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Month in North America

Gazza

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Gazza

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So what was like the 'map' or your trip? How did you get everywhere?

One day, I will follow in your footsteps and complete a similar trip. One day...

Respectfully Santa07, can I ask you read the topic properly because you keep asking questions I've already answered

How I got everywhere is at the start of each post. This is exactly what I wrote earlier, had you read it:

SFDK

Getting there you can take a ferry from Downtown San Fran to Vallejo, and then a bus to the park. Be aware the last 30 mins of the trip is a slow crawl up the river to Vallejo. If you've ever used the ferry to Parammatta you'll know what it's like. Getting home I used a bus from Vallejo to Cerrito Del Norte BART station, which was slightly quicker.

CGA

Again, getting there is easy. You take Caltrain from San Fransico to Mountain View (Home of Google......The train was full of Silicon Valley employees, and I felt like the only one without a laptop) and then switch to the VTA light rail system which drops you right out the front of the park (And the new 49ers stadium).

SFMM

I was with my mum for this part of the trip, we set off from Santa Barbara early, and I got dropped at SFMM before opening for a quick 4 hour visit while mum did her own thing.

KBF

With that, I had run out of time. The drive down to Orange County took a couple of hours due to frequent pockets of congestion. After checking in we headed to knotts, for me it was free of course, for Mum just $35 due to it being after 4pm.

DCA

We stayed just around the corner from Disney...an easy walk.

CW

After LA I flew up to Toronto to visit a mate. Midweek I made the trip out to Vaughan to visit Canadas Wonderland, which involves taking the TTC subway to Yorkdale, where a half hourly Go Transit bus connects to the park. The bus trip involves travelling along the famous 16 lane wide highway 401.

You get dropped off at a stop which is right at the bottom of Levaithans first drop

Darien Lake

So after a few days in Toronto I was up at 5am to take a commuter train to Burlington and then a coach onwards to Niagara. The highlight of the trip along Queen Elizabeth Way was seeing in the other direction the dump truck that had wedged itself into the support structure of the Burlington Skyway Bridge the night before due to the driver being drunk and having his tipper raised, and the kilometers of banked up traffic trying to use the exit before the bridge. We just sailed through.

http://toronto.ctvne...ly_fs/1.1941193!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg

Upon Reaching the city of Niagara Falls I begun what I call the 'death walk', carrying my luggage on my back, and my laptop on my front. The bus terminal is about 2km away from the falls, and the length of the falls is another 1.5km long on top of that. My shoulders were aching due to the cumulative walking I did that morning.

I passed the fallsview indoor water park (part of the casino) which looks quite odd due to being a base of 7 levels of car parking, with the water park sitting in a glass dome on top. In the distance I could also see the space shot towers at Marineland (Didn't go here either, so no Dragon mountain for me)

....

I continued to lug my bags across the rainbow bridge and crossed into the US border on foot, which was a pretty quick process, and got a taxi to Niagara-Buffalo airport, where my hire car was waiting. $80 all up, and I passed my 3rd park without visiting that day, Martins Fantasy Island.

After getting my car, and stopping via a "Tops" supermarket, and then navigating some country roads to get back I arrived at Darien Lake at around 1pm, which is only about 40km out of Buffalo, and 70km from the falls.

Waldameer

With the park done I hit the New York Thruway and drove a couple of hours to Eire, Pennsylvania

Cedar Point

It was time to hit the road again, but not without a stop at Wendys (Finding the fast food you want to try out is easy on interstate highways, big tall tower signs everywhere, and on approach to each exit are standard signs, which show the logos of the "FOOD", "GAS", "LODGING" and "ATTRACTIONS" options for each exit. When you get on the exit ramp itself you have another set of signs telling you wether to turn left or right for your relevant hotel, restaurant etc, and how far it'll be.

Passing through Cleveland during the night was pretty spectacular, helped along by passing a football stadium right as fireworks were going off. At about midnight I had reached my hotel in Sandusky Ohio.

Kings Island

I hit the road to Cincinatti, 3 hours away, and got into the spirit of the countryside I was driving through with country music going on the radio. Such stereotypical American countryside with barns and Baptist churches dotted along…I even saw a crop duster out doing its thing over the cornfields. American rural roads can be frustrating, because they have a speed limit of 55 (only 90km/h) and they put stoplights at major cross roads in the middle of nowhere rather than doing what we do and having give way signs and staggered intersections, so you don’t seem to progress as fast as you’d like.

Finally reached the interstate, and pulled off a short time later because I saw a sign for White Castle hamburgers. Don’t go, it’s terrible. Worse tasting burgers than HJs. I had ‘chicken rings’ and they are as bad as they sound. think the only reason people go there is because it’s cheap.

I went straight to Kings Island rather than my hotel since the park was still open for an hour or so. Enough time to squeeze in a night ride or two.

Kentucky Kingdom

My hotel for that night was in Louisville, Kentucky, a couple of hours away. The highway was good, and it felt like it was 99% trucks at that hour. The road seemed to be at a constant dowhill, and you could tell that the scenery would be pretty spectacular in the daytime.

....

Next day was a double park day, I got a bit of a sleep in since the park didn’t open till 11am and wandered a short distance (I was staying about 400m away) to Kentucky Kingdom.

Beech Bend

With the park done I headed a couple of hours south to Bowling Green (Where Corvettes get made), stopping off at Dairy Queen for lunch. My destination, Beech Bend.

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Gazza

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The next day was the final major park of the Trip, Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari, which is a bit over 90 mins west of Louisville, over the border in Indiana in the interestingly named township of Santa Claus. Another sleep in this morning, because that part of Indiana is in a different time zone to Lousiville.

On the road towards the park you get a great Glimpse of the Voygage, and I also got to see the bits of track in a field for Thunderbird, the launched B&M Wingrider they are opening next year.

The park is a bit different to what I expected, its on a bit of a hillside, and very green and leafy.

I headed straight to the opposite corner of the park for Voyage. This is an enormous wooden coaster by the gravity group that features a few big hills, a twister section at one end with 90 degree banked turns, some more hills on the return trip, and then another twister section with an underground tunnel to complete the ride. Sailed straight into the front row. My initial thoughts were “Is this really the #1 / #2 wooden coaster in the world?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beast and very long, and very wild, but the airtime didn’t seem to be as powerful as it is made out to be, and it does run very roughly. I did a back seat ride straight after and given how long it goes for you really do get that feeling similar to being hit in the kidneys. The best part of the ride actually comes after the MCBR. You come up a hillside, and it is at ground level and it looks like the ride cant do much more, but the land drops off again, and there is a good set of airtime hills after. The 90 degree turn section at the midpoint is great, but the turns at the end are a bit torturous.

Next it was on to Gobbler Getaway , a Sally Shooting Dark ride, which was a real visual treat and despite being cardboard cutouts with UV lighting, felt like being a storybook. There was a nice “grandma” animatronic, very realistic, telling the story in the queue, which is that you are shooting, no sorry, calling the turkeys from their hiding spots to save thanksgiving. The guns make a repetitive “gobblegobble” sound when you shoot. Much like the Boo Blaster dark rides at the Cedar Fair parks it seemed really hard to hit targets, but I did get a few of the turkeys to pop out from their hiding spots. In the end where you reach a scene of the thanksgiving dinner table it turns out the protagonist has had a change of heart, and pizza is on the menu rather than roast turkey.

Looking across you can see the splashdown flume and loading station of the failed “Pilgrims Plunge” ride which closed after only a few years of operation. Will be interesting to see if they incorporate the existing infrastructure into a more reliable water ride.

The next coaster I hit was The Legend which follows a rather twisted out and back layout along the side of a hill, and passes underneath a few of the slides in Splashin Safari. The ride is only running one train at the moment, and things looked fine…only one queue switchback full, and then I got into the station and realised there was a whole other section to wait through. Really excellent ride, and properly disorientating in the sense that you lose track of if you are heading away or towards the station, quite lengthy too (extends further back than it looks in the queue). Very solid.

The final major coaster in the park is the Raven which is the smallest of the bunch, but excellent, follows a terrain layout including a sweeping turn by a lake. The whole time you are rushing through a mature forest and keeping a fast pace. Can see why this was voted one of the top wooden coasters back in the early 2000s.

For lunch I got a grilled chicken burger, which was very good. What made it extra nice is you got your lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion in a little plastic bag, so it was kept cold while the burger was hot. This brings me to the other big thing Holiday world is known for…Free soft drinks! Everywhere in the park are little buildings with Pepsi postmix machines, each with about 12 or so varieties, including all your regular soft drinks, powerade, ice tea (the latter two being good options because I don’t like fizzy drinks)

At the other side of the park was the Howler, a Zamperla Jr Gravity Coaster like the one at Adventure World, except this one ran freakishly smoothly. On the way I passed Liberty Launch , an S&S Double shot, so fairly similar to Batwing, except it’s only 40m tall, and you get two full launches up and down. Nice airtime.

For the time being I’d done all the dry rides I wanted so I headed into Splashin Safari. It’s supposed to be African themed, but the park seemed to have a real naivety when it comes to African theming. There were a few faux stone animals at the entrance, but the rest of the buildings and landscaping was just generic American style theme park buildings.

A really big water park anyway, perhaps mid way between the size of Whitewater World and Wet n Wild Gold Coast. 2 Wave pools, two big kids water play structures (and a toddler area, with slides like Wet n Wild Jr in Sydney). On top of that there were heaps of raft and multi person slides.

First one I hit was Baluki which is a behemoth bowl like Rip at WWW, except it had a couple of extra turns at the start. Thrill wise I think ours is probably better due to having a steeper drop. Oh, but capacity was great because they’d send rafts before the first one was out of the bowl!

Next I did Mammoth which is an enormous Hydromagnetic slide. Unlike other ones, this uses circular 6 person rafts. It really is a well run high capacity operation, and the single rider queue is great. Two groups of 6 are batched in the loading station, you stand as a group on scales and if you get a green light you board. Rafts move continuously through the station on a slow conveyer, and then onto a shorter conveyer that accelerates you match the speed of the main uphill conveyor. On the uphill conveyor it’s basically a conga line of rafts going up. From the top its into a short tunnel, and down the first drop. The ride is excellent fun, and better than the regular sized ride of this type (Seeing the reactions of fellow riders adds to the fun). It’s A very long ride too, so the drops and uphill sections seem endless. I’m guessing the rafts must weigh a fair bit because at the bottom of each drop is a permanent pivot crane (presumably to lift rafts out in the event of one not making it up a hill)

Next door is Wildebeest which is another hydromagnetic rocket slide, but with your regular 4 person rafts, like the one I had ridden the previous day. It was run much the same, and also had a single rider queue. Basically just a longer version of Supertubes, except you got way more water sprayed in your face. On the plus side the enclosed tunnels were properly dark, and not made of translucent fibreglass.

I headed across and tried out Zoombabwe a rather lengthy enclosed family raft slide (Like Taipan at Jamberoo) You got some decent wall time, and this was aided by the ride having some of the turns with the radius of the slide widened, giving the raft a bit more opportunity to splash up. A lot of dark slides drill random holes in the side to make it feel like you are flying through space. This one had African patterns and iconography drilled in at a few points.

After taking a few pics I tried out the slides at Hyena Falls. 3 of the slides are just generic 1 and 2 person raft slides (quite short…helix, drop, helix drop etc) which were average, but one of them was a Proslide Pipeline Wave. This is like Bombora at WnW Sydney, but scaled down for use by 1 and 2 riders rather than cloverleaf rafts (groups of two use a whirly wheel raft). I liked this one, good pop of weightlessness at the top…I reckon this is the sort of slide Whitewater World might put in down the track. A giant wave is basically made for the theme of the park.

From this end of the park you can get another glimpse of the construction of Thunderbird.

After some re-rides on Mammoth and Wildebeest I did Zinga which is the first ever proslide Tornado as far as I know. For all intents and purposes it is exactly the same as the Green Room, except it has an extra open air drop at the start.

Jungle Racer is a run of the mill head first mat racer, with a timing system (times of 6 seconds to get down the slide were pretty typical) It was 10 lanes ride, so that’s a lot of riders per hour!

Watubee was a teal coloured open air family raft slide, like Mammoth Falls, which was fairly middle of the road.

The last slides I had to try were Otorongo, another three single and double person raft slides. One was just a double downhill drop, another was a helix and big drop, and the 3rd was a long pitch black downhill slide.

Whilst I still had boardies on I donned a shirt I went across to the Raging Rapids. The loading station is cut into the hillside, so straight from the station you go through a tunnel, from there the course switches back and forth a couple of times, passing through a flooded western town along the way. It was okay.

I did a 3rd ride on Voyage, in the middle of the train to see if that improved things, but it was much the same.

Frightful Falls is the parks flume ride, this one also starts out with a tunnel, which was quite claustrophobic because its not just a trough cut into a tunnel, but the boat more or less floats through a concrete culvert underground with quite a low ceiling. After a few turns its up a straight open air lift hill and down the drop. Roughly on par with the Viking flume at Sea World.

Last ride I tried was Eagles flight , a Flying Scooters type ride. This one was built in the 70s, so I was hoping I could get it to snap…I could get a bit of twisting going, but still nothing crazy like you see in some videos.

With that it was almost closing time, so I finished the day with extra laps on the Raven and Legend, which had barley any queue at this point.

I got a few sunset pics of Raven from the outside of the park by the lake, and then got in the car back to Lousiville.

Overall, it’s a very solid park, quite pleasant, though the rides are fairly middle of the road. The B&M should really add to the place.

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Gazza

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The final park of the trip was Rainbows End in Auckland. I saw with my flights that I could have 11 hours in AKL if I didn’t take the first connecting one home, so I figured, why not?

I Got into AKL at around 6 in the morning and got a bus into the CBD, then a ferry across the harbour to Devenport to have breakfast. I mucked up, and thought skytower opened at 10, and not 9, so ended up cutting into my time at Rainbows End needlessly. Skytower was pretty good, a bit more modern than the CN tower in Toronto, and the glass floors were better positioned.

To get out to Manakau City where Rainbows end is located you can take a bus, or a train to the new rail spur there. i Was hoping I’d get on one of Aucklands new electric sets, but ended up on one of the older Diesel trains. From the station its a very short walk to the park.

Entry was about $50 NZD, ouch! First coaster I did was the Corkscrew Coaster, which was awesome, it ran as smooth as a B&M! However it was a bit slower than the Corkscrew was at Sea World, due to only having 6 of 7 cars on the train. Operations could have been improved. Waited about 6 or 7 trains, they weren’t making an effort to find pairs of guests to fill empty seats, so trains would go out about 2/3 full. Slow operations all around.

Next I did Gold Rush which is a custom built mine cart coaster similar to Eureka at Dreamworld. Not as tall though, the first half of the ride is very similar in feel to the first half of scooby doo, with some great animatronics, rolling mine carts and the like, and a cool little downhill banked slalom/’trick track’ type section. After that you go up a small lift hill, and down a gently sloped sweeping turn back to the station. Thankfully not much of a queue for this one.

I ticked off Choco Express in the kids area, which has a giant barrel vault roof over it to keep out the Auckland weather. (kinda similar to the DW main street roof, but rainbow coloured and made of steel). The coaster is just a couple of helixes.

Stratosfear is a Claw style ride, except it does a full 360 degree swing so you go upside down. It takes forever to do enough swings to build up the speed to make it all the way around, does 3 upside down revolutions, and then then is braked to a stop (so takes less swings to stop than start). For less daring riders there is a separate queue, where it only swings to 45 degrees. Barely any people did that. The queue theming was kinda odd (like most of the theming at the park), a giant blackboard with aerospace calculations, radiation warning signs, spacey music, and hand painted drawings of various aircraft in a line, and then a drawing of the ride itself.

With that I had run out of time and had to get to the airport, so sadly didn’t get to try the drop tower, the log flume :(((((( , and the 360 degree dome cinema.

It’s actually a very small park (smaller than I thought), probably smaller than LPS, and quite narrow. I terms of the vibe of the place it reminds me of Adventure Island in southport.

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downunder Contributor

downunder

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Wow, what a trip, I've been to all those parks except the Kiwi and SF ones.

Glad you discovered some of the hidden gems, Vortex at CW was absolutely insane at night when we did an ERT session on it - the cars were swinging madly from side to side after we hit the brake run. I agree with you on Blue Streak, it's a good one, I ride it multiple times when I visit.

No surprise to see the Voyage is painful as usual, it was brutal when I rode it in 2007. Magnum used to have much better airtime, but since they changed the brakes at the turnaround, much less so - in the early to mid noughties it was an airtime monster and 1.3 was truly the ejector eat. Wasn't fussed on Gatekeeper, but I love Maverick - or Mavershark, as the ride ops dubbed it during our ERT during Discovery Channel shark week.

I haven't been to DCA since 2001, even though I'm in the area every year, rather sleep in after Knott's Scary Farm - shame on me.

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