Furius Baco

It's a well known fact, that it takes its time to cultivate a good wine. Spanish park Port Aventura wants to convince its visitors that modern wine growing can be done much quicker. Through the vineyards at high speed; Europe's fastest roller coaster emphasizes different features in different ways. Let's hope, that the wine won't lose its bouquet at this high speed transport.

The old winery lies on a small hill at the foothills of the Mediterranean area. Young grapevines are planted at numerous terraces on the hill. The new owner of the vineyard is a scientist who lived a few years in Africa and inherited the winery from an uncle. This is the story told by a number of little boards, which can be seen along the waiting area. To perform the process of wine-making in a more effective way, the scientist built a transport device for wine casks. With the help of his robot-like mechanical helpers and his assistant monkey, the device was nearly ready for testing. But the monkey started the apparatus too early and the machine catapulted the wine casks together with the mechanical helpers all over the vineyard. The visitors can see the shattered remains of the casks at the foot of the grapevines. The mechanical helpers are still stuck upside down in the ground or hang on the supports of the track without any function. Now it's up to us to accompany the wine casks on their wild journey over the vineyard.

We step into the vineyard and follow the path on the terraces through the grapevines into the winery. Passing by a strange looking winepress and bottling machine, we reach a huge room where we find ourselves in a large zigzag queue line. Some wine crates, bottles and things alike are exposed on a shelf in the middle of the room. Even some technical sketches on a chalkboard, giving an idea of the construction of Furius Baco, can be seen on the shelf. On the walls are little boards mounted, which tell the story of the scientist and the building of the transport device. The walls of the building are very open, so a small part of the track - for example the inline-twist and a short part of the launch track - can be spotted outside the winery. But most of the track cannot be seen from within the park. When we enter the station, we pass a huge wooden turnstile, which sets a part of the machinery in motion.

The station itself is held in a very plain way. Some wine casks can be found in one corner of the room. On the other side of the platform, three small lockers on a low wall serve as housing for bags and rucksacks. The assistant monkey swings on a rope over the platform with a grin on his face. Below the monkey, the strange looking wine cask transport machine rolls into the station.

Intamin's new Wing Rider trains still look very extraordinary when you have a close look on them. A hogshead is strapped over the centre of each chassis. Two seats with the usual over-the-shoulder restraints from Intamin are mounted on each side of a wing-like cantilever coming out of the barrel. Six barrels on each train holding a total of 24 passengers per ride. For boarding and exiting the train can be passed over a small platform next to each barrel. Thank to the slightly shifted position of each seat to its neighbour, even the passengers on the inner seats have a free view out of the side of the train.

Two huge wooden doors swing open and the train moves slowly into the bottling room. Huge cogs on each side of the room begin to rotate with a squeaking noise. Pipelines go every which way through the room. The scientist enters the scene (on two huge displays) and begins to screw on the cogs. The assistant monkey enters the room on a bike with a propeller (!). Thinking "No monkey can stop my show", the scientist proceeds screwing on the cogs with his huge wrench. Suddenly all things go wrong. The room (well, at least on the display) is flooded with wine and the scientist is caught by the cogs, sucked into the bottling machine and finally flushed through the main pipeline beneath the ceiling. This is the moment, when we are pushed into our seats and the whole train chases away with enormous force out of the building. We accelerate even more when we already reached the sunlight. At the end of the launch track, the train dips down into a small canyon with some airtime and rushes into a long right turn. The canyon walls appear to come very close to the train, when you sit at the outer seats. The wine transport proceeds at breathtaking speed through an S-curve and up into a right-left direction change element. Very close to the ground with nearly the same speed, we go through the inline-twist, where the train performs a 360° turn around the middle axis. Due to the lack of g-forces, we uncomfortably skid around between seat and shoulder restraint. Finally, the train dives down to the lake and soars through a wide turn into the final brake. The crazy wine cask transport has reached the finish.

The launch and the consistent high speed of the ride are very impressing. The ride comfort, unfortunately, is quite daunting. While the vibrations at the inner seats at the front row are acceptable, the joggling and shaking is getting stronger and stronger with every row towards the back of the train. Seated in the last rows of the train, the passengers literally get the feeling that this out-of-control wine cask transport device hurtles over a cobbled street on steel wheels at a speed of 135 kilometres per hour. The outer seats generally cannot be recommended for a comfortable ride experience.

The winery and the vineyard complement the Mediterranean area in a pleasant way. The sky-blue bow of track over the lake doesn't interfere with the themed area too much. The ride is very impressing - but only until the first turn after the launch. The joggling and vibrations of the seats are more or less unbearable, depending on the position of your seat. There seems to be an urgent need for action to improve the ride comfort. Time will tell, if the park or the manufacturer will do some modifications on the ride. When the contraption hype will be over, someone should bother about these ferocious vibrations. Actually we're all used to much better ride characteristics on innovative attractions from Swiss manufacturer Intamin. This leads to a bit of a swizz with this unique ride. This wine has an impressing label on the bottle - but unfortunately a corky aftertaste.