Miragica

Molfetta, Puglia, Italy – Saturday, April 24th, 2010

“Terra di Gigante”, the subtitle to this newly-opened theme park along the coast of the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy, translates to “Land of the Giants”. Upon arriving at the front gates after an hour long shuttle bus from Bari, I discovered this name was not to be taken as self-referential, unless it refers to the relative size of its customers to the park footprint. Miragica is tiny, occupying a corner of a parking lot for a much more expansive shopping mall complex, neither of which appeared to be doing all too much business on this Saturday. To be clear, Miragica clearly had some ambition to be a top-quality regional substitute for Disneyland Paris, the attention to detail in its elves and giants medieval theme has turned many heads, but the fact that you can pretty much see clear to the back edge of the property as soon as you enter the gates makes the park less awe-inspiring and more awwwwwe… how cute! It’s like when you see a second grader dressed up in a miniature suit and tie, their attempt to imitate a full-grown adult only makes you want to pinch his cheek that much more.

The first of the adorables was the park’s signature attraction, the Intamin mini-accelerator coaster Senzafiato (literally ‘Breathless’, which I always thought would be a great name for a ride, although I’d have given it a theme involving Jean-Paul Belmondo staggering down a Parisian street). The layout borrows from the Rita mold of layered figure eights but with a top hat added to the very beginning, and then shrunk down to at least half the size. Already I can cue the chorus: “awe, it’s an adorable little Pocket Rocket!” This of course is a premature underestimation of the bite a smaller track can pack, the reduced scale permitting faster timing between tighter, more violent elements. So it wasn’t until after my first cycle that I could conclude its bite was just as soft as its bark. And I mean that in a good way.

Like its bigger brother iSpeed, this coaster uses a shortened three-car train, although I sense that’s less to accommodate the sharper dynamics of the elements or to increase the effectiveness of the launch system than it is because anything larger would have been overkill (there’s only a single train and no transfer track). The initial launch and jolt up the not-quite-vertical 59 foot tophat are about as crazy as things get, which is to say they manage to be genuinely fun. The rest of the layout is like watching the kindergarten fun run; you gotta give it a gold sticker just for the smile and the effort. Perhaps this was owing to a slower than usual launch as the train noticeably was running low on momentum over the tops of most of the hills, but this hopefully should come as a disappointment to none.

I’m not generally one to favor scavenger hunts for hidden pops of airtime on coasters as many enthusiasts seem to be, but it was the small pleasures such as these which made this small rocket worth the ten to fifteen rerides I took throughout the day. Interestingly the back row did not seem to be an ideal place to sit, as the most substantial air was offered in the front row on the crest of the top hat. The twist on the way back down (which on a hill this tight leads to a gentler pitch and more banked turning rather than inline rotation) seems to kill most of the potential for weightlessness on our fall out.

Even more interestingly the right side of the train offered significantly more airtime than the left. On the second camelback s-hill (going from left to right underneath the first) the rotation at the peak of this crest is sudden enough that those sitting to the right of the heartline path will find the train suddenly yanked down from them, offering a split second of negative G’s that their riding partner will not be able to experience. The other s-turn hills don’t do anything, nor does a final straight hill into the brakes, which slow the train so much that the inward bank on the final turnaround proves to be the longest sustained force (I guess lateral?) on the entire coaster. Hence by ‘significantly more airtime’ I meant the tally at the end of the ride is 0-1 between the left and right seats. Actually, provided I’m a bit lax on my mathematical definitions, I could say that (excluding the top hat) the right side of the train has infinitely more airtime than the left.

Like I said, it’s a small roller coaster of small pleasures.

Given the low crowd turnout I decided to pace myself over the rest of the main attractions before I ran out of things to do. Of these, one of the next was Per Bacco!, a drop tower with an apparent grape crushing barrel theme. Depending on what side you get you can either have a nice view of the rest of the park or the seaside. The drop was not a significant one, not even faster than gravity if I recall correctly, and an S&S-like bouncing up and down didn’t add much else. The vertigo at the top still helps it to be possibly the most thrilling attraction at Miragica.

Nearby was Spaccatempo, the spinning wild mouse from (wouldn’t you guess it?) Zamperla. Despite the petiteness of the park already they still found it necessary to order the junior model for what would be one of the park’s only two coasters. Smaller size, smaller cars, smaller track gauge… ultimately the experience was not too different from the regular sized model. This was mostly owing to the progression of the layout being still the same (lift, upper switchbacks, main drops, spinning switchbacks, spinning curves and dips, brakes) which didn’t make the quantity of the ride matter as much as long as it went through all the expected motions. Major differences such as the presence of only a single full switchback on the upper section and straighter and much shallower drops were not nearly as missed as minor traits that this one lacked, such as the fun little curved double-up after the main drop or the final bunny hop which could also be rather aggressive depending on which direction your car is facing. In the end I almost suspect that if I weren’t already so familiar with this layout I almost would prefer the experience over the more one-dimensional Senzafiato, as provided that the spinning is adequately dizzying it’s a coaster that never fails to satisfy.

Inside a house of cards was the 4D Cinema, which I was caught waiting in line for a good fifteen minutes due to my failure to check the schedule and realize that the small crowd that had formed were not just about to be let in. As everything else in the park the theater was quite small and the film playing was an obvious Finding Nemo knockoff, although they oddly seemed to make Nemo into a cuter version of the dreaded anglerfish to avoid total copyright infringement. (One of my favorite hobbies while visiting a European theme park was to count the number of times a park would play chicken with Disney’s legal team.) While I don’t think Disney will be contacting them with complaints over their Finding Nemo property just yet, they may have a case with Monster’s Inc., one scene I very clearly remember used one of the main soundtracks from that film, presumably without license. Perhaps indicative of my generational biases, I’m actually a strong advocate of the free digital media movements and loosening of intellectual property laws (for some real reasons too, not just ‘cause I want to download whatever shit I want for free) although especially in cases like this where a company cheapens the work of another out of their own cowardice at creating something original, I gotta give them a ‘tsk-tsk’ no-no.

Next I tried to give the Strozzagorgo log flume a try, but before I got on board the attendant on duty issued me a warning I didn’t fully understand in Italian. Upon asking if his English might be better than my Italian, he decided, “It’s a total wash”. Well that doesn’t sound exactly like the most pleasant experience so I thanked him for the information and went directly to the exit ramp. From off-ride it didn’t appear to be any wetter than the normal log flume, although it was hard to see with large fencing all around it so maybe there was a shield on one of the drops that splashed water back into the boat?

More risky seemed to be the Mangiabiglie, a rapids-type ride with an elevator lift and a long descending drop into a splashdown. Nevertheless I received no warning on the loading platform (one wonders if ride operators everywhere share the same degree of compassion for unwitting riders?) and the boats appeared to be reasonably dry so I got in, not really sure what to expect. After a vertical lift to the top of the mountain there was a long descending helix, the circular boat rolling down the outside wall like a runaway tire, generating an incredible amount of centrifugal force ensuring I was sufficiently dizzy. What worried me more was the prospect of the final splashdown at the bottom as it was clear I had vastly underestimated this ride. Eventually the reservoir appeared around a corner and the raft dived in, by sheer luck I was on the opposite end so the wall of water that splashed overboard missed me entirely. After an exceedingly tame by comparison ground-level channel the boat returned to the station. Easily the best (good) surprise of the day, and I would no doubt have given it a second go had I not been unwilling to risk being on the wrong side of the raft on the splashdown.

Okay, here’s another example of how cute Miragica is when it tries to imitate its big brothers: on all of the queues were signs posting the estimated wait time from that point, but for just two switchbacks they’d estimate 60 minutes, and all of fifteen feet later would be the next sign arbitrarily indicating it was now 45 minutes. Such was most amusingly the case in the miniature queue for Il Girabugia, a Zamperla Disk’O coaster (and perhaps the only ride in the park which was not the smallest model of its class). Some days these rides work for me and other days they don’t. Today this one didn’t. The outward facing seats which necessitates one to lean forward puts the force awkwardly on the stomach and it’s generally hard to support the upper body, plus the spinning can just get plain nauseating after a while. The addition of a camelback hill in the middle I found added little to the experience, in fact it may have even been a regression as the experience it provided made less interesting use of the large spinning disk changing directions than the spikes normally would, ultimately just padding out the cycle time.

Nearby on a conspicuously small strip of asphalt with a cheap set of bleachers overlooking it, an auto stunt show was in progress, which I caught a bit of from the sidelines. This corner was the one area which struck me as particularly low-budget and improvised, my assumption is they might have plans for a makeover in the future. After exploring more areas of the park intended for the children and getting rerides on the coasters, I found myself waiting for the show in the park’s Gran Teatro to begin. This was an acrobatics / song and dance show with a custom script and set designed to fit the park’s fantasy theme. While the storyline (of what I could follow in Italian at least) was definitely and expectedly on the cheesy side, the choreography and a few of the stunts were on the whole quite accomplished. I will also attest to the fact that for many of the adult members in the audience there are far worse ways to spend one’s time than watching cute Italian elven chicks in leotards dangling from a rope demonstrate the laws of angular momentum and centripetal force with their bodies. After the show I decided to catch another six or seven rides on Senzafiato before calling it a day and waiting for the scheduled return shuttle bus back to Bari.

For what it is, Miragica seems to be a decently nice park to walk around, the whimsical setting being complete in most corners. The abundance of gardens and landscaping that had yet to grow in over flat property reminded me of my visit to Hard Rock Park. While it’s much smaller, in many ways this helped the atmosphere from becoming too diluted over large empty midway paths that seemed designed for Disney level crowds. It’s a theme park but it was more intimate than the big names. The advantage of a new park like this is it will feel complete and logically laid out, with few inconsistencies between sectors. This can also be a downfall as it lacks some of the original character you’d get at a park that has seen many improvements from varying creative minds over many years, and the small plot of land and ‘completeness’ of the midways makes me think capital expansions will be few in years to come. It also appeared to be done somewhat on the cheap, the themeing apparently all molded from the same styrofoam materials, and there was a certain playful, colorful artificiality to the design that put it in a spirit very much in solidarity with the massive commercial mall it shared parking lots with. I guess the point of all this commentary is that despite the pleasant presentation I don’t particularly wish more amusement parks to be like Miragica, although if more shopping malls want to build parks like this on their property then I’m definitely all for it.