Semi-Ghetto Photoless TR: Vancouver's Playland

[easytoremember]

I am nearing the end of my Vancouver/Seattle family trip. I had a chance to visit Vancouver's Playland, which could be considered a semi-Ghetto park. I also got a chance to get a random credit at Fun Forrest amusement park, which sits right next to the Space Needle in Seattle. I also chickened out to get one of the remaining credits, but I will talk about later.

 

We visited Vancouver's Playland first. Our main goal was to ride the wooden coaster at the park known as, you guessed it "Wooden Coaster", as well as pick up the three other credits at the park. When we got to the park, it was raining, but that was not supprising because it had rained every day but one since we had gotten to the Pacific North west. My brother and I payed the thirty bucks each to enter the park, but at least it was POP, so we could ride the woodie multiple times as well as get the other credits and ride the flats. We first hit up the woodie, and we were not expecting anything special. We were very supprised when it was actually good, To tell the truth, it was very good. "Wooden Coaster" is an ACE coaster classic, which means that there was no seat divider, no seatbelts, and single position lap bars. This was great for this ride because there were about five spots of ejector airtime where you basically stood completly up in you seat invoulentarily in the back seat. The ride was also very smooth, even though it was so old. The park obviously does a good job maintianing this ride, which is supprising when you look at the rest of the park. I would also like to comment on the opperations of this ride. They were only running one train, but the ride ops were doing a great job of keeping the line moving really fast. Since the trains were so old, the ops had to manually unlock each lap bar on the final brake run, but they were doing it so fast that they had unlocked everybody before the train even came to a full stop at the brakes. It was actually pretty cool to watch.

 

Other than the woodie there was nothing really special or good about the park, but we still had a good time getting the credits and doing the flats. We were happy to find out that we were actually allowed on the kiddie coaster. The Arrow coaster was average, but at least where we sat was not painful. Their Wild Mouse was just plain scary. It was the weirdest roller coaster I have ever seen. Instead of having upstop wheels and sidestop wheels(is that the term?) it had this crazy horizontal wheel thing directly below the train that acted as both the upstop and side stop wheels. We were both really reluctant on getting on the ride, because it looked like it should derail. I still have no idea how it didn't. We got on anyways, and it was the scariest ride I have ever been on. Everything was banked to the right a little bit, so on some turns there was a slight opposite bank, which made you feel like you were actually going to derail. The cars were also very small, with just seatbelts, you felt very insecure.

 

After getting our credits, we hit up some of the flats. When we had gotten there, the log flume had been closed, but now was open. We headed over there. It seemed as though they had opened prematurely because there was no water in some of the troughs, so we just rolled along on the bottom of the trough.(this could possibly be considered a Jeff Johnson credit). After that we did their S&S tower, which was mildly fun. We also got on our first huss frizbee(I have been cursed with these things because we see them everyhwere, but they were always closed). This one was actually closed when we got there, but then opened, so we took advantage before it would surely close again soon. And that was about it for Playland.

 

A little more to come.

[odie]

How long did it take you guys to get from Playland to Seattle/Seattle to Playland? I would like to go there one day but I don't want to have to spend the night over there and have the cost double.

[easytoremember]

About five hours, including the border crossing, but we took the long way to see Cascade, so it is probobly shorter.