PortAventura Trip Report May 2024
So… My first trip to Portaventura, I have been waiting a long time for this one.
After a 2am get up to head to London Luton, we parked in the long stay car park…. Only 2 busses running, so unless you were at pick up point A, the bus was full and drove past… This meant we nearly missed our flight.
We chose to fly to Reus as it was closer and meant an easy taxi transfer for 30 Euros to the park, great! We chose to stay in hotel Gold River and wow is it beautiful. The Lobby is amazing, and it feels like an actual; western town. Check in as simple enough and at Portaventura your hotel Key Card is also your park entry tickets and you also get discounts for staying on site!!!
One of our Group has a disability pass, which was easy to get from guest services at the front of the park, they accept the Nimbus Access Card and also print you a barcode wristband which lasts for the whole of your stay, so no need to collect one each day, it also works for Ferrari and the Waterpark.
First Stop… BEER! Specifically a yard of BEER! It was Estrella which is lovely, and wow beer is cheap in this park, once you buy the yard you get refills for like 3 Euros, I can see this being messy later on.
We actually rode Furious Baco first… ouch! Back row, outside seat, my brain did not enjoy that. However I will say another day we got front row middle seats and it was such a different experience. Fun fact Furious Baco used to run 3 trains when it opened! The area is themed to a vineyard and it looks amazing going over the lake however it does struggle to run in wet weather as we found out on day 3… interesting.
The reason I really wanted to come to Portaventura is Shambhala and it did not disappoint. My Favourite type of Rollercoaster has been the B&M Hyper since I rode Silver Star in 2022, yep still love them. Shammy B pulls some great forces and amazing airtime! So Glad I got to ride front and back row on this trip.
Next door to Shambhala is a rollercoaster I was very excited for, with Hulk, Kumba and Kraken being some of my favs from Florida, Dragon Khan was next…. Nope just nope. As I went down the first drop I saw some welding at the bottom and ouch can you feel it. You can tell this ride was 29 years old and needed the B7M retrack like others. The 2nd half of the ride smoothed out, but I do suggest getting the front row if you can. Please Please Please PA do the retrack as I don’t want to lose this classic B&M
A few Beers later, can you see a trend here and we took a break in the hotel and used the pool, we had all 3 tiers of the pool to ourselves, that was quite funny! A cheeky cocktail in the hotel bar and we went back into the park to explore the rest of what’s to offer. I won’t go into too much detail as you’ll be able to watch my Vlogs below, however the water rides were great fun and Uncharted was amazing!!! Such a fun coaster, mainly screen based but back row on Uncharted was just brilliant.
We ate that evening in LA LUIGA sports bar, and they even put the Chelsea game on for me…the less we speak about that game the better but thank you for the team for offering (it did mean I had a few more drinks).
Visiting PA in May meant it was a lot quieter and we managed to do everything we wanted over the 4 days. I’ll do a Separate review for Ferrari Land, uncharted and the VR experience at the park as soon as I can, but I definitely will be back soon as I really enjoyed all the resort had to offer!
