What exactly is it that makes a theme park a theme park? Themed experiences, attractions… rides? It’s rides mostly, right? Sure, theme parks exist without them, most notably Puy du Fou who excel predominantly in shows, but even Ghibli Park in Japan is adding rides. So, how many rides do you need for a theme park?
Well, Ferrari Land has 12. Of those, adults are not allowed to ride 3 unless accompanied by a child, with a further two attractions being non-identical pairs. Racing Legends and Flying Dreams are both simulator attractions with differing vehicles. The two attractions share the same pre-shows and queue experience, making riding both an ordeal. Likewise, Thrill Towers consists of one drop and one shot tower, making for two separate but similar attractions.
Surely, in the absence of attractions, the park makes up for this in some other way? Entertainment, most likely? Given PortAventura’s well-earned reputation as an excellent park for entertainment. Well, no. There is a stage for the park’s Acrobatic Show, which was not being performed on the day of our visit… and that’s about it. The park also features a gallery dedicated to Ferrari and a plasticky kids’ play area. That’s your lot. Enough to make Walt Disney Studios Park – the much-maligned and very-much-rushed second park at Disneyland Paris – feel like a fully formed second gate.
With a limited line-up, the park has been open for correspondingly limited hours in recent times, usually in the evening, to encourage guests to continue their day at the resort. Given the widespread lack of shade in this park, unpleasant even on our relatively mild 24-degree visit, the late openings are certainly a good call, but can make the park pretty crowded.
On the day of our visit, Ferrari Land was open from 4pm until 10pm, which was perfect for us as we landed into Reus at 2pm. Hooray for late hours! However, we didn’t end up entering the park until just before 6pm. As on-resort guests, we were entitled to unlimited access to PortAventura Park throughout our stay with one night’s admission to Ferrari Land. As mentioned, we’d planned this visit to fall on our arrival day, but there was a slight snag… as we enjoyed a brief run into PortAventura for Shambhala, something was not quite right with the skyline. Red Force was not running. Easily visible from large portions of the park, the tallest coaster in Europe is, of course, the main draw to Ferrari Land, and using our single visit on a day when the coaster was down felt like a very dumb idea indeed. So, we ended up lurking in the main park for longer than intended, waiting for the headline attraction to open, which it eventually did! And so, we made use of the turnstiles linking to the two parks and hopped on over.
Having spent just 2 hours in PortAventura, I’d already gotten accustomed to a certain level of theming. Whilst this isn’t exactly absent from Ferrari Land – the Italian section and large simulator building are both very impressive – it certainly doesn’t live up to the expectations set by its neighbour. It doesn’t really feel like there are any cohesive design choices here, only that we must all bow at the altar of Ferrari.
With Red Force having opened late after extensive downtime, the ride had predictably picked up quite a line, so our first ride of the night was, instead, Racing Legends. We’d been forewarned about this simulator attraction, with friends noting that it wasn’t even in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category, falling instead under ‘irredeemable’. With a tiny line in front of us, we thought it wouldn’t matter either way – I’ll ride anything with a short wait! But alas, this tiny line took a soul-destroying 45 minutes to filter through (of our four hours of park time!) After this wait, we didn’t even experience the first pre-show, instead filing straight through this space and into the second pre-show. Here we’d watch a video that was… fine, I guess, Ferrari sales talk mostly, before entering the batching area which resembled the staff-only area of a shopping centre. All bright white strip lights, dull carpet, and no windows. In this corporate hell-space, we’d be left for what felt like an eternity before finally stepping inside and aboard our ride vehicle. These 8-seater Ferrari-shaped vehicles were surprisingly impressive! For a moment, it looked as though this might actually be a decent ride experience. Reader, it was all downhill from there. As the ride itself finally began, it became apparent that the enormous safety fence between our vehicle and the screen was going nowhere. Okay, so that’s the bottom third of the screen already a write-off. Fab. I’m so immersed. Let’s just look at the top of the screen. Except, as our vehicle purported to speed through a racetrack, I couldn’t make out where we were going as the 3D wasn’t working properly. Everything I could see was doubled up, and boy, was it making my head pound. To make things worse, we were barely moving. We were on a motion base, sure, but I’ve sat in office chairs with more dynamic movement. Thankfully, it was all such a disaster that I can happily say I wholeheartedly disagree with what I’d been told previously. I could not stop laughing. It was so laughably bad. Racing Legends is without doubt one of the worst attractions I’ve ever stepped foot on. But boy, was it funny.
After spending the best part of an hour in a stuffy, dark room, it was time to freshen up by riding a roller coaster! Sadly, Red Force was still posting a vile wait, so the park’s only other roller coaster would have to do: Junior Red Force. Sat directly underneath the real deal, this is a hideous SBF Race Coaster. Its racecar-shaped trains are not unique. You can find one in three of the Gullivers parks, except here they’re red. Perhaps the only redeeming factor here is that adults are allowed to ride unaccompanied, a rarity for the children’s rides in this park, which meant we could get the +1. But with how it tried to snap my spine in half, perhaps they ought to alter that policy for the sake of enthusiast’s musculoskeletal systems. There are plenty of painful coasters out there, and most of them are far more worth the struggle than this heap of junk.
As you can see, our evening at Ferrari Land was going great. Coming out of Junior Red Force bruised, drained, and in need of something to cheer us up, we looked at our options. Maranello Grand Race, the park’s spin on Autopia – except with cars that made a horrendous screeching noise as they drove – was posting an incredible 80 minutes. Thrill Towers 50 minutes apiece. Red Force, also 50. It sounded a lot like it was time to finally experience Europe’s tallest and fastest coaster!
The Red Force line was a little bit of a struggle. At first, it seemed as though our wait time was over-estimated. We moved at a good pace, as the trains were fired out with impressive frequency, happily taking photos and videos of the many, many launches. Then… it all went wrong. The ride went down shortly after joining the line. Looking at the other queues around the park, we decided, given that there was nothing else we’d really want to do, we’d stick it out. With no updates, bar the visible mechanics entering and leaving the station, the ride resumed operation 20 or so minutes later. Our perseverance paid off in the end, however, as we were granted the rarest of things – a front-row ride! As the only one in our three-person party who’d not visited the park previously, I surrendered this to the other two who had not been so lucky on their previous visits and had still yet to don the famous goggles. But my second-row ride was good enough for me! For everything I heard about the rattle on Red Force, I felt none of it here. My ride was, quite simply, perfection. Sure, the initial LSM launch doesn’t have nearly the same punch as a hydraulic, but boy does it build and build, but it never ceased to be fun! Where I found the launch on Kingda Ka slightly too much by the end, Red Force never gave me that. It was pure, unadulterated joy. The airtime as we sailed over the top hat was spectacular, feeling as though I was about to fly off into the balmy Salou sky. On that note, the views, both over the park and the sea, were phenomenal as well, especially as we rode at twilight. It was light enough to enjoy both the beach views and the glistening lights! But, of course, there’s only a moment to enjoy this before beginning the 367ft descent back to earth. This drop, too, was spectacular. Again, sorry, Kingda Ka, but Red Force wins this one for me too. I found the straight drop far more enjoyable than Kingda’s twist. Cresting the top hat and looking directly down at that sheer distance of uninterrupted drop? I just couldn’t get enough of it. As we slammed into the brake run, I had a feeling of adrenaline I just don’t get on very many roller coasters. Red Force is magnificent, at least up front. I’d ride a second time later in the evening, this time in row 3, and have the same, magnificent experience, if not even better. Thankfully, I didn’t join the rest of the group for a third and final ride in the back-row, which I’m told was horrendously shaky! I don’t doubt my opinion would be different had I sat back there.
With Red Force finally ticked off, we could finally try to squeeze in a quick dinner. We had about an hour left in the park at this point, and it was becoming apparent that we wouldn’t get much else done. Dinner pickings were pretty slim, with Pit Lane being the only quick-service eatery open during our visit. Thankfully, like all of PortAventura, there were multiple vegetarian options here, and I grabbed a vegetable focaccia, which was delightful. Honestly, it was so delicious and light and fluffy. I’d absolutely buy one every time!
With under an hour to go, and wanting a second ride on Red Force, Thrill Towers and Maranello Grand Race were both a no-go. Both still posted 40/50 minute waits, even just before park close. Instead, there was one very strange-looking attraction with no wait whatsoever that felt a lot like a must-do. Crazy Pistons is another SBF Visa attraction in the kids area of the park, but this time with a cute custom design and one that I’ve never seen elsewhere. The ride doesn’t really do much, but the tilting and rotation are probably enough to be fun for kids. We just wanted to ride it because it was silly, and it definitely ticked that box!
With twenty minutes left of park time, Red Force was just a 15-minute wait. As mentioned above, my second night ride might have been even better than my first! As we exited the ride at 21:55, my group eagerly ran around to the front for one last lap. Meanwhile, I was running in the opposite direction, eager to experience one last attraction in this bizarre park.
After a good few hours, I was finally ready to re-enter the cursed Racing Legends queue. Except this time, I’d be paying a visit to its sister attraction: Flying Dreams. Flying Dreams is a flying theatre attraction, falling into the same category as Voletarium and Soarin’ and providing the usual set-up. Read: you fly over a lot of cities. Perhaps it was the nicely themed pre-show area, or maybe just the utter lack of a queue at this point in the day (I enjoyed my ride cycle with two other guests) but I really enjoyed this experience! It’s still not my favourite flying theatre – Flight of the Sky Lion wins for me – but it was a fun, enjoyable time with slightly blurry graphics and occasional effects. Like its sister attractions at the Disney Parks and Europa-Park, Flying Dreams flies over the theme park as its finale, which may be corny, but makes me smile every time. Certainly not worth enduring the lengthy queue, but if you can hop on like I did, it’s a good time!
And that was our experience of Ferrari Land. Whilst I complain of the lack of attractions, we didn’t even ride everything! But that’s perhaps that’s down to this park having limited operating hours, limited attractions, and granting all resort guests one free admission. Queues were disproportionate for the experience offered for the majority of the evening, and we visited on a day marked on the PortAventura calendar as one of the quietest! This park quite simply cannot handle being its own theme park. It does not offer enough to justify the separate gate or offer a reasonable experience to the number of guests it intends to entertain. The whole place, too, feels souless and corporate. At every opportunity, you’re told how magnificent Ferrari products are, which is obviously to be expected, but there’s nothing to temper this. No silly character to meet. Nothing fun (except you Crazy Pistons, you get a pass). This park takes itself so seriously and yet fails to deliver the quality Ferrari is widely known for, or so I was told, repeatedly.
Ferrari Land is symptomatic of the fact that a second gate is not always A Good Thing. As Disneyland Paris rushed to fulfil their contractual obligations, they opened a cheap and lazy park that lessened the overall quality of the product on offer. PortAventura seemed to have seen this and thought, we’ll have some of that. I’m no historian on the resort, so remain unsure of how the Ferrari deal came about, but clearly, this land would not have fit thematically within PortAventura – having said that, Sesame Street manages just fine! But in removing it from the main park, the resort makes promises it just can’t fulfil. With no investment since opening some off-the-shelf children’s attractions in 2018, this doesn’t seem like an issue PortAventura are particularly fussed about fixing either.
Despite all of this, Ferrari Land does one thing right. It’s priced appropriately. At the ticket machines in our hotel, we were able to purchase tickets to the park for €15. At the time of writing, that’s £12.80. You could buy a ticket to the park, and a pint, for less than the cost of two pints at a UK park. Unless you’re extraordinarily unlucky, you’ll be able to get multiple Red Force rides in for that money. Maybe hopping onto one of the simulators at the end of the evening and maybe even catching some acrobatics. Whatever way you look at it, even if it shouldn’t be a separate park, Ferrari Land is good value.
I’d pay £12.80 for Red Force any day.
Speak again soon,
Claire
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coasterclaire.co.uk 