Jer Goes To Canada Pt. 2 - Darien Lake

I just want to start of stating that if all the stars hadn't aligned perfectly as they had, this trip would never had been possible, and I'm so thankful for where my life has ended up now to make this trip, and next years trip more than just pipe dreams. Anyway, enough with that stuff, onto the report.

This was my first time to Canada and only my second time out of the country. So I had no idea what to expect for the park, and for the country on my way up. I met up with my friend Joey at his house the night before, and we drove up the same night, meaning I was in the car for a grand total of 9hrs all day (not including work before) Which means I was in a haze the entire time, so if I miss any details of my trip, well, I'm sorry

(I would like to apologize for my lack of photos, I was taking on my phone that I forgot to charge the night before)



We got to the park at 9:30, 30min before it opened to the public. They had opened the area of the park with Leviathan early, but we decided it best to start at the low capacity rides first, wait for the crowds to die down, and more importantly give Leviathan a chance top warm up for the day.



Naturally, our first ride of the day was the Volaire, Time Warp. Now I had never ridden one of these before, my only previous contact being total spite at Rye Playland, so I had no idea what to expect, and honestly, It wasn't all that bad. Now I can understand where these would get a negative reputation, those cars were terrible, and my chin was definitely dislodged. Yet, it really wasn't that bad, and definitely not the worst in the park.

Continuing on the theme of low capacity first, is Thunder Run, It was an unremarkable ride, just a powered mine train. I did like the themeing in the mountain and it picked up some decent speed, nothing amazing though. Across from that we grabbed the wild mouse, and then headed for Vortex.

I was pretty excited for Vortex, it was only my second arrow suspended, my first being Iron Dragon @ Cedar Point. So I was excited to see what a real suspended coaster was like. I'll tell you what, I really enjoyed it for what it was worth. It was great, fun ride. I only wish it was a little bit longer.





From Vortex, we made our way to the kid's section of the park for Ghoster Coaster and the Silver Streak the family inverted coaster. Silver Streak was nothing special, however I really enjoyed Ghoster Coaster, It was such a fun family coaster, and of the few family/kids creds I've ridden, this one is definitely one of my favorites.

From there we walked back into the real park and rode The Mighty Canadian Minebuster. And let me tell you something, I thought it was just :dontswear:. If it wasn't rattling my insides to submission it wasn't really doing anything at all. Yet even though it was mostly awful, I feel bad talking too poorly of it, because it didn't really do much in the first place. After Minebuster it was a quick walk to Backlot: Stunt Coaster. I was also curious about these rides from when they opened, and other than a decent launch, and surprisingly powerful helix, it failed to impress.

Behemoth was next, and I had high hopes, this was my 3rd B&M hyper, with the other two being great (Nitro & Chariot) I didn't think this could go wrong. But I was wrong, i'm not going to say it was bad, because technically it wasn't. But it was just boring. It was trimmed to hell, and other than a decent first drop didn't really offer too much in the way of forces.





Once lunch was over, we headed for Joeys only +1 of the day, Wonder Mountian's Guardian. While I struggle to call it a cred, it really technically is. We both seemed disappointed by a lackluster coaster section (one drop) a pretty poor shooter (couldnt really see what you were shooting and the effects were pretty dark) and a deeply disappointing vertical drop section (despite being twice as large as Verbolten's it felt shorter) Overall, nothing to write home about.

I then broke off to ride Dragon Fire on my own, it was the only walk on for the whole day and I could see why. It wasn't the worst Arrow Looper I've ridden. But no, it wasn't good. Now there was only one coaster standing between us and Leviathan, Wild Beast. I was dreading this all day, I expected the worst, and you know what... It wasn't that bad. The worst pain I suffered was ramming my shoulder into joey's razor blades he called shoulders. The ride even had 2 pretty decent pops of airtime. So...good on you


Finally, Leviathan, I was hyping this up for myself all day. After the longest wait of the day we were directed to the back row, the last place I expected to be, and yet I would have wanted to be anywhere else. I absolutely loved this thing. It was smooth, fast, had amazing airtime, and hell even though it was short, the length felt just right for what it was trying to pull off.







That was the last ride of the day, since by then the Waterpark was starting to empty out and everyone was flooding back into the park. We only got one ride on everything, but to say I'm disappointed would be a lie.

My impressions of Canada's Wonderland are like my first impressions of SFNE. Its a pretty mediocre park, with one truly excellent cred to draw me back again, and I look forward to that day.



Stay tuned for day 2 of my trip to Darien Lake, where we find out if it's really that bad.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Did you meet the people at the park for the CC meet?

Is it awful of me to say, I didn't even realize there was on going on? When was it? I was there on the 6th

This TR is kind of late.

Yeah I kinda felt the same way about Canada's Wonderland. A lot of coasters, but most of them are crap. I just didn't like Leviathan much and I didn't have a problem with Minebuster. Plus SkyRider was still there and that was the best coaster in the park.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Jer wrote:

Is it awful of me to say, I didn't even realize there was on going on? When was it? I was there on the 6th

This TR is kind of late.

They're at CW today (10th).

Nah I was just way behind on posting my TR thanks to work and such

I need to keep lurking more and keeping up with my CC happenings.

Anyway, just finished typing this up, enjoy!!

Pt. 2: Darien Lake

This park....this park. It has a stigma to it. I've repeatedly heard it was one of the worst parks people have been to. I mean mine is Six Flags America, so the competition is fierce. I've also heard it has been cleaned up and improved. Well, was it that bad?

I have even less photos from this part of the trip, not because my phone was dead, I was just too lazy this time around, so there are rides that are completely missing photos, and again I apologize, but if you're here for the photos, you arent really reading this.

The day started out just fine, we got the park 30min before opening and were waiting in the entrance plaza for the park to open. I remember turning to Joey and saying "This park doesn't seem that bad yet" which the only response was a reassuring "yet" We made a bee-line to Ride of Steel first, knowing it would be the longest wait of the day. I had, expectations for this ride. Ride of Steel at SFA is by a long shot the worst hyper I've ever ridden. So needless to say my expectations were great.

Before I get into the ride itself, I want to take a moment to tell you guys the operations at Darien Lake are some of the absolute worst. Ever ride runs only one train, and its not that they have more than one and choose to only run one....no, there is only one train for every ride!

Now superman actually just got a new train. It had traditional T-bars and very comfy seats. i'm saying this to compare to the one at SFA because holy crap, they made a huge difference. Not only was this one better than I expected, it was actually a great ride. Albeit boring given the huge helixes and the long straight. The rides first drop was excellent in the back row, each of the airtime hills offered some great pops, and those last 3 at the end were shockingly good. Is this one top 10 worthy? no, definitely not, but it was actually a very good ride, better than Behemoth I even thought. So good on you.





We decided since the park had terrible operations anyway to just jump form ride to ride in a logical order, instead of heading for specific ones like at Canada's Wonderland. So next up, Predator. This is a dinn woodie, that was allegedly considered for a RMC conversion in 2013/14. The ride looked to have a great layout, but given the history, and what we were up against, it didn't instill much hope.

Now im not sure if this is because we were in the front row, or if I'm crazy. But again it was surprisingly good. It had some great airtime, was just rough enough to enjoy but not be unbearable, and if not for some terrible trims at the end kept great momentum during the rather good layout. Again, im surprised by this park.

Up next was a personal first, Moto-Coaster, a zamperla moto coaster and from my understanding the first of its kind. Now there isn't much here to comment about so I'm just going to say it out right. The launch was fun, then it didn't do much of anything and the riding position killed me.





Following Moto-Coaster was one i was actually looking forward to, Viper. I love a unique arrow looper because you cant really get combinations of inversions like this anymore. So as we were walking to the station, people were leaving, and more people, and more. When we finally made it (It was a considerably long walk) we found out the ride was closed. We decided it would be best to wait it out. After 15min of so there was an announcement that it would be opening any time soon and were told to leave. Did I just get spited? by an Arrow looper? Yes....I did. We waited at the end of the line for an employee to ask what happened his response was a wonderful "I know, but I cant tell you" well, fantastic then.







So we moved on to the last credit of the day, Mind Eraser. There is nothing I can say other than "The second worst SLC I've ridden" but at least it gave me a great photo.



As we were leaving the torture device a miracle occurred. Viper was running! So we ran there as fast as my fat ass could take us and we hopped on as soon as possible...and it was underwhelming. Not the worst Arrow Looper, but no where near the best. Most of the elements were fine, but the batwing had such snappy transitions. That however was the only painful part so i'll give it another pass.

So I go back to my first question, is Darien Lake the worst park ever? No, not by a long shot, it was fairly clean, with some decent creds, and lots of room to expand. Will I be going back any time soon? No probably not, but if I had no choice, I don't think I would say no outright.



That ends it for the shortest coaster weekend of my life, hopefully it wont be the last trip of the year for me, but you never know. Next year I have a huge trip planned and I hope to document it all here, as well have even more photos

Thank you so much for reading!!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Predator is a really fun coaster. Honestly, Dinn Corp gets a worse reputation than it should. The only reason for their bad rep is Mean Streak being a snorefest (and Cedar Point fanboys can't handle a wooden coaster). But yeah if you sit anywhere but the very front, Predator's a mess.

And yeah ROS is miles better than SROS. It's not the restraints either. It just runs like an absolute beast. I almost blacked on the first helix and the second helix has some crazy lats by the end. SROS was still good though IMO.

If you ever go up there again, you should go to Seabreeze and Martin's Fantasy Island. Seabreeze is a great park with the most bats**t crazy log flume ever, and Martin's Fantasy Island is a s**thole, but Silver Comet's great .

I have actually been to Seabreeze, I love it there!! Bobsleds are amazing

WE were actually supposed to go there after Darien Lake, but I had a 6hr drive home from Rochester and we were only going to have maximum 1.5hrs there. It wasn't worth it.

[mkingy]

Nice trip report I'm surprised the volare wasn't the worst in the park at Canada's Wonderland haha, I hate those things!

Yeah I was surprised too. I was expecting the worst when it came to that ride. Perhaps thats why when it wasn't so bad I was honestly surprised.