Hey guys! It's great to have theme park season back in full swing! Just like the past 2 years I'll be reporting on all of my trips this year. This year I will be going to:
Bowcraft Playland
Keansburg Amusement Park
Lake Compounce
La Ronde
Six Flags Great Adventure
Dollywood
Beech Bend Park
Kentucky Kingdom
Kings Island
Holiday World
Six Flags St Louis
Silver Dollar City
Worlds of Fun
Adventureland
Ocean City, NJ boardwalk parks
Not necessarily in that order, but it's pretty accurate. I've already been to my first three. Sadly, not too many pictures, but when I get to larger parks that I haven't been to, I will be taking more pictures. As always, though, I will start off with my top 20 from the beginning and I will continue to update it as I go along (if it changes)
1. Boulder Dash
2. Ravine Flyer II
3. Phoenix
4. Wicked Cyclone
5. Maverick
6. Phantom's Revenge
7. Skyrush
8. Bizarro (Superman the Ride)
9. El Toro
10. Manta (SWO)
11. Ride of Steel
12. Intrimidator 305
13. Kumba (BGT)
14. Batman The Ride
15. Superman - Ride of Steel
16. Storm Runner
17. Alpengeist
18. Coney Island Cyclone
19. Montu
20. Comet (Great Escape)
The first day of this summer included 2 small parks in New Jersey. I could have tacked on another mall with a figure 8 SBF spinner but I was too lazy. My sister and I went to Bowcraft Playland and Keansburg.
Bowcraft Playland
Living in North Jersey, Bowcraft is one of the closest parks with a non-kiddie coaster to me, and I hadn't been. I felt obliged to go. We decided to show up a little late to let the park get running before we show up. First impressions were decent seemed like a basic family park with a lot of the basic flats. Decent paving and whatnot. It's right on the side of a street which was slightly interesting. It's not really in the nicest area though. We had to drive through Union, which if you know New Jersey, you know it's notorious for not being such a nice place. The park didn't show that though and the road it was on was nice enough.
Then we headed to Crossbow...
When we got there we walked onto the queue, but we couldn't see anyone in the station. When we got to the top, there was no operator. We could have basically walked on the coaster and operated it ourselves no problem. Kind of scary. Figured maybe it was down, so we headed back to the kiddie coaster. That was the same situation, but the flats were running no problem. We asked around and everybody kept saying that "He'll be there soon." Like the operators decided to spend a little more time sipping their coffee. Mind you, we got there 30 minutes after opening. Finally, we saw an operator on Dragon, so we hopped on.
First coaster of the year was a kiddie coaster! Yay!
Finally, we saw an operator over at Crossbow, so we headed over.
I know when this opened it was the first of it's kind or whatever. It's also surprisingly tall for a family coaster. I have to say though, I don't really like Zierer, so I wasn't anticipating much, and I didn't get much. Some cool positives though. Definitely a sufficient family coaster, not bad.
The park was ok. It is very affordable for a credit stop, so you won't necessarily regret going if you're interested as long as you don't show up at opening.
Keansburg Amusement Park
We then headed to Keansburg Amusement Park which is on the beach in the bay south of Staten Island. We rode a bunch of flats and picked up the credits. It was a fun park, but the coasters left something to be desired.
We started with the Tilt-a-Whirl which spun quite a bit.
Next was the S&S double shot, which was worth the entire trip (as they usually are). But this one was special. Not only did we get to ride twice, but the view of the beach, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan in the distance was really great.
We got the credits next. We headed to Looping Star first and it was even worse than I expected. Maybe I shouldn't have ridden in the back, but this coaster was one of the roughest coasters that I have ever been on.
Next was the kiddie coaster Sea Serpent which had one of the worst jolts on a lift hill lol.
We rode the wave swinger and the pirate ship with both also gave great views. The pirate ship was one of the better ones I've been on at an amusement park, but nowhere near fair/carnival level.
It's a fun park, but if your not from the area, I wouldn't suggest it unless you go extreme credit hopping lol.
Lake Compounce
My sister and I decided to drag my dad along for Lake Compounce this time since he hasn't been. As always, Boulder Dash was only running one train because operations at Palace parks always have to suck apparently...
We were going to head to Phobia first, but it was closed at opening. So our first ride was Boulder Dash. It had been 2 years since our last ride, so we were eager to ride again. Half way through the ride my dad said "It won't stop!" Which perfectly sums up why this is the greatest coaster on the planet. The rocket fast pace of this ride is still baffling after almost 30 lifetime rides. When he got off he said "I just breathed for the first time now" lol. I rode in the very back seat so they could take the smoother seat in front of me. It wasn't too bad aside from two very rough spots. The quadruple up half way through the ride has a valley that's a little shaky, but I can bear it no problem. The actual serious spot is on the triple up at the end. One of the valleys made me bounce up and down a few times in less than a second which was approaching unbearable. It was almost as bad as the first valley on Hell Cat at Clementon Park. The front wasn't so bad, but it was even worse in the front of the back once it had warmed up. I'd say the only way to ride this now is the very front seat, which is disappointing. Regardless, every ride I get on this is better than any ride I've gotten on any other coaster.
You probably didn't notice, but this picture is reused from my 2014 report. You can tell I was too lazy to take pictures lol.
On my final ride, my dad sat out and we rode in the second to back. The people behind us was an older man with either his child or grandchild. He was laughing the entire way and on every airtime hill he screamed "Woah". When we got to the brake run he couldn't stop laughing. He screamed "Wow" and "Holy Guacamole! I was not expecting that! Holy Guacamole!" This is the reason I love coasters so much. Experiencing things like this with people can make my day. And this guy was so adorable and overwhelmed. The child seemed to be enjoying it as well. And then there are enthusiasts shutting this thing down for being "rough" even before a few parts got iffy.
I have a question though that I hope someone could answer. In the front car, the front left wheel keeps popping up and down on the lift. I've never seen this on any other PTC train. Why is this happening? It just seems odd and can be a little unsettling.
After our first ride we saw Phobia Phear Coaster open, so we headed over to ride it for the first time.
We rode in the front and back once each. The coaster was really fun. It's funny because I find myself ranking it very close to Sky Rocket at Kennywood (which is the earlier version of this technically) despite being completely different. I think this is slightly better because it's a more complete ride. However, Sky Rocket has some of the coolest inversions. I preferred the front because the downward twist was very awkward in the back since it was combined with the trim. The upward twist in the front was great though. The heartline roll was cool being so high, but I barely noticed the height. The non-inverting loop was just meh and made me grey a tiny bit. The launch had multiple tugs which was weird too. But overall it was pretty good and a great addition to the park even though it didn't empty Boulder Dash's line like I wanted it to.
We rode the log flume which had really slow operations, so we waited forever. We also rode the S&S Screamin' Swing which was, in classic S&S fashion, broken down at the beginning of the day. These are really fun though, but this has a super short cycle.
I had a fun day, but this park needs a serious upgrade in operations if I'm going to be a regular visitor. It's getting ridiculous with the past 4 times having Boulder Dash running 1 train.
After 3 parks, no changes yet to the top 20.