MagicLand

Valmontone, Italy

“Stunning facades, mediocre experiences”

Rome is a beloved destination for culture lovers, party people and romantics. However, the Italian capital may not be the first thing on your mind if you’re planning a coaster trip. That’s a shame, isn’t it? Rome actually offers a good amount of coaster credits. You’ll find some fairground coasters at Luneur, you can experience a classic Schwarzkopf Looping Star at Zoomarine and Cinecittà World offers one of Europe’s best indoor coasters. The region’s largest theme park is MagicLand, which was previously known as Rainbow MagicLand. It is located in Valmontone, approximately 40 kilometres east of the city centre. It’s possible to get there with public transport, but a car will definitely make your journey quicker and easier.

ROLLER COASTERS

The star of Rainbow MagicLand is Shock, an X-Car Coaster which was built by Maurer. The ride looks stunning with its lakeside location, but I was a little afraid that it would provide an underwhelming ride experience. Fortunately, I was wrong. Shock features a powerful launch, good airtime and its smoothness is remarkable. The best part of the layout is an incredibly fast overbanked turn which made me greyout every time. It’s a very re-rideable coaster, but long queues made it virtually impossible to ride it more than twice.

Shock wasn’t the only ride which suffered from its low capacity. Vekoma’s Junior Coaster Dune and the family-oriented Olandese Volante had long, slow-moving queues as well. Spinning Coaster Cagliostro had considerably better operations, but the ride was disappointing nevertheless. This indoor coaster is integrated in a stunningly themed building of huge proportions, but it feels as if MagicLand opted for the cheapest roller coaster Maurer could possibly design. And to make matters even worse, the interior of the building isn’t even decorated in the slightest way. I really don’t understand what happened here…

ANYTHING ELSE?

MagicLand is a park which consist of many beautiful facades and clever theming ideas. The quality, however, can be questionable from time to time. This can easily be noticed while riding one of the park’s water rides. The rapid river and the shoot-the-chute both look stunning from a distance, but some decorative elements haven’t aged well. An interactive dark ride called Huntik 5D suffers from the same lack of attention to detail. This ride is similar to Spider-Man at the Universal parks, but it just doesn’t perform on the same high level.

WORTH A VISIT?

Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend visiting MagicLand on a busy summer day. We bought a MagicPass which enabled us to bypass the queues and that made our day enjoyable. It would’ve been a frustrating day without the MagicPass, though. Wait times were long and operations were very slow. The park’s newest VR dark ride, for example, had an estimated capacity of 60 guests per hour during our visit. Shock didn’t perform much better, as the crew only dispatched one train per 2-3 minutes. And can you imagine that the brand-new log flume had a 90-minute queue because it only operated with 4 boats? Why oh why?!

The park is nicely landscaped and most attractions are pretty okay. That’s why I don’t want to describe MagicLand as a horrible place, but I would strongly recommend to plan your visit on a quiet day.

PHOTO GALLERY

Did you get the chance to visit this park yet? Is Shock one of the greatest Maurer coasters ever? And do you find it acceptable that a flume ride operates only four boats? Share your opinion in the comments section at the bottom of this page.