USA 06/23 – Frontier City
Upon arrival in Oklahoma City, the ‘too hot to theme park’ heat had finally caught up with us. It had been ranging from pleasant to bearable thus far but, as is inevitable in this part of the world, with operating calendars only 2 months long, weather reports started announcing record highs and it got more than a little sticky.
Not too concerning for the first item on the agenda though
Day 13 – Frontier City
Again more pleasant than I had imagined, for whatever reason. Something about looking at lacklustre lineups on RCDB sometimes makes you think something else must be lacking too. It all looked green and pleasant from this vantage point at the very least. No concrete and rides here.
Maybe some tarmac. The wrong #1 Diamondback, or Not Revolution, can be found signposted from the gift shop that you enter the park through. The queue winds you upwards in a more merciful manner than the Blackpool counterpart. I don’t mind that one and I didn’t mind this, rides pretty much the same. The lurches in or out of the drops toe the line between exciting and painful depending on where you sit and the loop is… an inversion.
Round the corner is the only dark ride on the bill, Quick Draw.
Interactive of course, and themed to the same as everything in the park. It was perfectly serviceable, had a fun dynamite scene at the end.
Bonus cred? Sadly not, this tease of track appears to be the remains of the Nightmare Mine. It’s gone.
I had a bit of a milestone to check off here, so did a tiny bit of backtracking, though not even entirely sure what I wanted or whether it mattered – there was nothing particularly enthralling on offer.
#2 Silver Bullet was a candidate, but nah, clone. Good thing too because it rode horribly for one of these, a ride where the main redeeming feature is usually coming off thinking ‘rides good for its age, that’. Anton will be rolling in his grave.
Sure as hell wasn’t gonna be #3 Steel Lasso, though I had it in my head as an over the shoulder restraint version so that was a pleasant surprise. The guy in row 4 is definitely sunglasses on, not caring.
Thus, #1500 ended up being the Wildcat. RCDB tells me there are just 62 rollercoasters that have used this exact name, so it will always have to come with the appendix – the one at Frontier City. That bugs me, I wanted Big Bad John.
On the plus side, it has historical significance, is custom and allowed me to make a reference to Wildcat’s Revenge.
It joins the ranks of many a wooden coaster around the world that pays tribute to other wooden coasters around the world. Signs are up in the queue snapshotting a wide variety of what is/was on offer, from local deceased classics such as the Zingo to local revived classics such as El Toro, from nearby early RMCs that shall not be named to far flung Chinese duellers that may be misnamed.
I’m putting off talking about the ride experience again because, simply put, there wasn’t one. Three days back to back of ‘I am on a wooden rollercoaster’ continued in a pleasant romp through some trees and one rather unique turnaround – the elevation changed both up and down rather than just being flat.. I hear they ‘spiced it up’ during a retrack once, maybe that was it.
With the end in sight and the skin beginning to blister, it was time to power on and find #5 Frankie’s Mine Train. This ride might well win the award for our most efficient +1 ever. Walked up the stairs, got in the train, quick dispatch, single lap, left. Perfection.
In fact the overall experience was one of efficiency. I had made a late game prediction about this, but I doubt it took any more than a couple of hours. Good thing it’s free.
As such we had an afternoon to play with and at last made headway back into Texas to mop up one final Six Flags. Another sweet start was now confirmed to be on offer, or more accurately, sweat start. That one can wait though.