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No, no, you misunderstand. I don't give a hoot about inspiration, I'm talking about functionality. They need to prove their rides and ride systems are reliable otherwise why would anyone give them a second glance? When the competition has proven over and over again that they have extremely reliable attractions nobody is going to look twice at their ripoff kiddie raptor.

Sure wish SeaWorld Orlando had gotten this instead of Ice Breaker!!!!

Breaking records for the first coaster to open with fully grown grass.

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!

And I would take the traffic in LA (just drove all over for a week there) over the people in my hometown that simply Do. Not. Know. How. To. Drive. Lots of volume in LA but at least drivers know how to merge and are relatively courteous about it compared to St. Louis. In fact we kind of had fun driving all around Hollywood when we made a stop at the La Brea tar pits on our way from SFMM to Belmont Park in SD. Funny how differently we all view the same thing, lol.

My knees are in rough shape at this point and crack every time I stand up, but RailBlazer didn't bother me one bit after several re-rides. I know it's not JDC, but it's similar enough where I have to believe it's a personal / body type issue, rather than the seats themselves.

You know, I watched that special a couple days ago. I can't think of a single song of hers that would be appropriate for a fast rollercoaster. 95% of that concert is slow, mumbly, and very bass-heavy and the other 5% is slightly uptempo but still subdued. I think she's a pretty cool person overall but her music isn't my style, so I may be wrong as I've not bothered to listen to her albums, but she wouldn't fit the bill IMO.

This is a great addition! I know this seems kinda sucky at first, but looking through the Facebook comments, the feedback amongst the general public is overwhelmingly positive! Frankly, the park didn't have a whole lot of just kiddie rides. Before this expansion, they only had 10 rides for the little ones. Now they'll have 17! Though I will say, the mini pirate ship to put next to the regular-sized one is a bit redundant. It does suck that three adult rides are being removed for 7 kiddie rides and one adult flat ride, but they were three rides that were getting too costly and near impossible to maintain. Overall, this is a great addition for the park and it is incredibly impressive that in the past ten years, the park has added essentially an entire waterpark, three new coasters, one major new thrill ride, one family-thrill ride, and then 9 new kiddie rides, two of which being included in a new family area. Adventureland really is kicking it into high gear with Lost Island opening up a couple hours away.

As they say in Colonial Williamsburg . . . I'm looking forward to riding this coaster, as opposed to just looking at it.

Honestly, these are super cute. I wish them all the luck and success with this product line; I know the Skywarp line has not been the most inspiring so far but if these manage to take off I think they could be a welcome alternative to the ever-present Zamperla and SBFs that are friggin' everywhere.

Here's to hoping it's some kind of outdoor boardwalk/restaurant/patio/bar area. That seems like it would fit in well, considering the resort is only a few hundred feet away. I know people are hoping for a boardwalk GCI, but it seems like Cedar Point has more of an interest in opening up the beach area, rather than boxing it off. I'm sure Cedar Point could easily get another 30 people to man the area...

Employee preview was tonight, so you can probably find some spoilers online if you want to. I was invited as a guest, but didn’t take any photos. quick summary: -fire back on the main entrance. No Gogo dancers up front. Main Street falls flat as a scare zone with nothing but music and gobo lights. -terror tram is exactly how you remember it minus the now demolished who ville and the mini maze next to war of worlds. The path is paved now! Very underwhelming, wish they would have kept the mazes in tram garage instead. -presumably because of planning for covid distancing, all the “recycled” IP mazes I think were improvements on their originals. Larger rooms and what felt like less scenes instead of “pack as much in with black walls between to make it fit” -Pandora’s box felt the same as 2019, which isn’t a bad thing! -aside from the low budget facade, haunting of hill house is beautiful. Again you can tell it was designed with covid in mind, which I think makes each scare pop more. -bride of Frankenstein, also felt shorter, but also great visuals. Exits into an outdoor scarezone on French street that I guess you could call an extension of the maze. Overall, Despite the recycled mazes, I think this actually turned out to be one of the better years quality wise.

A nice addition to any park's SBNO collection!

^ They removed three large, adult-friendly flat rides to replace them with multiple kiddie flats. Hardly an improvement, IMO. Also, they just killed a kid. I'm not exactly hyped about a visit to this place. Give them some more time and we'll have a new Mount Olympus.

^^^ I'm not heavy, but I do find the straddle position on the Devil very uncomfortable. The ride is good, but the trains not so much.

If you go to Dollywood from Minneapolis your route takes you within like 5 minutes of Kentucky Kingdom anyway. I'd say to go to those two parks, though really if you can do one full day at Six Flags, one full day at Dollywood and like 3 hours at park open at Kentucky Kingdom that's all you need anyway. I may also be biased because I just don't really like Holiday World. Also, book refundable rooms and watch this website. Obviously, if Lightning Rod is closed for the day for a few full days before your trip then maybe change your plans...

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.

I did! Great to meet you @Kyndmusic. So I'll post my full report when I get home, but here's some bullet notes on Mindbender. Keep in mind, that I never rode it in its previous iteration. -The whole operating system has been replaced. Brakes, sensors, drive tires, lift chain, presumably the PLC, basically everything except the track itself appeared to me to be brand new. Even the track *appears* brand new, because of the paint, but we all know its not. -Capacity was great. They were chugging through the trains, and the ride ops here actually seemed to have some enthusiasm for the job (can't say the same for the rest of the park). Since it was just preview, Flash Pass wasn't an option, but I waited 26 minutes for the front row, with about 4-5 trains where I didn't move since exit-pass people jumped to the front. Probably would have been under 10 minutes had I gone for any other row. Notably, I entered the line maybe 10 feet out of the station. SFOG's lack of groupers didn't help here, so the station got very crowded and at one point a group of people waiting for the front blocked the entire line and some empty rows went out before they made an announcement to fill in the station. -The trains: Yes, they are lab-bar only. Yes, there are seat belts. Yes, there are carve outs for your butt with the little bit that goes between your thighs. I have to imagine it was better with the original Schwarzkopf trains, but as it stands these trains were not bad at all. Yes, there are only 5 cars, but there are 3 trains (though they double-stacked every cycle I saw). -The ride itself: It's a Schwarzkopf, which means positive Gs. And you get them in the loops here, even the "non-loop" in the middle of the ride. No grey-outs for me, but it did force my arms down at the entry to the two true loops and at the bottom of the non-loop. That said, it is what I believe to be tamer than it once was (entirely speculating here); the lift slows considerably before cresting, and each of the trim/block brakes at the start of the turns definitely took off some some speed. Without those, this ride would be absolutely insane, but even with them it was still pretty damnned good. and the fact that they chose to invest so much into this instead of just scrapping it wins a lot of points me with. This was my first trip ever to SFoG, and rode all of the coasters, but Mindbender is a solid #2 or #3 at this park for me. I've gotta review my notes for a full coaster ranking, that's just off the top of my head.

OMG. . this is *so* freaking awesome. Park President Jeffrey Siebert just shared this on his twitter. 1st piece of track for 2022's "Dr Diabolical's Cliffhanger" is on it's way to San Antonio! how cool is this?