chadster

^ The Mouse appears to be held together with nuts and bolts, but to be honest, I was more concerned about breaking my neck. Surprisingly, it's not a bad ride! Just watch out for the drop at the end! Do the Doodle!

My amusement park travels have taken me this time to Lubbock Texas, home of the Buddy Holly Center, the Texas Tech Red Raiders, the Lubbock War Memorial, and Joyland! Joyland is a small family amusement park that many have never heard of. Located in Mackenzie Park, Joyland is just two miles from Texas Tech and close to downtown Lubbock. The population of Lubbock is relatively small when you take away the college students, but offers most everything you would expect from a mid-sized city including one of a kind eateries that will make your mouth water. Personally, I recommend One Guy From Italy. To die for calzones and pizza, all freshly made. The park itself features three coasters including a S.D.C Galaxi (WildCat or similar) and a funky Allan Herschell Mad Mouse that looks like it was built on scaffolding. Both rides are manually operated, no drive wheels, no computers, but they do have pneumatic breaks, all hand operated via levers. The park also has several classic rides such as the roll-o-plane, scrambler, and spider. Recently they added a 140 foot tall Larson built drop tower. For those of you ride manufacture nerds, Larson is located 45 miles away from Joyland in Plainview, Texas. I did drive by the facility, but wind gusts up to 45mph and the volume of dirt being blown around kept me from getting out of the car. I can tell you tho, that some lucky park is getting a new Fireball and/or an Aviator. On my visit on 4/9/2011, crowds were very light at 6pm, less than 100 in the park. The entire staff were extremely friendly and happy to hold my camera backpack while I rode. I talked with several park employees who were asking about my C-TPR shirt so hopefully we will have some new members soon! Jerry, who was operating the shot tower gave me a super history lesson on the park of which I will share some of it in the photos below. Greezed Lightning is still in storage and I was given directions on how to get to it, those pictures and information I learned about it's current status will be towards the end. All in all, plan to spend around 2 hours in the park on a light to mid sized crowd day, three hours on a heavy day. For the park index, I'd give this park an overall 2.5, it would be a 2, however, the staff gets a solid 5, food and beverage prices also get a 5. Expect to pay slightly more for drinks than the local 7-11, but food overall was way below industry standard. So, without further ramblings, I present to you, Joyland! Welcome to Joyland! If you make a left once you pass thru the gates, you'll find this amusement park must have. Next door to the horses running in circles, you'll run into another must have at an amusement park, the bumper cars! They even have things built in for you to bump into! Next we come to my personal favorite ride type, I wished ever park had a Himalaya or Musik Express!! This one goes forwards, and backwards, but not in the same cycle. They alternate, one cycle forward, everyone gets off, hauls a$$ around to the queue, gets back on, then goes fast backwards! I have no clue who these kids are, but they were loving the ride! This park is full of the classics, all of which I love, like this old school tilt-a-whirl and scrambler This is there standard how to have fun guide. On to the Mad Mouse! Take a close look. See? I told you it looks like it was built on scaffolding! RCDB says it used to be at Bell's, but that must have been way before my time as I don't recall this ever being there. Nerd Shot! You have to respect a ride op who can operate a ride theses days without the aid of a computer. All levers, no buttons, no clear to send lights, all 100% know how. Nerd Shot #2!!! The parks other classic rides include an itsy bitsy spider crawling...oh, uhum. Hey, they have a spider! I walked past the spider and found this ride. Made to ride with your clothes on (please), people were getting off it wet enough to warrant a bathing suit, so I passed. All aboard! Next I took on the Galaxi! This ride has a sign notifying you that the the ride must have a minimum of 4 riders, 5 with kids. The park was so slow today that the op was sending the train (pushing the train out of the station) with two patrons on board. I had to wait about 10 minutes for someone else to show up. So this one pulls two cars around. I personally like versions that only have single cars, the doubles and tripples to me slow the ride down a bit. Speaking of slowing down... 100% hand operated brakes! My mandatory wait for more riders allowed me time to get these shots. Get this, I got to ride with my bag on board! You don't get that at Cedar Fair. This has to be expensive to operate as it uses a gasoline engine to power! It's a trailer model and if you're not careful, you'll get wet!! Noted! Death trap. You can even blast off into space! Kindof a week ride program, no fast spinning at the end, still, a nice calm ride. Being as this park is geared for families and tweens I can see why they would have this running a calm program. Any ride with "Big Splash" in the title indicates an unacceptable amount of wetness. Bell's had one of these death machines Maybe this is where it went many moons ago Reagrdless of it's origin, I'm not getting on it, don't feel like having a headache the rest of the night. And for the third and final coaster, Dipsy Doodle! Nerd Shot! You'd expect on a ride of this type to get spun around 2 or 3 times. But I lost count at 5. The ride op was super friendly as were all of them. He had only ever been to three parks, so I gave him some info on TPR and about some parks close to an event he was planning on attending, so who knows, maybe he'll make it out to NTG Bash Winding down my journey I headed toward the shot tower and ran into this. Being as I have an hour drive ahead of me, I kept with my promise to myself to avoid all water rides. Especially when I saw those sprayers at the bottom of the short hill. Short ride, but it gets the job done. So finally I made my way to the shot tower where I met Jerry. Jerry thought I was an ACE'r. I told him I wasn't fat enough to be an ACE'r. Apparently that crew comes out once a year to ride the parks three coasters. I'd bet only three of them could actually fit into the coasters as well. But I digress. So this ride was put in not too long after the park purchased Greezed Lightning, so it's fairly new. So after we chatted, I strapped in and he pressed the button. This thing has a surprising amount of air on the way down and a gentle release at the top. A great ride indeed. Think about this. Small town park with not a lot of cashflow can put in a 140 foot tall tower. Think of how many major parks that don't have a tower. SFMM, SFDK, Hershey. So maybe this park isn't that small afterall, it's just doesn't have a huge Intamin or B&M. Most people were riding the flats anyway. The coasters, except for the kiddie coaster, weren't getting much love, so heck, maybe that's a sign to the bigger parks, MORE FLAT RIDES!! So anyway, Jerry gave me the coordinates for the whereabouts of the old shuttle coaster, so off I went. I drove up just as the sun was setting and here it is! Sorry about the picture quality, it was getting dark quick. So why isn't it up yet you ask? Well, several reasons. Placement for one. But, that I'm told is most likely resolved. It will go to the west of the gate along the front. The real problem is the ground, it's too soggy. And money. Everything takes $$ The footers he said need to be 35 feet into the ground, and needs multiple footers as you can imagine. And for a park not making millions, that gets expensive, 60K plus expensive. Then you have to pay a crew to install it, refurb it, wire it, test it, certify it, etc. He didn't give me a figure, but just my rough knowledge tells me it could cost at a minimum of 250k to get the ride going. They certainly could use it, and it would probably pay for itself in a few years. But in the world of unknowns, sometimes it's better to wait. So with that, I leave Joyland and a backwards running Musik Express and head out for dinner. Don't let the size of this park fool you. The rides are in great condition. The ride vehicles were free of torn seats or messed up bar padding, clean grounds, and, a friendly, everyone is welcome atmosphere. You can tell the park owner cares about the rides, the customers, and his staff. Thanks Joyland for a great evening!!!!

^I can handle that!

Can I rent KT for a credit run on Wile. E. Coyote’s Grand Canyon Blaster? It would save me from having to beg someone to let me rent their kid, but that in and of itself is not beneath me.

Will you buy mine too? Personally, I don't leave home without it anymore, that is, unless it's forecast for rain, or it's deep in the off/in between season and noone is there. If I'm lazy during those times, I'll get a regular so I don't have to walk around, otherwise, golds the word. SP gets $10.00, if they offer a better discount, I won't complain!

Star Shape. My new favorite ride model that I've never been on. Thanks for the pic's and notes!

^ Nothing better than riding the rear!

I call shotgun!!!

Done.

It looked like a rainbow flying by on the mid course

Spring time cometh, time to get your ride-on!

^ Perfect! I just edited my last post to include something I noticed, but I'm sure I don't need to point out that I edited my post so not sure why I did, but I did.

Larry, Is the list of needed stuff in the evolving index thread still accurate? If so, I'll have a load of stuff for you next week to complete several parks. *Edit: I didn't see where this was mentioned, so forgive me if it was. When submitting a photo, and I'll use Universal Hollywood as an example, in the drop down list for ride name, it lists items such as park map 2009, trips reports, etc. I submitted an exterior picture of Kong and my best attempt at an inside picture (it gets dark quick, plus, it's just a giant movie screen).

^ I'd bet you'd win that bet!

^ Good to know, you just never know sometimes if they do something for "show" or if it's real. ^^ Get the semi-kiddie credit!!!

^ nope. Look for it to open sometime after the Disney thing opens.

After arriving at the ghetto port (John Wayne) on 3.17.10 for WCB, I made the drive Universal Hollywood. Having had pre-purchased my ticket, which magically turned into a season pass, I thought I would save some time. Much to my surprise the line to process the season passes (as a result of EVERY pass sold that day being a season pass) was horrifying. Wasting time in line is not something I enjoy. Lucky for me, after about 15 minutes of waiting, a staff member noticed I was alone, asked if I had a pre-purchased ticket, and sent me off to a different area to get my SP, score! I was in and out, and in to the park in no time, kudos to that staff member. My time in the park was short (less than 4 hours) as I was to attend the St. Patricks day taping of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. That was an awesome experience in and of itself getting to witness a new world record for the most leprechauns in one room. Since I left my camera in a free fluffy bunny, I have nothing to share on the Mummy. But I have to say, I really enjoy that fact that while the two rides are similar, they are not the same. I liked the hands coming from the ceiling, but missed all of the fire leading up to the free rolling portion of the ride. To me, that part of ride carried more speed and was more enjoyable than Orlando's version. But in the end, I have to give the slight edge to Orlando, as it had FIRE!!! My first stop was the Studio Tour, an item on my bucket list and the wait was short. Jurassic was "temporarily" down during my time at the park, and I was somewhat disappointed I couldn't ride it. The park is for sure smaller, with fewer offerings than Orlando, but I liked that. It was enough to get your park on, but not overwhelming. I felt as if you could relax and enjoy the park rather than worry about how much time you had left to be able to hit everything. No need to worry about that here. So, enough of my pointless commentary, and on to why you are here, the pics! Welcome to Universal Studios, home of the spinning metal contraption. Shrek looked cool, although it had a long line, too long for me on this trip. Had I more time, I would have checked it out. Moving on. I was sooo excited to be here that I almost shot my rocket In Spanish even There it is! Whoopie says down there you will find that A$$ hole Jimmy Fallon trying to take my job. Whoopie also said she was looking forward to being demoted to tram car attendant. Sweet Hi-Def screens Best.Movie. maybe this is why the ride is closed, the boats were swimming off! Cowboy's and Aliens, now there's a winner! Random set, my brain at this point was in overload. I asked these guys if they could help to Save TEH BIG DIPPER, they laughed. So onward to setville. They have done a remarkable job re-building after the fire. Built so that they glisten in Hi-Def, in person they look way different than on film. And in a good way. Looking at my pics I'm like wow, so that's why they built it that way! So yeah, to those in SoCal, this is no big deal, to us Okies, it's a nice change of pace. Now, we have had movies filmed here. One most of you probably haven't heard of called "The Outsiders" Details were everywhere. The drive-in theatre where part of "The Outsiders" was filmed burnt to the ground last year. We've also had Jessica Alba here filming some movie with Casey Afflack, she spray painted some billboards, got her into some trouble. Work was going on on practically all of the outdoor sets. YAY!!! Kong 3D!!! This was awesome. The projection screen was HUGE!!! The film was put together well and the Dino's were practically in your face!!! This is COOL! Bad attempt at trying to take a picture of 3D Moving On hmmmmm FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! ok, that was lame. random crap Time for Mexican Food? Is the the Espanol part of the tour? hmmmmm, WTF? ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just kidding. onward. We stopped here so I could get a hair cut. so yeah, did I mention my brain was on overload? oh noes!!!!! there was some story about some famous movie film in this part where the water moves out of way, honestly, I could care less, it gave me the opportunity to get cool shots, like this one. A local film school was filming some local something another. random prop crap time to go fishing For sharks? People in Cali do things funny. this was actually pretty lame. so lame in fact that is was funny. but it had fire so that made it cool again. They were filming desperate housewives, so the narrator had to "go off mic" was it for show or not, I say for show. heck, lets just end it all now. The actor was a nice touch to this part of tour, without him, it would have been blah. I'm glad they left this, I thougt it was cool. Uncle Buck??? YES!!! That movie was great. Too bad John died so young, he was a great comedian. Now thats a big a$$ screen! shameless movie promotion. and this tomb thing was, well, unintersting to me. This is the end of the studio tour. Worth the trip, I wanted to take it again and sit on the other side of the tram, but not enough time. But hey, I have a one year season pass, I can just come back and do it again. moving on that's what I say What do we have down here? whatever it is, lots of work going on... ahh, of course, Transformers! So yeah, I was looking forward to a comparrison on this ride. but, it wasn't meant to be still cool looking i'll just use my imagination and guess at what it would be like to ride. What kind of convention is this? walking around on my way out So yeah, it was a good, short trip. If you are coming for the credit, it's an expensive credit, so why not spend the day, then grab a bite at city walk. I'm a fan of this version of city walk, why you ask? It's more compact and streamlined. While you still have to walk a mile to get to the park from the garage, I found I liked the overall design better. So, that's it for Universal Hollywood, thanks Universal for a good time. Hope I didn't put you guys to sleep!!! Next trip is in 1 week, smaller parks, stay tuned!!

Simply amazing, thanks Hanno!

Just posted reviews for Magic Springs and Frontier City. Will post more reviews and TR suggestions as time allows.

A drink coaster is the liquid form of a rolling coaster. Some people prefer vodka, others prefer foster's, but whatever form of liquid coaster you choose, in the end, you will feel like you're riding a never ending coaster.

Jet Rescue appears to be everything that Pointless Express wishes it was. Who says Koala country doesn't have good rides? Looks like they do to me.

just have one of your servants open it, after all, they're expendable.

Larry, I have a few other TR's that might be useful in the index but they are grouped with two or three other parks (separate posts, same thread) I know in the past it's been preferred to have TR's in their own thread for the index, is that the preferred method or can I submit a few that are grouped with others?

I skipped out of WCB @ SFMM for a few hours on 3.19.11 for a quick credit run to Pacific Park. Turns out, glad I did as the L.A. Marathon pickup zone on the 20th was quite near the park. I ended up making the round trip in just under two hours. I classify Pacific Park as a kiddie park with a baby morgan coaster. The park seemed to kept well for the most part. The view from the pier was also nice. The coaster was nothing more than a credit, the brief amount of speed it picked up on the hop was nice, a good beginner coaster for sure. So no more chat, here's the pics, afterall, who reads anymore unless it's a photo caption? Welcome to Santa Monica Beach Home of muscle beach. Strange, I feel right at home... Also home of the original hot dog on a stick. And home of Pacific Park These hard working guys deserve some credit Walking towards the park Inside this building you will find wooden horses running in circles told ya so walking towards the entrance not sure about this combination so here we are. grey skies, but colorful rides spin and puke kiddie balloons. down here you can win stuffed things like a whale a banana or a fat wax stick Wheel that's shown on their webcam a covered swinging ship, a first for me Queue line of the coaster Lift hill porn boat station shot. 5 bucks will get you two spins on the west coaster. this is the part the train picks up a brief amount of speed, like maybe up to 20 mph Maintenance area spare parts so there you are, a quickie trip to Pacific Park, not much there, but enough to satisfy families with kids in the 13 and under crowd We will leave the park with this beach shot, adios Santa Monica!

^ Thanks