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("only I didn't say fudge") Haven't been in this thread for a month.... and now I wish I had just let that continue and just skipped over the last few weeks. Can't wait to see the Darien Lake thread debate about THE Predator becoming a steel, hybrid, ibox, Titan, totally tubular, sensually seductive .... whatever you want to call it..... coaster. But that will be for another day. Just someone please private message me when that starts so I can stay far away. Anyways, anything to keep Lightning Rod more reliable, as others have said, is the most important. How it is classified... well, I'll just call it an RMC and call it a day. It doesn't matter.

I think the name is a little weird but it's a good idea and I wish them success with it!

I always try to capture the aesthetic of not just the park, but where it's located. Most parks in the US have pretty homogeneous surroundings, though you'll find the occasional oddball -- the arid mountains around SFMM, the surrounded-by-water feel at Cedar Point, or (lol) the graveyard at Little Amerricka. But in Europe, it's so much more varied. I don't disagree with the Eastern Bloc comment -- I definitely got that feel from some parts of the park and some of the older buildings nearby. However, both the park and the area around it have quite a bit of new development too, so change is on the way. Great point on Lightning Run -- that is a coaster that Lech also reminded me of, though Lech is obviously superior by a pretty good margin. But they both try to pack a lot into a small footprint, they're both very well designed, and they're both non-stop action the whole way. I'm still kind of surprised more Hyper GT-X coasters haven't been built, but hopefully Vekoma's got more Lech-like stuff up their sleeves. That's a really tall order, but it's penance for their sins as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for the comments everyone!

Sea World San Antonio This park was not on my radar until 2020. It always seemed like a pleasant, midsize park with a few okay coasters that I might go to if it was convenient but would never plan a trip around. Then they built Texas Stingray which rounded out the lineup enough to appeal to me. It was still very much a “convenient” stop in what had been a trip of pure planning turmoil and if any of the Texas parks had to get bumped from the trip, it would have been this one. Fortunately that didn’t need to happen. Our day at SWSA went much better than our day at SWO. Don’t interpret that as me saying Texas has the better park. Florida’s is the flagship for a reason and everything from coasters to animal exhibits to landscaping and dining is a notch higher there. The difference is that on the day we went, SWSA ran with at least some semblance of normal operations. The only rides closed were Great White and a couple of flat rides. We never gave the flats consideration in the first place and I’m not about to lament missing one of three Batman: The Ride clones in the state. Crowds were manageable and there were clearly budgetary cutbacks, but it didn’t feel like SEAS took a hatchet to the place like Orlando did. Not all the coasters opened right away. The two available at opening were Journey to Atlantis and Super Grover’s Box Car Derby and the rest opened an hour later. The layout here is kind of unique. As I understand it, when the park first opened the whole property functioned as a single park, then over the years it was subdivided into three sections. Now when you enter under the iconic triple arch structure, the southern and largest side of the park to your right comprises Sea World proper featuring all the coasters and shows, while the east end just ahead has been redeveloped into an Aquatica water park, and the north end to your left is Discovery Point with dolphin and shark encounters. Having seen a bunch of the animal stuff a few days ago, we spent almost the entire time on the rides side with a stop to watch the Beluga show since we didn’t see it in Orlando. You’d think Sea World Orlando might have the grandest entrance, right? No, it’s actually San Antonio! The Covid effect reared its head most obviously with the park’s seasonal Bierfest event. They advertise it as a pretty standard theme park Oktoberfest beer and food event and this was just what we had a taste for after completing our first laps on all of the coasters. In practice it didn’t turn out quite as well. It was held in a courtyard area between Atlantis and Texas Stingray with a stage featuring a German-style show surrounded by small craft beer tents with more tents scattered along the midway. Unfortunately the venue was practically empty and we just couldn’t bear to sit there and watch the German show troupe half-heartedly perform to a plethora of empty benches and a bunch of bored-as-hell bartenders seemingly suffering from caffeine withdrawals. And the staff didn’t seem to even know how the event was supposed to work. It was one of those setups where bartenders don’t actually sell you the drink—you have to buy a ticket/wristband/whatever from a different booth then take that to the individual beer tents. A shrugging bartender sent us to a pair of booths in the center to buy our passes where we were met by another employee who wasn’t sure what to do and was apparently waiting for someone else to come train her. Maybe we were early or something, I don’t know. We knew there was a German restaurant out the back door of our Hyatt right on the Riverwalk, so we decided to just skip this thing and go there for our Oktoberfest fix. While it would have been nice to share a few beers in the park, it wasn’t a big deal since operations were otherwise just fine. Do I think I’ll come back next time I’m in Texas? Ehh, maybe not. The park was nice enough but none of the coasters really stand out, even Texas Stingray, and I’ll likely continue making regular visits to Sea World Orlando in the years to come. So unless Sea World San Antonio builds a big B&M, Mack, or Intamin to peak my interest again, this visit will probably be it for a while. Great White and Vampire at La Ronde are the last two North American Batman: The Ride clone credits I need. We actually thought we were going to be able to ride it later in the day… …until we eventually found this sign, which was a little more definitive. The festive Oktoberfest atmosphere around here is just so strong I can hardly believe it. You pretty much feel like you’re actually in Munich. Texas Stingray I was not as hyped for the latest GCI as I was for the two Gravity Groups. I figured it would be a pretty good ride because the layout looked fantastic in videos, but as we know, GCI is like the B&M of wooden coasters and they rarely deviate much from their safe, proven formula. So count me one-hundred percent surprised/not surprised when I hit the brakes after my first ride on it and thought, “this is what all the coaster YouTubers are so excited about?” It felt like a watered-down Goldstriker with little of that coaster’s sharp pops of airtime or feeling of controlled chaos. Texas Stingray felt surprisingly tame, like the transitions were all just a little more drawn-out than usual for GCI. I don’t think running slow was the problem. Even with socially distanced trains it still ran blazing fast. I will say that Texas Stingray might be the smoothest wooden coaster experience I’ve ever had. The steel structure/ipe wood/Millennium Flyer combo runs like a dream and I will always prefer these trains to Timberliners. The only wooden coaster that felt comparably smooth might be an opening season Outlaw Run. Overall through, speed and smoothness are not enough. A great wooden coaster should carry either airtime, intense laterals, a near out-of-control ferocity, or some combination of the three. Stingray didn’t seem to do any of that for me. My tastes in GCI differ from the consensus though. My favorites are the relatively unheralded American Thunder and Joris en de Draak. If those two aren’t your cup of tea, maybe Texas Stingray will be, but it’s a middle of the pack GCI for me. 7.5/10 GCI Rankings: American Thunder Joris en de Draak Thunderhead Gold Striker Troy Wodan Texas Stingray White Lightning Kentucky Rumbler Lightning Racer Prowler Apocalypse Roar Wildcat I think Texas Stingray has one of the best looking structures of any GCI. It is built over some slight terrain though it isn’t apparent on-ride. I approve of GCI doing a straight first drop for a change. It’s no Gravity Group drop, but there’s some nice airtime in the back few rows. I’ll be curious to see where Texas Stingray ranks when the next round of polls comes out. Many new GCIs score highly at first before the excitement settles to a more appropriate level a few years on. Steel Eel This was better than expected. While not a full scale hyper, Steel Eel delivers a slightly more forceful ride than its cousins Steel Force and Mamba. It finds a nice middle ground between those two and the big outlier in Morgan’s catalogue, Superman El Ultimo Escape. The experience in the back car was enjoyable though nothing to get excited about, but things get a little more interesting up front. You actually get some very abrupt airtime at the crest of those big cammelbacks. I thought it was almost Magnum-like a few times. Steel Eel is not the kind of clunky airtime machine Cedar Point’s big classic is, but how often do you ever ride something even reminiscent of it? Not often, and that’s why Steel Eel was a very pleasant surprise. Contrasting it with Texas Stingray is a study in how expectations can impact one’s enjoyment of a ride. I’m giving them both the same score despite the fact that I enjoyed Steel Eel more. If two coasters are equally good and you entered one with higher expectations and the other with lower expectations, the former will always feel like a disappointment no matter what it does well while the latter feels like you earned a nice bonus. 7.5/10 The scale of these two coasters plays tricks on me. My eye wants to see Steel Eel as a full size hyper and it has the effect of making Wave Breaker look massive by association. SWSA has adopted the Cedar Fair method to painting roller coasters: (1) Give one coaster the most high contrast combination of bright, primary colors possible, (2) choose an opposing set of bright, primary colors for the next coaster nearby, and (3) throw your hands up in the air, walk away, and assume the aesthetics will work themselves out on their own. Fortunately it worked out okay in the case of Steel Eel and Wave Breaker. Be it a trick of perspective or merely the lack of anything taller around it, Steel Eel certainly doesn’t look like a junior hyper while approaching from the midway. Steel Eel fails the airtime eye test and passes the butt test. It looks a little slow, but it’s deceiving! Like Sea World Orlando, the San Antonio park has great views across the central lake. This was the best dual train shot I was able to get. Am I the kind of enthusiast photographer who waits around for such things? Well, maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. It has the same 36 passenger trains found on Steel Force, Mamba, and Superman. With Steel Eel’s shorter track length, I bet it’s a capacity monster when running more than one train. Wave Breaker: The Rescue Coaster This is everything a deluxe family coaster should be. It’s fun and mildly thrilling without being intimidating. Throw a bunch of expensive theming on it and it could feel right at home in a Disney park. Wave Breaker is a coaster I wish was a lot longer because I felt so relaxed riding it. Give me a scenic railway version of this that spans the entire park. I’d ride it. Like any family coaster, scoring it on the same scale as bigger coasters is deceptive because it’s not playing the same game. It excels at what it was meant to do. 6/10 Wave Breaker is um… not a capacity monster. I'm interested to see how the similar, but more compact Jet Rescue at Sea World Australia rides one day. With their new Gravity Group, that park just added itself to my to-do list. I don’t know how much use the park gets out of the lake as a show venue, but I’d like to see another large coaster skimming across its surface one day. Journey to Atlantis I don’t have a ton of thoughts about this one other than to call it like I see it: it’s a poor man’s Atlantica. The theming, setting, and scale Europa Park gave their Mack Super Splash is not found here. Even something as simple as the camelback after the drop adds a lot to Atlantica. Sea World really could have done a lot more with the Atlantis rides in Texas and California. 5/10 Journey to the chute-the-chute. The turntables and reverse drop are fun elements even if they seem kind of silly and pointless. Our hotel for this leg of the trip was the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk. It’s one of the nicest downtown city Hyatts in the country and has the trademark atrium lobby. This was the only hotel we stayed at that felt somewhat busy. If it wasn’t for people wearing masks you could easily have fooled yourself into thinking it was business as usual here. The Hyatt has prime placement on the Riverwalk. Back in my Japan trip report from 2019, I recounted how my experience at the Roosevelt Lounge at Tokyo DisneySea was influenced by an earlier visit to another “Roosevelt lounge”—the Menger Hotel Bar in San Antonio. Well, we’re back! In 1898 Theodore Roosevelt used the Menger Bar as an enlistment station for what later became known as the Rough Riders, Teddy’s regiment during the Spanish-American War. Supposedly, if you enlisted, you were served a whiskey. Talk about an incentive. The Menger Bar wasn’t quite as charming this time in its Covid configuration with bar stools removed and seating confined to tables on the upper balcony level, but what can you do? I drank to the kindly, apologetic Japanese bartender at DisneySea who tried so hard to understand what I meant when I attempted to order an old fashioned. She has no idea there’s a buzzed coaster enthusiast 6,400 miles away in Texas thinking about her. If the staff is to be believed, this is a bullet hole from when Teddy’s trigger finger got a bit too frisky at the enlistment table. The lobby of the Menger Hotel is rich with history. Mounted antlers and horns from game animals Teddy shot. Teddy’s handkerchief with a likeness of himself. Hey, I’d carry a hanky with a pic of me on it if I were Theodore Roosevelt too. Dollhouse furniture belonging to Teddy’s daughters. A crow Teddy shot. Teddy’s Almond Joy wrapper. Okay, so I made these last five up, but I had you there for a moment, didn’t I?

I heard Six Flags has some rides for sale if Indiana Beach is interested...

So basically there were about as many rides open as there would be in peak season with 15 mph winds.

Update: Christmas came early for me (From Sunday) Also, it contains the cleanest water in the city of Tampa. The park closed early yesterday and will remain closed today due to a water main break. I guess I almost got 2020ed but they filled it up just in time.

This brings back memories. I went to Legendia in 2018, when there was not that much about this park on the internet yet other than reviews of Lech Coaster. Lech really feels like a complete experience, with a fully themed queue and even some theming during the ride. However, the rest of the park looks exactly like you would expect a park in the Eastern Bloc to look. It is green and has a lake, but I remember the foliage being fairly overgrown and most of the rides had a carnival feel. (The area around the park is very "Eastern Blocky").

Wow such a great report. Looks like a fun park to visit. Seeing the TPR videos and reading your comments about Lech Coaster I really hope these start to pop up here in the states. Thanks for sharing!

what a wonderful report - with fantastic pictures (as usual). Thanks for sharing, Andy. . .love this!

Such a great report!!! I really loved this park and can't wait to see how it evolves the next 10 years. Lech Coaster is amazing and we need Vekoma to get back out there and sell as many of those as they did SLC's and Boomerangs!!!

A few years ago I was blown away by rides like Maverick and Lightning Run. Tiny rides that pack a crazy punch. From everything I have read on Lech says the same. Watching videos it seems to hold its speed so well. You took some great photos. It was a great read as well. Thank you for taking the time to post the report. Lech looks incredible

I never realized that this park was located in such an urban area so close to the city, very cool aesthetic. I love how Europe has so many parks like this. Great pictures as always, Lech looks fantastic, really hoping a park in America get one of these newer Vekomas sometime in near future.

While I give the edge to Lech Coaster over Hyperion, your assessment of this park is right on the money. They're definitely going in the right direction. I missed the mountaineering museum.

More pics! Continuing with a loop through the park to check out some of the various flat rides. I mentioned in the TR that Dragon Wrestling Tournament was no longer. That's a shame. Mainly because it's one of the best names in a park full of awesome ride names. But also because ... this. This is amazing. RIP, Dragon Wrestling Tournament. (for those wondering, Dragon Wrestling Tournament was a Huss Flic Flac.) Next up on the way through the park -- Giant Water Pump. Giant Water Pump is an extremely small frisbee-type ride. I think it only seats 6 people. Like a smaller version of that bell ride at Hansa Park (that I actually somehow got on). Music Box -- another kids flat. A carousel! Phoenix. It's not just a coaster at Knoebels. This one is an Enterprise. Given that these are disappearing, it's good to note that Legendia still has one. Magical Lake Expedition. Yeah, that's some magic. It's a pirate ship, with zero pirates in sight, but a gratuitous amount of mermaids. Magical Lake Taxi is some kind of boat ride that goes out over the lake. Not sure it was operating on the day we were there. Would be good for some closer views of Lech Coaster on a day with a little more time at the park. The Tea Cups are ... just called Tea Cups. The Carousel is ... the Carousel of Love! The Royal Ballroom is... ...a Trabant! Wonder Garden is ... actually, I'm not sure what it is. Did anybody go through this? It looks like it's some kind of walkthrough in a spinning tunnel, maybe with weird effects of some kind? I really wanted to check it out, but as I recall, I was running short on time to either get to lunch or get out of the park. They have inverting bicycles. That's a hard pass from someone as clumsy as me. Join the circus! This is what you always wanted! These are all your dreams come true! Circus Hoppala, unfortunately, was down for the count (and has since been removed). I believe it's a Moser Hoppla, and it basically just inverts a lot. Not sure I've seen one of these before. This picture barely looks like it was taken in a theme park. A pleasant scene. Open areas for people to just take it easy. Play areas for kids. European parks are smart for building things like this. US parks should take note. Finally -- what's in the dome? Like I said -- it's Hawaii. Or Florida, or the Caribbean, or whatever. It's a beach party. Also, there's a cow... ...and a robo-mower, which I was way too amused by. Scary Toys Factory was inop. I'll have to find my scary toys elsewhere. Across the water, it's Dragon Temple. Skyflyer is flying. That brings us to lunch, in a nicely themed restaurant. Seriously, in this one picture, there's more cohesive theming than in that entire other ... er, fine, I said I wasn't going to talk about them anymore. Lunch is served! It was great! The Fanta Shokata (Elderberry-Lemon) I'm not as sure about,, but I'd never seen one of those before, let alone tried one. Anyone up for some Polygamy? Alright, Lunch is done, so let's get back to Lech. Lech is visible from pretty much anywhere on the park's waterfront, so with a long enough lens, you can get a whole variety of different angles. Here's one that shows off the steepness of the drop. A big flip into the first inversion. Airtime -- and that big white bird again. Also, if you look closely, I'm pretty sure Steve is in about 70% of the Lech pictures in this part of the TR. Just look for the bald guy in the red shirt with his hands up! More airtime! Lots of crazy track on this view, and you can see the inversion heading into the ride station. This is sort of the best "full view" of Lech from across the water. Cresting the lift. Lech Coaster is 131 feet tall. It has three inversions. Lech has a max speed of 59 MPH. Lech is 2979 feet long. I think that's all the pertinent stats. Thankful that the sun came out for a bit so I could get a couple good cycles with nice lighting! And now a few pictures from closer to the coaster. That's a drop alright. Going down? Nowhere else to go. The big white bird makes a nice prop for pictures like this one. Plus I got really lucky on the timing here! A closer view of the bird. A big inversion from the back side of the station. So many good photo angles of Lech Coaster, and I barely scratched the surface of them. Another inversion shot! (another appearance by Steve!) Into the station! (seriously, did Steve ever get off this ride all afternoon?) The in-station inversion needs to find its way into more coaster designs. It's awesome. So many emotions. I have no idea what this award is, but whatever it is, Lech deserved it. Barry and David agree! And now here we are, in 2020, and we're actually advocating for parks to buy new Vekoma roller coasters. What a world. One more ride I got a few pictures of -- Diamond River, the park's splash boat. Diamond River is adjacent to Lech at the north end of the park. It actually has two hills and two drops, but I only had time for pictures of this one. The splash begins. Skloosh. Water everywhere. Diamond River looked like it wasn't a complete soaker, but nearing the end of our time at the park, I wasn't going to risk it. Extra credit for the nicely-themed boat, too. Heading toward the exit, but one more place to stop on the way out. This is Korona Ziemi. Literally, Korona Ziemi translates to "Crown of the Earth" ... but what it actually means in Polish is "seven summits." As in, the highest points on the seven continents on Earth. And Legendia has a museum for it. Amazing. Mountaineering artifacts and informational signs! Boots and helmets and other mountaineering equipment! The star of the show? Gigantic scale models of the seven summits themselves. The grand-daddy of them all, Mount Everest. North America's highest mountain peak -- Denali in Alaska. The level of detail on each mountain model is pretty stunning. Somebody spent a lot of time on this, and I absolutely love it. That brought me to the end of my day at Legendia, with the group about to head out. I waited several minutes for a train to run on Lech Coaster for this closing shot, but no such luck. This will have to do. Such a cute little park, with a really bright future. Hope I get to visit again some time. That's it for this TR segment. Will try not to wait 5 months between segments for the next one.

I felt Oziris was an excellent example of a new school B&M Inverted, where Banshee's long and gliding inversions lacked the wow factor for me. I'm grateful that Monster is able to fit in the space, and am just hoping it rides more like an original Batman clone than a wing coaster

Raptor plans scrapped.