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Don't forget it also has the slowest lift hill so it just takes FOREVER!!!

Steel Curtain has the absolute slowest operations I've experienced on any coaster ever. The staff is slow, the one train operations are slow. I don't understand it at all since other coasters in the park are perfectly fine, it's like they put the worst employees on the most popular coaster and said "hey we don't need both trains, what's an extra 3 minutes per dispatch on top of the 15". So while you could get a few rides on it, I would plan to buy the VIP pass if you want re rides. I pretty much skip the coaster every time we go unless we have a pass for it. Even the one time the ride had a small wait outside of the station, the wait for that was 45 minutes to an hour for essentially 5 to 6 trains worth of people and that was with two train operation.

First of all, something needs to be said... ***** WARNING / CAUTION / DANGER / TRIGGER WARNING***** This thread will feature a lot of very similar looking pictures. It's not my fault that all of these boardwalk parks happen to have similar if not identical rides. If seeing such imagery will cause you offense, to feel distressed, or to become exhausted from having to scroll through them, please do not continue in this thread. I'm also not a professional photographer, nor does my phone have the best camera in the world. My intent was to document every single ride at these rarely-discussed parks. Thank you and have a nice day. Okay, with that out of the way, we can begin! Stop #1 - Keansburg Amusement Park, Keansburg How this place continues to exist boggles the mind.... But first, a side note about my personal history with this town: I was born here, and lived there from age 0 to 6, from 1983 to the summer of 1989. My house was in bicycle-distance from the amusement park, and I distinctly recall riding there with my friends the last summer we lived there, without parents. Did I mention the route passes by a (now-defunct) strip club called Chasers (as in "chubby chasers")? Man, was it a different time back then. Not only that, but my father lived in that town since he was born, and was actually a games attendant at the park when he was a teenager, so yeah, my family has quite a bit of history there. Why did we move? Because the town was apparently a shithole then and has only gotten worse. The value of my old house, even with the new second story addition, is around $300k. "Wow, that's not cheap," you might say, but when you consider that the average home price in Monmouth County, NJ, is $550,000, yeah not looking so good anymore. Median household income? $39,000 Monmouth County as a whole is $65,000. My parents didn't want me going to school there, and I struggle to think what might have come of me had we stayed. Anyway, here's a picture of that old house of mine, mind you back then it didn't have that second story on it. Anyway, enough personal nonsense, on to the park! Just outside the gates, there's some batting cages, that most definitely haven't changed in 30 years. A little food stand, not open...a trend you'll see throughout this section. Many of these rides (you'll probably be able to tell which) actually date all the way back to the 1930s. Which is pretty impressive in my book. The park itself traces its history back to 1904. Classic train ride, has seen better days. Car ride, was operating. Planes, were operating. Kiddie drop tower, was operating. Kiddie Ferris wheel, was operating. Kiddie carousel, was operating. Motorcycles, were operating. \ Boats, were operating. Roto Jets....definitely have seen better days. This looks like a Whip, but is actually just a circle, so I'm not really sure the purpose other than just go 'round in circles. Was operating. Yet another "various vehicles rotate" ride. Was operating. Classic fire trucks, one of the older rides at the park. Was operating. One of the newer additions, was operating. Original Loop-o-Plane! Not operating. Adult, mini-double-shot tower. Not operating. Also not the smallest adult drop tower you'll see in this thread. Tornado, operating. The Haunted Manor. No, this is not the famous Spook House, which opened in 1931, which I'll talk about later, but instead a formerly-travelling haunted house that first opened in 1995, and then settled at this park in 2002. Sadly, not open (this was one of my reasons for visiting). Bumper cars, operating. Moby Dick, not operating. It may look like it, but it was just sitting there in that position. "Thriller," a Gravitron. Not operating. Tilt a Whirl, not operating. Zamperla flyer, was operating. Chance Chaos, the ultra-rare. You guessed it, not operating. Yep, they even have one of these things. If you've never seen it in action, as it rotates around, it rises and falls on eccentricly-mounted wheels. That's how they got their fun back in the day! Yes, not operating, of course. Basically, this entire half of the park was not operating. Including all of the following: Aww, cute little baby teacups! I think someone forgot to put the wheels back on LOL. None of them had wheels. They do have an actual Whip, albeit kiddie-sized. Red Baron (rotating/elevating planes), under construction. Kiddie train, under repairs. Yes, that is how decorated it is normally. They also have two Go-Kart tracks. And a boardwalk park staple, the burlap sack slide. Ah. Bev and Wally's arcade. How I so remember dropping dollars and dollars of quaters into the arcade games here....Outrun, Donkey Kong, Hang-On...the list goes on and on. Alas, now reduced to 100% redemption games. Sad, sad indeed. Another arcade, the Game Room. Do you think they paid the appropriate royalties for the artwork? At least this one had a tiny, tiny section of non-redemption games! And a full-size carousel, which did not appear to be operating. Back to the rides of the park, they've got pirate ship that is super-well themed, and totally stands out from the rest of this abandoned-looking place. A Wave Swinger, that looks kinda new. Sea Serpent, their kiddie coaster, which looks a lot older than it is (it's a 1998 Miler model). Which is right next to the world's tiniest and worst decorated log flume ever. And finally, the star of the show, Looping Star, a Pinfari looking Zylkon, that has been at this park since 2015 but has been operating and traveling since the mid '80s or '90s. Of course, it's closed. So yeah, about what I expected from coming here. Oh, and all of those kiddie rides I mentioned as operating? Yeah, they only had about 4 ride operators shuffling around to the different rides. Which was fine, because there was like 3 families there, and me, and that's it. You might say "well, it's a Monday at the end of August, lots of kids are back in school, etc. etc." You will see from my later parks on this blitz road trip, yeah that didn't matter. All of the others were packed. They also have a tiny water park, that similarly appeared not that populated. Oh, I almost forgot, the Spook House! Some history: This dark ride, built by the Pretzel Company (famous for Devil's Den at Conneaut, Haunted House at Camden Park, Spook-a-rama at Deno's in NY, and the original Dante's Inferno at Morey's, to name a few), opened in 1931 as the "Mystery Ride," seen here in a photo provided by the park's website: Those cars, and the track, continued to operate all the way up to 2012, albeit with some changes to the scenery inside and out. Here's a couple of photos showing the ride over the years. 1970s, from Pintrest. 1992, from Wordpress. Mid-2000s, from Patch.com The park's website says the following: "One of Keansburg Amusement Park’s oldest rides and seen on History Channel’s American Restoration, is undergoing a complete restoration!" Yeah, not so much. There is zero sign of the ride anywhere in the park; the old location it used to be at is now (presumably, based on the sign overhead) a games stand. I asked the guy selling tickets about it, and he had never heard of it. A manager standing behind him said "You mean the ride that got destroyed by (sic) Hurricane (sic) Sandy? It's never coming back." Major, MAJOR bummer. I'll continue to hold out hope that it one day returns, but I'm not holding my breath. So, I left this place with zero credits and zero dark rides. On the plus side, I only spent like $3 for parking plus an extra hour out of my day to get here. I honestly don't know how this park survives. The area is majorly depressed, there are tons of better park options around, many rides appeared to be in a state of disrepair that couldn't have been new, it's not supported by any government or historical preservation society. Because of my memories here, I'll really be sad if it ever closes down, but the logical part of me thinks that would be a better fate for the park than continuing to putter along the way it is. Next up: Jenkinson's Boardwalk in Point Pleasant. Which probably won't get posted until next week sometime (work the next two days then a SFoG/Carowinds trip over the long weekend). I just really wanted to get this one up first since I had so much to say about this place. Thanks for reading!

I personally wasn’t able to go but have seen several people comment on Facebook that the Thrill-A-Thon event went well and that it was a lot of fun. This was the first time that the park ran the event and I’m sure they will continue to improve it moving forward. I’m glad the park is expanding the event to include more groups similar to Coastermania and other park operated events.

Well my experience this year at Valravn and Cheetah Hunt were lightning fast compared to Steel Curtain. I do remember those two coasters being a bit slow this year, but nothing like how horrible Steel Curtain is. Even SFA wait times and operations were better every single time we've went, even with 1 train operations on Superman with very similar conditions as I described with Steel Curtain it was still quicker. I do want to emphasize this is only for Steel Curtain, I can't think of any other ride in the park that has bad operations. Everything else is lightening fast and particularly the Phantom's Revenge crew is amazing. I highly recommend marathoning that one at night if you have the opportunity.

Fun fact: The highest ridership the park ever achieved with Ka was during the the 2013 season with only one station and three trains. El Toro Ryan (who worked the ride) talks about it extensively in his excellent Problematic Coaster video about Ka. I recommend checking out the entire video (and all his other vids) but skip to around 17:40 for the goods about the station/capacity.

You may be right, but Manta is a seriously wicked ride overall. Tons of airtime and twisty fun. I enjoy dive machines but Mack makes far better coasters than B&M these days, IMO.

I watched a guy snapping pretty much nonstop during the short ride at Carowinds while my son was riding. It was pretty fun to watch and the ride op did not care one bit.

Great pro tip! Without a doubt.

Best way to watch a parade is to power walk the opposite way it’s traveling and see the entire thing in 5 minutes.

^You just described the operations at half the parks in this country the last year! I'm still trying to give parks a pass this summer, but I will not continue to ignore all of the problems next year. They have to find a way to improve staffing, operations, maintenance, supply chain, EVERYTHING!

This came up in my Facebook memories today. 5 years ago, my son (4 at the time) was standing in line for the kiddie swings and dancing around like he had to pee. He insisted he didnt have to. I took his word for it and sat down on a bench. A minute later, I hear him crying on the ride, and this is what I found when I got up to check on him.

I mean that is why it is being closed. Hardly a shock.