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.
I’ve always known Kentucky Kingdom as the place next to a tyre fire, so was surprised and confused to be entering the car park via a big, posh exhibition centre entrance.
Day 3 – Kentucky Kingdom
Once again we arrived early and the first order of business was brandishing various emails and tickets dated from 2020 in the direction of a guest services window. We had originally been booked to come on their special event that coincided with the Holiwood nights weekend, which included free drinks, though this was sadly no longer a thing. This also meant we had paid for two days when we only needed one, but as we’ve learnt already you’ve gotta spend money to make money.
Our new tickets were located in a secret envelope in a secret box in a secret drawer in the back of an office somewhere and sure enough they got us straight in.
It was a quiet, murky day and some stuff wasn’t open yet so we ended up on #1 Thunder Run first. I had forgotten this ride exists to be honest, they still have an old woodie here? And two Runs?
Turns out the ride is largely forgettable anyway, though far more substantial in footprint than I had imagined from standing within the structure. Wood, corners, a couple of hills, it had it all.
#2 Storm Chaser was waiting for us at the back of the park, looking grungy as anything. This is what I had pictured for the park and it didn’t disappoint.
I think the aesthetic is rather admirable and special in it’s own way, a nice contrast next to poster boys like Wildfire and Hakugei.
God damn Iron Gwazi is it a good ride too. Flopping out of the seat from the very first moment in that inverted drop before being violently ejected many, many times. It sets out to be an airtime machine and delivers an incredible set of punches. Even the other elements like the overbank had a good sideways kick to them, meaning that they weren’t just filler.
This wonky sequence of multiple hills is a fantastically vicious pre-finale, though it does sort of run out of things to do through the last corner into the brakes. A little too short to compete with the best of the best, but it’s still an easy top 25 and can sure give the bigger beasts something to sweat about.
#3 Roller Skater was ready to accept customers and had a really funky beat playing in the station to set the mood.
Then we got lost trying to avoid the water park in our street shoes in an attempt to find #4 Kentucky Flyer. There it is.
It’s cute and fun, though not the most potent of these things. I always love a piece of Gravity Group, but this one feels like they tried to do White Lightning over half the track length and it just doesn’t quite carry that physics-defiance, relentlessness and longevity that most of the other baby ones manage so well.
Things that couldn’t be further from cute and fun – #5 T3. Fair play to the park, they’re on board with the joke as to how bad SLCs are and even hype up the fact in the station. Far from the worst of these I’ve done so far, but good ride it is not.
We headed over to Lightning Run in anticipation of completing the park in record time, only to discover that the weather had turned against us and it had ceased operation.
Sure enough, it began to rain almost immediately and we attempted to take shelter in the 5D cinema. This plan failed as we were stranded in the outdoor section of the queue for what felt like an eternity, waiting for the next batch, which may or may not have included a technical breakdown.
Nothing exciting going on in here at all, just something dry to do. They were playing the laziest cut of Ice Age 4D imaginable. I don’t really remember the previous iterations I’ve seen in parks, but surely they weren’t this bad? The preshow is just clips from the film with the dinosaurs in it, with no set up. Then the actual film is just more clips from the same film with no pay off. Stuff happens that doesn’t get concluded, scenes chop and change randomly in an attempt to only have ‘things that work with moving seats’ and I’ve already used too many words on this attraction now.
The rain was only slight at this point, but all the coasters remained down. The Storm Chaser crew stated that their coaster rides just too damn fast in the wet and breaks itself, which I fully believe. Advice outside Lightning Run ranged from “I hear the weather is improving after 5pm” to “We’re not supposed to give any indication of time”.
It wasn’t ideal, but this felt like a good opportunity to continue the round robin of hotel phonecalls. We encountered a new low from one particular staff member who was beyond rude and obnoxious. From the moment she answered the phone there was a combination of an abject lack of care and a paranoid wariness that we were some form of pranksters. It basically boiled down to no, I can’t update your card details, nor can I guarantee your room, nor can I cancel it for you. “But that’s your job right?” “Yes, but you go online yourself.” Needless to say we didn’t stay there.
Time passed quickly and #6 Lightning Run began cycling to our great relief. We hopped aboard the weirdly elevated seats and experienced the world’s first Chance Hyper GT-X in all it’s glory. It’s good. From an off-ride visual it appears to burn through those elements at a blistering speed, though on-board there’s a few less sensations going on than I had perhaps anticipated. The legit airtime hills are great and it’s wonderfully paced, but some of the other moments were a bit of a let down. Nice and unique in any case and I look forward to a resurgence of the model.
With many laps of that under our belt to be sure, it was now a question of how long can we stay with Storm Chaser before we have to tear ourselves away and get some more creds tonight? The answer – quite long, though it helped that it was a walk on.
Beech Bend
Fortunately our next destination had a time zone change in the right direction to gain a cheeky extra hour of operating day. The park also run a deal where you can get in for extra cheap on a Friday night, which suited us perfectly.
The reason for the visit of course was the #7 Kentucky Rumbler. Such a good name. Is it king of the Kentuckys?
Yes it is. GCI man, they got me again, what’s going on? A curved drop that turns into a violent plummet to start proceedings, backed up by an action packed, airtime filled, rumbling romp of a ride. I loved the perpendicular station flyovers and the fact that it isn’t just 72 corners and crossing points. It tries for other things and delivers them exceptionally well. A surprise hit for sure.
As importantly, there were +1s to be had in the form of #8 Spinning Out.
And I did their Haunted House ghost train for ‘research purposes’. Meh.
Then we got stuck on a block section of the spinning #9 Wild Mouse. Two engineers appeared at speed in a golf buggy, almost tipping it down a steep grassy bank. The issue was resolved in no time and we were treated to a very slow rendition of the spinning second half, from a standing start. Fresh experience I guess.
A couple more rumbles on the Rumbler were sufficient to see the day out in style, and a successful one too! Kentucky treated us very well.
Our next day was dedicated to a full 12 (13) hours at the beast that is Kings Island. I had got it into my head over the various years of planning that this might be a tricky one to complete, there’s always a bit of trepidation when you’re staring down 15-odd creds and thinking anything could go wrong at any time.
Day 2 – Kings Island
We arrived nice and early in order to deal with some business, namely picking up our ‘2020’ cedar fair platinum passes that they had kindly offered to honour in 2022 instead. Brandishing various emails and the original tickets, we confused a friendly and helpful member of staff and, miraculously, ended up with exactly what we wanted, parking refund and all.
Even though the park wasn’t officially open yet, they do let you wander in to wherever you like without any form of batching or rope drop and so we opted to camp out the entrance to #1 Mystic Timbers. It was a rather joyous spectacle, the simplicity of watching several test trains running, a staff member appearing at the entrance at 09:55, getting a phonecall at 09:58 and opening the queue. Just like clockwork, seems rare to find many parks with a performance record like that.
So at precisely 10:00 we were seated on the first train of the day and ready to find out what’s in that bloody shed. I do have to give credit to the marketing of this ride, that phrase has stuck with me like very little else in the industry and it feels like I’ve been saying it for a lifetime already.
Before you get there however, there’s some track to negotiate, a surprisingly awesome layout full of high speed, relentless, bumpy, twisty goodness. GCI are back on top form and I can’t emphasise enough how much I’ve missed this. As you hit the brake run hot, some creepy warnings are played over the speaker system warning you not to go in the shed. The announcement breaks up, losing clarity as you head inside. The first half is standard GCI storage shed, but the second half is themed. We were right at the back so couldn’t actually see what was going on, nor hear the little radio that plays one of several old pop songs so it was a little confusing when the rest of the train were seemingly clapping along for no reason. After much suspense, one of several sequences takes place, themed to one of the rides in the park and you’re scared straight back into the station.
All in all I absolutely adored Mystic Timbers. Not only is it amongst the most standout pieces of hardware that the manufacturer has ever pieced together, it has bags of character and charm and I couldn’t really have asked for more. Except maybe fire.
Headed round to the #2 Beast next to continue on the woodie streak. It was an honour to finally get on this legendary ride and I had no idea what to expect. It’s a laugh. The freshly reprofiled first drop actually felt quite good but it doesn’t really do a whole lot of significance over the remaining 7000ft. But, over that length, it’s just an all round fun time ‘being’ on an old wooden rollercoaster that isn’t overtly offensive. The trims make me chuckle when they hit in all the places that might have otherwise looked exciting, but I think my favourite moment of the whole thing is the timing of the trains – they blaze past each other at a very specific moment that marks the beginning and end of the ride for each respective group of guests and it’s such an on-board spectacle.
After thinking a nearby ugly building was Flight of Fear and then discovering that it was just an ugly building, we doubled back to #3 Diamondback. The longer, stadium seated trains on B&M hypers have grown to concern me as I had until this point found them to be unfailingly inferior to the standard design. I think Diamondback managed to buck that trend somewhat, but by no means did I find it spectacular. It’s average, run of the mill at what it does best. Floaty drops, meek airtime, trims that make me chuckle just when it looks like it’s about to get exciting. Slow it down there, you’re having too much fun.
And so to speed things up, #4 Orion was the obvious next choice. An old technique was reborn on this ride, one that takes me back to the days of the disappointments of X2. ‘Sunglasses on, not caring.’ It will be coming up a lot over the next couple of weeks.
It ain’t no Fury 325, but I still prefer it your average B&M hyper simply for breaking that formula. I’m not big on the sensation of speed as a whole, but at least it feels fast paced and fun, until that same old trim in the same old place on the first airtime hill at least. Just. Design it better. Oh and the brake run being taller than most coasters is a rather facepalm moment too.
The one thing these do have going for them is that they’ve really nailed the giga drop. It both feels huge and it kicks your ass, where other manufacturers have somehow failed.
Continuing on the theme of failings, #5 Banshee, what the hell was that? One of the last hopes in the world for me to fall back in love with the B&M invert again and it just goes upside down 7 times with a similar sustained force throughout. Sunglasses on, not caring.
The one thing the vest design has going for it is that the seats feel wider and you don’t have to rub sweaty elbows with strangers.
Having made excellent time on what we considered to be the ‘big 5’, it was time to start operation mop-up.
The Bat was spiting. Abandoned, with one train parked on the lift hill. That’s going to stop me having the set of Arrow Suspended coasters at some point (unless they just close it) and I’m significantly bothered by that fact.
#6 Adventure Express was a thing. The quirky themed lift hill at the end of the layout was an unexpected highlight that led to absolutely nothing.
#7 Racer was very enjoyable. It felt more powerful and significant than the Kings Dominion equivalent and that endless line of sequential hills is always fun. Suffers from the same issue of you not actually knowing who wins because the trains finish apart from each other, divided by painted walls, but the sheer length of the pre-brake run track with everyone just wobbling in a straight line for 15 unchanging seconds had me in stitches. Of course we immediately went round again for the #8 other track.
#9 Flight of Fear was awful. There’s more to see in the queue than the KD counterpart but it went on forever and then the ride was running really, really poorly. Ruined the reputation of this attraction for me, as is the job of a good clone.
All the other queues for stuff we needed, but didn’t really want, were starting to look bad now. Grabbed a snack and headed into #10 Backlot Stunt Coaster. It’s more nicely presented than the KD equivalent (that’s 3 now) but the special effects part still didn’t work, nor did it have the comedy of someone in the train reacting to that fact.
What else have they got? I’m struggling to rattle them off in my head now.
#11 Woodstock Express. It was a bonus just to be able to get on it, and for it to not have the 90 minute queue that was stated on the app (trying to scare us off I feel).
#12 Invertigo. Worldwide set complete, now let’s never speak of it again.
The Eiffel Tower was open, unlike the KD equivalent (4). I did have to laugh when the lift operator said it’s an exact replica of the real thing. Despite the fact it’s a different colour, size and shape.
Good views though.
And we saved the worst til last. #13 Flying Ace Aerial Chase was a total travesty in every conceivable way. Sunburn, heat exhaustion, terrible capacity, medics were called to the station, a ridiculous safety announcement that tells you ‘not to stand up’ on a suspended coaster and an awful ride that manages to bang your head at under 10Mph. I was lined up to see a perfect shot of a small child taking the restraint directly to the jaw on one particular transition. Sign of a quality product.
Chores successfully completed, back to the good stuff.
Mystic Timbers had developed a fairly hefty queue, but it was worth the wait of course.
Orion’s queue had also got a little larger, this time we got to queue through the theming, which was nice to see.
Couldn’t be bothered to queue for anything else, so gave the shed one more go as the sun was going down. This time the wait had some great comedy in the form of a bunch of teens deciding to alter the distribution of large quantities of small rocks within the queueline. PASS IT BACK, PASS IT BACK, PASS IT BACK! Everyone got involved. Who needs queueline TVs.
Night had fallen and the ride was hauling so hard it made a noise I’ve never heard GCIs make before. The wheels (either sidestop, upstop, or both) were literally screeching with force and excitement, what an incredible ride. Also 3 different laps, 3 different monsters.
But of course night falling can mean only one thing in this park. Even the op box says it on a sticker. The legendary Beast night ride. We sprinted into the queue just before park close, having only just discovered that there was in fact a firework and drone show on that night (and every night with a 10pm close, to celebrate their 50th anniversary). This meant the only way to ride it involved having to watch the spectacle while standing in the queue, at which point the ride was temporarily shut down for the display.
Some technical faff later, the ride suddenly starting chewing through the queue at an extremely impressive rate. We ended up amongst the last few trains and were treated to a fantastic atmosphere with cries of BEAST, BEAST, BEAST, BEAST! on all sides.
It’s not going to be making any waves, but I get it, it’s just one those things you have to do some time. The tunnels and laterals felt all the more brutal in the darkness and another train of ghostly figures screaming down the first drop towards us as it all came to an end was quite the moment.
Kings Island then, what a park. I’ve never felt particularly positive or negative about a Cedar Fair establishment before. Things have changed.
