Rai Fox

Sure, there is. I'm not saying "mystery solved" here. But if it's true that someone bought it, it seems like there's a reasonably good chance that's where it's going, anyway.

My thoughts exactly... Although I'm hearing rumors it may have been purchased by another park. Anyone heard anything? Kentcuky Kingdom posted a video eluding to a flyer this week. Well, they have a video calling their new ride the Kentucky Flyer...and they already have Larsson Flying Scooters. Seems fairly likely.

Someone in the Dorney thread claimed one of their employees said it's not going there. Still, I'd love to see it; I still love Firehawk and I'd be that much happier if it just ended up closer to me!

Wellp. Firehawk it is. I'm not incredibly happy about that, but it's better than it being the Bat, at least. I really wish they'd announced it early enough that I could have made plans to get out there for some last rides though.

I've seen a lot of comments on social media all but begging for it to be Firehawk. Am I the only one that loves that ride? I know most people aren't quite as much of a fan of it as I am, but I didn't think I'd see people wanting to see it torn down. King's Island has such a good lineup though, there's really nothing I wouldn't be a little sad to see gone. Adventure Express would be tolerable, Vortex would only be missed a little, almost anything else would be pretty sad. Anything but The Bat, though. We're losing those coasters too fast, and The Bat is definitely the best one we have left...

Oh wow. I remember when this was first announced as Xanadu, and how excited I was for it, as naive and innocent as I was then, and then years of disappointment as it all seemed to fall apart. It's been a loooong time since I ever expected to see this happen. I'm definitely going to have to check it out next year! If that indoor water park ends up looking like their concept art, I can see spending quite a lot of cold winter time there. Really hoping to see this place succeed now!

Ooh, that looks goooood. Sadly not somewhere I'll be able to get to any time soon, but maybe someday! And best of? Absolute best burger ever, if you ask me? https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us/things-to-do/dining/the-cowfish/index.html I truly hope that someday I find a better burger, because I want to taste something even better than that...but I don't expect that I ever will.

Those are from Harry's Burger Bar in Providence, RI. Pretty great; sliders pressed with onions, topped with portabello, and sweet potato fries with some kind of green aioli that I couldn't quite identify. Harry's is quite good but the "lower end" burger place the owners have around here; they have four Harry's locations that are pretty much sliders and beer, a very good taco place, and then Luxe, a much higher end burger place with Wagyu beef and every topping you could possibly imagine; Luxe is on the pricer side but absolute fantastic, probably the second best burger place I've ever been to. ...now I know where I need to get back to this weekend

I'm sure they will, but I'd be pretty shocked if anyone did at this fair, at least any time in the near future. Can you imagine how anyone that saw the accident last year would take that? Especially since quite a few of the people there would have a rumor started within the hour that it was the exact same ride...

I did! (Even though I had to go out in a torrential downpour and walk down a river that had been a street a few hours before for it!)

Boulder Dash, at it's best, absolutely deserves the hype. It's been years since it was anything like the coaster it was when it was built though. I think anyone that's only ridden it in this decade is missing out on what it used to be. As the star of my home park, I can only hope that someday LC can get it running like it used to again. You rode it during the day, didn't you? No other ride anywhere is as different before and after dark as The Beast is. It can never live up to the hype, not even a bit of it, while the sun is up, but once it's dark...

Spinning Ride On A Stick looks to be a Fabbri Inversion. https://www.fabbrigroup.com/portfolio-item/inversion/ And I think I need to add getting on one of those to my bucket list.

That's, er, a bit much? It's not a world class coaster, but it's a fun little classic ride. After having been to the park a couple times, I definitely understand how it's sad to see it removed, and there aren't a whole lot of them around anymore. ...Are there any still around? I appreciate the park's communication with the letter, though. I'm disappointed it's being removed, but if they can't keep it safe to operate, then by all means this they're doing the right thing, and doing it while trying to be open with their fans too. I keep finding more and more reasons to love Morey's.

Great report so far! My kind of trip report, with plenty of awesome (and horrible) food to go with the coasters! I'm looking forward to seeing the rest, as much as it's making me regret not being able to make this tour! ...I NEED to try that Cheerwine sauce someday.

I use my fox character pretty much everywhere online, but the avatar here is a cut from this piece done for me years back. art by Kacey Miyagami Seemed reasonably appropriate for this place. And if you've never been to Lake Compounce, The art is incredibly accurate.

Not quite (sad face). . didn’t get to do the mini-golf, and missed out on Skloosh, and the flume (no one wanted to get wet). . . also missed out on the motorboats. The water looked like a nasty brown (likely from the flooding), so seemed a good idea to steer away from it. Yeah...no, that's just what it looks like. In well over a decade of going every year...well, you always have the pool if you want clean water.

That's sad. Flitzer's still a pretty fun ride, despite its modest looks. As long as it's going though, I hope something really good takes its place.

Oh, on the Carousel...that's actually not the real Flying Horse carousel at all! I know, the building claims it is, but the real Flying Horses carousel is nearby and is actually a children's ride; the horses "fly" because they're suspended on chains. https://westerlylife.com/watch-hill-flying-horse-carousel/ That Herschell Carousel is an interesting one on its own; it's a bit of a frankenstein's monster. The base of it is the old Grand Carousel from Rocky Point Park, but the horses had already been sold off before Atlantic Beach bought it. They originally replaced them with some rather cheap modern metal ones, which...was a travesty, really, but switched back to classic horses later. Some of them were, I believe, recovered from the original Rocky Point carousel, some were from the original Atlantic Beach carousel. I THINK that carousel organ is also the one from Rocky Point; it at least looks like the one I remember from there, but less sure on that part. The building was from the original Atlantic Beach carousel; the one that Rocky Point's carousel was originally in was torn down, sadly.

Rhode Island is too corrupt to keep a good park. Not even joking there; we used to have Rocky Point, which was a lovely little oceanside park, second oldest in the country after Lake Compounce. It closed down more than 20 years ago though after most of its board of directors embezzled all of its money away. They all set themselves up their own companies, made a few big "loans" from Rocky Point to themselves, declared their businesses bankrupt, then oops, Rocky Point was out of money, how did that happen, what a shame, guess they had to just walk away rich now. Yeah, I'm still bitter two decades later. That place was my childhood.

Unlike you, I have absolutely no faith and do not trust temporarily set-up fair rides in the United States. I'm kinda not sure how to feel about this, I don't want to be negative and ruin something I like so much for myself, but all I can think is how it came out that the ride operator literally painted over a crack in the ride's arm to hide it instead of fixing it. I'm sure, of course, most aren't like that, but unless there's a way for riders to know who's taking care of their rides and who are pulling this crap...well...shit.

Currently legislators in Rye are currently at odds with Standard Amusements about a 30 year lease signed last year. Legislators do not believe Standard Amusements is holding up there end of the contract, so I don't expect any big additions at Rye until this is worked out. That's...really frustrating. I've always thought Rye Playland had a ton of potential and just needed a chance and a little money to be something really nice. Now they get that chance...and politicians have to stick their noses in...

I didn't know this thread existed, now I have 30 pages or so to go through! *drools* Adding to Nrthwnd's post, the first was a build-your-own-burger with beer cheese, bacon, and sauteed mushrooms. The second was Nickel Plate's Firebox burger - Pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and sriracha mayo! Both were absolutely fantastic.

Great report! Like Bert, we focused on a lot of the same things, haha. As far as the motorboats, they are really hard to control, but there's a trick to them. You have to sort of look under the "dashboard" and realize how the steering is constructed to "get" it. There's just a rope, wrapped around the boat in a big almost-complete circle, that connects to both sides of the rudder, and it's just stretched across a pulley on the steering shaft. Nothing is actually connected together. Turning the wheel just sort of slides the rope a bit, but it's slippery and very often a little too loose, so it kind of slips back towards the center on its own very quickly. It's a weird, very cobbled-together setup, and not intuitive to steer, but once you figure that out, and that you have to kind of keep turning it, at different speeds for different rudder angles, it's mostly controllable. Not great, but you can stay off the walls, anyway.

(a few of the photos in this part were taken by one of my friends, not myself. You can tell because they're actually good shots.) Alright, Day 5 of our trip. It's been torture being at Knoebels for this long, but not actually spending much time in the park itself. Finally, we were going to fix that! ...of course, we woke up to this. The forcecast for several days had shown rain, but it never materialized, until we meant to actually spend a day in the park. If I stretch things a little and just count this, the day we spent all day in the park, as the actual park day for Knoebels, this makes 11 out of 12 times I've been there Knoebels that it's rained. Well, that just means less crowds. If the rain kept up, we'd just have to get Flying Turns another day. Everything else always runs in the rain, and I don't mind getting a little wet. We took advantage of the cottage kitchen before heading down to the park; one of my friends made biscuits for breakfast sandwiches (sooo good) and then, the two minute walk down into the park. We picked up our wristbands, and...well, look, we're already right near the carousel! And we have people who've never been on a carousel with a brass ring to grab! All nice, but this isn't what makes Knoebels' carousel the best. I explained about the ring, and reminded my friends that almost every time I'd brought people to the park, one of the people there for the first time got the brass ring (true!). We got onto one of the first rides of the day, everyone found an outside horse...they lowered the ring dispenser...and 15 seconds later, I had the brass ring. First time! I guess I broke the beginner's luck streak for the others, though. This year, instead of a free ticket specific to the carousel, they were giving out 3 of the regular 50 cent red ride tickets, so they could be used on something else. We had a couple people who didn't want to do a lot of rides and bought tickets instead of wristbands, so that was a nice little extra. Everyone was adamant about getting on the bumper cars that I'd been hyping up so much after that. No complaints from me! Only the best "in America" might be underrating themselves here. I can't imagine better anywhere Because of the very low crowds, they only had a few cars out on the track. Not entirely ideal to have less targets, but it did meant my group got most of the cars out there so we could focus on attacking each other. There's only so much I can really say about the Scooters here; it's all been said plenty of times. I knew what to expect, I'd done this dozens of times, but my friends' reactions to the first few hits were pretty spectacular. Sadly I wasn't about to try to pull out my phone for pictures here. With a lot of open space, we were able to get moving for some really good hits out there. As good as the Scooters are, we can only take so much abuse, and we had a lot else to do; there was always the rest of the weekend for more. I wanted to get on one of my favorites while we were right there. Not many of these left around! Most parks wouldn't try to run something this low capacity now. I believe this one originally belonged to Kennywood. Judging by recent conversations in the Knoebels thread, Satellite isn't phenomenally popular, but I love it, even if it does beat you up a bit. We doubled up, two to a side; it's much more comfortable to ride this one with someone else, so you're not being tossed around the entire cabin. I'd happily put up with it anyway, but this way was better for everyone else. By this point the rain had, despite being forecast to last a while longer, already started to back off. We didn't see it again for the day, but it had already done its job of keeping a lot of people out of the park, apparently. The crowds were the lowest I've ever seen even for a weekend there. Next, the Whip! I used to think these were relatively rare old rides, but it seems like basically every park in Pennsylvania has one. Sadly, the amazing operator / hype man that was running this and entertaining the riders last year wasn't here this year, or anywhere else in the park that I saw. Having hm running down the playform high fiving people, playing with the kids riding, and all was...well, very Knoebels. This year, just a normal ride. Italian Trapeze was down the entire week we stayed at the park. Out of all the rides there, it's one of the least unique ones, so better that that anything else. The skyride was also down the whole week as far as I saw, which was far sadder. Galleon was also down, but only because of the wet weather; the drive system doesn't work too well wet, apparently. They had it up and running very shortly after, but we didn't end up going back for it. Plenty of these rides around. Impulse still looks a bit odd, a bright modern ride in the front of a very traditional, woods-y park, but it's a nice change from the style of most of their other rides, and someone, at Knoebels, a ride sticking out so much...almost makes it fit in? Impulse was only running one train again today, but that was plenty for the number of people riding. I was going to wait for a picture of the car going through the loop, before I realized it was in the station waiting for us to get to it; it wasn't even going to be leaving until we rode. The giant wheel looks pretty peeking through the trees here. Not pretty enough for me to get on it. I know, it's ridiculous, but Ferris Wheels are about the only thing I don't like riding. I'm terrible with heights if I don't have any kind of restraint... Pretty much every park has a Scrambler type ride, but Knoebels is the only one I've been to with a Garbrick model. Might just have something to do with Garbrick being almost down the road from there? The cable drive makes it much smoother than a normal Eli Bridge Scrambler, but...personally, I feel like it's missing something without the ka-thunk ka-thunk... While I was riding Power Surge, most of the group stayed safely on the ground, and one went to take pictures. Downdraft is so much more intense than it looks like it should be. Definitely don't miss this one. Who remembers that this ride has someone who literally married it? It wasn't particularly hot after the rain, and there was no line for Skloosh. That didn't stop a few friends and myself. Picture just a little early to catch the splash. With only a few of us in the boat, we didn't get nearly the soaking Skloosh usually gives, just a bit of spray. We'd make up for that later... The Pioneer Train is another must-do at Knoebels, with some of the views you get, both of Twister and the waterslides, and out into the woods... The tube slides from an earlier day of the report The train runs right underneath Twister and lets you watch riders from below! When we were at Penn's Cave, they mentioned that they host an annual festival for people to show off old machinery, like Knoebels has here. I wonder if they ever bring this down there? None of Knoebels' black squirrels today. Too bad, they're adorable. Just a quiet ride through the woods. There's always a guard on the bridge here, and they always wave to the train. Or...is she... Yeah. She's blowing bubbles at the train riders. Because Knoebels, all. The little things here. Riders going up the first lift hill on Twister. I like the train, but I'd still trade with them right about there. Okay, we'd had a good start to the morning, but we'd been putting off something very important. Far too many of my friends still, to this point, didn't know what had been missing from their lives before now. Time to change that. There was something they had to ride. The one and only Knoebels Flyer! The little bit of breeze left over from the morning storm was absolutely perfect for snapping. Most of my group was new to the ride and not willing to push their luck too far, but I got absolutely the best snapping I've ever experienced on this ride. Fortunately the operator this time didn't care one bit. I wish someone had been taking video, though! JUST as we got off the Flyer, Flying Turns started testing after drying out from the morning. Perfect timing! I think I can see why they don't run this ride when it's wet. Maybe it was all in my imagination, but even after drying enough for them to reopen it, it felt like it was running faster and wilder than usual. Still maybe not worth waiting in a huge line for, but a unique and fun ride, if you can get on in a reasonable time. Knoebels putting on some entertainment for the kids, though I think there were twice as many actors as kids in the audience. Round-ups aren't rare, but they're still fun, and this one has a big advantage over any other similar ride. It's at Knoebels! Same with Tilt-a-whirls. For some reason I rarely seem to get a good, spinny ride on this one, but today was an exception; we just got the car going and it did not want to stop. Sadly my friends that took another car just stalled theirs almost immediately and never really got beyond rocking about a bit. The ride op here was great, as well, chatting and having fun with everyone, and trying to teach younger riders how to throw their weight around the car to get a good spin going. I don't pass up flumes, but no one else wanted to ride yet. A few people said maybe later, so I figured we could come back. If no one else wanted to, I'd ride alone later. Besides, I had something even better than a flume to distract me for now. Anyone else claiming to have the World's Finest Roller Coaster would be met with some healthy skepticism. Here...I might just believe it. The ride operator here was messing with everyone, refusing to talk about Phoenix at all and trying to hype everyone up for the antique cars instead. Cute. Front seat ride this time. I can't decide if the front or back of the first car is better, so I'll just settle for both of them being perfect. I don't know if it's possible for Phoenix to run better than usual, but after the rain it certainly felt like it was. I felt like I was going to get thrown entirely out at the far turnaround and end up taking a shortcut straight to those antique cars. Well, after hearing all about them from the Phoenix ride op, everyone wanted to ride them. Fine with me! Unfortunately they seemed to have one car that just couldn't keep up; they kept staggering the cars sending them out onto the track, only for them to all come back bunched up behind one car. Yeah, this green one wasn't doing so well. I'm kinda surprised they left it on the track, but as far as I saw it stayed out all day. I ended up going out several cars behind the problem car, so I figured I wouldn't have too much trouble. Instead, I ended up being someone who let their small child drive, and the kid couldn't seem to keep their foot on the gas pedal and kept stopping. Silver lining, that gave me a chance to take some pictures as we putt-putted around the course. Knoebels has one of the prettiest antique car courses I've seen. Made all the better by how it's partially built right into the structure of Phoenix. Over the top? Still not running, the entire week I was there. Not sure what's going on with it now... This is just disturbing in so many ways. After the antique cars, someone, possibly me, mentioned that the park also had driveable motorboats, and several of the group very much wanted to try that, so we cut back across to the other side of the park to get on them. They had what looked like the longest line in the park, probably because they were only using one side of the station and a few boats, and one operator was running everything, but with how quickly we were getting on everything else, we could afford to wait a bit. Finally got our turn... One of my friends got in his boat, and made it...exactly this far out of the station before managing to get his boat twisted sideways and stuck. The operator had to jump on his boat to get him unstuck. And then...everything went quiet for a while. Too long. No boats coming in, nothing going on that we could see...the operator giving us some rather awkward looks...normally they have extra staff there and someone would have gone to check out the boats, but that didn't seem to be the case this time. Finally, one boat returns...followed in one giant pile by all the others. ...yep...guess who. It actually turned out that it hadn't been him holding us up after all. The group before us had managed to get two adults and two children into a single boat, way too much for it and leaving it barely able to move or turn. They'd proceeded to make it as far as the first bridge, turned sideways, and gotten stuck. Eventually the boats behind managed to push them out, and they bounced and scraped their way along the canal in front of everyone, before making it to the last bridge and getting stuck again. My friend in the boat behind them managed to push past them and get them unstuck again, passing them in the process... ...only for them to immediately get stuck again badly enough that the lone operator had to run back to push them free. The poor ride op was really earning her pay that day. Finally my turn for a nice little cruise. Hello Satellite. The boats are a nice, peaceful diversion for a little while, assuming you don't have a crazy family ahead of you. I'm pretty sure we worked our way back through the middle of the park around now. At least point we hit a bunch of rides in the middle; Cosmotron, Paratrooper, Roto-jets etc. All fun, but not particularly notable by Knoebels standards. At least, not enough that I remembered my camera... Cosmotron still sticks out to me as a bit of "it could be so good." I'm easy to please and an indoor ride with lasers, music, etc? Awesome! The ride system is just kind of a tragedy though. It's so sluggish, bumpy and rough compared to any other type of himalaya or music express type ride I've been on. I always ride it at least once, still, but...it could be so good with a better ride in there, even a garden variety music express or Thunderbolt. We also made time to stop for ice cream at the Old Mill. The ice cream here is SO good; does anyone know for certain where they get it? There are quite a few mentions of it being Hershey's, but Hershey doesn't seem to make some of the flavors they have there. The only coconut pineapple ice cream that I can find, like what I had, seems to be Haagan-Dasz, but they don't make some of the other flavors, so maybe it's a mix? Soon enough, someone suggested that the Flume was a good idea after all. Well, who am I to argue that? It was a bit cool, but that rarely keeps me from Flumes, and if Skloosh barely wet us, what was a regular log flume going to do? I've been on this one so many times and mostly just gotten a bit of a misting. Three of us got on, the rest waited on the observation deck. Oh. Right. The observation deck. I remembered that part just as we were going up the first hill, and realized it was probably going to be somewhat wetter than anticipated, because there was no way they weren't going to notice the water cannons. At least we'd get pictures, because someone would definitely be taking them while they soaked us. Yep. I know my friends. The joke was at least partly on them, though, because I don't know how we managed it; we didn't have THAT much weight in the boat, but when we hit the bottom of the last drop...I'm not sure I've ever seen such a splash from a normal log flume. Too bad the picture was taken just a bit too early. We were pretty much drenched head to toe; that water cannon hadn't made any difference in the end. At least that left us well armed for some revenge-hugs for our friends when we caught back up to them... This carousel organ was playing the most horrific piece of "music" I have ever heard from one of these, so bad that it was hilarious. Unfortunately, I don't know what I was thinking at the time, because I took a picture of it, and thought it was such a shame that there was no way I could actually include the horrible music. I was halfway back to the front of the park before it occurred to me that cameras can take video, too. I know...I'm gonna blame it on being hungry. It was just about time to do something about that, anyway, and the Alamo was finally open! While we were waiting for our table, the park lights began to come on... I didn't need a menu. I'd been waiting for this all week. The Alamo's hot turkey sandwich might look simple, but it's one of my favorite meals anywhere. Plenty of moist, delicious turkey and crispy fries just drowning in a lake of gravy. Sometimes fancy looking food is overrated. This is all I need. By time we finished, the sun was down and all the lights were on. Knoebels is even more beautiful after dark. Time to pick out the best night-rides in the place! ...and Twister is so, so much better in the dark, too. I see you over there...I'll be there soon! But first, I needed a night ride on my favorite flat ride. Also very pretty with its lights on! And then over to Twister. One of these days I need to get there for Halloween when they turn all the lights in the back of the park off for it...but for now, this would do just fine, especially with Twister running like it was this year. So incredibly disorienting in the dark; even very nearly up there with the Beast and Boulder Dash for after dark rides. Stratosfear, also better after dark, with how the lights bathe the park around you when you're at the top! Of COURSE Phoenix is one of the must-do night rides. I love diving into the pitch-black tunnel before the lift hill, and if any coaster deserves a light-up crown... And...as always for me, last ride of the night. Everyone else headed back to the cottage, but I stayed for an extra 20-30 minutes or so. Finishing up with Fandango is a little bit of a tradition for me; I don't know why I like it so much when I've been on much "better", certainly bigger rides of its type, but...something about Fandango makes it once of those rides where it manages to be both a thrill ride and so comforting that I could sleep on it. Especially at night, under Knoebels' trees, it's wonderful. Every time I can stay at Knoebels until closing, I head over to it towards the end of the night and just ride until the last ride of the night. ---- Day 6! A bit less to show off for the last two days here. By now we were a bit tired and had quite a bit of ride time, so these were mostly hang-out days. Saturday though, someone suggested Mini-golf. Knoebels mini-golf course is the mini-golf equivalent of Phoenix; it might not look like much from a distance, but it's a pretty crazy ride. It ended up being more so than usual this time. On the way there, a couple members of our group wanted to get in an extra ride on the Haunted Mansion. Fine with me! This was the first time I'd seen anything even closer to a line for the Haunted Mansion, so the first time I actually noticed this while waiting. I didn't know it had a story. We headed down to the golf course, and I attempted to break us up into three groups so we could stay under the group size limit and not cause issues for anybody. That was when the mini-golf attendant laughed and told us to just go ahead and all play together; no one would mind. They didn't really care about rules like that. She made the mistake of telling my friends not to worry about rules and just go have fun. I'd really been hoping to play minigolf. That wasn't exactly what happened. It STARTED as mini-golf... But people kept mentioning how she said not to worry about rules. So soon enough... It was more Mini Golf With Friends With everyone trying to come up with more ridiculous ways to "not care about the rules." It was pretty silly, to be honest, but I was clearly outvoted on wanting to play seriously, and everyone was having fun, including quite a few people that were obviously getting a laugh just watching. We made sure to let "real" players play through past us, so no harm done. At least until one of the group decided to Happy Gilmore a shot and sent it not just off the course, but through the chain link fence, across the road, and under a corral across it. Um. I missed the actual shot. I didn't miss the reaction it got from passers by. Someone fished the ball out and tossed it back to us, fortunately. "Don't worry, I love grabbing balls." Well, that wasn't what I expected to hear in the middle of central PA, but sure. The group only played a little bit more seriously after that. Exactly one out of nine of us actually made it up over the ramp and through a barrel here. Mostly unintentionally, the vast majority of us found...more interesting ways through. Less a factor of this group bending the concept of mini-golf, and more just how this hole usually goes, in my experience... This hole has four different spots to tee off...so of course, some of the group used them all at once... We did manage to get through the rest without any more entirely lost balls, somehow. I needed a coffee, and how ca you resist The Loaf? This was actually the first time I'd been to Knoebels on a weekend, and even late in the season, it was beginning to look rather different than I'm used to. That's a lot of people for Knoebels, at least compared to what I'm used to The back areas were still pretty quiet The bigger crowds meant that the bumper cars were running almost all of the cars at once. That was an opportunity! As much fun as the extra room was the first time we'd hit the bumper cars, having more targets was even better. The car I took this time had an...unusual crabwalk, which made aiming at anyone something of a challenge, but it wasn't like I could drive far even diagonally without hitting someone, so just as good, really. We wandered the park a little bit, getting seconds of a few things that we hadn't had enough of, then most of the group headed back. I stayed in the park a little later again. I can't remember if we all got on the Flyers again, or if that was after I was on my own, but I did need to get in more time on them before the week was over. They were snapping like crazy again, and again the ride op didn't mind At one point I got in what certainly felt like a very impressive snap, hung the tub in the air for a moment...dropped back onto the cables, and the lights on the entire ride flickered. Now...in retrospect I don't think there's any real chance the two were actually related, the ride isn't that rickety. More than likely someone brushed a switch or who knows what. For a moment though, I couldn't help thinking I broke something! Just a minor heart attack there. Very dark night, means an even better ride on Twister! And back "home" for the night Day 7 Sunday was even more relaxed; we all meant to recover a bit before long drives home and heading back to reality, so it was very much a relaxing day. We hit the International Food court for breakfast...which was absolutely mobbed, we could barely find anywhere to sit...then lounged around a while. In the evening... Well, we had this nice charcoal grill here, why not use it? Burgers and hot dogs, and one of my friends made a fantastic chili to go with them. One of the best meals of the trip, and we got to take credit for it! Well...some of the group could take credit for it, anyway. I mostly just cleaned the grill. I'm a baker, not a griller. Everyone else was entirely satisfied as far as rides by now, but this was the last night I'd get to spend at Knoebels at least for the year; I was going to make the most of it. One more time down the road into the park This place has such a warm, welcoming glow at night. How can you not love it? I wasn't going home without one more ride on Power Surge. Settling into the seat...I couldn't help but notice a massive spider web across one of the arms...apparently spun by a tiny little spider. I can't imagine how this web stayed in place with the way this ride moves, but...that's spider silk for you, I guess. No one seemed to want to knock it down, staff or guests. Gotta respect a spider with ambitions like that, I suppose! It's hard to see in the photo; I didn't get a chance to take one from up closer, but that's one big web, on a fast moving ride. Huh. I did a bit of wandering, just enjoying being in the park one more night. Towards the back, I noticed a bit of a green glow that looked almost like something being set up for the Halloween event? Nope. Just a green light atop the flume for some reason. It was getting chilly and late at night...riding the flume again now wouldn't be a great idea. Of course, I rode the flume again. I finished up with a couple more rides on Twister and Phoenix, and once again Fandango, and then, back to the cottage. Even after spending so much time in the park, I still didn't want to leave...that has to say something about the place. There was something waiting back at the cottage though that we hadn't had a chance to break out all week yet... We had a fireplace; we had to make s'mores! A night around the fire with friends and toasted (and horribly burned, flaming) marshmallows, to cap off an amazing week. That's appropriate enough, I think. This little place really did feel like home by now. Even the parts that had seemed a little rough at first had grown endearing. Well...except the Jesus clock, anyway.

This is likely long since debunked, I'm not sure at all, but wasn't there a rumor a while back that Rye Playland was getting a Chance coaster as part of the big investment they're supposedly getting?