Gröna Lund is an amusement park located in Stockholm, Sweden. Their attraction line up currently includes a wide array of attractions, with their latest being a wooden coaster from the gravity group and a scare maze.
In 2017 the park plan to install "Ikaros", a new 95 meter (312 foot) drop tower attraction based on Icarus from geek mythology. The story is taken directly from the mythology, putting you in the place of Icarus! You fly to the attractions peak where you will come too close to the sun idol situated upon the top of the attraction, meaning your wings burn away - now there's only one way to go, down! However, the park already have an S&S shot tower and the world's tallest tilting drop tower (standing at 80 meters tilting at 20 degrees). So what makes this so special?
Well, due to the success achieved with Busch Garden's Falcons Fury, the tower will feature the 90 degree tilt found on Intamins Sky Jump attraction. However it will slightly differ to Falcons Fury as the attraction features only two gondolas with 8 guests in each row, as oposed to the 8 rows of 4 found on Falcons Fury. Below is some concept art and an announcement video.
For the same operating group as Kolmarden, Park&Resorts:
Swedish government has repealed the planning permission for Grona Lund's new attraction in 2017, Ikaros: https://mitti.se/nyheter/grona-lunds-mo ... n-stoppas/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (Swedish, but a German news site translated it).
Sweden really has it in for Park&Resorts, do they? Hope they can resolve both issues in Kolmarden and Grona Lund!
Gröna Lund have submitted a planning application for a B&M inverted coaster that would open in 2020, with construction beginning next year if approved. The coaster is said to be inspired by Dragon Challenge at Universal's Islands of Adventure, with a maximum height of 24 metres, a length of 700 metres, a top speed of 100 km/h and a duration of around 2 minutes.
This article features a brief interview with the CEO of Parks and Resort, with reference also to Ikaros, this year's addition.
It looks to be a unique and potentially very strong layout, with it being the first (I think) inverted coaster from B&M to not feature a vertical loop. It certainly seems like Parks and Resorts know what they're doing, with this following on from the addition of Wildfire to Kolmarden last year.
Our recent trip took us to Stockholm, while our primary aim was to visit Kolmården Wildlife Park, it would have been silly not to take in Gröna Lund while we were in the vicinity.
The amusement park is set in the center of Stockholm and the best way to describe it, as I'm sure is a popular opinion, is a prettier, better maintained Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
The premise is the same in that you can purchase entry for the park separately and after that you can buy whole day wristbands, or individual tickets for the rides if you think you won't get the value out of a wristband.
I didn't know what to expect from the park, in my mind it was going to be mostly flat rides the spun me round which I wouldn't go on, so I was skeptical about purchasing the wristband option, however I was completely wrong , there were a couple of really fun coasters and plenty of attractions for me to get my money's worth. There is also a year round scare attraction which can be purchased separately or as part of your wristband bundle. (I did not partake in this, #teamwuss4life) :lol
One thing worth noting is that we received a discount on the entry price due to having our Kolmården tickets with us from the previous day, as they are part of the same operating group.
My highlights from the day were:
The wooden coaster Twister- a really solid fun ride, for which you can purchase the digital download of your photo for (IIRC) 30KR, about £2.40 which I thought was a pretty fair amount.
The Fun House which was was so so much better than I anticipated, really well done and provided us with many giggles, there seemed to be a route around any of the sections which you didn't want to partake in too, which reassured me.
Vilda Musen - the wild mouse. This ride was down for the majority of the morning and early afternoon but luckily re opened so we didn't miss out, I'm really pleased it did because it is absolutely my favourite that I've ridden of its kind , it had such a fun layout! It also provided much amusement and embarrassment to my travel companions when I somehow managed to get out out the wrong side of the car after the ride , fell over and ended up upside down :lol I'm now sporting a rather spectacular bruise that covers half of my shin.
Special mention to the aptly named 'Insane' which was the first ride of the day, the Intamin ZacSpin was the first of its kind I've ridden and will definitely be the last. I believe it had the same layout of the now closed Green Lantern ride at SFMM.
The park was open 12-8 on the day we visited and I would say pretty quiet, I don't think we really queued more than 30 minutes for any ride, with the average time being about 10-15 minutes. That being said, none of us attempted the newest (highly advertised) attraction 'Snake' which quite frankly looked horrendous, and very cheap, and never seemed to have a queue of less than an hour.
It was easy to travel to the park via tram, we hopped on with the 72 hour travelcards we had purchased on the first day of our trip these cover you for train, tram and bus travel around Stockholm so were a worthwhile investment if you plan to travel around sightseeing while you are there, they take all the stress out.
TL:DR - nice park, plenty of fun rides with a good amount of variation, absolutely worth a visit.
