ejot

Kind of guessing but let's say..... Def: Dollywood,SFGAd,SFNE,BGW,Moreys,Knoebels,Hershey Prob: HolidayWorld,KentuckyKingdom,BeechBend,SFA Mebbe: FuntownSplashtown,SylvanBeach,Waldameer,Conneaut

I visited Canobie for my first time on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Had planned to see Funtown/Splashtown on Monday but other plans developed the night before that brought me back home instead. Expected it to be busy, but I knew this was the kind of place where enjoying the atmosphere was as important as the rides, so I wanted to see an alive, bustling park. It was busy, but very bearable. I pulled in right at opening after some delays getting on the road, so arrived later than planned to already full queues. An interesting phenomenon ensued: With just a few exceptions, every queue stayed more or less at exactly full capactiy all day long -- neither shortening nor extending into the midways. This meant a 20-30min wait for most rides. The park is absolutely charming, and I enjoyed a relaxing day soaking in all the details. How about a few pics? First up is Yankee Cannonball! I've long heard a fair bit of hype for this ride and was excited to see what it was all about. You don't really get to choose your seat. Train-filling groups are let in for each lap, everyone just kind of dukes it out for the best seats. Can't see much of the ride from inside the park, just the lift hill. It borders the parking lot but I did not venture out that way for a closer look. On my first ride I was second in line to get in, but had to set my bag aside and ended up with front seat of the back car. My ride was fun, extremely smooth, but did not deliver the major airtime I was hoping for. Later after dark I took another ride on Cannonball and lucked out for the front seat! Holy moly is this a smooth ride (absolutely the smoothest woodie I've ridden), and the airtime was better up front. It was best-case ride and really had me appreciating this vintage coaster. Next Up was Untamed in the picturesque Great Bear Plaza. Untamed was fun, but a little too jerky to be a great ride. Great details on the station. Operations were speedy and I waited about 5min. This was one exception to the "instantly full queues at opening" rule. The lift hill trys to intimidate you as you queue. Bring it on, Untamed. Around back of Untamed was a real cornfield! I'm thinking these were related to a Halloween event. A field of tomatoes and an awesome windmill. This is my kind of place. The birch bark supports are really well done, and the ride nestles beautifully into its surroundings. This is a game of "find the train hidden in plain sight". I said nestled, and freakin' meant it!! Looks smooth. Is not. Fantastic new pinball parlor. Could have spent hours here. Major reason for coming here! It was,... decent. Wish I could have done Funtown's version, too. This is Lake Canobie. Thus the name of the park. I definitely drank my way around the park. Beer was flowing freely. Even the smoker outposts were attractive. My first pass by, the line for Canobie Corkscrew was too long for my liking so I just snapped a few pics. This has got to be one of the cleanest Arrow Corkcrews out there. I did manage a ride during a rare moment when the line shortened. These folks are not getting screwed as hard as your typical Arrow rider. A small water play area in the back of the park behind CC. Strangely, I actually REALLY liked this ride. Paintball range! This would make for part of a great haunted walk-thru. Parks get points for friendly doggie policies. yay rainbows Gave the Roosters a pass on my first time by, hoping the line would die down. It wouldn't. wet af Line showed no signs of relenting so I waited out my 1/2h My turn! OH WTF is this!! (Permission granted to take photo.) They're beautiful, but flew like a Cadillac in molassas. Positively un-snap-crackle-poppin'. Oh, how did I forget to tell you about Caterpillar? It was AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. (Permission granted to take photo.) I ate some food too, but not from here. Totally meant to. Oh man, and I also totally forgot to mention my favorite ride!! Oh well. Thanks for reading my TR.

Oh my. This may call for a quick jaunt. I was a solo visitor my last BOGO day and had to track down an odd-numbered group to share my benefit. That felt nice, but this is.... better!

I totally missed the last few replies! So my caption lied and I did not actually hit up the tap room for various reasons. Their site mentions local craft brews, so I'm thinking real beer and betting you'd be all set. Hours are kind of limited & funky though so check for that. I don't believe they brew their own. That said, craft hard cider = win. But I agree, oddly flavored beers = good chance of fail. The place is definitely worth a stop since you're so close. Then again orchards in general enthuse me more than they do most people.

And that is why I am in line for Maverick instead. I happily rode Maverick twice early on with like 5min waits. It's an excellent ride. And I actually enjoyed the 50 min we spent inside Mean Streak waiting it out. The structure is undeniably impressive, and it was cool to take some time and really check it out up close one last time. My row 3 ride itself was, by far, not the best I've had - but still made me crack a few smiles. Glad to get a final ride during the atmosphere of the final day. There was a seven-lap wait for front when we rode. Worth the wait, would have done so if alone. Anyway, we had a GREAT visit tonight. 25min and 10min waits for two front row Dragster night rides. Half-hour Millennium Force waits dwindled to 10min the last hour. Backrow 2nd-to-left-edge Valravn ride was A+. This is a very wisely chosen ride, and serves great purpose in combining "sustained stunning view" with "legitimate thrills". Is it too short? NO! I come back laughing and smiling and happy, so nope. Haunt stuff we did was OK, but we lost some enthusiasm after a long wait for Cornstalkers with the ride lines so attractive. Some good scare actors.!

Mean Streak line is past the Maverick entrance lollll

I believe there's also a two beer limit per person per visit.

Oh man, if you've only been on a rushed Hershey visit and loved it, a nice relaxed visit is going to blow your freakin' mind. I actually think Hershey is a total two day park ... take it easy ... ride the monorail .. take a trolley tour, I bring the niece and nephew and do all the cheesy ChocolateWorld stuff, enjoy the ambiance, stuff my face with candy, hit up a few coasters ............... then late in the evening when the line inevitably dies down, marathon the everloving crap out of Skyrush. Next day, rinse & repeat.

I emailed the park asking about this a few days ago and got this reply:

Barton Orchards is an awesome farm in Poughquag, NY with a few homebrew style rides on premises. Their Harvest Festival was on Saturday so we went and enjoyed the unusually hot early fall day. This was our first visit and we'll definitely be back this year to pick some apples. There will be no ride ratings as I did not actually ride anything, but observing was a blast. You're day is probably going to turn out well when there's a goat enjoying a f@#cking overpass. Plus LLllamas....chillin. There was fair style food. And beers being double fisted. Let's do this! Plus things that go boom. and pickups, lots of pickups. We picked up seven pounds of jalepenos, which are now canned and pickling. Bountiful harvest. We've made it to the park! Woohoo! This is the only park you enter through a tunnel of CRAZY A$$ grapevine. Now onto some rides!! There are attractions aplenty including a haunt walkthru. And freakin' BOULDERDASH, baby! I mean, admit it, you kinda wanna do this. Oooh, yeah, onto some REAL rides. This, sadly, was down. Tractor wouldn't start. Maintenance had been called, but they couldn't estimate how long it would be. Hate it when that happens! Let's have a closer look at this, shall we? Look, a cart track! Ahh ha... That's why they're so quiet. Why yes, I will be building a set of these now. Huge corn maze! By the time we made it here, we were short on time and couldn't afford to chance getting lost, LOL. That's all, folks. We really did have a great day. I mean there was live music and pulled pork and beer so ...

Awesome, thank you!!

Asking because it's not specifically mentioned on the Platinum Pass Benefits page.... Halloweekends is part of park admission and we'll get in with Platinum passes? It's not a completely separately ticketed event like Knott's? Is there 5pm early entry for the Friday nights that open at 6? Thanks.

I had a front seat ride that was bearable early in the season but on my last visit a few weeks ago a second row ride really beat me up to the point that I didn't want to ride again. If it was merely back-of-Mean Streak rough it would be a top ten coaster. As it stands, it's basically at the bottom of my list because I just can't ride it without really regretting it.

This has always been my experience at Gatekeeper as well, the crews there stand out above the already great operations in the rest of the park. If I can get an op's attention long enough to do so, I always take a second to commend them on how exceptionally well they run the ride. I probably wouldn't find Mean Streak particularly great in almost any other setting, but it is a perfect ride for delivering that zen experience overlooking the lake. I'll always distinctly remember my first ride on it on a blustery, damp May morning. The lake was covered in this beautiful thick fog and at the exact moment below I was almost overwhelmed by this feeling of being incredibly alive. Photo courtesy Cedar Point official POV. We're planning a quick trip out for it's final day. I'm excited for what the future will bring but, agreed: I'll miss it.

So the possibility that WC is allowing preferred seating and the $50 2017 season passes finally got me back to SFNE yesterday after taking this year off from the park. > Crowds were VERY light > We really were allowed to wait for any row on WC all day long with no pressure to fill in empty rows. > Waits for front row were minimal because you had to kind of work your way through the crowd, much like the situation with the back rows of Toro. > WC was running AWESOME. Very smooth, very fast, incredible airtime. By far the best rides I've ever had on it. > Saw three different crews running the ride. Two were doing a great job, and the third was one of the worst crews I've ever seen. Each of the three dispatches before our ride were over 7 minutes, for no good reason. > At Superman we weren't allowed to wait for preferred seating even before they started running VR. They forced you to fill empty rows. They had the fog cranked way up in the tunnel which was cool. We stayed away once VR started. > Goliath is giant turd and appears to be losing popularity, it was running with no line whatsoever all day. Our ride in row 4 was one of my worst ever. > The Six Flagiest thing ever: Meal plan snack gets you an ice cream cone, but they hit you up for $0.59 if you want sprinkles.

yes

Couldn't agree more. The beige has to be the prettiest color I've ever seen on a woodie. But what was last year a definite re-ride is this year a one-n-done

Blue Streak is still hanging on in my overall top-10 (among ~200) due to: 1. Backseat rides are an experience beyond words. 2. The sensation that you've discovered an abandoned ride and managed to get it running. But sure, the wheel seats are pretty rough.

Zierer vs Miler is actually an interesting comparison. Miler built a coaster nearly to the scale of Impulse, Verbolten, Wicked, etc. over 20 years ago. But instead of completely starting from scratch with the design, they simply scaled up their kiddy coaster design with the funky c-beam track. The result looks wonderfully terrifying and is absolutely on my coaster bucket list. But it didn't really catch on, or allow Miler to grow into a bigger company. Zierer, on the other hand, moved in the direction of more expensive, refined, sturdy designs instead of scaling up Flitzers or Tivolis. This seems to have allowed to them to grow as a company and win bigger contracts more frequently. To get back on topic, I'm surprised the consensus on Gale Force + Miler is "ugly". I think the "mess" of supports looks awesome. Can't wait for the project to finish up. I'll probably do an Atlantic City/Ocean City trip next year as I've never been.

You can't use fast lane til early entry is done. You can buy them early though. Millennium and Mav are the best early entry rides imo. But if you have fast passes don't worry too much, just relax, you'll get in plenty of rides and rerides.

^,^^ Woah, cool! Yes, that is just like what I had in mind. Thanks for posting it. Would love to ride this coaster and also think a similar model on a larger scale would be very cool. Maybe outward facing seats too or 1/2 & 1/2?

I going there next week with an enthusiast friend who loves it, and goes a lot, so I'm excited to hear this about it! I knew about Ravine Flyer II being great (my friend's #6 coaster), but like that is sounds like the whole park is nice and charming to go to as well! You're in for a treat. This park is a gem and doesn't get praised nearly often enough! Definitely my #1 vote for this thread. I hope you're staying till close because Waldameer after dark is pure magic and RFII night rides are life-altering.

I'd like to see a spinning suspended coaster. Each car would resemble a little frisbee ride.

Two wild mice, two Chinese knockoffs, some Intamin goodness........ and Giraffica. I was like "the only thing that could make this even richer would be a volare"... then I scroll down on rcdb, there's a volare. It's like something out of the "weird coaster dreams" thread.

What great feedback, glad you guys enjoyed! I do agree that PR totally outclasses SFNE SROS and, for me personally, MilF. While they are quite different rides, I'd probably put it on par with Fury. Agreed! The line was pretty long each time I passed by, so I kept skipping it. Will make it a priority for a return visit, as I do like dark ride shooters. Not wanting to spend only a partial day at KW is much of the reason I hadn't visited until now. And after seeing how many truly great rides there are, I totally recommend a full day visit!!