Well this was it, the big one. You don’t need me to play up Cedar Point, being the supposed rollercoaster mecca and all that. It’s not something I’d ever consider doing for any other park, but I used to sit and watch the live webcams of this place, mesmerised by those views from the drop tower of legendary coasters and ridiculous operations. Still can’t quite believe that I managed to get over 1300 coasters without yet visiting, but here we are. We inadvertently ended up visiting during Coaster Con, though thankfully it didn’t appear to have much of an impact beyond comedy.
Day 13 – Cedar Point
But what about British ones?
We used our platinum passes to gain the extra hour of exclusive morning ride time. Certain rides were already up and running for additional extra exclusive time for the thoosies, but you needed a badge rather than just ‘a look’ to get on those.
We went straight to #1 Millennium Force which was available to all. As soon as I head the theme tune in the station it suddenly hit me where we were and what we were doing. My Cedar Point moment had arrived and there was a great vibe and buzz around the ride. Staff were making jokes at the expense of Kings Island at the point of each dispatch and in a flash we were heading up the insanely huge lift hill.
You leave Orion alone, it’s better than this. While I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing this iconic coaster, it confirmed my sneaking suspicions that it just isn’t my cup of tea. Speed and corners. The first big hill was hilariously on point at being ‘see hill, nothing happens’ and the parallel return version was identical in its lack of sensation. The speed hump past the station is the true highlight of the ride for me, after a particularly long and satisfying dose of zooming around trees with that unified, hands up coaster feeling and we were now at least sufficiently broken in.
Our plan was to get one more ‘major’ ride under our belt during the magic hour and then get to the ‘main event’ well before it opened, but having already walked past Valravn and seeing that it already would have put us beyond official park opening, the only real option was the nearby #2 Iron Dragon.
A perfectly pleasant sit down. It looks good, but I’m not sure these old suspended coasters work particularly well without the terrain to back it up. I much prefer the build up on Ninja.
Oh they have donkeys, no hats, here? Now I see the appeal of this place more than ever.
We didn’t come to Cedar Point for a perfectly pleasant sit down though. We came to experience the inescapably hyped up coaster that is #3 Steel Vengeance, the last of the big boy RMC set. Our camping out plan was successful, putting us reasonably near the front of a queue that grew and grew behind us, snaking around all over the place and confusing everyone who turned up as to where it began. Endless test laps were cycled to tease us and build that anticipation while I tried and failed to not spoiler some of the layout for myself.
After a tense wait, the line was unleashed and once the Velocicoaster style mandatory locker deal was out of the way, we were quickly up the stairs and batched into Wyatt Gold Digger Dempsey’s train. I loved the themed announcements that each train gets, along with the accompanying acknowledgments and hype from the staff. The Cedar Point vibe continued in true style and we were off. Oh no.
Initial impressions then. The little pre-lift section is short, but sweet. It’s not winning that particular battle. The massive first drop and subsequently tiny hill felt very par for the course to someone who has experienced everything in the wrong order, but that’s not to say it isn’t amazing, world class, etc. It’s just not winning that particular battle.
The two stonkingly huge hills that act as the world’s biggest turnaround are stupidly sublime, I loved the sensation of flying over that mess of structure and being pinned out of the seat at weird angles for an obscene amount of time. It may well win that battle.
There’s a satisfying double up style hop up into the first inversion which is of course executed very well. High up turning occurs and you get the unusual counter-inversion to that on the way back out, which I didn’t mind, it’s a thing. One of the most notable moments of airtime occurs out of that double down, though it’s cut a little short as you climb again into the mid course brake run.
It’s nothing short of weird to me to experience a mid course on one of these, though it’s far less intrusive to the flow than I had perhaps anticipated. A brief moment of contemplation before plunging through some structure, where the ride gets a whole lot more difficult to comprehend.
Countless airtime moments, overbanks, inversions, wave turns all happen seemingly simultaneously, many of which are completely hidden within the supports to the point where you can’t see them coming. The unpredictability here is simply wild, something I always particularly love from a coaster and it all sadly comes to an end after four characteristically silly little RMC hops into the final brakes.
Conscious of how much of a mammoth task still lay ahead of us in this park, we went round again for an immediate re-ride just in case things went terribly wrong. The queue was eating through the initial rush rather well and we got to read some of the back story signage throughout the earlier line during a comfortable half hour wait. Our second lap aboard Chess Wild One Watkins confirmed that it wasn’t instant, smash hit, best thing ever status. But it was already better, and god damn Iron Gwazi is it good.
Fear got the better of us and we decided to suck up a 90 minute queue for Maverick next, which we considered the second most unmissable ride in the park. It was during this time that the Cedar Point vibe was slain. Unlike SteVe it moved awfully slowly and, as we approached the top of the stairs after a particularly excruciating wait, it broke down.
The most bizarre set of mixed messages were delivered by the staff at this point. Engineers arrived at the scene, but not in a fun Steel Curtain way and a series of announcements were made ranging from ‘shouldn’t be too long, thanks for your patience’ to ‘we’ve got other rides, go check them out’. To have come so close and yet not got on it, we were of course placed in the worst dilemma. We need all those other rides, but we’d also be loathed to come back later and queue another hour and a half, or worse, for this again.
We fruitlessly stuck it out over the next hour or so, expecting some sort of indication on how things were going, a useful piece of advice or perhaps some minor compensation. Instead the staff milled around going on lunch breaks or into what remained of the queue to have a chat and make the vaguest possible statements. Eventually we extracted the three pieces of information we didn’t want to hear: 1) ‘The problem could take 5 minutes, it could take all day.’ (perfect) 2) ‘Oh, no, we don’t do that’, in response to ‘we’ve lost a huge chunk of our day here, can we get something to avoid queuing again if we come back later?’ (ouch) 3) ‘Get the app, that will tell you when the ride reopens.’ (hold that thought)
Disheartened and now heavily on the back foot, we left the queue and plunged into operation mop up. The next nearest thing, the mine train, was posting some ridiculous wait times out front, so we kept on walking and downloaded the app.
#4 Gemini seemed manageable at around 30 minutes. Big, tall Arrow, not very good. It ain’t no Excalibur and the factor that should work in it’s favour, namely racing, loses all impact when the ride is so heavily trimmed in places. They’re frequent to the point that any victory doesn’t really feel earned, plus the fact it appeared to guarantee the same winner without fail. While it sucks the fun out of the race, it also reduces the surprising amount of roughness, which was more than prominent.
Getting the app taught us that either it, or the entrance signs were lying to us and we went back to #5 Cedar Creek Mine Train to confirm which of those it was. Just ignore the 400ft piece of steel in the background please. For now, the app was right and this one wasn’t a bad wait at all. Little, small Arrow, not very good.
We hit the other side of #6 Gemini for the sake of completion and then popped over to the most unremarkable #7 Woodstock Express yet. After a mercifully cloudy morning, the insane heat returned to us once more and this queue brought out the worst of it. Why are we doing this again?
For stuff like #8 Magnum XL-200 of course. Bigger, taller Arrow, very good. There’s another magical retro aura to this triangular-shaped station and we made an immediate beeline for the ‘magic row’. From here, the first drop loses a bit of an edge over the similarly shaped Morgans we had been experiencing and the initial half is a bit Big One-esque, a fairly brutal rattling around, not doing much. As soon as the return leg begins though, it turns fully brutal and makes up for all the lost time with a ridiculous sequence of hills that are all the wrong shapes, tunnels that confuse and confound and finally the sheer fear that the train may stop itself from 60-0 instantly if they haven’t dispatched the next one quickly enough.
Raptor appeared to be the next sensible target but it turned out to have also broken down. It was at this time we recognised how stupidly far certain parts of the park are from each other and how gruelling it can be to navigate the concrete and rides. After using that phrase for several years now, it may well have peaked here.
#9 Blue Streak was one of the rides ACE had been hogging in the morning, but we were allowed on it now (I just wanna ride the wooden one). They had a little stall set up on park advertising memberships and such and it was tempting to rock up and ask ‘how much to get us on Wilderness Run?’ though the attendants didn’t look like they’d appreciate the humour.
I’ve always admired the appearance of this blue woodie for some reason and it was solid, delivered some unexpected forces and was a good little sit down.
#10 Corkscrew was just another inverting Arrow, not very good. The fact that this one was down for an hour of ERT later still baffles me. Surely it’s purely ornamental at this point.
This only left us with the four big B&Ms and the spiting Maverick left to do, which the app said was still down. Not really wanting to queue 75(!) or 90 for Rougarou(!) or Valravn at this point and not really wanting to walk 75 to 90 over to Gatekeeper either, we were at a loss as to what to do next. Surely #11 Rougarou, a three train B&M and a ride no one likes, can’t have that sort of queue.
Turns out the app was now lying to us and the entrance signs were more respectable. A ride host confirmed that it was in fact 20 mins. It was in fact 5.
The station for this ride was the most obnoxious thing ever, with ever increasingly loud announcements screaming instructions at everyone as to how to have the most efficient operations. I’d usually appreciate the sentiment, but not at that volume and with a queue line (and ride) that made it entirely unjustifiable. I was the victim of a particular spate of shouting for daring to have glasses on at this point, even though we’d been sunglasses on, not caring for the majority of the park including, most amusingly, Millennium Force. “PUT THEM INSIDE YOUR SHIRT.” Having never heard those words before in my illustrious career I barely knew how to react beyond the bemused words “I can’t”. I took them off and held them in my hand like the ridiculous Ice Breaker compromise. “PUT THEM INSIDE YOUR SHIRT.” Having thought about the implications once again and not wanting to lose vision for the rest of the trip, thanks to Rougarou of all things, “I’m not doing that.” Dispatch.
Riding defensively against comfort collars and silly airtime moments while holding a ‘loose article’ in a looser position was never ideal. Riding defensively against an awful B&M with over the shoulder restraints was ten times worse. It happened, these conversions are poor, now let us never speak of it again.
The simple inclusion of a small storage bin in the station for #12 Gatekeeper solves all such potential issues. I rather liked the sprawling layout on this one, the surprisingly intense wing-over drop straight into the second inversion, the huge hill and of course the signature keyhole moments. It’s got a bit of a Shambhala ending with that late game mid course brake run but it was probably my preferred wing of the trip, even though they’re all sooo close together.
With the Valravn queue being unrelenting and the knowledge that we could simply walk onto it first thing the following morning, along with the remaining two coasters being down for the count, it was time to get some vengeance.
Oh wait, never mind, Maverick had actually opened again and the app never even bothered to register it. Of course, yet again, it was an advertised 90 minute queue and in reality it turned out to be far worse than that still. The line for fastlane was out of its own entrance and spilling into the pathways beyond. As such the capacity of the ride, which was never ideal in the first place, was easily split in half again to cater for this grossly disproportionate system.
The wait was nothing short of agonising, not least for how long it was but for the dilemma it had placed us in. It had seemed like a no-brainer to just walk in that queue and guarantee a ride on Maverick that day in case it broke down again (and assuming it wouldn’t right there and then), but as time wore on it got dangerously close to simply being the end of our day. Was it worth losing our only opportunity for night rides on Steel Vengeance? On principal it had to be, as it had now set an all time record for the longest single wait I’ve had before any coaster. Four and a half hours, albeit split into two. It felt so wrong.
And yet, by the time we hit the final brakes, it felt so right. Amongst all that stress it had always been lingering in my mind that I didn’t honestly expect #13 Maverick to be that good. Restraints, restraints, restraints.
Well it is that good. I never thought I’d be putting it up there with the likes of Taron after one lap, and yet I was, sitting there stunned. The beyond vertical drop at that initial velocity is silly, with some violent vest-based ejector, but the terrain hugging speed of the twists and turns after that, while I had no idea what was coming, in the almost dark, was infectious.
There’s two ridiculously powerful airtime hills in the layout that have no right being that good, more intense than the RMC round the corner. And the second launch, even though it pauses and faffs, which I didn’t think I’d like, it works so well. It builds the suspense with the lights in the shed and then comes at you so hard. The visual speed feels off the charts as you hit a very intense corner and then have to be trimmed immediately, in rather amusing fashion. One of the most pleasant surprises was that there’s none of that clunky Intamin restraint to the side of the neck snap in the transitions, the high levels of aggression feel perfectly tuned.
Case in point with the Stengel thing. It’s a shame they can’t duel the two trains at this point as was intended, for fear of breaking the ride again, but the way that thing rides, so forceful yet unobtrusive, god damn Iron Gwazi. I’m a fan.
We brought some intensity of our own to the table as there were less than 5 minutes before park close as we disembarked. A full on sprint to the SteVe was the only acceptable course of action, made all the funnier by the train crossing being shut and surrounded by a crowd, all ready to come straight towards us, mere metres from the ride entrance.
Our arrival was met with ‘there’s no need to run’, but they were wrong and we had made it. That’s all that matters. I was terrified of this night ride, not because of the hardware in any way, but due to the literal horror movie scenes that were the spotlights for the structure. Each and every one was covered in a dense mass of a thousand bugs just sitting there, plotting our demise.
Thankfully they do just sit there and plot, preferring the light to being splatted by riders hands and faces and although screaming is not recommended in any way, you just have to sort of interally shout like a slight hum in response to all of the amazing forces, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Zadra getting insects under my eyelids.
And what a ride it was. The cedar point vibe was finally back, a full 12 hours after it so cruelly abandoned us. The views from that ominous lift structure, building up to the most lengthy of RMC experience ever conceived with everyone on the Wyatt Gold Digger Dempsey train having their lives changed. To the point that every single one of them was screaming “ONE MORE TIME, ONE MORE TIME, ONE MORE TIME!” as we pulled back into the station. The staff were on fire, playing to the crowd, joining in and firing the energy right back at us. The restraints were unlocked. The restraints were locked. “YOU’RE SADDLED UP, YOU’RE SADDLED UP, YOU’RE SADDLED UP!”
How can a mood change so much over the span of a single day? I know it’s entirely unreasonable to expect that level of heightened atmosphere over the entire course of operation but there were times in this visit where I was stood there thinking the best of this hobby is behind me. I was fulfilling a lifelong dream at what is considered the pinnacle of amusement parks and it was doing nothing for me. And then those last two laps on Steel Vengeance happen and it basically brings me to tears of joy simply thinking back on the experience now.
Actually heading back in the right direction now, our next stop was everyone’s favourite park.
Day 12 – Michigan’s Adventure
I’d forgotten what it was like to have a pass that actually works again (mostly).
And we soon found ourselves at the main event for this park, #1 Shivering Timbers. S’alright.
I do really appreciate the layout on this one, nothing but straight lines and airtime hills over a ridiculous length. In terms of what each one has to offer though it’s nothing to really write home about. It provides an above average happy fun time of just ‘being’ on a wooden rollercoaster (seems the US is great for this) and the way it just keeps on going is the best part of that.
Titan Track #2 Wolverine Wildcat was a laugh. We were sat in front of a guy who kept proclaiming that it was his favourite ride, trying to impress either his date or daughter (it was a weird dynamic), and then proceeded to make some hilarious noises throughout the entire course, as though he was being destroyed by it. Which I don’t get, it ran well. I like the fast wonky hills and trick-track stuff or whatever you call it. There’s not much of a sample size, but probably the best Dinn still out there.
They may not get new investments here, but they do like to paint things. #3 Corkscrew was looking rather fresh, though the same couldn’t be said for the ride experience.
I high-fived Snoopy on the way into the queue for #4 Woodstock Express, which was probably the highlight moment of the visit. As a weird little Chance coaster it broke the mould somewhat.
Zach’s Zoomer then proceeded to break down on us, so we took an excruciatingly long and hot walk over to the SLC, which was also looking rather fresh. Was #5 Thunderhawk worth it? Of course not. There was one very questionable moment of roughness into the first inversion which didn’t inspire much confidence, but thankfully it never surpassed that. Nor have any of these managed to surpass T3 at this stage.
That’s pretty much the only ride the other side of the massive lake, so it was all the way back again to find #6 Zach’s Zoomer was fixed. Having been sunglasses on, not caring for most of the park, getting told the only option was to ‘hold onto them’ here brought back fond memories of Ice Breaker. It was somehow the roughest woodie of the park for only being 40ft tall, though I found if you sit sort of side-saddle as the only adult in a row it was reasonably different and entertaining.
I’d half been hoping that yet another example of the Arrow #7 Mad Mouse was going to remain closed as it had been all morning, but it was back. Once again it was awful, the queue was hugely disproportionate to every other in the park and full of sunburn. Worldwide set complete though, now let’s never speak of it again.
We took another courtesy lap on the Shiver, to see if anything had changed. It (or the staff, accidentally) decided to e-stop on the lift hill and thus we had an even lengthier than usual lap courtesy of 10-15 stationary minutes of silence. Through that, opinions were confirmed rather than changed and it was deemed as not worth risking another mishap – we had places to be.
It was time to hit the road.
Indiana Beach
We found Indiana, but not the beach, rather a field in which to park the car and a big, wobbly bridge to cross. The view was welcoming, the admissions staff less so.
Lets get the bad news out of the way first, Lost Coaster of Super-spite-tion Mountain was out of action. Oh and Spiter Looping is still in bits after far too long. Over the years we’ve had this trip planned the park threatened to not exist at all, so we were more than happy to take what we could get.
First thing we got was #8 Cornball Express and I adored it. I couldn’t tell which wood was which in this tangled mess off goodness, nor did I know which one was supposed to be ‘the good one’. What it was was CCI at it’s finest. Just look at that drop.
Thanks to the freedom of the buzz bar restraints it had several moments of scary, standing airtime in remarkable places. The layout is mostly left turns and drops, ending on a bunch of silly corners but it works oh so well and I couldn’t get enough of it.
There were other things to try though, #9 Tig’rr Coaster was pretty vicious and reminded me of the rawness that these old Schwarzkopfs can (should) sometimes have.
#10 Hoosier Hurricane was a bit bigger, a bit rougher and a little less fun than it’s nutty neighbour, but still solid and with great views. I keep meaning to look up what Hoosier means, as it clearly wasn’t just a silly ride name and was plastered on signs around the state of Indiana.
The answer is less interesting than I had hoped for.
The staff were bigging up #11 Steel Hawg rather well, though it was somewhat lost on us. Got all the clones now, just need the other layout, but I’m happy to speak of them again. I rather like the funkier moments El Locos have to offer and this thing hurled itself into that first drop in a very unnerving fashion.
In an attempt to make up for a lack of big new coaster, the park also have a brand new second hand Zyklon Galaxi, #12 Cyclone, complete with an amusingly questionable clearance envelope, which it appears I forgot to photograph. We spent the duration of the lap trying to spot the dark ride.
And spot we did, Den of Lost Thieves was another Sally classic, perhaps not quite in the same league as the previous day, but I like the sheer simplicity of those cars. It’s a solo affair for adults and my gun didn’t work. Good in parts though, and changes in elevation are always fun.
In the absence of being able to complete the park beyond that, we got our fill of corn to see out the day in style. I loved the visuals here, one of those classic piles of rides on top of each other and there were some great opportunities for interaction, just a shame it was a little too quiet to capitalise on that, even on a weekend. Get those loops open.
Unfinished business really eats away at the soul and our only logical course of action at this point was to ditch both a well needed lie-in and a visit to Little Amerricka to go and solve a problem. The ‘striking distance’ I had alluded to in my calculations on that fateful bench in Adventureland was a mere 5 and a half hour drive that morning, all because, as proclaimed, we wanted to ride the monster.
Day 11 – Adventureland (the Iowa one, again)
Mercifully there were no wind related mishaps, we rushed straight to said #1 Monster and sure enough it was open, with a brimming queueline that only took about 20 minutes. It was a bit of a novelty to be able to wear glasses on a Gerstlauer, they usually seem to have extra strict things in the rulebook about that, I wonder what caused it.
On the scale of Infinities, it wasn’t wholly remarkable. It’s a joy to watch, feels super long and is packed with tons of interesting elements, which is great, though none of them are especially hard hitting. Unlike something like Mystic or Junker, they don’t ride as crazy as they look.
Hangtime (the sensation, not the ride) is the predominant force and it works well in the super free seating, but it would have been nice for the attempted airtime moments to punctuate the flow a little more. The trim near the end that forces the last two elements to be extra ‘hangy’ also amused me. +1 though.
A surprise bonus +1 came in the fact that #2 Dragon Slayer had been fixed and was back in operation too. I won’t dignify it with another photo because it was by far the worst ride of the trip. They label the two different sides as having varying intensities and, perhaps foolishly, we opted for the gentler side just to get the ordeal over with.
Somewhere on the first turnaround I received the most vicious punch to the head I’ve ever had on a rollercoaster (taking the crown from Battle of Jungle King), courtesy of some horrible lurchy half-spinning and the rock hard seating. I immediately went into super-defensive survival mode but the worst part was I couldn’t even find a way to prevent this from happening again, short of using my own hand as a cushion between the two. Thankfully it didn’t, but it was such an endurance and I proceeded to feel nauseous for the remainder of the day so, mild head trauma, that’s nice.
The standard “welcome back guys, how was your ride?” was met with the word horrible, but as it’s scripted of course no one actually cares enough to press for details. It feels most appropriate to recount a comment heard in the Monster queue a few minutes prior – ‘they got rid of the Dragon for that ****?!’ As it’s now my second worst coaster of all time, I’m inclined to agree.
Success comes at a price I guess. It was time to leave and never look back, as we had a date with Sally, several more hours away.
Lost Island Theme Park
The primary reason we had bothered to stick around and backtrack to Iowa at all was for the ‘grand’ opening of this place, generally most famous around the theme park corner of the internet for being where Kanonen ended up. I don’t need Kanonen of course and to go out of your way for an SLC and Wacky Worm in the midst of an epic US road trip seems more than a little insulting, even at this stage of my adventuring. What did very much interest me was their dark ride, Volkanu, which had some great early teasers at the exhibition stage and then fell off the radar pretty quickly.
I’d been keeping an eye on the park website for some time and attempting to factor it into this trip somehow. Based on their original schedule we would have been able to hit it late night on a weekend shortly just a few days into operation. Things got complicated, they suffered further teething troubles and silently offered refunds to those who had pre-booked, removing certain dates from the calendar, shortening opening hours and preventing any further online ticket sales. Not the best of signs.
The DRdb team decided to reach out to Sally Dark Rides to see if they had any inside info on when their latest project was billed to open and it wasn’t until we were already on the trip that the final answer came back. As luck would have it, the one day I could actually visit was now the official inauguration. The park themselves appeared to do very little in the end to advertise, perhaps as they were still short a couple of major attractions and also as they seemed to thrive under the opportunity for more of a ‘technical rehearsal/soft-opening’ approach to kick things off.
As such it was more than a little quiet for opening day. We had been scheduled to meet up with the Lead Designer of the project who had wanted to be on park to see initial guest reactions first hand. Sadly he couldn’t make it due to travel issues of his own, but we were still booked to have a chat with Sally’s Project Manager, which was equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking as I’ve never really done anything like that before.
But first things first, to settle the nerves, creds. Even #3 Lokolo, the brand new Wacky Worm, was suffering from some technical issues and I believe, from a bit of Coaster Count stalking, had spited some guests who had visited first thing in the morning and then sacked it off early. As such we were particularly smug when they managed to get it open for our afternoon lap. Good face that.
#4 Nopuko Air Coaster, the not brand new SLC, was looking rather fetching in mud and that colour scheme, with those fancy vest trains and all. Had Dragon Slayer not just happened, this would have earned the title of worst ride of the trip because oh yes, it was bad. No, the layout isn’t good if you’re not having your ears bashed. Yes, they can still ride awfully.
With business out of the way it was time for the fun. The whole outside area for the dark ride looks really nice and has some bonus interactive elements built into the theming. We took our first lap on Volkanu: Quest for the Golden Idol and came off thoroughly impressed, before meeting up with Chris from Sally. He was super easy-going and fun to chat to both on and off the mic and, unsurprisingly, has a great taste in dark rides. I sent all the necessaries (on park wifi, which was extremely hot – as good a reason as any to visit) back to the rest of the team and they turned it into this write-up while we were still out on holiday – click here to check it out.
Oh and a shameless plug of the POV we took as well, also a first.
We took a few more laps for both business and pleasure and personal opinion is it’s really good, particularly for a park of this size. I was pleasantly surprised by all the more old-school physical set pieces going on in there and though it’s also a screen-based shooter it shares a little of the brilliance of Challenge of Tutankhamon (best shooter ever) with these impressive monsters and some other clever tricks along the way.
As for the park, good luck to them. It seems bizarrely located out in the cornfields away from civilisation, though I don’t really know what type of numbers the adjacent water park pulls in. It’s family run, which is always nice to see but I hope they push the marketing a bit more once they’re settled in and everything (Kanonen) is up and running properly. I’m no expert but they certainly didn’t turn a profit that day.
Having racked up double digits in failed phone calls to Six Flags St. Louis over the previous evening (the alternative number we had been given went to exactly the same place), there was no option but to turn up again and see what Great America could do for us about these useless passes. Failing that we’d just buy some tickets off them.
In similar fashion to St. Louis, we rocked up bright and early and ended up in a small queue of cars that were halted pre-parking booth. How can we blag our way past paying $35 today? The wait was far less significant as they didn’t really have room for stacking too many cars and obviously actually wanted to allow guests to sort their stuff before park opening.
Armed with my best/most confusing script, we pulled up to the window. The guy completely blanked the conversation, saw the useless pass in my hand, said “always use your season pass”, didn’t read the screen and let us in. That works.
After repeating the entire saga to the guest services window again, along with telling them how awful St. Louis are at communicating, we seemingly inched ever closer to getting what we wanted. They took our passes away into a back room somewhere and, after a nervous wait, came back negative. Nothing we can do. Two day tickets then please, which were surprisingly cheap, even on the door. The one good thing about Six Flags.
Day 10 – Six Flags Great America
We were still early enough to be in before rides opened, so opted to join the queue outside something that was popular, important and poor capacity. Otherwise known as #1 Maxx Force.
Usually I’d be especially excited about S&S air launch coasters but I knew this was more Dodonpa than OCT Thrust. I was surprised to learn that it was in fact the slowest of the lot, having not realised that they pretty much only opted for fastest acceleration in the US (and fastest inversion). In my head this thing should have been doing at least 90.
It is what it is, this was never going to be a gamechanger for me. 18 seconds of launch and some weirdly shaped inversions is just too short to compete. I thought the fastest one would be a bit more brutal and have some significant snap to it, but it’s surprisingly refined, to it’s detriment. The token kicker wheel in the ‘Dog Tongue’ amused me, I do respect what’s basically the opposite of a trim brake – we got our calculations wrong, here’s some more speed.
I’d have liked to given it another go but it was so poorly run, so overly popular and was classically unavilable for more than 50% of the day. It had been broken the previous evening too, so it was a miracle to get it at all.
Something we had no desire to queue for was #2 Dark Knight, the indoor wild mouse, the only ride that had managed to retain any significant wait time at all by the end of the night before. The plan worked, barely anyone had showed up to it yet and they weren’t bothering to run the preshow, so that was a quick tick.
Here are the quick ticks from the previous night, in case you needed the visuals.
Joker.
Flash.
Little Dipper.
I had a silly milestone looming, so we went a bit out of order from here and ended up at #3 American Eagle. They were doing a China and only running one side, slowly, so we spent the queue drafting an extensive message to Six Flags St. Loius as we had now racked up over 20 unanswered phonecalls.
The ride was awful, Intamin did not start strong on these. Endless helices of doom while regularly slowing to a crawl. It really did miss that racing spectacle at the very least.
Milestone coaster number thirteen-hunge, became #4 X-Flight (#1300), cos it’s a B&M I guess. I had a different wing, Raptor, at 900, so there’s a bit of a synergy there. This one’s better.
They were operating it awfully slowly and most of the effects were turned off. Main highlight was learning it’s not the same layout as the one in Colourful Yunnan Paradise, though they share some similarities. Good little sit down.
The dishonour could just as easily have gone to #5 Raging Bull, which also would have had synergy with Shambhala. This one is long and has an unusual ratio of corners to hills for a B&M hyper and I’m not convinced it was a good thing, or any better.
Best part was probably the first drop, because it’s an early boy and has the little pre-drop like Apollo’s Chariot, with a surprise kick to it. Even the first actual hill has that fun-sapping trim right in the wrong place though there’s also one basically on the floor later on that made me laugh. Good little sit down.
Actually found #6 Viper this time, hiding out back in the Wild West area. One thing I noticed about this park is a that a lot of the exit pathways are ridiculously long. In terms of Coney Island layouts, this was more fun than Bandit. Better trains, better corners, better airtime. It’s good.
We’d walked past the #7 Demon earlier and clocked that it had a jaunty little theme tune about itself. This instantly became addictive and a surprise hit because the lyrics are so on the nose and it’s so out of another time. I love it almost too much.
Well we’ve seen him now and he is what he seems, an Arrow looper with janky transitions and a hilarious face carved into a rock as you get beaten up by some corkscrews. Up there with the best rides on park.
Out of respect we hit the Justice League: Battle for Metropolis dark ride as they’re way better than you’d expect from Six Flags and up there with the genuine best rides on park. This one wasn’t 3Ding, which made it even better than Magic Mountain’s for me as the screen based high speed chases weren’t a blurry mess of confusion. It also wasn’t running a pre-show, instead just telling the story throughout the regular queue, which came off far less obnoxious. Really appreciate the wilder motion aspects and the physical sets most of all.
#8 Sprocket Rockets had been closed the previous day and was worrying us by being silent all morning. Mercifully it sprang to life at some point and we got our fill.
The end was now in sight and it was time for #9 Batman the Ride clone vs. #10 Superman – Ultimate Flight clone.
Batman wins, though they both earned the title of sunglasses on, not caring. Which I find particularly insulting to a flying coaster.
If it weren’t for the stupid Georgia version spiting I’d have every B&M flyer in the world now. At least Fun Spot is giving me a legitimate reason to return there one day.
Last and maybe least was #11 Whizzer. It took too long, but had some characters in the queue. An old guy in an Orion shirt was boasting about having ridden coasters for 50 years and was all fired up to brag once again when someone complimented his meteor-based attire, assuming they knew it was a rollercoaster. The follow up question however was “is that Star Wars?” which quickly shot down any notion of shared enthusiasm, in amusing fashion.
As for the ride, I found the French fair versions of single file seated Schwarzkopfs were far more wild and impressive. This one was just trees.
And so the park was complete, American Eagle spite aside, in a timely fashion. We bounced around a few of the majors for some courtesy laps but most of our focus was pinned on Goliath once more. This resulted in a particularly glorious evening, getting that golden extra lap without leaving the seat from being on the last train of the day.
We had a troubled history with Mt. Olympus before ever setting foot in the place, which is always a good sign. Back in 2020 I had committed to one of their offensively cheap deals to stay the night on resort, including entrance tickets for both check in and check out days, for the same price as any average hotel in the region.
When it came to cancelling this one, it appeared they were the most solid of any park we had dealings with. An instant reply, where others took weeks or months, to say ‘sure mate, come back any time in the next 5 years when you know what’s what.’
2021 rolled around and while I was playing with the plans once more, I reached out about reserving some tentative dates and was told via email that I would have to phone, even from outside the US. While on international minutes, the news was dropped that in order to book what was essentially the equivalent dates to the previous year, in a worse room this time, would be an additional $200.
“Why has the price trebled?” Several minutes on hold. “It is what it is, sir.” “Well I’d rather cancel it then.” “But that’ll cost you the $50 deposit.” Better than 200.
They were throwing around a different cheap deal that year, park tickets for a measly 8 bucks, so we ended up with those instead. Fairer play the second time around, they honoured those in 2022 without quarrel.
Anyway, enough faff, I just wanna ride the wooden one.
Day 9 – Mt. Olympus
Which one?
We opted for the opposite tactic to Holiday World here – start strong and go smaller, which meant big bad #1 Hades 360 was up first.
In the absence of Voyage rocking my world, the pressure had shifted to the OG Gravity boy. I knew it was the less popular option, mainly for the sake of brutality. A sign was teasing in the station – ‘Hades is running particularly rough right now’, but given my experience with these in the past, that could only ever work in my favour, right? Right?
Well the pre-lift section is insane. That violent, Helix-style drop straight out of the station is like nothing else that’s been done with wood before or since. It bounces around a very strange assortment of corners and surprisingly potent hills almost as if the devil doesn’t know what to do with himself. It’s good to this point, though I could already feel it in my bones that this one was gonna get vicious.
But not necessarily in the right places. First drop gave a very similar vibe to Voyage – that’s nowhere near as good as it should be from the back row. Then the tunnel happens. What.
The level of assault on the senses is just surreal. 1000dB of wood, concrete and screams pierce the very soul while you can’t see a single thing and the ride is bucking you all over the place like the very best of Gravity moments. I was laughing uncontrollably with glee at this ridiculousness, thinking please keep this up.
Of course the tunnel can’t keep going forever, people would go deaf. With no way of knowing what’s just happened you emerge into sunlight and are immediately upside down. I love the timing of this element, but the way it rides does absolutely nothing for me, just like the other corkscrews on Gravitys. It’s official, Mine Blower has the best inversion.
The following corner is a bit cornery and then you plunge back into round two of tunnel madness by means of a surprisingly steep drop that’s basically better than the first. More insanity, less speed carries you back out into a double down hidden within the lift structure, another example of great placement. Then the woods happen.
This final third-ish feels like over half the ride and just doesn’t live up to everything that came before it. And sadly that makes this part simply not worth the brutality. It is a super rough ride, even for one of these and I can totally sympathise with those who might not be able to handle it. If Mine Blower broke you, this will ruin you. It bumbles around the trees, again without purpose, but also with much gentler track shaping. And by bumble and gentle I mean it’s actually rattling your brains out through your bowel, before ending on the biggest wet blanket of a brake run.
Hmm.
Visually I had no idea what else was going on in this park, but #2 Zeus is the next biggest, pictured here on the right. And possibly the bottom left, one of them anyway.
Back on the CCI wagon feeling right at home in these PTC trains by now, Zeus was surprisingly good. Solid air, fun laterals, rode well. It ain’t no Raven but it was perfectly enjoyable and got a well earned second lap out of us.
Unlike Adventureland where I had the hunch that something might be bad, I’ve always known Mt. Olympus as the place where everything is bad. Not true at this moment in time.
#3 Cyclops had a turn next, pictured here on the right. And possibly the bottom left. It’s both lesser in stature and ride experience, but was otherwise bearable, to the more seasoned veteran at least. I’m told they’ve changed something about it and that big drop that comes halfway through used to be a lot more… questionable.
The stories did come true here though, one particular woman who rode Cyclops came off more distressed than I’ve ever seen anyone from a rollercoaster. Properly broken down in fits of tears on the offload platform, while the staff and her companion didn’t even know what to do. I felt really sorry for the both of them, they didn’t need this in their lives, it’s only us who have to suffer for our art.
And suffer I did, on #4 Pegasus. How is the smallest woodie the absolute worst? A right proper internal organ shaker, I was very glad that it spends most of the layout unusually high up and at lower speeds. People didn’t know what to do with themselves after this one either, though the children are immune of course.
That marked park complete, as the bastards don’t let you on their only steel coaster Little Titans. We’ll get some E&F Miler goodness at some point, don’t you worry.
We went back for another battle with Hades to try and settle on a stronger opinion. This time we managed to cheese the queue by skipping at least half an hour of poor one train ops as they called for a two and we were the only pair for miles of stairs. In our haste we were back in the thick of it without even having time to contemplate.
The second lap did no favours to the ride. After that initial shock, I would have placed it up there amongst the hard hitters of the Gravity Group world. Not quite top 25 material, but up there. As soon as I knew what was coming in the tunnel it simply became obnoxious and I just couldn’t look past that. The body was enjoying the being thrown around but the head just wanted the stupid noise to end. The manner in which the ride just gets weaker and weaker as the layout progresses stood out even more and we declared that enough was enough. It’s mid table now and makes me think of it as Cú Chulainn’s abusive older brother. From amazing, to good, to running out of steam.
And so Mt. Olympus took the same turn and we ran out of steam. As a place it’s literally just wooden coasters and a water park, so if you don’t get on with either of those then I can certainly see the lack of love it gets. I wouldn’t say I disliked it, it’s kinda silly and unique with all that timber they don’t seemingly know what to do with. Always worth trying.
On to the next one.
Bay Beach Amusement Park
Elvis would be rolling in his grave. His favourite coaster did not treat us well and once again I really wanted to like this one.
On the journey here I had formulated a new plan, seeing that Mt. Olympus had taken far less time than, perhaps not expected, but hoped. This meant we were in one of our famous hurries as we left the car park and headed towards the one and only ride that meant anything, straight past a ticket booth.
It’s a weirdly laid out park and nothing like I expected for beachy amusements. Rather than the fun, dense, vintage feel of somewhere like Arnolds Park, this was sparse tarmac, sewage soaked grass and strangely spread out attractions, like no one wanted to be near each other.
As seen here, the ticket booth outside the coaster was closed. This was the far end of the park and we had mainly wanted to scout out the queue and operations before committing to purchasing a particular number of laps for the ride. Several other booths were also closed back on route to the car park and we ended up all the way back where we started, which wasn’t an insignificant walk by any stretch of the imagination, especially in the heat and hurry. At last we had the privilege of handing over some cash only (we were witness to several arguments about this in a very short span of time). It is stupidly cheap ($1 a lap), but spirits weren’t swelling.
All the way back to #5 Zippin Pippin once more, we joined the queue for a couple of trains wait and handed some tickets over for lap 1 of 3. 3 felt like the magic number.
It’s cute, nothing special. Small scale wooden fun with some alright drops. Bit of a Jack Rabbit in that there’s one single moment on a triangular shaped hill at the end that far exceeds anything else going on in the layout. I don’t even think this one was intentional.
Our second lap took a little longer to queue for than the first, but we were still enjoying it and felt comfortable enough timewise to go for the third. As it pulled back into the station we noticed they had cleared the queue, other than a handful of folks still standing in the air gates, and were suddenly announcing that the ride would be closing for the wind. Not this again.
As we left the train I asked the attendant if we could ride again with what would now be a half empty train on it’s last lap, we had the tickets in hand for it and everything. She looked at an engineer standing on the exit ramp who instantly pulled a Six Flags New England on us. “No, we need to clear the area now.” They then proceeded to send the train half full, as we left without our third lap, laughing. Why?
Bah Beach.
The plan I had been formulating earlier involved having a little cheeky preview evening at Six Flags Great America. It was another of those parks that felt a little overwhelming on the sheer number of coasters to hit in a day front and we had no way of knowing how Six Flags that day would be. On a less tactical level, we had just taken note of the fact that we’d ridden 5 woodies so far, an amount that would match any old school visit to Blackpool. With 5 more still available where we were headed to next, could we set some form of record?
No.
On arrival at the car park we drove under American Eagle to find the parking booth abandoned with a sign saying ‘go in and enjoy your day’. Good.
On arrival at the entrance to the park we handed over our passes to be told ‘no mate, these are for St. Louis only, you won’t be coming in today’. Bad.
The initial advice had been to contact St. Louis as they were our ‘home park’, so we attempted that while standing in the queue for guest services. No one picked up the phone. Once it was our time at the window we explained the situation, that we had had 2020 gold passes for ‘all parks’ that were meant to be honoured for 2022 but they seemed to have not been generated properly. The issue appeared to have been that Six Flags have of course since scrapped the old pass system completely and renamed everything, so what we should have had now was called the ‘extreme pass’. St. Louis had sold us short and downgraded us to a pass with only their park.
Bottom line was Great America can’t help. The conversation was a little frustrating as they were acting like St. Louis being our ‘home park’ was a matter of significance and we should ‘just go back there’, when they already knew we were foreign tourists on a road trip. What, jump in the car now and drive for another 4 hours? We want to get in tonight and we don’t care what our ‘home park’ is, it can be this one, it can be anything.
Nothing doing, changing the pass in any way was out of their hands. The temporary resolution was to give us a free ticket for what was now the last hour on park and an alternative phone number for St. Louis, written on the back of another guest’s personal details. Well that was now tomorrow’s problem, let’s see what we can achieve in this time frame.
Six Flags Great America
#6 Goliath. The ride we were most likely to want multiple laps on and that would have perhaps suffered if it came down to coasters vs time tomorrow.
Early signs were good, we got a couple of laps in without leaving the seat because the station was empty. It’s a highly competent ride, but the streak continues for RMC in that their wood ain’t as good. In fact the streak ended that night, because that’s the set. Will they make another?
Short might be the best way to describe it, although maybe it actually felt a little more drawn out than Outlaw Run did. Lacking in significant moments might be the best way to describe it. The drop is amazing, the big turnaround thing is visually impressive but otherwise unremarkable. One strong airtime moment. Inversion and a good old stall. Big turnaround thing V2.0. End.
If anything it shows just how stupidly good RMC are though. Goliath lacks the longevity, the power and the insanity that makes many of their other rides the best of the best. And yet, as their weakest coaster I’d experienced yet, it’s still amongst the greatest rides in existence just for the sake of 3 elements at best.
Our woodie record ended at seven for the day, as we rode the #7 Little Dipper (better than the Boss) and realised it was too far to walk back to American Eagle, plus we hadn’t even laid eyes on Viper yet.
With about 15 minutes to go we just dashed for the nearest bad ride with bad capacity to save having to suffer it the next day and that happened to be another Intamin Impulse. This was the star attraction according to all the maps (though depicted as having Vekoma SLC track) due to having been given a brand new name and lick of paint – #8 Flash: Vertical Velocity. Foolishly we sat near the front to see what the ‘Twist’ side of the ride was like. Not good. Side to side movement in those clunky trains is a recipe for a collision. I’m officially team ‘Spike’ all the way and I assume that means good riddance to Wicked Twister.
With about 5 minutes to go we just dashed for the nearest bad ride with bad capacity to save having to suffer it the next day and that happened to be another S&S Free Spin, #9 Joker. I dread repeating these because the experience is so unpredictable and yet never lives up to my old friend Arashi. I either want a full, unrelenting spin in the same direction for the entire lap, or I want no spin at all. Six Flags ones tend to faff around in between the two and that generates the horrible parts – lurching changes of direction and being pinned upside down for too long. This was no exception.
Sadly it wasn’t a ride suited to being sunglasses on, not caring and upon return to the loose item storage it appeared that someone had taken said sunglasses by mistake. The attendant asked me what was up and I repeated that sentiment, though strangely his solution was to give me a lost and found card and state that they’d walk the ride area at the end of the day. They’re not in the ride area, they’ve probably been taken. Oh wait, no, they’re just smashed on the floor, thanks anyway.
And with that the rides were now closed. We were 4 creds closer to safely completing the park in a timely fashion, assuming we could even get in the next day. Most importantly though, our thirst for Goliath had been satiated.
If the last three days had taught us anything it was that the weather forecast probably needed checking a bit more regularly. This highlighted the fact that were were due a severe thunderstorm at midday, so we’d better get our skates on.
Day 8 – Valleyfair
All the fun of the fair.
We headed straight to the back of the park first, to pick up the priorities. It’s an unusually shaped park with a long and thin layout, so basically no one had made it here yet, not that any of the queues were a problem, bar one.
#1 Renegade was first on the bill, another chance for some GCI goodness. Though reputation preceded it, this one didn’t quite live up to those that we’d experienced over the past week, which had all been above average for their type. Renegade was precisely that, average. Serviceable.
The double twisted drop looks far better in photos than it performs in real life and though it’s fast paced and contains some undoubtably good moments, the focus on corners was a little too high for my personal tastes.
#2 Excalibur was a fascinating one. Arrow mine train meets mega coaster, in such an awkward location that guests don’t ever find it. The huge drop was pretty spectacular for a ride of this nature and it had some surprisingly intense moments alongside another powerful pow of unexpected airtime. Just ended a little too quickly for my liking.
With the clouds growing ever more ominous-looking, we skipped past the stupid wild mouse and hopped on #3 Wild Thing. Another fun, butter smooth, Morgan experience that was near identical to the last. Sadly the final series of hills weren’t as potent as they had been on Mamba, but the lack of queue made it far more rerideable at the very least.
Content that we now had all the coasters of significance under our belt, it was time to see how much we could mop up before the lightning shattered our hopes and dreams.
Unlike Worlds of Fun, #4 Cosmic Coaster is fair game at Valleyfair. +1.
I had it in my head that #5 High Roller was going to be a spinner clone, so to find that it was a Snoopy land little(ish) woodie was a pleasant surprise. Better than the Boss.
The moment we left the station for this one, staff members with clipboards came pouring up the exit ramp to shut the ride down before the very next train. There’s a storm coming, and we all best be ready when she does.
While walking back towards the entrance, confirming that everything was closing down around us once again, staff seemed jovial and optimistic towards those that would ask about the situation. Don’t worry folks, it’ll probably pass and everything will be fine later. That’s what I like to hear.
Luckily there’s a few indoor creds just down the road.
Nickelodeon Universe
After swerving to narrowly avoid parking in the Georgia section of the Mall of America, we settled on Maine and headed in.
The park have clearly got the measure of us, as there’s a wristband deal that gets you exactly the number of points for 1 ride on every coaster. It doesn’t come with any adhesive though, I believe the first ride you come to is supposed to supply you with a sticker so that you can actually wear it, but they weren’t doing that. Brandish wildly it is.
It all began with #6 Fairly Odd Coaster, yet another Gerstlauer spinner, I knew someone had one today. All of this layout went to exactly the same part of the world for some reason. Good thing it’s good, although this one appeared to have aged poorly and was really crunchy in places.
Talking of things that have aged poorly, #7 SpongeBob SquarePants Rock Bottom Plunge was awful. Bad Eurofighter bad, it’s been a while since I’ve had that wakeup call. Shame it had to happen on a rarely seen unique layout.
In fact here’s a car that was on track just earlier that morning.
The rain on the roof looked ridiculously intense while we were in here, so glad we got out of that one.
#8 Pepsi Orange Streak, the huge custom Zierer Tivoli with multiple lifts that weaves in and out of everything in the entire park has to be one of the finest examples of these around. I’m gonna go with best ride in the park. So many visuals.
Although #9 Back at the Barnyard Hayride, which is barely even a coaster, was also a solid contender for that title.
Because last up was this stupid thing, #10 Avatar Airbender. To be fair I haven’t yet had a repeat of the original, awful Half Pipe experience where the restraint makes contact with your head on every launch and this one actually had a good bit of float at the tops. Still basically a flat ride.
Valleyfair the Revenge
And from flat ride to flat ride in the form of #11 Steel Venom. As promised, Valleyfair were back in business later that very afternoon, once the storm had passed. For some reason our Platinum pass wouldn’t let us back into the car park a second time – the parking attendant asked when and were we got the pass from, before waving us in, confused. “Last week, Kings Island.” “Where?”
Back on topic, Intamin Impulses. Bleh. We sat in the back to make the most of the spike, while I hoped it didn’t ride as poorly as that one with the stupid angles. It didn’t, it was fine. A good bit of float at one of the two tops.
Arrow looper was a thing that happened. Not sure I agree on calling something #12 Corkscrew when it has a vertical loopings as well.
These #13 Mad Mouse Arrow mice are nothing short of a plague. I queued 90 minutes for my last one and I queued far too many minutes for this. It was running maximum capacity on cars, but each one spent a good 5-10 minutes stacking on the brake run, with guests getting visibly sunburnt and annoyed (yes, it was now back to high-30s°C, will the relentlessness never cease?). Everything else was walk on and they don’t even need the cred.
Best part of the experience was the baby birds living inside this queueline TV, which was thankfully off. Plus the fact that it meant the park was complete. Been a while since that’s happened.
Renegade hadn’t notably improved from earlier. S’alright.
And Wild Thing was as predictable as can be.
So, content with our day of great success, that’s all from Valleyfair. Good park, that.
And here it is. Where focus was lost and fatal mistakes were made.
We got complacent and started ticking stuff off in an unordered fashion, starting with the grimly low capacity #1 Phoenix. Shelf model Maurer spinner. Meh.
I didn’t even know what half these coasters were, coming in. Something wood, something steel. #2 Outlaw turned out to be an unremarkable CCI with some fresh track in places.
Dragon Slayer had apparently broken the previous day and was gone for the foreseeable. Don’t care, got the clone(s). #3 Tornado was another woodie with more hills and less corners. For some reason in my head at least one of these was supposed to brutally murder us. Neither of the first two did, so that only left…
#4 Underground, the indoor dark ride woodie. It had a preshow at the batching doors to the station, with this bloke waffling on inaudibly for a good while. Don’t go in the mine? Do go in the mine. Is it flooded? Hilariously the operator asked if any of us were first timers and then put the fear in us by saying the first drop is real bad, but it’s alright after that. Considering the restraint had at least 12 inches of play, and the fact I still thought we were overdue a bruising, we spent the entire ride bracing for said drop. The joke was on us, there ain’t one.
We headed to Monster, the main event, which had been running all morning. It was now closed, with staff doing stuff in the station.
This lead to collapsing on a bench outside, overheating, for at least another couple of hours, with endless noises of air venting that would get our hopes up but unfailingly mean nothing. Eventually the station was abandoned and we asked what was going on. Oh, it’s not technical, it’s the wind.
Naively assuming that it would open again at some point over the next 10 or so hours that the park was due to be operating for, we bounced between the car park and the bench fruitlessly killing time in relative despair at the most significant spite of the trip so far. Eventually something started to feel off, all of the rides were closing down around us, also due to this ‘wind’ phenomenon and that exact same atmosphere of guests being disgruntled at not being able to do anything was brewing once more.
We went to guest services for a second opinion as there was still a good 9 hours to go, right? The response was ambivalent. It’s the wind mate. Do you know the forecast though?
Fair play to them, they openly offered us tickets to return the following day, which we had to decline as this was the only day allocated to the park.
Back to the bench, where eventually some maths was performed. We can’t come back tomorrow but we could be within striking distance a few days later, at the expense of a minor cred run and because something else was brewing. It would be stupid, but it could work. We also had somewhere to go this very evening that would have to be sacrificed if we did just stick around all day, potentially for nothing.
Umm, so…
Ahh, but…
Umm, so…
Such a crisis. The reason we’d killed ourselves in St. Louis was essentially to open up Arnolds Park as an opportunity and it felt so silly to throw that all away by sitting here for another 8 hours with no guarantee of results.
Back to guest services. We’ll have those tickets, but for later in the week please. “Sure! You guys came to ride the monster, and you can’t ride the monster!” It was so refreshing to meet someone who gets it.
Back to the car, now with two open-dated tickets and a couple of free arcade passes for the crate.
3 hours of corn fields later…
Arnolds Park
And we made the right decision, eventually. This place was lovely.
#5 Legend was the main draw of course, a particularly ancient woodie that kicks some particular ass. By far the highlight of the day, good, clean, old school fun. Better than the other Legend.
Construction, get excited.
The other piece of history was the Allan Herschell #6 Wild Mouse, who must be so proud that there’s now ten thousand of these in China, delighting generations. It was pretty brutal, but fun, as all solo rides should be.
Having made it all the way to Branson the previous night, we were treated to a later start than usual and a short, scenic drive past some Ozarks to what was probably my most anticipated park of the trip. The weather was showing no signs of relenting however, and you know it’s bad when even the locals are complaining that it’s too hot. We thought we could at least prepare for it this time by, say, putting on some shorts, after it had been a bit of a surprise the day before, but it turns out most things simply aren’t built for this kind of heat.
Day 6 – Silver Dollar City
First impressions – the car park was a bit naff. There’s no real form of organisation as to where you go and the, what can loosely be described as trams, are sporadic and inconveniently placed amongst a sea of unshaded concrete and cars. The options were to wait a long time and probably not get on, while getting burnt, or walk for a long time and get burnt, so getting to the entrance was a battle in itself.
You have a great pass out ahead of you.
#1 Wildfire was first, with a beautifully shaded indoor queue hidden amongst some dense forest. I fell in love with the setting of the actual park itself immediately. As for the B&M, s’alright. One of the better ones amongst the plain old sit downs for having a bit of variety between those inversions. And the views.
It was from here that we got lost, and learnt that this park is all about exploration, which I both liked and disliked. When you’re happy to relax and stumble around, it’s great. When you’re hot and bothered and want to get somewhere, it sucks.
Eventually we found #2 Powder Keg and got launched into some more equally amazing views, spotting just the tips of several more coasters through the thick, mountain top foliage. The ride surprised me mainly for having track that looks like Bullet Coaster. Keeping the old, water coaster ending without the water is a nice touch, hurts the pacing somewhat though. Crashing one of the old boats through the roof of a building as theming was also a nice touch.
Pressing on further, we encountered the fabled RMC. Their first wooden creation. Let’s get this out there – their wood ain’t as good.
I love Lightning Rod, and the wood somehow managed to add to that insanity, but then it also broke it. I love Wildfire, but to me it had always been the weakest RMC and the material itself made absolutely no difference as of opening year. If it deteriorates like #3 Outlaw Run, I feel it will only detract. It doesn’t carry that true, satisfying wooden coaster rumble, but it can carry a headache inducing judder that distracts from the glory, when sat in a wheel seat. I quickly learned to avoid those.
Wildfire is free, to be happy, as Outlaw Run instantly became my new least favourite. It’s deathly short for the size of the initial drop, which is amazing itself. The first, thing, doesn’t really do much for me. The following five airtime moments are lovely and varied, play well with the terrain, with the structural near misses and are undoubtably a very good sequence of events. I really didn’t like the double barrel roll. The end.
Still world class, obviously, we’ve come to expect that as standard by now, but something has to prop up the list and it’s unfortunate as I was rooting for this one to be a bit of an underdog these days, particularly in this style of park.
Suddenly the stakes were raised. There was a clear opening for a Mack launch coaster to be the best ride in the park. After getting lost again, and at the very last second asking a man where #4 Time Traveller was, only for him to point directly in front of us at the entrance sign, we headed in to learn more about where the Happiness all began.
Swing and a miss. I was rooting for this one too and though it also has brief moments of excellence, a lot of the layout is simply suboptimal. The sexy robot set the bar too high, in the future.
First drop, back row, incredible. We never left that seat throughout all of our laps for fear that the ride would suffer even more without that highlight moment. It did a lot of playful things in the inversions with the spinning, sometimes compromising my seating position and other times creating some gloriously disorientating visuals. Then it feels like there are just as many overbanks that slow to a crawl and do absolutely nothing. There’s a couple of cracking, back slamming, airtime moments if you happen to be facing the right way and yet that second launch essentially goes straight into the final brake run. That’s the real killer. You know I’m all about that pacing.
#5 Thunderation eh? Awful. Rode terribly and had that fake out ending again.
It was at the point we took a brief respite to have some food that I noticed a distinct lack of rocking chairs in this park. Whenever we wanted one, there was never a nice place to stop, sit and soak up that atmosphere, of which there wasn’t one really. There was no music, no festivities, no spontaneous banjo players, it was even supposedly too hot to make knives in the knife shop.
We ended up having a subpar meal in what can best be described as a sweaty canteen, with people crowding over and around us, mid eating, while there was nowhere better to go with it. A man here noticed my Dollywood shirt, at this very moment mocking everything that this park stood for, and made the simple statement ‘we live about two hours from there’. It wasn’t to strike up conversation, it wasn’t even a point of interest. It was just a fact. Maybe the heat was getting to them to, but I didn’t particularly rate the clientele here either.
#6 Fire in the Hole was ridiculously popular for some reason and had a hideous queue, while all major coasters were walk-on, but the post lunchtime blues seemed like the best opportunity to get it over with. Is it because they class it as a water ride? ‘Fire in the Hole!’ was shouted many times throughout the layout in an attempt to raise spirits and in anticipation of that all important moment. ‘The Baldknobbers have got me pants’ was also a good line, though I may be crossing it with ‘Gromit, there’s a bomb in me pants’.
Continuing on the dark ride theme, we ventured into the Flooded Mine. Great scenery, great song, shame they went and put guns on it really.
Here’s an obligatory kugel fountain shot for the fans, to mark the moment it all went wrong.
The last cred to mop up for the day was Grand Ex-spite-sition Coaster, not as grand as it sounds being yet another Zamperla 80STD. We got as far as sitting in the train but it simply wouldn’t dispatch. The operator was shrugging and pushing buttons, but not in a fun, Steel Curtain way. It was gone. We were wordlessly evacuated, with no apology to the clearly disappointed families and children (or the heartbroken cred hunters). While sitting nearby to watch what went down, another staff member appeared soon after but only to carry the ‘unavailable’ sign down towards the entrance, so we gave up on it for the time being and went to ride the train.
The train was alright. It came with a bit of a pantomime in the woods, though even the live fire arm wasn’t working in the heat. There was a promise of ‘better views of Outlaw Run’ that wasn’t delivered on. There was promise of a train robbery that wasn’t delivered on. All in all it ain’t no song about a devil on a big black train, with the sheer terror of getting ash in your eye.
Upon our return to the station, we heard a number of people audibly complaining about some other rides being down. Sure enough the rapids ride, Infinity Falls was also closed for the heat. We had a subpar cinnamon bread just to confirm the food situation was also still poor and went back over to Outlaw Run, getting as far as the air gates before it also ‘broke down.’ An engineer arrived and seemed to be looking at a restraint issue but not in a fun, Steel Curtain way, and then quickly gave up.
No communication was made and gradually guests began to leave the station of their own accord. Eventually we asked one of the team what was going on and he said that the heat was causing power cuts, so they had been advised to cease operation of all rides for fear of something getting stuck somewhere. With the day just over half way done by now, surely that would have been useful information to give to their guests, rather than speculative silence? I guess not.
And so we wandered back out of the queue to find that absolutely everything was now closed, yet the park were choosing to say nothing about it. Was it too much to ask for a ‘Sorry folks, but stick around, we’ve still got live entertainment, food and shopping’? I guess so.
It was even too hot for water features to function apparently.
As we headed back to the park entrance, we got swept up in a depressing exodus of souls all exiting via the gift shop in a very solemn mood. One staff member broke the silence in poor taste with a “Well, goodbye then, *awkward laugh*”, to no one in particular.
Thus ended our day at Silver Dollar City, minus the uncomfortable walk back to the car because, of course, no trams.
This was the rival to what is essentially my favourite park ever, and yet not one thing landed the right way. I was worried that a single day wasn’t going to be enough for the place amongst all our other crazy adventures, instead it turned out that we didn’t even need that. I may come off as bitter and jaded about all this as I usually do, particularly when there were obvious external factors that aren’t the park’s fault, but I am genuinely upset that I didn’t like this place.
As we left Indiana (for now) and headed on into Missouri, we faced what was billed as the most difficult day of the trip. There had been various flip flops over whether it was worth it, amongst the many different itineraries that had been invented over time. Once 2022 rolled around, the opening of a certain new coaster meant that this was the only way to open a whole world of opportunity.
Also, let’s be honest, it would have sucked to dedicate a whole day to just
Day 5 – Six Flags St. Louis
Nerves were wracked from the very get go as we arrived extra early to be faced with this. We wanted to allow as much time as possible before park opening to go through whatever rigmarole would be required to once more collect our ‘2020’ season passes that they had promised to honour in 2022. Previous experience with Six Flags had shown that it wasn’t even easy to obtain a normal version in normal times.
We sat here in front of the gate for what felt like far too long as a number of cars gradually stacked up behind us, mentally revving our engines and going over the gameplan a million times. A mere 15 minutes before (10:15) the park itself was due to open (10:30), someone appeared and unlocked this gate so that we could wheelspin over to the parking booths.
There was no time to argue the point over season pass collection with a parking attendant so, wallet $30 lighter, we parked as close as physically possible to the entrance without being ‘preferred’, with the car already pointed towards the exit for a quick getaway.
Security weren’t ready for those of us who had now reached this point so there was a little more kerfuffle before we could walk through the scanners. A man at guest services was at least ready for us as we powered over, brandishing out of date tickets and various emails yet again. He seemed cool with it and set to work generating the passes while I could feel myself already burning. “You picked the hottest day of the year for it”, he remarked. Well, that won’t help matters, but gotta run.
It was all for nothing of course, no sooner than were we through the entrance we were then accosted by another member of security who stated that you can’t get into the park proper for another half an hour (11:00). This left us stranded with nothing but a shop, the entrance plaza, and a sliver of shade to stand around in, mentally revving our engines, going over the gameplan a million times and facing down a man with a baton and litter picker.
Because their lineup is pretty trash, ‘members’ of this particular Six Flags gain a whole 10 minutes of early access past these security guards, a policy I first observed in appalling fashion during my debut with the chain when it spited me walk-on Joker at Discovery Kingdom. Several of these members got ahead of us using this method of course, going on the guy’s first whistle, though the joke was on them because why would they want to rush this park? Gladiators, you will go on my second whistle. We were off.
It was all for nothing of course as we raced over to Mr. Freeze. Even though we had now been at the establishment for 90 minutes, the park didn’t have the rides ready and open for us anyway by gone 11:00. A surly ride host told us to come back later. So that membership is even more useless now I thought to myself as we passed one particular member already collapsed on a bench from heat exhaustion, probably thinking ‘worth it.’
Alright then, Boss? 38°C and sweating profusely, this wasn’t the time to have poor route planning but we needed to hit these rides at a rate of knots if the day was going to work. Same story at the Boss, come back later. Have a Six Flags day. A Mr. Freeze test train hit the spike once more to tease us at this point and we reached the original conclusion that it all had to begin there. Low capacity, high popularity, oh and the added complexity of it being Megalite’s 1000th coaster meant it had to be at least somewhat impressive.
The surly staff member was already gone just 5 minutes later and the queue was now open, so what was the point in wasting all that energy? There was no time to wonder. The outdoor queueline was far too long, but then the sheer bliss of aircon hit us in the building. That’s right #1 Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast, you’d better be damn cold.
I like the station track sliding over to the launch, taking your basket of personal belongings with you. There’s a good ominousness to it. Oh yeah, it’s ‘Reverse Blast’ isn’t it. BACKWARDS!!! S’alright. Positive Gs and sunlight are my main memories from the experience. The spike itself is a strange sensation and the inverted top hat is pretty cool. Better than that Flight of Fear nonsense from a few days prior.
Soaked up one more brief burst of air-con before we staggered back outside scalded and half blinded onto the spinner, #2 Pandemonium. In our only semi-aware state it had a lot more offer than we gave it credit for, delivering the best spin I’ve ever had on a Gerstlauer and some high speed drops to boot.
#3 Boss then, now open. The outdoor queueline was even longer, and uphill, with stairs, so we were already half dead upon making it to the station. Awful ride sadly, this CCI layout has so much promise (just look at that photo), but instead the Gerstlauer trains rattle themselves around in poor fashion and grind themselves to a halt at every opportunity in what I assume is an attempt to stop the thing from tearing itself apart. Boss became the joke of the trip, in that everything was always better than it.
There’s nothing worse than forcing yourself uncomfortably towards a #4 Boomerang, but this was the fate we had chosen. Could be worse. +1.
The face of the #5 Screamin’ Eagle on the sign for this ride summed up the situation at this point, but the ride was rather decent. Airtime, laterals and just the right amount of shake, rattle and roll. Much like Six Flags America, the surprise best ride in the park is the woodie no one talks about.
The #6 River King Mine Train had way too many lift hills that led to basically nothing, but the tracking was comedically poor to make up for it. Can’t believe this thing was converted to a stand-up at one point. It didn’t end well.
The wrong #7 Ninja was as bad as it looked. “Wwwelcome back riders, how was your ride?” “My head hurts.” “Oh, I’m sorry”.
And we finished the park on the #8 Batman The Ride clone with it’s metal shed station feeling like a furnace. Staff were literally pouring bottles of water over themselves between dispatches to keep themselves going, which wasn’t a great sign. Ride was running pretty hot itself to be fair and trying to rip my feet right off, which is a great sign.
With that, we had completed the creds in a sliver less than 90 minutes, with the caveat that American Spiter was closed all day. Don’t care, got the clone.
So, Six Flags St. Louis eh? Pretty much what I expected. Some coasters. At least it was quiet.
Having allowed about another hour, which was lost before we started, this put us exactly back on track for a stewing four hour drive to
Worlds of Fun
I like the balloon.
Back to back B&M inverts and the right #9 Patriot held it’s own. It had both grace and force with both unusual floaty sections and tight manoeuvres. Kinda reminded me of a mini Pyrenees, which is high praise indeed as that’s most likely my favourite that they’ll ever make by this point.
Titan Track #10 Timber Wolf was mostly uneventful. Just like I recall from Grizzly at Kings Dominion, those around us were losing their minds over how supposedly rough it was while we were just there, sunglasses on, not caring.
They didn’t let us on Cosmic Coaster sadly, putting it the nice way in that we were ‘too tall’.
And so we entered one of the worst queues of the trip. I’ll say it again – it was too hot. It hadn’t been quite so bad while we were keeping on the move and feeling like we were achieving things. Everything ground to a halt at #11 Mamba, with some pitiful one train ops. They had a crude sprinkler system set up to spray on the final set of brakes, though it was clearly the wrong set of brakes as they were barely putting any work in when compared to all the sets that preceded them.
We also got queue jumped by an overly large group when their youngest member simply walked in front of us, acting all innocent but knowing full well what they were doing. Then, gradually, every single one of the rest of them passed us as if we didn’t even exist. It made no difference by the time the station was reached anyway as it was a total scrum for any and every row, but it was still too much effort to be dealing with that nonsense.
It’s a shame, I liked Mamba, yet there was no way we could have put up with riding it more than once. These medium Morgans all follow pretty much the same formula and the return run of hills here were particularly triangular, delivering a hilarious and satisfying sequence of float and crunch.
#12 Prowler was next, now infamous for being difficult to photograph. I also failed in that regard. A solid GCI, not quite as spectacular as we had been treated to the last few days but still above average for me. It’s more twisty and turny, but there was good variety in there and it ran with that concept better than most. We managed a couple of laps on this one before the heat broke it.
If only to delay the inevitable that we would have to queue for, and ride, a second #13 Boomerang for the day. Even a mere two train wait looked far too unpleasant, but we’d come this far and had to see it through. Eww.
Which only left us with #14 Spinning Dragons, the second Gerstlauer spinner of the day. Gross Worlds of Fun crowds were back again, this time a guy glued to his phone and ignoring his kids for the duration simply cutting straight past us with no explanation. This time it did make a difference, because capacity, and by this point I was already looking forward to the time we could say ‘we’re not in Kansas any more’.
Ride itself was good again, I’m assuming this is the best layout for the model, can’t think of a better one right now.
And so, success, but at what cost? We were battered and burnt by the end of it, though it was probably still the ideal outcome. It simply would have been too much to spend more than half a day at either of these parks anyway, in the weather conditions we were presented with, and though Worlds of Fun in particular had a pretty strong top three, it wasn’t an overly pleasant place to exist in. Regardless, the extra effort was for a worthy cause later in the trip.
For 2 years in a row we’d been booked to visit Holiday World during their famous Holiwood Nights, with tales of a trimless Voyage taunting my very soul. Sadly, because of a certain monarch, I was unable to make it happen this time around and we instead ended up with a purely vanilla visit to the park. Tickets had already been refunded at this point, so no issues there at least.
Day 4 – Holiday World
To make things even more bog standard, we opted to ride the woodies in the recommended order from smallest to largest.
Which meant beginning with Edgar Allen Poe’s The #1 Raven. It’s a solid starter pack, I like the look of the building and the big bird judging you from the front of the train. Claims of this being best wooden rollercoaster in the world at one time seem a bit bold, but it’s easily one of the best CCIs I had experienced up until this point. Decent airtime, excessive laterals, a great setting through the woods and that surprise massive drop halfway through the layout make for a strong introduction to what Holiday World is all about.
And in keeping with that theme, we grabbed the first of our many free fountain drinks on route to the Legend. Why can’t all parks do this? But not that net thing, get rid of that.
Once again the station has charm with a big fancy mural of the headless horseman and the ominous bell ringing upon dispatch of each train. #2 Legend is essentially the same concept as Raven, but a bit bigger. It interacts with the water park, has some freshly reprofiled sections, even more excessive laterals and an eerily similar surprise massive drop halfway through the layout. For all that I’d say it’s the slightly weaker of the two just for the sake of pacing – it drags on a bit unnecessarily towards the end, though still a lot of fun.
Oh no. I have to say that #3 Voyage was my most anticipated coaster of the trip, if not the entire world, at the moment we arrived on it’s doorstep. No doubt you know I’m a sucker for the Gravity Group and this was the king, right? Right? It hadn’t really sunk in that we were about to embark on this journey even at the point of parking ourselves in the back car and in my head it could only go one of two ways – the best thing they’ve ever made and therefore by default instant top 5 material, or it would Grand National me and I’d hate it.
Oh no. It was neither.
I knew it from the very second the first drop happened. It didn’t scare me. The best of these absolutely terrify me. The subsequent two massive ‘airtime’ hills are nothing but a waste of wood, steel and momentum. They had nothing to offer. The following tunnel moment and wild pop out of the seat is cool and what I had expected most of the ride to be, yet it follows that up with a third piece of nothingness.
Things do get more exciting at the far end in the woods, high speed lurches, twists and turns are exactly the formula that makes these things so special to me. For the sake of the ride having such sheer size and length however these are all just a bit drawn out and there’s some deathly suboptimal corners in there. The first return tunnel offers a brief glimmer of hope before the mid course brake run, which of course saps some energy that we can’t afford to lose at this point.
Once again it starts to do the good stuff with several back to back bangers, but then halfway through this it feels like they suddenly realised during the design process that they’ve got an awfully long way to go to get back to the station. The pacing is put on pause once more with some overly underwhelming shallow turns as it continues to thunder back to civilisation.
The big twisty hill at the end of this section is a welcome return to form but I found the ride may as well have ended at this point. Many more corners and plaza dodgings finish the event on the wet blanket that is Orion’s brake run, where I can quote my reaction after the second lap – “nahhhh.”
It’s most certainly a victim of expectation. I give it a good slating because I’m a picky bastard with too many comparisons to draw at the point, yet I don’t dislike the ride by any means. It’s middle of the road for the Gravity Group, which still puts it amongst incredible company, I just guarantee that it could have been so much more. It was a learning experience for me on the day as well as for the manufacturer when they were building it – they got better at what they do over time. This was early days and it already has all the makings of best wooden coaster on the planet. Just cut out all that faff.
So with that dream smashing disappointment out of the way, it was time to head up the hill for the last major cred. I do admire the fact that they have a height checking board for Thunderbird all the way down the bottom to save the short from having to make the journey, it is quite the trek in the heat.
I then also had to laugh at this starflyer thing which is both shorter than the coaster and the nearest tree. What are you expected to see from it? Bring back the crow’s nest.
Anyway, #4 Thunderbird. S’alright. It’s an unusual experience to get that launching kick on a B&M wing, though I expected a bit more of a song and dance in the shed to compete with the likes of Baco. The coolest part of the ride for me was the initial inversion, which has an uncharacteristic plunging sensation out of the top if you’re in the right seat.
From there it’s a bit of meandering and trees, the back to back turnarounds felt a little excessive. I found quite a chunk of the ride missed the mark on the on board visual spectacle that these usually provide, it made me recall Wild Eagle with those fun near misses with it’s own supports amongst gorgeous scenery – this doesn’t do that.
It does near miss a shed near the end with a fun attempt at a twisted airtime hill that sadly doesn’t work, then it ends on the classic and uncomfortable slow inline directly into the brakes.
With the major coasters now complete it was of course dark ride time. Gobbler Getaway is a load of silly fun in which I’m not sure whether I was relieved or disappointed that you aren’t actually shooting the turkeys. The ‘guns’ are for calling the turkeys back to where you want them and then, spoilers, thanksgiving dinner ends up being pizza. Which I’m perfectly alright with. Ok, maybe not American pizza.
Last cred in the park is #5 Howler, a Holidog (park mascot) themed Zamperla 80STD, also known as the knee smasher. Gets the job done.
I think it might be for the best that we didn’t get to experience Holiwood Nights, all things considered. We were ‘done’ with this park far quicker than I had ever anticipated. I’m not sure feeling obliged to hang around for two whole days and feigning some enthusiasm for a selection of rides that didn’t turn out to be world class would have been all that beneficial to the cause. The operations were generally and unexpectedly very poor across all the rides during our visit and with the fact that they’ve had to implement measures for reducing the capacity of the special event, there’s every chance it could have been even worse for us.
We did however feel obliged to make the most of our single day ticket and so took another lap of the park and all four of the major coasters, this time sunglasses on, not caring. Opinions were solidified rather than changed in any way and we headed out, satisfied, just before the water park closed and everyone rushed back into the main park.
