Florida 03/22 – Universal Studios Florida

Day 7

Universal Studios Florida

I never knew that the divide in quality between Islands of Adventure and the Studios park itself was so great. While much of that is down to Islands of Adventure adding Hagrid and VelociCoaster recently, even without those 2 monsters I still feel that the Studios park feels incredibly lacking when compared to its neighbour. I can now absolutely see why the park removed Jaws to add Escape from Gringotts, because without it, it really does feel like you’d only ever visit the Studios park out of courtesy.

Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit

Thankfully though, the park is home to Rip, Ride, Rockit, and that’s where we headed first.

This coaster really has no reason to be as good as it is. The queueline is bad, dirty metal switchbacks under a slightly rusting roof, I suppose it isn’t much worse than Hulk’s queue though. The presentation is bad, with dated queueline videos telling you how we are going to create a totally awesome music video dude. The station is bad, it doesn’t even really have one. The coaster model, if my maths are correct, has a 1 in 3 chance of being God awful.

Yet despite all of that, the coaster itself is extremely good fun, helped immensely by the on-board audio.

Hauling around this intense coaster, getting ejected out of my seat on entry to every block brake (of which there are many), while rocking out to Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ was amazing and I’m more than happy to be in the minority of people who are proud to say they like Rip, Ride, Rockit.

After triple R we went on a walk to find the kiddie coaster (naturally) and on route discovered that the Studios park being not as good does have its advantages. You can comfortably walk between rides without having to dodge around thousands of people, it was a nice change after yesterday.

Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster

Would you look at that, a Vekoma Junior at a Universal Resort that doesn’t have a 90 minute queue, I could get used to this.

E.T. Adventure

Next it was time to go see E.T., or go save his friends, or something like that.

I’d heard a lot about this dark ride over the years, from it was one of the scariest things in the World (unintentionally of course), to it’s one of the best dark rides ever I can’t believe they got rid of it at the Hollywood and Japan parks.

It was alright, definitely showing its age though, which is fair enough when it’s even older than me.

The one thing I will never forgot about my ride on the elusive E.T. Adventure though is the key moment being ruined.

So as pretty much everyone will know, you give your name to a ride host when you enter the attraction, this all comes full circle with E.T. himself saying your name at the end of the ride. Well in our case, just as E.T. began to say our names the ride operator started shouting at someone for filming, completely cutting off E.T., it was hilarious.

The Simpsons Ride

From a proper “old school” dark ride to the first of the park’s many slightly different motion simulators.

I wasn’t a huge fan of The Simpsons Ride if I’m honest. Jiggling around while some video played that wasn’t very Simpsons in either tone or animation just didn’t do it for me. The best part of the whole attraction was the clips from the actual show that they showed in the queueline, but we’ve got those at home.

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts

Then it was time to enter the only part of the park where you couldn’t walk freely, the Harry Potter bit of course, in order to ride Escape from Gringotts.

Not a criticism of the ride, but my God the queue for this thing never ended. Endless switchbacks in 1 location outside (must be near the front now), queuing in the bank foyer (I reckon we get on just through that door), queuing in a corridor (think it’s just at the end there), going down a lift, queuing in another corridor (I think I see the end now) and then finally going down lots of stairs, this ride loves teasing you.

As for the ride itself, I really enjoyed it. More so for how impressive it is on a technical level though, than as a story driven experience.

That comes down to me being a Harry Potter fan and them taking characters already portrayed rather poorly in the films and going even more off the rails with them in order to make some of the gimmicky stuff play out.

Then it was time to experience the trio of terror…

Fast & Furious: Supercharged

Starting with Fast & Furious.

While it certainly deserves the awful reputation it has recieved, and I fully stand by the Universal high ups calling it the biggest mistake of their careers, I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. All those on board and all the staff members on route kind of gave off the same impression of, it’s bad, but let’s try to enjoy it, which I can get behind.

Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon

Jimmy Fallon was worse, way worse.

After, for better or worse, skipping 90% of the preshows and set up, we entered the theatre room, all atmosphere left the building, and it never returned.

71 people bouncing about infront of a screen in silence while Jimmy Fallon delivers awful one-liners, and an ex-employee of the ride explains aloud “it used to be better trust me, they used to spray the smell of pizza in”.

Awful.

To regroup we visited CityWalk and had the best Panda Express of my life. I can’t stress enough how much I like the setup of Universal Orlando. The ability of launch out at any time, recharge at one of the many CityWalk restaurants then launch back in is fantastic.

Despicable Me Minion Mayhem

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, Minion Mayhem, was, alright.

I thought the story was quite cute and heartfelt, which I really wasn’t expecting from Despicable Me. Then the simulator stuff was nothing special but slightly more than I was expecting.

Yeah, was alright that.

I’ve just read that it replaced Terminator at the Hollywood park though, and that’s not alright.

Men in Black: Alien Attack

With the trio of terror out of the way, it was time get back on track with a dark ride that I’ve wanted to ride since I saw it on TV 20 odd years ago, Men in Black: Alien Attack.

Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the ride coudn’t live up to 20 years of hype, and much like E.T. felt like it was really showing its age it parts, I did still enjoy it though.

Transformers: The Ride

The answer to the question asked yesterday of does Spiderman or Transformers use the ride system better is, Transformers, by far.

While Orlando’s Spiderman had us coming off doubting ourselves about how good the Japanese one was. Orlando’s Transformers kicks exactly the same amount of ass as we remembered it doing on the original in Singapore.

Frantic, brutal, a fun story, huge set pieces and tons of special effects, Transformers really is a real gut punch of an experience from start to finish and I love it.

With that we were done, so while Heartline’s wife enjoyed the Mardi Gras parade, it did sound quite fun actually, me and Heartline went for another lap of Rip, Ride, Rockit.

This time we both tried to access the hidden song library and both failed to get what we wanted. The guide I read was wrong so I got some trap beat with a man repeating the same 2 words for the whole ride, and Heartline yet again was unable to lock his song in before dispatch, leading to him once again getting a song where a man repeated “I guess I didn’t know” for the whole ride. This only helped add to the experience and once again we got a great ride on triple R.

That was Universal Studios Florida, and despite it not being anywhere near as impressive as Islands of Adventure, I still had a great time there.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 8 of my trip report, where we visit SeaWorld, before riding the absolutely insane Mine Blower.


Florida 03/22 – Universal Studios Islands of Adventure

Day 6

Today we decided to once again deploy the hire car, as we wanted to waste as little time as possible, on possibly the most intense day of the trip.

Universal Studios Islands of Adventure

Unlike yesterday, Universal Studios as a whole was exactly how I pictured it, with the only exception being that CityWalk was far larger and more impressive than I’d assumed.

I actually quite enjoy the, parking lot, central hub, CityWalk, then pick your park set up of Universal Orlando, it really helps gradually build your excitement as you press forward.

If travelling under that doesn’t increase your heart rate then you might be on the wrong website.

The right of passage lighthouse shot. Islands of Adventure really is beautiful in places, anywhere but Toon Lagoon actually.

That’s your greeting as you enter the park itself, stunning, just try to ignore that Hogwarts is now located behind an Intamin launch coaster.

And that’s exactly where we are heading, (the Intamin, not Hogwarts) but not before one of the most physically demanding theme park journies of our lives, and that’s coming from someone who sprinted the length of Busch Gardens last night.

It’s not that long of a walk distance wise but there was just so many people and things you had to keep dodging around in the intense Florida sun. I wouldn’t want to visit the park when it’s near capacity in the hotter months.

VelociCoaster

Finally though we made it and it was time to experience the 2nd best coaster in Florida and 17th best coaster in the World, currently, according to me. It’s statements like this that make me not bothered it took me so long to visit Orlando, the coaster game only got truly World class in the last couple of years and now it seems almost unfair that VelociCoaster and Iron Gwazi live about an hour from each other.

Let’s start with the theme. I love it to pieces, in fact, the more I think back to it the more I miss and appreciate it.

Sticking an Intamin multi launch coaster in a raptor paddock and having them hunt us is totally something out of a Jurassic Park/World film. The queue videos are all so iconic, I find myself saying “welcome to the VelociCoaster” on an almost weekly basis. The raptors in the queueline are amazing, as are all the fictional and not so fictional ride posters in the locker area.

Quickly speaking of the lockers, they are handled almost perfectly at VelociCoaster. You place your items, all of them, in lockers about 10 minutes before boarding the train. This means you can have your phone for most of the queue (for photos and K-pop). It also means locker and metal detection faff doesn’t affect the loading of the coaster, a win win situation.

Now onto the coaster itself, it’s amazing, but neither the best multi launch coaster in the World or even the best one from Intamin.

I’m certain this opinion comes from my preference for intensity, and I’m almost certain VelociCoaster was designed to be somewhat tamer as to not wreck the masses on what will be one of the most ridden coasters on a yearly basis.

That’s not to say VelociCoaster doesn’t have moments of intensity, in fact let’s enter the paddock and go on a virtual ride through. This will need to be much less descriptive than normal because describing VelociCoaster moment by moment won’t do it justice.

The first half of the coaster reminds me of Taron, but with added inversions.

This equates to a fun launch, followed by a couple decent inversions, some twisty stuff, a twisted airtime hill that kicks ass, even more twisty stuff and then a drop down into the second launch, exactly like Taron.

It’s from the entry to VelociCoaster’s second launch that things start to get truly interesting and it begins to ride much more like Intamin’s finest multi launcher Taiga.

The launch, rolling, from 40 – 70mph is brutal and must be one hell of a wake up call for those thinking VelociCoaster was going to ride like its first half throughout.

Next up is the 155 foot tall top hat, providing the strongest moment of airtime on the coaster and an amazing ride back down it for those in the back seats.

Zero G Stalls are always great fun and that’s what follows the top hat, before you are sent hurtling into what I’ve heard described as the Maverick section.

A crushing overbanked turn transitions into a vicious change in direction over water. While it doesn’t ride as intensly as the moments on i305 or Maverick it still rather alarmingly attempts to throw you out of the train.

Another overbank then lines you up for the single greatest moment of VelociCoaster, easily one of the greatest inversions on the planet, maybe even slightly better than the death roll, the Mosasaurus roll.

So while VelociCoaster has slowly been stepping up the intensity as it goes, this inversion is something else and feels like we’ve skipped many steps on route.

The Mosasaurus roll hits so damn hard that it’s even impossible to prepare for on rerides. The inversion is taken so fast that your being won’t even know how to comprehend it, all while the coaster is also trying to launch you sideways out of the train into the water below.

People are describing the Mosasaurus roll as a tamed down, modern recreation of Maverick’s infamous heartline roll. If that’s true then I can absolutely understand why that element was removed, but I still want to experience it either way…

That was VelociCoaster, and I love it, just not as much as I would have if it rode like its second half for the whole coaster. But then I do really like how it slowly builds up the intensity and then ends with one of the most intense moments on any coaster… I’m torn OK? VelociCoaster was one of the hardest coasters ever when it came to ranking it…

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure

From one amazing Intamin multi launch to another.

But getting to it wasn’t without issue, and it turns out it was all due to locker related faff.

We entered the Wizarding World and much like its Japanese counterpart it was so busy that you couldn’t even move. After powering past many people we finally got to the entrance of Hagrid’s, but then we had to follow staff members holding up signs all the way out of the Wizarding World into the Lost Continent, this isn’t looking good…

After queuing our way back into the Wizarding World, at some point we were batched as our group into the lockers room, which was an absolute mess, but never mind we’ve made progress. But no, after leaving the lockers room we were instructed to enter the official stand by queue for Hagrid’s, which was no where near coming out of the entrance. Meaning we have just queued nearly 30 minutes and already got a bad impression of the coaster and Wizarding World in order to use lockers, there’s got to be a better way guys…

Enough moaning, how was the coaster? Incredible.

Hagrid’s just has to be the best family coaster on the planet and even holds up very strongly amongst the World’s other multi launch coasters. 7 launches (with the final one kicking ass), a powerful drop track, a reverse section, animatronics and some of the best theming that I’ve ever seen, this monster seriously has it all.

I absolutely adore this technological marvel of a coaster and wish we had gotten more rides on it over the trip, which I’m certain we would have, if VelociCoaster didn’t exist.

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey

In order to end the debate of if Forbidden Journey is one of the greatest dark rides ever created, or just a robot arm bouncing about an inch from a blurry screen to make you sick (like it was in Japan), we subjected ourselves to more locker faff.

I’ve no idea what the Japanese were doing wrong, I’ll put it down to the language barrier and their one using 3D glasses, but my God, I actually like Forbidden Journey now.

It actually has a story, isn’t just blurry screens an inch from your face, the robot arms aren’t trying to murder you every 2 seconds and the queueline is actually really cool and not an absolute chore.

The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman

Don’t be too upset though Japan, you have the better version of Spiderman.

In order to end the debate of if Spiderman or Transformers makes better use of the ride system we knew we needed to ride both at the Orlando resort. And yeah, either I’m getting jaded with extremly high tech dark rides (quite possible) or Orlando’s Spiderman doesn’t hit anywhere near as hard as the Japanese one, your move tomorrow Transformers.

Incredible Hulk

Next up it was time for Hulk, the second B&M sit down in two days, and it wasn’t great…

Firstly the queueline was not what I was expecting, concrete, rust, loud noises and 40 second poorly animated Hulk transformations on TVs were just a bit disappointing after experiencing VelociCoaster’s and Hagrid’s queues earlier.

The station, which I assumed would have a really great atmosphere, didn’t, it was just loud again.

Then the coaster itself. It wasn’t Kumba bad but it wasn’t good. The launch was fun, then it was just inversions and giving me a headache.

A clear one and done coaster, in a park that contains 2 of the most rerideable coasters on Earth. At least it looks nice.

The Cat in the Hat

After a quick lunch of ice cream and nothing else in CityWalk, we re-entered the park and first made our way to Seuss Landing to check out The Cat in the Hat dark ride.

It wasn’t good by any means, but it was so not good that it was rather enjoyable, especially on a trip with some of the World’s greatest dark rides.

Poseidon’s Fury

Next up was something special, that I still feel lucky to have got to experience.

Poseidon’s Fury, the park’s special effects heavy walkthrough had been closed since the start of the pandemic and had only reopened about 2 weeks before our visit.

Yeah it’s a bit cheesy and silly in parts, but I really enjoyed it, the effects were great and I couldn’t shake off the feeling of how cool it was that I was experiencing a piece of Universal history, that felt like it had opened just for us.

Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls

Then it was time to check out the Toon Lagoon water rides, which we had left until this point in the day, sun going down, park dying down, as earlier on they had some of the worst queues in the park.

The next 2 hours or so will never leave my mind and might forever go down as one of the funniest in my coasting career.

It begins by walking up to the entrance of Ripsaw Falls, worrying about what to do with our bag. “Do you have lockers?” we asked the staff member. “Yes we do, 5 dollars.” was the reply. It appears the bag is taking the falls with us then.

Next we power through the completely empty outside queue before heading inside, all the while trying to fashion some form of waterproof set up for the bag.

There was no need to panic, there was a queue once we headed inside. Leading to either me or Heartline saying aloud, “bit of a queue, Dudley Do”, which to this day is still one of the funniest things ever.

We spent the next half an hour continuing to fashion our waterpoof bag solution, saying “bit of a queue, Dudley Do” and watching the Dudley Do cartoon on the queue tvs, which at the time was hilarious, then it was our time to board.

The seating and restraint system on Ripsaw Falls is one of the worst and funniest on Earth. I’m too chunky to get in, Heartline is too tall, and his wife, who’s now 90% waterproofed bag is in an even worse position. Once we were finally in though, it was quite cosy, but not at all reassuring we weren’t about to get destroyed by the falls.

Ripsaw Falls itself then, on that night, in those circumstances, in that frame of mind, with that group of people, it was amazing.

With my favourite moment being during the indoor section hearing Heartline screaming “Oh no!”, then speakers on the ride announcing, “I seem to have lost my train of thought”, only for Heartline to scream even louder “OH NO!”. Does he know something I don’t? Drop, life ending amount of water on my crotch, all 3 of us screaming, fantastic.

Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges

The bag scare and not wanting to get wet again led Heartline’s wife to sitting out Bilge-Rat Barges, which to this day I’m forever thankful for, because what happens next can only be described as a massacre.

Me and Heartline power through the completely empty queue and were directed straight into a boat with 2 other young blokes. They were sitting opposite each other, soaked head to toe, but for whatever reason neither me or Heartline stopped to think why.

Then the boat left the boarding area and we were underway.

The first few corners were fine, your typical rapids ride, a few splashes of water leaping into the boat, nothing to fear!

Then….

We pass under a water effect that dumps so much water into the boat that me and Heartline are instantly soaked to the skin, shoes full of water and screaming in shock.

But it didn’t stop there, it was relentless, the next minute of so was non stop effects as wet as the first, not making us any wetter, because that was impossible, but just attempting to drown us.

My memory only truly comes back as we began to climb a lift hill, which had life ending water effects all the way up. I assumed this lift hill was taking us back to the loading area but one look over the edge proved this theory very wrong.

Heartline was now blind, so I had the task of trying to explain it to him. “There’s a drop coming man, and it looks BAD.” And it was…

The tidal wave of water from the drop and then yet more insane water effects proved that it was in fact actually impossible to get us any wetter.

We re-enter the boarding area, the staff seem unphased, the 2 young blokes haven’t made any noise during the ride, me and Heartline are in shock.

Our minds were gone, so we spent the next 20 minutes or so in a toilet, not even the nearest one to the ride, trying to do something, anything, to tame down the situation, but nothing really worked, so let’s go ride Kong.

Skull Island: Reign of Kong

Dripping wet and leaving foot prints where we stood we slowly strolled through the very cold horror themed queueline of Kong, hoping the scare actors weren’t there because there was nothing we could do if they were.

We boarded the ride vehicle, instantly soaking the seat, and tried our best not to get the people sitting next to us wet too. And then we were off…

Yeah, it wasn’t very good at all. Blurry screens of King Kong punching dinosaurs, while the entire tram screamed at slight side to side jiggling was 90 percent of the experience.

I think the conversation I overheard as we left the ride summed it up better than I ever could. “Why’s everybody screaming?”, “cause it’s scary!”.

After that wisdom it was time for Heartline to do some maths.

We have about an hour left, we need a night ride on VelociCoaster and we still need to ride Flight of the Hippogriff. If we ride VelociCoaster and then run we can join the Hippogriff queue just before it closes and cheat the always 90 minute queue it has, sounds good to me.

A few weeks before we went on this trip Universal posted a POV saying how great night rides are on VelociCoaster, and they weren’t wrong. This already stunning coaster is in fact even greater under the cover of darkness. Even better it even helped us dry off a little.

Flight of the Hippogriff

This meant we were able to run to Hippogriff and queue only 10 minutes for the most cloned Vekoma Junior on Earth.

The perfect ending to a great day at Islands of Adventure, which is a great park with a truly World class coaster in VelociCoaster and a stunning secondary coaster in Hagrids. I do however have to ask how much would I have enjoyed the park if I visited before 2019?

Thank you for reading, click here for day 7, where we visit Universal Studios Florida.


Florida 03/22 – Busch Gardens Tampa

Day 5

Busch Gardens Tampa is located over an hour from Orlando, even longer when you get lost looking for a Quiznos, so today public transportation was thankfully once again off the cards.

The park was one I’d been dreaming of visiting for years, strangely though, almost immediately, Busch Gardens Tampa was nothing like I’d imagined.

In my head I pictured us driving into some massive car park, with cars as far as the eye could see, a grand entrance plaza waiting for us at end of the sea of cars. But no, you park in a sketchy looking car park at the side of a busy road and then take a road train, via almost the ride area of Montu to the park entrance, which wasn’t all that grand at all.

I mean none of that really matters, but I thought it was quite interesting.

After a security check and a walk through the park’s rather cramped and barren entrance area, things did begin to make sense though, well kind of.

There’s Iron Gwazi, that’s what we’re here for, but I didn’t know it was right at the front of the park, that will make marathoning it easier later!

Iron Gwazi

Well then, how strong do I want to start this?

Iron Gwazi is the best RMC I’ve ridden (out of 13, including Steel Vengeance) and is 7th in my top 25 (out of 1,157 coasters Worldwide).

Yeah I think that sets the scene quite well.

Before I dive in too deep I need to mention that I really like the styling of the ride, the logo, the crocodile theme, the station exterior, the train and the slightly faded purple track it all just works so well in my opinion. I also massively enjoy the name for being both impactful and hilarious on multiple levels.

Now onto the ride experience itself.

In short, it’s incredible, paced perfectly, is admittedly a little short, but God damn is it intense.

Iron Gwazi is easily the most intense RMC that I’ve ridden and it’s for that reason, combined with the outstanding pacing that makes it my favourite RMC. There are no wasted moments and every single element hits harder than those found on other RMCs.

Join me on a virtual ride through and I’ll try to explain the insanity.

You start with a 206 foot drop, which is awesome, but not much different than the drops found on Steel Vengeance or Zadra.

What is different though is the immense amounts of positive Gs Iron Gwazi pulls at the bottom of the drop and up into the next element. I was greying out nearly every time and not getting my vision back until we crested the top of the outwards banked airtime hill, which provides intense ejector airtime.

Then you are sent hurtling back down through the structure. This is a good time to mention that unlike most other RMCs, Iron Gwazi feels fast, wild and out of control from the bottom of the first drop to the brakes. It really uses its 76mph top speed to its advantage and it’s amazing to experience.

Next up we pull out of the ride structure into an upwards banked right hand turn full of positive Gs before we are thrown left into Gwazi’s famous deathroll element. This barrel roll downdrop is so fast, so intense and so perfectly executed.

Before you even have time to work out what has just happened you enter an overbanked turnaround and are now hurtling towards an element that’s almost as good as the deathroll.

On the ground it looks like any other waveturn, but my God the lunatics at RMC have finally figured out how to make these more than just a “wow we are going sideways” gimmick. Iron Gwazi’s example is insane, launching you clean out of your seat as you fly sideways, it really is a sensation that’s almost impossible to prepare for.

No time to comprehend that insanity we are now hurtling towards the true airtime section of Iron Gwazi and only Twisted Timbers can rival the airtime intensity that’s coming up.

A hill that doesn’t look like it should have airtime tries to eject you into space, then you go through a baby waveturn (which still pops you out of your seat), before hitting a zero G stall.

Then it’s a vicious twisted airtime hill, followed almost immediately by a double down that might just be the most intense moment of airtime on any RMC, please don’t throw apples at me Twisted Timbers.

One more brutal airtime hill sends you flying into the brakes, where I’m still conflicted if the ride should or shouldn’t end. On one hand I’d love for the coaster to continue, but on the other would pressing on bring down the overal intensity and pacing of the coaster? I guess we will never know.

That’s Iron Gwazi, that’s my favourite RMC, that’s my favourite new coaster of 2022, that’s the best coaster in Florida (spoilers) and that’s the best coaster by far at Busch Gardens Tampa.

Oh wait yeah, there are other coasters at Bush Gardens Tampa, let’s go check those out…

Air Grover

Starting of course with the kiddie coaster, one of the many areas of the park where you can see Iron Gwazi and question why you aren’t currently riding it.

SheiKra

Maybe I’m just 17 years too late but I really expected SheiKra to have much more of an atmosphere around it. Instead we just walked through a tatty empty queueline, strolled straight into a mostly empty and uncovered station and in no time at all were riding what was probably once one of the most important coasters ever.

I’ve never been a big fan of dive coasters and SheiKra is no exception to that rule, I will however give it points for being 17 years old and still glass smooth.

Tigris

I’ll give no points whatsoever to Tigris though, my 4th Sky Rocket 2, which is 4 too many if you ask me.

I’d learn later on this trip and on another US trip later in the year that Sky Rockets can be quite good, when they aren’t this layout.

Kumba

If it counts for anything I really did want to like Kumba, but I can’t, and I’ve got a pretty solid reasoning as to why.

It suffers from the same instant headache issues that Dragon Khan does, but worse. I’m talking the constant rattling and bouncing, but also combined with unavoidable head and restraint contact. You can massively lessen this issue by not taking a wheel seat on Khan but on Kumba it’s every seat.

What makes it even worse for Kumba is, Dragon Khan actually has a decent layout, that has fun moments to break up the inversions, Kumba does not.

So with Khan, take a middle seat, cross your fingers and you’ll most likely get a pretty kick ass ride. But with Kumba no matter where you sit, what you do, you’ll get a headache while being dragged through endless inversions.

Sorry Kumba.

SandSerpent

Next we queued longer than we’d queued all day for a poorly operated clone Mack mouse. Which both triggered cred anxiety and Iron Gwazi rerides anxiety.

It wasn’t even a good Wild Mouse either…

Falcon’s Fury

Now let’s go ride something that’s the polar opposite of a Wild Mouse coaster.

Falcon’s Fury is one of only two Intamin Sky Jump drop towers in the World. This model slowly tilts you as you climb the tower, until you are fully laying on your front by the time you reach the top.

As a man who’s absolutely terrified of drop towers this seemed like a bad idea, but I had to give it a go.

I loved it, but not for the drop itself, which honestly was a little weak, I loved it for its gimmick.

Laying face down, facing the ground, 310 feet in the air, with hands so sweaty they keep sliding off the restaint causing even more terror was one hell of an experience.

Cheetah Hunt

From one kick ass Intamin creation to another.

Confession time, I wasn’t the biggest Cheetah Hunt fan after 1 lap, but after a few, after accepting what it’s going for, I really like it.

Cheetah Hunt is a nice long ride, it’s twisty, the launches are fun, there’s a couple of good airtime moments, it’s just a fun time all around. In short, “a good little ride that”.

Cobra’s Curse

Next up it was time to challenge Cobra’s Curse, the park’s Mack spinning coaster, I thought it was pretty great.

The queueline is well themed and tells the ride’s story via a projected preshow every few minutes.

Then the ride itself, while no Cheetah Hunt in terms of family coasters, did still provide a fun experience helped massively by the spinning ride vehicles.

Montu

Montu was next, the final of the B&M triple and the penultimate coaster of Busch Gardens Tampa.

I’ll start with the positives, Montu is the best B&M at the park, Montu is the 3rd best coaster at the park.

Unfortunately though, much like its sister coaster Alpengeist, Montu in my opinion failed to live up to its legendary status.

I fully expected Montu to hang with the elite inverts (Nemesis and Pyrenees) but instead, to me at least, it rode like an inverted tour through B&M’s inversion catalogue with not all that much character.

Side note, the park have done Montu real dirty with its recent paint job…

Thanks to Scorpion being more closed than open, and always closed when we needed it, we decided we’d start our Iron Gwazi marathon now and launch if the app showed life from the aging Schwarzkopf.

On route we checked out parts of the zoo.

Cheetah Hunt.

Iron Gwazi.

At some point, in a blur of greying out on the World’s best RMC, eating an amazing banana nut muffin and using the facilities, Scorpion finally opened. And thanks to nothing but excitement from how good Iron Gwazi is, we somehow found the strength to sprint the entire length of the park to Scorpion, I suppose that gives it less time to break down again.

Scorpion

Was it worth the run? Kind of, yeah.

Scorpion was staffed by a couple of truly hilarious operators and the coaster itself offered a smooth as silk and intense ride.

Maybe Gwazi had just softened us up, maybe it was riding it at night, maybe it was all thanks to the operators, but tonight at least I can honestly say that I enjoyed what is essentially a Schwarzkopf Looping Star, a coaster model that did nothing but disappoint at Nagashima Spa Land.

A slightly more leisurely walk took us back to Iron Gwazi, where we stayed until they kicked us out.

Huge shout out to the engineering team at the park who went above and beyond to make sure that everyone in the rather short line got a chance to ride the coaster even after it went down after official park close.

That was Busch Gardens Tampa, and while it wasn’t quite what I expected I had a fantastic time at the park. Iron Gwazi is truly one of the World’s best coasters and the park has some rather awesome supporting rides too.

Thank you for reading, click here for day 6 of my trip report where we visit Universal Studios Islands of Adventure and ride the amazing VelociCoaster.


Florida 03/22 – Animal Kingdom + Epcot

Day 4

It felt so great to be back in the car again today. Two days of public transportation had made us miss the comfort and convenience that only comes with having your own 4 wheels.

Animal Kingdom

This made it easier to part with $30 for Disney parking, as did the fact that you can park hop with the same ticket all day. I mean $30 isn’t all that bad for all day parking (8am-midnight) on Disney property, I’ve seen more offensive parking prices for much less return.

What you do have to contend with though, if you bring the car, is the massive walks from the parking lots to the park entrances. It was a long and hot walk at Animal Kingdom, but it would be far worse later.

Soon though we arrived at the entrance, and it was far more impressive than the one at Hollywood Studios.

Also more impressive than Hollywood Studios was the park’s centre point, the beautiful Tree of Life. Both these photos also show how green and pretty the park is, for the most part at least.

It’s Tough to be a Bug

Speaking of the Tree of Life, that’s where we headed first to check out It’s Tough to be a Bug.

This 4D cinema, inspired by A Bug’s Life, was great fun, but I think I prefer it the least out of all the 4D cinemas at the resort, Disney World has a strong 4D cinema game.

It was really funny watching half the audience launch out of fire exits after Hopper showed up and things got intense though.

DINOSAUR

Then it was my turn to get scared on the amazing Dinosaur.

I love everything about this ride.

The entrance building full of bones, the wonderful cheesy information videos, the intense loading area that got me even more nervous than I already was. I really am a big baby when it comes to getting jump scared in the dark.

Then the main ride itself, damn! Dinosaur sits right on the limit of being too much for me but never crossed that line. I had such a great time aggressively bouncing around, shouting “that’s not our dino!” and laughing until it hurt.

Best ride at the park (Everest was closed) and probably one of the best at the Resort (Everest was closed).

Kali River Rapids

Because ‘(Everest was closed)’ we walked past it with a tear in our eye and headed to Kali River Rapids.

While visually very impressive, Kali was neither all that wet (it was hot) or all that impressive as an actual rapids ride.

After Kali we took a long walk, almost back to the park entrance, to visit Pandora – The World of Avatar.

I know even less about Avatar than I did about Star Wars, but once again first impressions are very strong, how does this even work?!

Avatar Flight of Passage

We ended up at Flight of Passage first and not wanting to get lost in Pandora, it’s a bit of a maze, it was time to check out the land’s star attraction.

Well not before queueing over 2 hours for it…

At least there’s lots of interesting things to look at, while you’re outside at least.

The ride itself though, it was pretty cool, but certainly, in my opinion, not worth queueing over 40 minutes for. Flight of Passage is essentially a very high tech and fancy flying theatre attraction and no matter how much tech you throw at it or what film is being shown that style of attraction will never really do much for me.

It’s a must ride for sure, but easily a one and done attraction and one that would be best to catch when the queues are low, if they ever are.

Na’vi River Journey

Then it was time to check out Pandora’s other ride offering, Na’vi River Journey.

After a much shorter queue, around 45 minutes, we took our seats on this boat ride around a Na’vi rainforest.

It was alright, I think Heartline summed it up perfectly with the statement “a sit down and some blue”, because it was a nice way to rest our legs, and the Na’vi are blue.

Nothing really happens, it’s very short, there’s not all that much to look at and there’s only 1 animatronic, she’s very impressive though. Once again a one and done, probably not worth queueing more than half an hour for.

With that, with Everest being closed and us not being all the interested in doing the animal stuff, our time at Animal Kingdom had come to an end. Opinions?

A half day park indeed, a beautiful one though, with an insane dark ride I wish we could have ridden again.

Thanks to being ahead of schedule, we treated ourselves with a quick trip to Disney Springs to grab an Earl of Sandwich. I remember really enjoying the one I had at Disneyland Paris, and this one was even better, certainly worth the speed run of Disney Springs.

Epcot

It turned out we really needed those calories too, because the walk from the Epcot parking lot to the park entrance was insane. A solid 10 minutes of brisk walking on unshaded concrete, not the greatest of starts.

Admittedly all was immediately forgiven once we entered the park though, because damn, Epcot visually might just be my favourite out of any Disney park.

Spaceship Earth’s gigantic geodesic sphere surrounded by all the other funky retro futuristic buildings in the distance is just an incredible first impression and I’m happy to say this level of visual quality continues throughout the park.

Spaceship Earth

Speaking of Spaceship Earth, we are here, let’s ride it.

I loved it. I couldn’t shut off the part of my brain that was saying, “you’re riding Disney history in a massive sphere, holy crap.”

Then when I thought it was over, I was shown a picture of my sweaty face superimposed onto a crude vision of the future and that’s exactly how this ride got escalated from fantastic to iconic.

Mission: SPACE (Intense/Orange)

Then it was time to experience one of the most physically intense attractions Disney have ever built, and it was awesome.

I’d watched many Disney YouTubers say that they can’t ride Mission: SPACE any more because it makes them unwell. I just dismissed them as being weak, but now I can see how if you weren’t used to high G forces this might end you.

Mission: SPACE is a 4 person interactive motion simulator attraction, but not your standard boring motion simulator. No, this one puts you in a centrifuge, puts screens an inch from your face and places controls inches from your chest, so it really feels like you’re in a cramped space craft.

Then it applies sustained strong positive Gs (up to 2.5) during key parts of the experience. These moments sync up perfectly with the screens to create an incredibly realistic and intense ride.

I loved it and if we had enough time I would have certainly ridden it again.

Journey Into Imagination With Figment

Next up we journeyed into imagination with Figment.

I’m quite torn on my opinion of this ride.

On one hand it’s (for better or worse) an iconic part of Disney and Epcot. But on the other hand in its current state the ride is pretty unpleasant. I’m not able to prioritise one over the other so in short it’s alright.

Living with the Land

You’d think that sitting down in a boat for 15 minutes to go float around some greenhouses would be a waste of time, but you’d be wrong.

Firstly, Living with the Land feels very Epcot, with its emphases on innovation in the farming industry. Secondly, the dark ride sections are fun. Lastly, a 15 minute sit down after standing all day is amazing.

The Seas with Nemo & Friends

I would however let you say that The Seas with Nemo & Friends is a waste of time.

The only thing I can remember about this omnimover attraction is that it wasn’t good.

Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros

Keeping the trend of disappointment going, we headed to Mexico to ride Gran Fiesta Tour.

After having to power through an overcrowded building to find the entrance, and after queueing in an extremly cramped queueline, we finally took our seats on what can best be described as Mexican Small World, but it’s worse, and Donald Duck’s there. I can’t recommend it.

Frozen Ever After

Next we headed over to Norway to go see Elsa, but her ride was currently experiencing a delay in operations and the castle gates were closed.

We spoke to a cast member outside who was both friendly and helpful. She told us that they were working hard to get the ride open again shortly and in her opinion it wouldn’t be that long of a wait. A very refreshing answer in an era of every single park not wanting to give out any helpful responses in case they are wrong and they get fired or something.

This delay gave us a reason to stroll around the Norway section of the World Showcase, which I thought looked great.

Not that long later the queue reopened and we were 3 of the first people to head through the gates.

While there certainly are issues with the ride – I don’t really like the face projected animatronics, you can tell it was held back by having to reuse the layout of Maelstrom and there’s no clear progressive story to the ride, I still loved it anyway.

I’m a huge fan of Frozen, its songs and its characters, so to see the franchise with its own ride, even if it’s a bit flawed, made me happy.

Test Track

We had fully accepted that we both didn’t need to ride Test Track, nor would we have time to ride it. Thanks to the queue being exactly the right amount of time that we needed to kill before the night-time though, we figured what the hell.

This ended up being the best decision ever because Test Track is awesome.

The create your car bit, which I didn’t even know was thing, was tears of laughter levels of funny.

Then the main ride itself was far more intense than I was expecting, with the indoor section being far longer than I was expecting. All the while our created car kept popping up on screens to make everything even funnier.

Test Track kicks ass and was the perfect way to end our day at Epcot.

We ended up missing a little of the night-time show, but it wasn’t all that great anyway so it was nothing to get upset about.

I really enjoyed my visit to Epcot and unlike Animal Kingdom I really could see myself spending a whole day there.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 5 of my Florida trip report, where we visit Busch Gardens Tampa and ride the incredible Iron Gwazi.


Florida 03/22 – Hollywood Studios

Day 3

After a decent night’s sleep, which you’d expect after doing 12 hours of the Magic Kingdom running on fumes, it was time to visit a park that had a certain amount of stress attached to it, Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Hollywood Studios

The stress obviously came in the form of would or wouldn’t we get to ride Rise of the Resistance today? and this led to us making a slightly silly mistake in regards to our shady hotel shuttle bus.

Much like yesterday the bus dropped us off at the transport hub outside Magic Kingdom. Not knowing how connections worked from here to Hollywood Studios we asked our bus driver. His reply was something along the lines of, ‘Disney’s internal transport is screwed because of Covid, it will be a major faff and will take almost 2 hours. But… I can drive you straight there for a tip!’

I think deep down all 3 of us knew he was lying to our faces but in the stress of the moment and honestly not knowing how we’d even think about getting there we opted to pay the man.

About 5 minutes later and after several near misses (he was driving like a madman so this extra bit of money making wouldn’t affect his schedule) we arrived at Hollywood Studios.

MuppetVision 3D

Where we tactically decided to tick off MuppetVision 3D as we walked past it.

I’ve wanted to watch this show ever since I first heard of it many years ago, and it didn’t disappoint! The main show was great, as you’d expect from The Muppets, and the surprises and 3D elements only helped to enhance it.

Then it was time to get serious and venture into Galaxy’s Edge.

Confession time, I have not seen a single Star Wars movie, nor am I attached to the franchise in any way whatsoever. Did this stop Galaxy’s Edge from absolutely blowing my mind? It most certainly did not!

I can only imagine the joy Heartline (he’s a huge fan of Star Wars) must have been feeling because I was completely awestruck by the detail and scale of this land.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

Enough about how great the land is, let’s go fly a spaceship.

The insane levels of detail from Galaxy’s Edge continue into the interior queueline of Smugglers Run, the land’s lesser but still amazing ride. And don’t even get me started on how amazing the animatronic is for Hondo Ohnaka.

The ride itself, the best kind of motion simulator, is great fun, with the interactive elements and complete immersion making it feel so real and epic. Oh and yeah remember, this is the lesser of the Star Wars rides…

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

So let’s go ride the main event!

Yes, Rise of the Resistance was open and could be experienced from a stand-by queue, which wasn’t 9 hours long.

It was almost 3 hours long however, but needs must, I reckon this one will be worth it.

And oh man was it!

I’ll say the absolute minimum that I can in order to convey my thoughts but not spoil anything because RotR is so much better when you know nothing.

First off, it’s so much more than just the main ride part.

The moments from being batched into the first preshow section until you board the official ride vehicle are ridiculous. Awe, intense excitment, legitimate tension and fear, wonder, it’s so good, I was beyond buzzing by the time that it came to take my seat in the actual ride.

Then things got even better!

Rise might be the best dark ride in the World and I promise you that I’m not saying that lightly or without experience.

Breathtaking in more ways than one, a technological marvel from start to finish and an ending that I promise will blow your mind.

The three of us left Rise shaking with excitement and spent the next 20 minutes talking about what we’d just experienced, the sign of a fantastic dark ride.

After a bite to eat, which turned out to be a fatal mistake, it was time for another fantastic dark ride.

Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway

With a trip to the Chinese theatre to ride Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

This massive trackless dark ride, with many surprises, was amazing, and that’s coming from someone who stepped off RotR an hour ago.

The animated styling is adorable, the use of screens and projections are handled in a way that doesn’t distract from the experience, the surprises the trackless system throws at you are pretty special and I don’t know if it’s just me but I found the whole ride really funny.

I just wish I wasn’t dealing with stomach issues from the previously mentioned fatal mistake because I’m sure I would have enjoyed it even more.

We only got one ride on Runaway Railway throughout the entire trip, due to it always having a queue and sharing the same park as RotR, which is a shame because I’d have to loved to have ridden it again.

After dealing with said stomach issues, getting some water and doing a stock take. We came to the conclusion that due to Hollywood Studios having the longest queues in the whole resort that it would be impossible to finish the park today. This caused us to fall back on an old favourite technique of just doing the shortest queues first and seeing how the cards fall.

Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster

This technique led us to Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, which technically was the shortest queue on park (of things we needed) but was still almost 2 hours…

We spent the queue researching how we were going to get to Epcot later for our bus pick up.

While there was no way it would take 2 hours to get from the transport hub to Hollywood Studios, our shady bus driver was correct in saying that transport between the Disney parks was a faff.

Oh yeah, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, it was fine, not as good as the Paris one was. Only in the respect that I prefer the rock show theming more than cardboard cutouts of signs.

Upon leaving Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster we concluded we had just enough time to ride Slinky, if the stated queue time was correct.

Slinky Dog Dash

It wasn’t, it was even shorter.

Which meant it was now time to ride a Mack multi-launch at a Disney park.

Slinky Dog Dash is great fun and honestly far more impressive than I was expecting.

Disney and Mack have found the perfect medium between family friendly Toy Story coaster and probably the best coaster hardware on the planet to create something special.

Slinky has decent airtime moments, fun laterals, some positives and the launches are quite punchy too.

I liked it, and if it wasn’t pegged at 3 hour queues from opening to almost close every day I would have loved to have ridden it again.

Hollywood Studios then…

As a park, other than Galaxy’s Edge, there’s almost no atmosphere other than it’s busy and too hot.

As a ride line up though, in my opinion, it’s the best on resort, in terms of both numbers and quality.

Now let the faff begin.

We left Hollywood Studios and spoke to a cast member about the plan we’d seen online about getting from here to Epcot and if he agreed with it. He did, because quote, “there are no buses to Epcot”.

With that we jumped on the Skyliner and took far too long, via several hotels, to arrive at Epcot’s World Showcase.

We arrived at park kicking out time, so in order to know which stampede to join the back of to get to the bus park out the front, we asked a cast member. Her reply was something along the lines of, you shouldn’t have travelled here on the Skyliner, you’re not allowed to walk through Epcot to get to the front at this time, you’ll have to beg security at this check point to let you through.

Her opinion wouldn’t change even after we explained we were told to come this way, so we walked over to the security lady to beg.

“Come straight on through guys, have a good night!”

Well that was easy, not really sure what the issue was…

After a slightly hurried walk through Epcot (spoilers!) we got to the bus park with enough time to ask a transport cast member about our plans for tomorrow.

We needed to be at Animal Kingdom for opening in order to make the most of our day, yet our shady shuttle bus wouldn’t be able to get us there any time near opening.

Can we easily and quickly get from the transport hub to Animal Kingdom?

After a few seconds of thinking and several stutters the reply was no. Let’s just take the car.

Thank you for reading, click here for day 4 of my trip report where we visit the beautiful Animal Kingdom and the fantastic Epcot.


Florida 03/22 – Magic Kingdom by Mega-Lite

I think it’s fair to say that many coaster enthusiasts, become said enthusiasts, after visiting Florida at a young age on a once in a lifetime family holiday. If not, Florida is usually the first real port of call for any up and coming enthusiast. What is not so common is making your first trip to Florida when you’ve already ridden nearly 1000 coasters and have already travelled most of the coasting World.

In other words what I’m trying to say is, once again, me and Heartline have done things against the grain. Would this tactic end up dampening our opinion of Florida? Or would tackling it with experience make things more rewarding? Let’s find out…

Day 1

In a continuation of our sentiment from our last trip, where it appeared that everything was out to get us, our travel to the US wasn’t without issue.

It started with me, Heartline, and his wife meeting at a very reasonable time to get to Heathrow and get our business sorted before our 11ish flight.

But then, there was traffic on roads that in 10 years of driving I have never seen traffic on. Followed by the M25 and M4 barely moving, leading to us being much later than we planned for.

This was an issue because you had to have a negative covid test before they’d even let you check in for your flight. Thinking we’d have all the time in the World, we planned this for this morning, now however this wasn’t ideal. After much faff we left the test centre with not much time to spare, but then had to wait 40 tense minutes for our results.

When we finally got our results we were the last 3 to check in for our flight and then had a stressful 20 minute walk to the gate, where thankfully boarding had been delayed 15 minutes.

The flight itself (American) was fine and soon we landed in Miami.

Yes, Miami. Heartline could probably write articles about how to save money when booking trips and this was his latest tactic.

Did it save money on a trip that normally costs many thousands? Certainly. Do I ever question his ways? No. Did the drive from Miami to Orlando suck? Oh God yeah.

We’d be staying in one of those do it yourself fully kitted out holiday apartments for the duration of our trip. Yes it was pretty dated, yes I broke the aircon on the last night, but I thought it was pretty cool how it had everything you’d ever need contained within its walls.

Day 2

After barely sleeping, which I put down to excitement crossed with time zone differences, it was time for our first day in Florida, and we were starting with the big one, Magic Kingdom.

Magic Kingdom

The resort we were staying at had a very limited (and pretty shady) bus service that ran to a very limited number of stops. Magic Kingdom was one of them and not wanting to pay the insane money Disney wants for parking we opted to give it a try.

Thankfully the bus was mostly empty (which was unexpected) and in the back row offered more airtime than most B&M Hypers.

What would be an issue several times though was the limited bus service combined with the overly complicated and mostly useless internal Disney transport systems. We will get onto the issues we had later, because this morning at least things were quite easy.

The bus dropped us off at the transport hub and then we boarded the monorail to the Magic Kingdom.

While it has taken me almost 1000 coasters and many other trips to make it to Disney World, I have been interested in the Florida parks for years, so this monorail ride felt rather special.

As was seeing this for the first time in person…

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Awful picture, but it doesn’t matter, we’ve made it to the Magic Kingdom.

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Apparently I’m not jaded enough yet because this view still hit me pretty hard.

Wanting to get away from the castle crush, we completely accidentally found ourselves entering Tomorrowland. Where we stumbled onto the first attraction we could understand where the entrance was…

Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress

The Carousel of Progress.

20 minutes of Disney history and animatronics, not much more I can say really, I thought it was awesome.

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Upon leaving the Carousel of Progress we were presented with one of Florida’s legendary rain storms. Thankfully this would be the only one that would happen while on this trip, well while we were in parks at least…

Not really knowing how to react to the rain storm we scrambled over to Space Mountain.

Where apparently everyone else had the same idea, leading to 40 minutes of dodging warm rain outside and 15 minutes of being soggy inside.

Space Mountain

This kicked way more ass than I’m still prepared to accept.

The extremely lacklustre Japanese Space Mountain had me set up for a gentle and uneventful coaster in the dark. Only for Magic Kingdom’s example to absolutely wreck my World.

This thing throws you around all over the place and was honestly so much fun, and that’s coming from somone who’s ridden most of the World’s most intense coasters.

If I had to be picky though, which I do, it’s Disney, it was a bit of a shame that the very impressive theming from the lift hills didn’t continue throughout the entire experience.

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PeopleMover

Yeah we spent our entire morning in the land of tomorrow and next up was the rather awesome PeopleMover.

Disney history mixed with linear induction motors, what is not to love?

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Not to throw shade on anyone who plans their Disney vacation down to when you’re allowed to go to the bathroom next, but our plan was a bit less structured.

We left Tomorrowland, with no clear plan on where we’d end up next, enjoyed the walk, commented on how stunning the park looks and next thing we knew we were standing outside the Haunted Mansion.

Haunted Mansion

It would seem our plan of not having a plan sometimes pays off, as we somehow walked straight onto the Haunted Mansion despite the queue being listed as something hefty.

Thanks to Tokyo Disney putting their Haunted Mansion into its Holiday flavour in early September, this would be my first time experiencing the real Haunted Mansion, and my God was it fantastic.

Sitting on my own really soaking in the atmosphere of this Disney legend I felt the hairs raising on my arms. I don’t think I was scared, just in absolute awe of what I was experiencing. I don’t think it was quite as impressive as Phantom Manor though.

I would have loved to have ridden it a second time but we had other rides to experience and we’d never find ourselves lucky enough to stroll right onto it again.

No picture? No, the Haunted Mansion broke my phone and I wouldn’t resolve the issue until we were most of the way through the queueline of…

Big Thunder Mountain

Thunder Mountain.

Damn you Paris Big Thunder for making all future Big Thunders seems unimpressive in comparison.

Credit where it’s due, Florida Big Thunder is better than the Japanese one, but neither come close to the French version.

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Country Bear Jamboree

Wanting a sit down and some air con we next headed over to the Country Bear Jamboree.

Much like the Carousel of Progress it was great fun to take in some Disney history and watch the animatronics. Unlike the Carousel of Progress though, the audience were absolutely losing their minds watching the gang of animatronic bears, adding an extra layer of entertainment to the experience.

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Under the Sea – Journey of The Little Mermaid

As great as it was meeting the bears, I think it’s about time we go and meet a Disney Princess. Sadly none of my favourites have rides at the Magic Kingdom, so we settled for Ariel.

Journey of The Little Mermaid is an omnimover dark ride and if I’m honest I wasn’t all that impressed with it myself.

The queue was pretty impresssive (I’ve read somewhere there’s a hidden Mickey that only shows for a couple of hours 1 day a year in there too), but the ride itself felt a little basic.

I guess if you compare it to the old school Fantasyland dark rides it stands out, but with how modern it is I kind of expected more from it.

Mickey’s PhilharMagic

I knew exactly what to expect from PhilharMagic though (after seeing it in Japan) and yet it still managed to blow my mind. Seriously this show is an absolute must watch for any Disney fan.

The Barnstormer

I guess we can’t put it off any longer, we better go ride The Barnstormer.

This seriously ranks up there in the list of bad decisions I’ve made in order to boost my coaster count.

Queueing far too long for a poorly themed and badly riding Vekoma Junior at one of the most impressive parks on Earth felt wrong at the time and doesn’t feel much better now.

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

But you can’t argue with success, and upon entering the very long queue for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train we were but 1 credit short of completing the park.

The queue for this coaster sucked, it was barely moving (got even worse near the end), had ginger teens making a scene and had almost nothing interesting to distract you.

As for the coaster itself though, visually, my God this thing looks impressive, the level of theming and detail is ridiculous. As a piece of ride hardware though, it does almost nothing, the swinging cars add almost nothing and I wasn’t the only one coming away thinking “was that it?”

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Pirates of the Caribbean

Running out of time now before we needed to get our place for the night time castle show we were missing 2 attractions that we wanted to ride, Pirates and the Jungle Cruise.

With that in mind we adopted a tactic that worked for us in Japan. Sprint to Pirates 30 minutes before the show starts, assume the listed queue is a scare tactic, experience the attraction, feel smug and then make it back with time to spare to watch the show.

It worked before and it worked again.

No matter how many impressive dark rides I experience, Pirates never fails to leave me speechless. The sheer scale of some of the sets is ridiculous, making it so easy to believe you have been transported to another World and aren’t just floating around in some warehouse.

Talking of the scale of things.

When we made it back to the castle area for the show, there was more people than I think I’ve ever seen in my life already waiting and even more flowing in.

All the credit in the World to the Disney staff for keeping this organised and safe, I’ll come back to praising them again in a bit too.

Hilariously the show ran into technical issues at the end of the big countdown, leading to confusion but good spirits.

Once it restarted (10 minutes later) though it was incredibly good and at times was as impressive as Disney Dreams in Paris.

Yes that’s right, Paris Disney has/had a more spectacular castle show than even the big boy in Florida. We won’t even mention the Tokyo one…

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Back to praising the Disney staff now. How do you get many thousands of people out of the park in an orderly manner? Extremly quickly apparently.

This was good news for us because it’s time to reference back to our stupid hotel shuttle bus.

Tonight’s only pick up was not long after the castle show finished, in the Epcot bus park…

This meant getting out of Magic Kingdom as quickly as we could in a sea of bodies, then switching monorails at the transport hub, then sprinting from the Epcot monorail station to the bus park with seconds to spare. Stressful, but I won’t lie, quite fun.

And that was our day at Magic Kingdom, did it live up to my high expectations? Yes, I think it did.

Thanks for reading, click here for day 3 of my trip report, where we visit Hollywood Studios and ride the insanity that is Rise of the Resistance.


USA 06/22 – Dorney Park + Summary

Let’s get this over with, it’s a highly anti-climactic finish. All the good stuff had been and gone and we were left with half a day to perform a courtesy mop up of one more park on the platinum pass.
But the bucket was dry.

Day 19 – Dorney Park

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For some reason this had the longest queue of any park to even get inside the entrance. Everyone and their dog had turned up for what appeared to be the water park and security were being particularly slow and thorough. Not kicking Hershey’s ass so far are we?

Our original plan was to hit the stupid low capacity mouse fresh and early, but by the time we had reached it there was already a disgusting queue. Thinking it was only going to get worse we joined anyway and then it failed to move for a solid 5 minutes.

Nah.

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#1 Hydra The Revenge was a walk-on however so, you know, these mice at Cedar Fair parks are just plain awful.

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And the ride ain’t half bad all things considered. Silly jojo roll is silly and then I greatly appreciate the non-conforming layout thereafter. It doesn’t drop into an inversion, it’s a little terrain inspired, the shaping of that cobra looks hilariously off and Hydra is an all round good time. Like the B&M I used to know and love.

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This being an ancient woodie (and also a walk on) was a complete surprise, I didn’t even know what #2 Thunderhawk #2 was. At least it isn’t another SLC.

In fact it was an even bigger learning experience as it also taught me that this park is well over 100 years old and yet you’d never know it. There’s not a single trace of vintage about the place. A sign in the station proudly proclaims that they used to have dark rides, so what happened there? Incidentally we don’t have any of these listed in the DRDb archive yet – if you have any information to share then please do.

The ride was entirely forgettable at this point. Good, but I don’t even know.

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#3 Steel Force was next along the path and yet another coaster with no queue. This one landed squarely in the middle of Mamba and Wild One in terms of float and crunch in the final sequence of hills, which is the only part that really separates them all.

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The first half of clunky fun drop and big hill of nothingness, followed by moderately Forceful corners, Steel feels exactly the same. Pretty good.

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Oh no, not another Impulse. Lessons thoroughly now learnt it was back row all the way on #4 Possessed for that rear spike goodness. Is this the one that pinched the brakes at the top? It might be.

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#5 Woodstock Express isn’t so good here either, just another Zamperla. It was being operated by a child though, so bonus points for intrigue.

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Sure enough the Mouse had got even worse by this point so we headed over to the last coaster of significance, #6 Talon, the Grip of Fear. The attraction staff didn’t have the grip of how to operate a ride properly however and it may well have been one of the most arduous ordeals I’ve ever witnessed in an amusement park. What could have easily been 5 minutes on two trains took almost an hour, with the second train consistently spending several cycle times with guests stuck and visibly disgruntled in the burning sun on the final brakes. There was zero hustle, there was barely even comprehension or understanding. It was the final piece of the puzzle in learning what we has all known all along. Dorney Park was kicking nobody’s ass.

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As for the coaster, meh, not a fan. Yes it breaks a few moulds but it does nothing with that and ends up very meandery in the moments that aren’t standard fare.

After that fiasco the decision had been made for us. There was no time to suffer the mouse queue and it was off to the airport. It all went far too quickly.

As for Dorney, well, it’s a half day park and we didn’t even complete it. There were obvious issues but it’s not a bad lineup at all, when analysed on a global stage. You could quite easily put it on par with the likes of Thorpe Park and that specific part of the world would do very well out of something like Steel Force or even Thunderhawk. The problem is the area of America this happens to be in. There’s literally world class attractions in every direction, just up the road from Dorney. It clearly doesn’t cope well with the slightest crowd levels and, as the place has no soul at all, may well remain relegated forever as the joke park of the region. Why would you come here?

But no doubt I’ll be back here for the +1 if I ever get another platinum pass. It’s always inevitable that one of the many other parks will build something that will kick Dorney’s ass once more, in the near future.


Summary

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Total states – 15
New creds – 160
New dark rides – 12
New parks – 28
New wacky worms – 2
Best new coaster – Steel Vengeance
Best coaster – Skyrush
Best dark ride – Volkanu
Best park – Kenny Knoebels
Distance travelled – 7000 Miles-ish
Spites – 14/174 (8%)

This trip kinda broke me. So many years of build up and so many creds, I’ve never quite hit that saturation point before and it hadn’t really hit me until I totted it all up.
160 coasters. I’ve obviously done a lot over the years, but never cracked 100 in a single month, let alone 160. Then we consciously skipped 6 by the end of it.

Have you ever stared at your coaster list and thought ‘I don’t even know what that is?’ I don’t expect a yes, but it’s happening to me more and more. It has also been over a month now and I still haven’t properly sat down and readjusted my rankings in any semblance of a sensible manner (Phoenix <3). It’s definitely getting harder to do that, but I’m determined to keep that part up no matter how deep into this I get. It always needs context, searching for that new best thing is a huge part of the appeal for me and the search goes on.

I may have moaned a lot here but it’s more fun that way and it’s still kinda my thing. On reflection there was a perfectly healthy balance of pleasant surprises vs disappointments, I just think the biggest shock was not walking away with a single new entry to the top ten after all of that. As planned I’ve now hit all of the CF top 25 and honestly I struggle to count beyond fingers the number of genuine contender coasters I feel are still out there operating. Which terrifies me on a weekly basis, but I’m undeterred.

Nevertheless, amazing, incredible, trip of a lifetime, loved it, what it’s all about, great stuff, good job, god damn Twisted Timbers.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time.


USA 06/22 – Six Flags Great Adventure, Casino Pier, Playland’s Castaway Cove, Gillian’s Wonderland Pier + Morey’s Piers

We had finally received an email from Six Flags St. Louis by the time we came to visit their last park of the trip. For the sake of ease on both parties it came down to a simple case of abandoning the pass and receiving a refund on the whole thing (still waiting on a cheque in the post). Which basically boiled down to our first two visits being free, before the other two on the spot ticket costs made it slightly more expensive anyway overall. You win some, you lose some.

Day 18 – Six Flags Great Adventure

Except it wasn’t quite that easy, as unlike Great America they didn’t want to sell us tickets on the door and the web page was full of all kinds of minor clerical issues like not letting you put personal details in the right format so that your bank then rejects you for being suspicious.

We so nearly cheesed our way in when a friendly staff member approached at speed and offered to get us through for free on his ‘bring a friend pass’, while we standing around the entrance looking confused and frustated at a phone. It wasn’t to be however, as he was then informed at the gate that ‘it doesn’t work on a day you’re working’. Nice try though.

After far too long we were in the hard way, with only one ride on our mind.

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The #1 Jersey Devil Coaster. This thing amuses me, still feels like it came out of nowhere and the face on the train is so silly. I had a good feeling about it as we walked straight onto the platform with no queue and hopped on the highly efficient conveyor system they’ve developed to sort out the capacity issues of the original.

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So it’s a shame it’s nothing like the originals in any other aspect either. I take issue with the fact that it rides really poorly across most of the seats I sampled. Unlike Railblazer clattering around in the station and then being butter smooth on track, the Devil clangs around on every joint and it just feels bizarre and unnecessary. What did they do wrong?

I take issue with the restraint design, where I didn’t before. There was no happy medium, it was either biting into my shoulders and restricting movement, or loose to the point of continually slipping off one side with me having to focus on putting it back in place rather than on the ride experience itself. I also don’t remember the straddle situation being quite so jarring in the way that it’s a slightly awkward leg position for receiving the best of the forces the ride has to offer.

I also take issue with the layout having lost the spirit of the ride type. By stretching everything out it loses that sheer ridiculousness factor of it whipping around the track at a million miles an hour to the point where I think it’s not real. This could easily have just been any old two-rail RMC and I can almost taste the world’s longest, tallest, fastest of it’s kind marketing wearing through the very design.

All that being said it’s still really good, obviously, it’s an RMC. There are some cracking airtime moments in there and the inversions are at least 50% graceful, in the right seat. Back row served me best, as always and it’s an easy top 3 in the park for me at least, which makes it no slouch.

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So let’s knock out that top 3 one more time. Nitro was still full of the good stuff, when we finally found the entrance, reminding me that it’s still the best one around this particular part of the world. It’s really long, but less tiresome in the elements somehow and with a wider than usual range of forces throughout.

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It’s all about the bull though, so glad they managed to get El Toro back in action after it had such an immense attempt at tearing itself apart. That says it all about this ride really, aggression by the bucket load. If it makes it 90% of the way around the course whilst destroying track in the process, you know there’s no holding back here.

That airtime. That airtime again. And again. It’s unearthly until that middle section and then it just hits you with purposeful speed and rumble before trying to do damage once more. The rolling thunder is back and better than ever, with extra bonus crunch at the bottom of the dip, just to bring you down to size after some of the most severe ejection around. The bronco adds so much flavour to the finale and yup, it’s the best prefab. Still got it.

We stayed with El Toro until the heat got the better of us, honouring it with the back to back laps it deserved, but couldn’t have, on our last visit due to such terrible operations. It brought back all the classic memories of this part of the park though. ‘It used to be my favourite ride’ and ‘I don’t like riiiiides’ are still some of the greatest lines ever spoken by park guests.

Time to hit the shores.


Casino Pier

The main draw of Hydrus, if you can call it that, was spiting for no good reason, so this park became a pure tick box exercise.

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Starting with the unpainted one in the middle, #2 Hot Tamales, which was a thing. Ignore the big green track in the background, just like we did at the last park.

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Then the SBF spinner, #3 Xolo Loca, that isn’t a figure of eight for a change. A real highlight.
And no, I’m not doing one of those hamster wheels.

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Finishing up with the jank machine that is #4 Pirates Hideaway. The inside holds no secrets, but it’s humorous to behold.

Next.


Playland’s Castaway Cove

The biggest incentive for doing all of these was the crazy looking GaleForce which had always given off the aura of a bit of a sleeper hit to me. Wild, compact, S&S multi launch goodness eh?

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Oh, how wrong I was. We had some let downs this trip but #5 GaleForce was in a league of it’s own. It was nothing short of awful. The lumpy, awkward forces of a Sky Rocket II combined with riding like a Eurofighter from 2004. Sprinkle in some disgusting restraints and you’ve got yourself an endurance-fest.

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The unpainted one in the middle, #6 Wild Waves, was better. E&F Miler showing up the big boys.

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#7 Whirlwind also took us back to the SBF spinners of old here with the classic and familiar layout.

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And the park ended in style with yet more Miler, this time with #8 Pirates Gold Rush trying to remove my kneecap. Better than Galeforce though.

All in all, just a hot, sweaty and overcrowded day at the office.


Gillian’s Wonderland

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5 minutes up the road there was a #9 Wacky Worm. A pricey one too.
I rescued a man’s pass that had fallen into a road from a Larson Loop and then we had some meter jeopardy by running out of quarters and having to put up with a whole two train wait for the coaster.


Moreys Piers

But nothing had prepared us (including researching the exact cost several times) for how pricey the last place on the coast was. Our quarter crisis was averted by doing laps around the town and then sneaking into an arcade for a change machine, which was explicitly stated to be against the rules. Needs must.

We parked nearest to the pier with the woodie and the realisation hit hard when we quickly learnt that one lap on #10 Great White was $15+tax.

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Being a big and unique CCI this wasn’t a problem. There was quite a queue for it and it was eventually dark by the time we boarded. It had all the makings of a classic, the wild tunnel start and some nice big powerful drops. The stacked turnarounds were pretty cool, the back to back hill section was a highlight and the setting was great fun.

It had dawned on us in the queue however that this was by far the standout ride of ‘the park’, staring over at yet another Boomerang on the next pier in the distance. Every other ride here is a clone, and a poor one at that. Awful coasters we had ridden multiple times throughout the trip would cost the same as the woodie and even the kid’s stuff was priced well over the odds. The only conceivable way of ‘saving’ money on any of the rest of it was a pass costing in excess of $200. Queues were busy, time was pressing on, the fatigue of the coaster counting had truly set in for one day.

Nah.

Day 19


USA 06/22 – Busch Gardens Williamsburg + Kings Dominion

This was the most recent addition to the already overly stacked roster, thanks to the long-awaited opening of a certain Intamin. It was a park I had already thoroughly enjoyed before, although it was at the time lacking that killer instinct. Have they found it?

Day 17 – Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Got to ride the car park tram this time, which was an indicator that it must have been at least slightly busier than before, when we had wandered straight into England on foot. They weren’t doing any of the staggered ride opening business either so we immediately headed towards Pantheon to find that it was attracting a crowd by doing some test laps but also being closed.

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Rather than immediately start the day in a stewing queue, we took a reride on Apollo’s Chariot to start the morning fresh. It remains one of the better B&M hypers for me, there’s a bit of character to it with the old style drop again, some decent and varied airtime moments, a bit of terrain action and an overall more rugged feel. I really like the camelback that curves off to one side as it drops away, which doesn’t appear to be something they’ve tried much of since. The turnaround is still the dumbest thing ever, but overall I’ll take it over the Candy.

Obviously not wanting to suffer Tempesto unnecessarily, though we overhead an unfortunate number of guests singing its praises throughout the day, the best option at this point was to rejoin the now slightly more orderly line outside the entrance to the Pantheon section. A staff member was trying to get the queue to disperse or shift out of the way of certain lesser attractions but this was once more met with amusing defiance. One man pointed out that there was plenty of space if they would at least let us wait up and over the bridge into the new area, to which he didn’t quite know how to respond and promptly walked off.

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Eventually they got their act together and after a longer external wait than actual queueline we were able to experience some new blood. Must say I expected more when it comes to presentation, especially with all the extra time they’ve had to prepare this attraction. Short of a few signs in the walk to the station that name some elements, there’s very little to indicate that you’re supposed to be riding the gods and all that.

It all begins on #1 Pantheon with a little slither out of the station and into a satisfying mini-launch with Taiga-style first inversion. This flops you out well into a low turnaround before some kinda slow wobbly bits reminiscent of an RMC pre-lift section. Dare I say it feels a bit faffy at this point before you’ve even reached the triple launch part.

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I had no idea this had one of those humps in the middle of an LSM launch that are becoming a bit of a popular thing now. It’s by far the best execution of one however and contributes to what is probably the most standout part of the ride. The first (second?) launch is a decent surprise, shunting you forward over said hump and most of the way up into the top hat. A moment of contemplation before rolling back and hoping the switch track has done its job.

The power with which the backwards launch hits was familiar to me, but I didn’t expect how violently it would take the hump in reverse, particularly from the front row. It’s a proper can’t see it coming, chuck you out of your seat moment that really threw something special into the sequence. Vertical spikes are usually pretty glorious, except when in Impulse trains, and this one goes up nice and high for the first real overview of what’s to come. The final launch is again weird and satisfying as it hurls you over the speed bump one last time and up into what’s basically Velocicoaster’s top hat again.

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From there you dive nice and low to the ground, with a decent first drop style kick if taken from the back row and then out into the big Kondaa style wonky hill. This is suitably spectacular in any seat really and takes you into a reasonably forceful turn before what’s basically Velocicoaster’s stall again. I didn’t love it there and I didn’t particularly here either. It’s very much just a thing that happens in the layout, there’s a certain clinical rigidity to the transitions both in and out that are quite hard to describe. Here comes stall, stall, stall ends. Are we overdoing them at this point?

The ride gets a little fruity after that, as if to compensate, with a much more whippy slither, then a sideways airtime hill that doesn’t do much happens and you hit the brakes.

Hmm.

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While dwelling on what had just transpired we took a lap round the park to reride the classics, starting with Verbolten, Busch Gardens previous best coaster. I still love this thing, the detail, vibe and theme are all spot on and it’s a real adventure of an attraction. Something I did notice this time is that the train had developed the distinct Zierer ESC rattle that they all seem to be getting around the 10 year mark, which didn’t hurt the ride experience on this occasion but definitely could do if it goes unchecked.

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Alpengeist was looking mighty fresh after some TLC and a lick of paint. I still want to like this one more than I actually do. The massive swooping spiral of a drop and unconventional initial element order is really spectacular, but it’s still a little unpleasantly jerky in one or two spots of the first half and then dies way too hard into the second half. Crawling through the fake snow at the end is not a good look.

Griffon was gone, Invadr was disproportionately busy, the wolves were hiding and their Irish dark ride has dropped off the radar presumably due to covid, so there wasn’t a whole lot left for us to do except for Escape from Pompeii. This was also new to us after spiting the previous visit, though for some reason my phone camera decided to fail me at this point in time.

Having been sceptical about the significance of the ‘dark ride section’ and worried that the wetness wouldn’t justify the experience, we were proved entirely wrong.

The copious amounts of fire effects used was the main appeal of course, but several moments of collapsing scenery, including one hilariously unconvincing one with a statue gently laying its head down to rest, also added to the charm. If anything it just needed a crowd of Italians to pull an Etnaland and all scream ‘eyyyyyyyyy’ down the drop, which turned out to be just comfortably wet given the weather.

And then it was time for as many re-rides on Pantheon as we wanted to queue for, simultaneously drying off and getting more of a measure of the coaster.

For a multi-launch Intamin, these days, it’s not quite as good as I had hoped/expected. There’s some truly killer moments in there but the pacing is all off for me. The highlight of the ride being in the middle of the triple launch can’t help but make me see it as more of a gimmick coaster than a full blown, non-stop, kick your ass package. After all the many build up sequences it feels like as soon as you finally get into that end game high speed, high thrill coaster section it just ends unsatisfyingly quickly.

It’s Soaring with Dragon kinda territory – I wanted a top 25 and got a probable top 50.
But that’s all good, we had another fun half day out at Busch, which is still a lovely place to be. The trouble always is that there’s a special something not too far up the road, which also happens to be free with this platinum pass.


Kings Dominion

Ah yes, back amongst the much preferred Paramount Park experiences of the Cedar Fair chain, I really do get on with these King parks better than most of the others.

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They’re both all about their Timbers and we were immediately back to remind ourselves what the ‘best RMC of the last big US road trip’, Twisted Timbers, was really all about.

God damn Iron Gwazi, it’s better than Steel Vengeance, the very first thought that popped into my head as we hit the brakes after a single lap. It’s relentless, it’s ridiculous, it ‘urts me. I’d almost forgotten how good it was and now I love absolutely everything about it.

The nitpicks are gone, the first drop is amazing with that little lurch out of the seat as the world twists around your head. The many little overbanks are great fun.

The best bits are back and better than ever, those three consecutive hills remain up there with the absolute pinnacle of RMC airtime sequences, the violent yank through the structure is unrelenting and the inversions serve to spare you from the otherwise endless assault from start to finish.

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I guess we need that +1 to calm down. Of course I now dread the sight of these after my last concussion-based experience but thankfully #2 Tumbili was riding in tame, Six Flags mode. It actually looks rather nice and is refreshing to have a bit of a different theme on one, they’ve done a decent job on the whole area especially in making it less concrete and rides. Bring on Volcano 2.0 next.

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Courtesy was thrown to the beast that is Intimidator 305 of course. Even when it doesn’t particularly interest me, you can’t come to Kings Dominion and not damage your health in some capacity.
What did I learn this time? Eh, it might have been riding the best it’s ever been at for us, but that still doesn’t do a whole lot for me. The sun had been cooking it all day and we took multiple laps in the back row of a full train, which hadn’t even been filling on the last visit.
It might sound weird but I found myself thinking that 305 provides the ‘most comfortable grey-out’ in the world. I don’t have a huge amount of comparisons to draw on but let’s say something like Lech Coaster thrusts me uncomfortably into and back out that sensation in unwelcome fashion whereas Intrimidator eases you into it, holds it there for a good few seconds and then gently lifts off again. I wouldn’t call it pleasant but I have to respect it. The rest of the ride doesn’t really justify it, failed airtime and a couple of fun, high speed, left to right snaps. I’ll be in a right conundrum if they ever do make a ride that backs it up.
Oh and the ‘start your engines!’ announcement was turned off. That’s no good at all.

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Never found the time to ride Boo Blasters on Boo Hill here before, so gave that a go. Another Sally special, it’s pretty good for what it is, colourful and fun.

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Felt generous in giving Dominator an unwarranted courtesy lap, something about the awfulness of Rougarou made us want to prove that they do make better ones, right?
Nah, not for me. It just rattles around and does stuff. Either all these B&Ms have hit a certain deterioration threshold, or I have.

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Just put me back on this thing all night. Forgot to say they’ve added the Steel Vengeance style lockers and metal detectors here too, which was a novelty. It ended up being walk on so we just left the stuff in there and lapped it until it closed. Nothing short of incredible, the ride threw me around so much it scraped the skin off my shins like I was pulling deadlifts. The others don’t do that.
It’s not often I find myself having a re-awakening about coasters I’ve done before but Twisted Timbers is getting an upgrade, if that’s even possible.

Day 18


USA 06/22 – Lakemont Park, DelGrosso’s + Hersheypark

It felt like Lakemont was another park we came close to losing over the years we had been planning the trip, so even though it was closed the very day we drove straight past it, we figured it was worth the effort of doubling back yet again in order to try and catch those dips.

Day 16 – Lakemont Park

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Except it wasn’t, because Leap the Dips was closed. Apparently it was particularly unfortunate timing as the ride had been operating within the last few days but was now currently awaiting some ‘new wood’, which was on order, so at least it wasn’t another Flying Turns situation. Sadly there was nothing we could do to make it work this time around, might as well mop up the other creds though.

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Things didn’t look too promising for #1 Skyliner either initially, as by opening time no one had shown up to run the ride. Eventually some saviours arrived to fire up the old beast.

Wait, this opened in 1960? I could have sworn it was more like 1860, and it looks it too, in a fun kind of way. Shake, rattle and roll happened. A +1 was obtained.

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Perhaps as compensation for Leap the Dips we had also been granted permission to ride the only recently abbreviated #2 Lil’ Dipper, which comes up with one of those fun warnings on Coaster Count – are you suuure you rode this?

Allan Herschell doing us proud once again, with a ride on which every lap feels like it could be its last.

With that lil’ victory under our belt it was time to pop up the road for more cheap creds.


DelGrosso’s Amusement Park

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It’s rare that you’ll find me going out of my way for such insignificance in the States, for now, but this place is a mere 5 minutes up the road, so it would be rude not to.

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By the very specific number of ride tickets requested, or perhaps our accent and attire, the ticket office knew exactly why we were here, and the Wacky Worm was up first. Felt like we’ve been apart for too long.

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Already had one of these, though no breakdowns this time.

The highlight of the park was the pizza, which was fabled to be even better than Knoebels. Sure enough it was popular enough to attract as big a crowd as the rides, was good value and tasted even better, for American pizza anyway. Should expect nothing less from a park that’s owned by a sauce company.

Places to be.


Hersheypark

A revisit to Hersheypark had always been on the cards since we last visited, more specifically whilst having a conversation with a local man, mid-lap on Skyrush.
“Are you guys coming back for the hyper?”
Between screams of joy and terror, “yes”.

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True to our word we had returned, and the new entrance area looked so much better than it had as mud and wood. Finally we were able to take some decent photos of Skyrush and, though we had several new things to ride, we couldn’t resist starting the visit on an old pal.

Or is it a pal? I’d almost dared to forget how brutal and insane this contraption is, it’s not here to make friends, it’s out to utterly destroy you. The giddy contemplation of what was to come hit me hard and fast as we were wrenched up that cable lift hard and fast once more, now professionals in our golden winged seats of choice. God damn Skyrush, you’re still better than anything on the trip so far. And that was only the taster.

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Fear of repeat Intamin spite took us to #5 Fahrenheit next, which was another solid factor in our returning.
2019, Hershey, it had been ‘too cold’ to run this while we stood outside a broken Storm Runner getting sunburnt.
Today it literally was ‘97° and falling fast’, as the tag line proclaims, so there was no excuse. It was also looking rather vibrant in a new paint job.

I liked it a lot more than I had expected to. Just another Intamin with clunky old trains I had thought, but they ride more like a Maverick than a Kanonen, allowing some powerful forces to come into play. It’s reasonably standard multi-looper affair after the Norwegian Loop, an element I’ll always love (set complete). I could give or take the Cobra but the double corkscrew is quite hard hitting, then they managed to squeeze in one good pop of air for good luck before the brakes. Soild.

Took a courtesy lap on Storm Runner from there, which I believe remains my favourite hydraulic/accelerator. The stuff it does with it is so cool, even if it’s almost as short as the rest of them, though on this particular occasion it wasn’t quite delivering that lung-crushing quality I had previously admired from it. As a slight bonus it was running dual stations this time, which was fun to watch.

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Sadly this was a thing that needed to happen. The ride previously known as Spitewinder had become #6 Jolly Rancher Remix, which made it more of a laugh at least, I guess. The rectangular headed mascot, although never seen, was laying down some tunes in the station, complete with random flashing light selector package. There was some fresh smoke in the tunnel, it rode in an acceptable fashion and that was that.

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One more slightly more important coaster to pick up though, big #7 Candymonium was running far too many trains for its general lack of queue and causing some immense stacking. S’alright.

Mako brought some new hope to this genre for me, but I found that this newest installation pales in comparison. It had the makings of the same genius in that first drop and first hill, which are rather sublime, though the first trimmed hill was just a bit too sappy, beyond the point of regular amusement. Corners happen, it attempts that sideways moment which looks far funkier than it actually is and then it kills the speed even more into the visual turnaround and ends on the Shambhala double brake run. I just got the feeling it’s all about aesthetic over ride experience.

Probably doesn’t help that you can literally see Skyrush while riding it, either, thinking why am I on this?

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After personal recommendation from the project manager himself, we of course had to check out Reese’s Cupfusion this time. I don’t even remember it existing during the previous visit. At best it didn’t have any of the frontage that it does now and was just a mystery metal shed, or it was still undergoing the retheme.

The wonky elevation changes in the track as you go round and shoot sweets are a little distracting but it appears to be a significant upgrade over what they had before in terms of theming, interactivity and media. Shenanigans happen, we got an embarrassingly low score for some reason and in our minds at least that was now park complete, again.

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Which meant it was time for only one thing. Another evening Skyrush marathon, though shorter than we were hoping for. This reminded me exactly what the majority of my top ten rides are all about, a combination of physical abuse and things you don’t get anywhere else. I had spent our last visit honing the technique as to how not to get your thighs crushed (scoot forward and get it in that hip joint, if possible). This time I decided to use the time testing the waters around how much I actually wanted to get bruised. It hadn’t been happening enough on this trip.

There’s a fine line, the silly shape of the first drop always gives that terrifying shunt forwards that tries to pitch you out and over the bar, adjusting the position slightly anyway if there’s any room for it and then any duration of straight airtime feels like the more the better. The real pain comes in those exclusive wing seat moments when extreme ejection combines with lateral forces and you fly up 10ft by means of a single leg. Yikes. I think my favourite part of the whole thing, and why I’m a back left man, remains the third turnaround in which I get entirely folded in half, sideways, around a 2 inch diameter piece of metal, in a wild attempt to fully leave the train. You just don’t get that anywhere else in the world.

And that’s why I love it.

We spent our moments leaving the park in relative frustation at the lack of purchasable merch on offer. They’ve got some strange new designer shops that have nothing to do with the place at all, which obviously didn’t contain anything related to one of the all time greats. In the big new main shop the story was no better, where nearly all of the other attractions were represented. If only my favourite ride was the Sooper Dooper Looper…

Day 17