Salitre Magico

• Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Salitre Magico had been high on my "must visit" park list ever since I had seen an iconic image of the park. The image showed an airplane parked along a busy highway, with a twin looping coaster by it's side and a massive Ferris wheel in the background.

Needless to say, my desire to visit this park started to fade as soon as I entered the queue line to purchase entrance tickets. Normally, most parks would start selling tickets before they open their gates. This didn't seam the sensible option for the management at Salitre Magico. Even though a substantial line had formed before the park opened, they still thought opening just one ticket window would be satisfactory enough to deal with the masses.

I might still have been in line today if we hadn't been alert enough to spot them opening another ticket window.
 

Once inside, we headed toward the first coaster we encountered, the Arrows corkscrew. The corporate nature of the park became even more obvious when Richard was not allowed to wear his fully secured glasses on the coaster--but they were more than happy for him to hold onto them during the ride. Well, he did hold onto them, and during one of the forceful inversions, they broke. To put it mildly, he wasn't happy.
 

Another policy of the park--which I've never encountered anywhere else in the world--is that you are not allowed to use your camera once you've entered the queue line of any ride. I only realised this when I was asked to stop taking photographs of the Tornado coaster within the queue line. I fully obliged. The rest of the time I put the long zoom on my camera to good use.
 

As much as I wanted to like the park, I still came away slightly disappointed. The coasters were good, the view from the Ferris wheel was magnificent, and I enjoyed the aircraft walk-though (again no cameras allowed inside so no internal photos). So what was it that was missing?
Amusement parks supposed to be fun--but Salitre Magico was anything but that. Put simply, Salitre Magico is a good park that is very badly run.

Salitre Magico sign

Price list

 

 

 

Park map

 

 

 

The Arrow Dynamics Corkscrew started life at Magic Harbor (South Carolina, USA) then was relocated to Myrtle Beach Pavilion (SC) before making it's way to Colombia at Salitre Magico in 2000.

 

 

 

 

Tornado, a Schwarzkopf' Jet Star 3, was our next coaster. Like the Corkscrew, it had two previous homes. It was originally at Alton Towers, were I had already ridden it. Then it moved to Mexico. Salitre Magico has been its home since 2010

A superb ride, nice and smooth. We thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Not many Soquet coasters find their way outside France. Colombia is home to two of these creations. The Bambo Coaster, operating since 7/12/2004, is a double looping coaster similar to the Twin Looper that was at American Adventure Theme Park. The Bambo Coaster moved to Salitre Magico from Seabreeze (NY).

Gusano Loco (Spanish for Crazy Worm) is the fourth coaster at Salitre Magico. It opened in 2001. Adults are not allowed to ride this coaster.

 

Samsung-sponsored Big Wheel.

 Other rides in the park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wanted to ride this one but tuned it down due to long queues.

Bins.

Work being done.

Overview of the park

 

 

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