, and Valkyria is a very good dive machine with great theming. Liseberg was an enjoyable day, though it does suffer in comparison to some of the other theme parks we visited on this trip, but I would easily rank it ahead of a number of legacy Six Flags and Cedar Fair parks in the US. If you’re traveling through Scandinavia, Gothenburg has a destination-worthy theme park that is worth a trip.
Next up – Legoland Billund
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I loved that park. The haunted attraction was what got me into going to Halloween Horror Nights.
This reminds me, everytime I post a comment on here, I have to go back and delete several duplicates. Is there anything that can be done to prevent this? Also, fascinating article Russel, if I ever make it over there, I'll have to check that park out.
Scandinavia is somewhere I'd like to visit on a future European trip, and if I could only do one park in the area Liseberg would be my choice. Helix looks absolutely amazing, and while Balder is no El Toro I hope it's still at least a really good woodie. Fantastic report, and I'm already looking forward to additional installments.
@AJ - Balder is a lot of fun and silky smooth, just not on the level of El Toro IMHO. I actually rode one final time near the end of the day by myself (grabbed a single VQ spot) and caught back up with a pair of Americans that we spoke to earlier in the day while waiting for Luna. They had ridden El Toro before, and actually said they preferred Balder because of its smoothness and overall fun layout (they were practically giggling the entire ride) with loads of airtime. It's very much like an RMC with continuous pops of air throughout the course. If that's your thing, Balder will probably rate pretty high on your woodie list, but for me, I cannot get enough of the intensity and shear power of El Toro, so while Balder has some similar features, it felt like it was a nerfed version of my top woodie.
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Thanks for the great write up!