I’m back on the Norwegian Jewel at the moment and we’re in the Baltics for a couple of weeks so I thought I’d take advantage of this and visit some Scandinavian theme parks.

Today we are in Stockholm which is home to Tivoli Grona Lund and they have a new coaster this year (partly pictured above) so that was where we headed this morning.

The park seems to be within touching distance when viewed from the ship, however it is across the bay and it took about an hour to walk there. We didn’t have long as the park doesn’t open until noon and we had an early sail, so we only bought tickets for a couple of rides and headed off into the park.

It was extremely busy for a weekday, and it’s a very compact park with everything crammed close together.

I have to say that the staff were the friendliest I’ve seen outside of a Disney park and this definitely helped to give the place a very happy atmosphere.

The bad news was that the new ride was closed so we joined the queue for ‘Kvasten’ which is a suspended coaster and themed towards some kind of witches house. Quite tame really but it flies around the park so we got an overview of the area.

After queueing for ‘Kvasten’ we were getting close to leaving time which is when we noticed that they had sent a car up on the new coaster. We headed over there to find they had just opened it and there was virtually no queue so it looked like the trip wouldn’t be wasted after all.

The ride is called ‘Insane’ and is a new design from Intamin (I think). It’s 35 metres tall, travels at 17 metres a second, lasts for 75 seconds and puts you through 3.5 g’s. The cars hold eight people, four on each side of the track, with two facing forward and two facing backwards. We faced forwards and were obviously heavier than the people behind as we spent most of the journey up looking downwards.

You have a lap bar but all of your weight goes on the shoulder harness which seems like the sort of thing that a rally driver would wear.

This is without doubt the most intense thing I have ever been on. You have no idea where you are going, which way you are facing and you spin round almost constantly. The g force is incredible (especially towards the end of the ride) and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

Insane is a good choice of name.

And, Yes, it made us scream like little girls.

Definitely worth another visit if I’m here again. Sorry the picture doesn’t do it justice but it’s in a strange location and hard to get a photo of.

We journeyed back to the ship in a taxi which was swerving as the driver seemed to have a nervous twitch in his right arm. Maybe that’s where they got the idea for the ride from.