North America 06/25 – Dutch Wonderland + Knoebels
The following morning we hit up another park on the Lake Compounce pass, one that we’ve looked at several times during trips over the years and figured was never quite worth the gate price.
It’s not.
So perfect opportunity.
Or not.
Day 12 – Dutch Wonderland
Security checks kinda block you from a decent entrance shot here, which is a shame.
Things started ok as we walked straight onto #1 Merlin’s Mayhem, S&Seses answer to the Vekoma suspended family coaster.
I had hoped better for them, but it has no real reason to exist. Was rather rattly throughout, better off with the originals.
Immediately from here the usual shenanigans resumed. Walked to the other two coasters and found them both closed with no signs of life. I figured as there’s not a huge amount to do here, maybe there was some form of staggered openings going on, but they could have easily said so.
Walked to the Wonder House, a haunted swing thing – madhouses before they were cool, and stood at its entrance for 15 mins or so. It was playing ‘station’ audio announcements and unlike the coasters had no sign to say that it was closed. Turns out it was closed.
So we went to guest services to find out what the deal was, which requires leaving the park and getting a hand stamp, for some reason.
The deal was they didn’t really know, and that all of the rides ‘should’ be open.
“Oh, but not the wonder house because it’s too hot.”
“Well we’ve been round the park and there’s a lot not open.”
“Oh, we don’t know then.”
“So, does anyone know?”
“No.”
It was around the climax of this conversation that I chose to reflect on something that had been nagging at me since our arrival in the park. Dutch Wonderland is a 5 time consecutive winner of Best Family Park in the World. Sure that’s just the Golden Ticket awards, and they notoriously suck, but in person this seemed far more egregious than the usual subjective ‘oh it’s just not my favourite rollercoaster, but I’m sure someone likes it.’ And this insult to the amusement industry is plastered everywhere, from the entrance to the park maps.
Had a good laugh about that for a minute anyway, then we resorted to our fast-becoming favourite activity of sitting on a bench waiting for a rollercoaster to open. During this time the entertainment came mainly in the form of other guests making a consistent habit of approaching, seeing the rides were closed and then loudly complaining about the fact that everything was closed.
Eventually, to no fanfare, this opened. I’ve forgotten what it’s called so, RCDB… #2 Kingdom Coaster.
I’d like to say we had a good run of new woodies on this trip for being at least above mediocre. This was about the least remarkable of the lot. At least it’s purple.
Being at the Best Family Park in the World hadn’t done much to raise our spirits, while Google’s threat of thunderstorms was looming over basically every other park we had planned for the rest of the trip.
However as we prepared to sack this one off and rechecked an actual contender for best park in the world, it turned out that the forecast had changed significantly in our favour.
Not only that, Flying Turns had just opened for the day. The decision to leave this place and it’s last potential spiting +1 couldn’t have been made more easily.
Knoebels
I love Knoebels, no other park does it like them. They deserve all the golden tickets.
Only thing we missed last time was their ever-finicky homebrew wooden bobsled thing.
The high tech weighing procedures and distribution of guests in the station is a great contrast to the traditions of the ride concept. Then we almost didn’t get it again as it threw a wobbly right at the point of dispatch, but this was quickly rectified, thankfully.
#3 Flying Turns is definitely a ride for which you need to sit back and think about what it does, to realise how awesome that is. I found onboard that it didn’t manage to express itself in an overly obvious way, though it was a little unhinged in the odd moment here and there. Maybe like many rides with this seating arrangement it’s all about the freedom. I was pretty wedged.
Park complete and there was only one thing on our minds. Phoenix. Lots and lots of Phoenix.
Much like Phantom’s Revenge this delivers an experience that I found was quite easy to downplay over time as to just how incredible it is. It simply sneaks up on you, in the midst of an epic (or in this case, less so) rollercoaster road trip and pow, has you questioning everything you know about rides and rankings.
I called it a list breaker back in 2022 and didn’t know what to do with it, after months of deliberation giving what felt like just a token spot in the top 25.
It did all that to me again from the first lap alone, there’s just nothing else like it that offers that raw but well executed, controlled but not controlled, safe but not safe, wooden coaster buzz bar ejection. Again and again until you’re physically hurt and can’t take any more. In the best way.
We see a lot through this hobby that rides can live or die on their restraint design and comfort or lack thereof. It lends a lot of weight to the grab them while you can mentality. They could very easily ruin this one at any time, I pray that they don’t. It’s so special. And better than Steel Vengeance.
Rode that until the thunderstorm warnings closed it anyway, instantly refunding our ride tickets, then headed over to the Haunted Mansion because I like it and it doesn’t care about rain.
Not quite as top tier as I remember, a few effects were broken and a few more obnoxious noises to balance it. Still a good vibe.
And that’s what Knoebels is about. Just a lovely place to be. I’m no park food connoisseur, mostly because park food mostly sucks, but Knoebels has some of the best and tons to choose from. And it’s reasonably priced. And it’s free to get in. And it’s free to park. And there’s trees. And it’s not Cedar Point.
The thunderstorm never hit in the end so we got to use the tickets we had believed were destined for another year. I had just enjoyed a ton of that food and was starting to feel the effects of getting old, but Phoenix remained glorious as ever.
Then we bought a ton of merch and left, happy as can be.