Bjørneparken Wildlife Zoo 29th July 2019

My initial plan for this weekend was to call into Bjørneparken Wildlife Zoo en route to the parks in Lillehammer on Saturday. Regular readers will be aware that animal exhibits do nothing for me, and as such I scheduled a one hour stop, which I figured would be enough for a lap on the coaster and a quick look around. I mentioned my idea to some Norwegian friends at the ECC event at Gulliver's Warrington, and in doing so dodged a major bullet; they warned me that the ride in question did not operate when bear feeding was in progress, which apparently happened throughout the day. Sure enough close inspection of the web site revealed a published window of 12:45-14:30, which represented a major embuggerance; it would have been just about possible to do all the coasters on my original schedule even with that time constraint, but the resulting death march would not have been fun. After some contemplation I decided that the best way to recover my trip was to dedicate my Monday to the zoo even though that meant dropping a planned stop at TusenFryd.

It was shortly after 11:00 when I arrived at the park, and as ever I made a beeline to the coaster. Signage at the entrance indicated a 12:15 start, thirty minutes earlier than expected, and that information set cogwheels spinning in my brain. My flight back to Ireland required me to be at Oslo Airport no later than 17:00, and the drive there via the park I'd already decided to skip needed no more than three hours. If I could have wheels rolling by 12:30 then there was enough time for me to do a ninety minute hit and run, which I figured would enable two or three coaster laps. Though a detour of this type was both expensive and fiendishly stupid it was nevertheless an infinitely more appealing option than getting to the airport four hours before my flight.

I spent the better part of an hour wandering the zoo before making my way to Gyldenklo (#2732) ten minutes before the appointed time. There were operators on the ride platform, though they were apparently waiting for an adjacent feeding session to complete before doing anything. Once the crowd began to disperse the ride compressor was started up, followed shortly afterwards by a single lap test dispatch. The queue had built significantly by the time the gate was opened, but that wasn't a problem; I took a seat about half way back for an enjoyable three lap cycle then made a rapid exit.