coasterbill

The new 4 across train on Goliath at SFNE... it made the best ride in the park the second worst ride in the park. What a rough piece of crap.

I know for some reason enthusiasts love to bash Gatekeeper but how anyone could not like that drop is beyond me. The drop is amazing, the location is amazing, the slow twist is great. I don't see what's not to like about that drop, or really the ride in general.

Technically the answer would be Funland in Rehoboth Beach, DE by a landslide as we've been vacationing there since I was born and my family now owns a place down there. It doesn't really count though since most of the time I just walk in to play a game or ten of skeeball before going to the beach or wherever else I'm going. I can say with absolute certainty though that I've ridden the Funland Paratrooper more than any ride in any park anywhere. If that doesn't count and it really shouldn't the answer is probably either Six Flags New England or Great Adventure. I'm not sure which.

Gatekeeper.

It's a shame Coal Cracker isn't open this time of year... it could be because it doesn't get you wet at all. That being said it's still a lot of fun.

If you want to ride Wildcat, ride Wildcat before you ride Boulder Dash (or ride Boulder Dash once and then go right to Wildcat)... Boulder Dash's line probably won't ever get to be more than 20-30 minutes but Wildcat... holy crap. It has one tiny train, probably with a row roped off and can get waits in excess of an hour. It did last Saturday.

Ninja is one of the most underrated coasters I've ridden. It's incredibly original and just a genuinely fun, good coaster in a great setting. I consider it to be one of the best rides in the park (probably behind only Tatsu, Batman and Apocalypse when it's running well). It's always nice to see it get some appreciation.

It seemed to work well on Saturday. I thought it was one of the coolest effects they had. If I were afraid of Spiders it would scare the hell out of me. lol

There is one room where they're projecting bugs (I think they're spiders but I could be wrong) on the roof and it looks amazingly real. It's absolutely awesome.

Woman sues Busch Gardens for Howl-O-Scream injury I hate this country...

I never understood the magnetic gate thing at Dorney. It doesn't have any impact on operations or anything but it's definitely strange.

Not only is it at a Six Flags park, but it's at one of the worst run Six Flags parks anywhere. Still... it would be very difficult to screw this up. Stacking the hell out of trains like it's an olympic sport is inevitable and dumb policies like having a rude grouper that hates their job and won't let you pick your seat is also very likely but the ride itself should still be awesome and I'm really excited about it. PS: I don't see how they could screw the ride itself up but then again it's worth pointing out that I would have said the same thing about Superman Ride of Steel and Goliath and they managed to add awful restraints and ridiculously rattly cars to Superman and put trains that make Mind Eraser look like a butter-smooth B&M invert on Goliath so I wouldn't put anything past them.

I'm so spoiled by the Knoebels Scooters that I can't even think of any other Bumper Cars worth mentioning. There's such an enormous difference between Lusse Auto Scooters and everything else that it just makes the other bumper cars seem like complete crap. I'll say this though... the most fun you'll have on non-Lussee bumper cars is probably at the Whirly Dome in Orlando (or in various other places throughout the country). The bumper car aspect isn't the main point though... it's a combination of Lacrosse and Basketball played on Bumper Cars. The bumper cars themselves are crap but everyone should try this anyway. When I try to think of the worst bumper cars it's a toss up between most Cedar Fair parks. The combination of amazingly short ride cycles and slow crappy cars just makes for some really lame bumper car rides. Basically any bumper car ride at a corporate park sucks but Cedar Fair takes it to the next level.

I thought Tomb Raider was amazing the year it opened, and this is coming from someone who hates top spins.

I think I'm going to change my pick to White Lightning at Fun Spot now that I've had a chance to ride it.

Since they're waiting for next season I wonder if the local Skyride parts store is located in Agawam, Ma.

Cool video, thanks for posting it.

Hydra's not that bad but it's not that good either. It's just there. I love the jojo roll though.

Talon is a pretty solid coaster... it's not nearly as intense as rides like Batman or Raptor but it's much better than Silver Bullet. As far as B&M inverts go I'd say it's pretty average. Personally I really enjoy it.

The funny thing about that flume is you don't get that wet in the front but you get a lot wetter in the back... I find the opposite to be true on most flumes. I never thought Thunder Creek Mountain was overly wet though and I love the fact that it doesn't have those spray guns which I love on Rapids and Splash Boat rides but I hate on log flumes.

I think we were riding behind you on the Flyers... did one of you have a Kings Dominion shirt on by any chance? Someone managed to snap the flyers at the very end when they started slowing down and we were shocked. lol

We visited the haunted graveyard on Saturday night for the first time ever and were very impressed. We stayed from opening (5pm) until close (11pm) and got a ton of rides in plus the Haunted Graveyard. I'll spare everyone the long report but I wanted to mention a few things. The Haunted Graveyard is awesome. It's easily the best maze I've ever seen at a regional park. It's about 45 minutes long and there are a ton of actors and great scares. They had great sets too and a lot of times props that managed to scare a ton of people. I'd much rather parks have one awesome maze than 5 or 10 crappy ones like Six Flags. This thing is awesome and they do a great job keeping wait times manageable by assigning people certain times. We waited for about 40 minutes but the line was more of a slow walk than anything else... it moved incredibly fast so waiting in it wasn't too big of a deal. Boulder Dash I've always loved this ride but thought it was a little overrated. The fact that it was voted best wood coaster in the world is insane to me as I never thought it was even close to rides like El Toro or Phoenix but it's still a lot of fun and it has a very unique layout. I'll say this... after riding it so many times at night (mainly in the front seat) I have a whole new respect for it. I have no idea how this ride maintains such awesome speed for so long but it really never slows down. The airtime in the front is great and the area by the turnaround was pitch black and actually reminded me a little bit of a Beast night ride. I still prefer Phoenix and El Toro and I still think the Beast is a better night ride but Boulder Dash at night is absolutely amazing and it's definitely one of my favorite wood coasters. Riding this at night is a must. Wildcat I've now been to this park 3 times... once in 2000, once a few years ago and now this year. The first time I went we rode Wildcat and thought it was awful. I have no idea how such a small wood coaster could be so rough but this ride was complete crap. Then a few years ago we heard they re-tracked it and decided to give it another chance and as expected the ride was horrendous. For some reason we decided to give it another try this year because they re-tracked it (again) but we were expecting the worst. I'm happy to report though that the ride was really smooth and enjoyable. It's absolutely smoother than Boulder Dash (and I don't consider Boulder Dash rough) and it reminded me a lot of the SFNE Thunderbolt which is a big compliment. I hope they can keep this ride running the way it is now because it was really, really good. We only rode it once as it's line was over an hour long due to it's low capacity. We managed to get on in 20 minutes on our first ride was it took about an hour for the park to really fill up. Zoomerang For a Boomerang with the old style trains this one is really good... i've always considered it one of the smoothest Boomerang coasters out there. I actually really enjoyed it. American Flyers These are the worst flyers at any park, anywhere, period. Overall we were really, really impressed with this event and we'll be making it an annual tradition for sure. The park was very crowded but except for Wildcat and the Graveyard nothing ever had more than a 30 minute wait and the crowds were much better than Halloween crowds at most parks (which I consider to be kind of rough compared to summer crowds at most parks). I highly recommend this event to anyone.

I really feel like Batman is the second best coaster in the park. I'm not even knocking the other rides when I say that, I just don't see how anyone doesn't like a ride that's this intense, fast and smooth. There's nothing not to love about it.

Great pictures. I don't know how I missed this thread but I went back and read through both pages and really enjoyed your updates.

Oh okay... I see what you mean now. Sorry about that I got confused for a second.