Waltzers From Vienna

This is the Wildalpenbahn. It's like a big water slide with river rapid style boats. The whole ride is themed around an Alpine mountain.

The rapid boats get to the top of the ride by a vertical elevator style hill lift. Riding up that lift in a rapids boat is quite an odd and disconcerting experience.

This is a new ride for 2008 that only opened a couple of days before I visited. As a consequence I didn't even know about it until I came across it at the park, so was pleasantly surprised to find this ride.

At first it looks like a ghost train with some great airbrush art. When you get close up though it becomes apparent it is in fact a compact roller coaster. I'm surprised there aren't more rides like this about, as it's a good family roller coaster in a very compact space. It's a ride that would make a good addition to a lot of parks with limited space.

This area is known as the Riesenradplatz, which is an area around the main entrance of the park, although I didn't use it as I was staying in a hotel at the other side of the park.

This whole area of the park was made over for this year. All the restaurants and shops now have a great front decorating them, giving a great sense of grandeur about this area.

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Even the fairground dodgems have had a makeover to make them match in with the rest of the Riesenradplatz.

The main feature of the Riesenradplatz is of course the Riesenrad. It was built way back in 1897, which I think makes it the worlds oldest Ferris wheel. It will be interesting to see if the London Eye lasts that long.

Before you ride the wheel itself you go in to a museum with lots of working models depicting various periods of the history of Prater Park.

A photo of another one of the models in the museum.