Photo TR: Coaster Palooza goes to the Northeast - SFNE, NBA

Coaster Palooza · September 15, 2007

The Plan: (8/1-8/5) Fly to Hartford, CT to attend a friend’s wedding in Springfield, MA

The Mission: Ride as many coasters as we can in between the events and get to an out of the way Hard Rock Café.

Read on to see if the mission was accomplished.

Day 1: 8/1-8/2 - A red-eye, Lake Compounce, a family dinner and no sleep

First off, we take a red-eye flight (8/1) to the east coast with a 3-hour (planned) lay-over in Pittsburgh, PA. Unfortunately it was our only route. We did get bumped to first-class though, round-trip. We also had a pass for the USAirways Club and it came in handy for the 3-hours.

Upon arriving in Hartford (8/2), we had to get to AAA to buy discount tickets for Lake Compounce. We had excellent directions and never got lost! Lake Compounce has become another favorite small park of ours. Boulder Dash lived up to the hype for us and we got all the credits there. It was extremely hot and the park was crowded. Surprisingly, the wait for Boulderdash was under 15 minutes. Actually it would have been a walk-up if we didn’t want the front row. We were at Lake Compounce from 12:30-4pm.

We headed to Springfield after Lake Compounce. The hotel that we were staying in is only 10 minutes from Six Flags New England and it also uses the same parking lot for the NBA Hall of Fame. We aren’t big NBA fans, but we did end up going to the Hall of Fame on Saturday (8/4) night.

Once we arrived at the hotel, we were informed of a family/wedding dinner that we needed to attend. It was to start at 7pm. We got to the hotel around 5:30. With no sleep and being in the same clothes as we were in yesterday, we got quick showers, a short rest, and put on our happy faces.

The dinner was great at a neat local restaurant. We closed down UNO, a restaurant next door to the hotel after the dinner.

Here is Meg again.

Here is Steve's bride Meg with her family.

Here is my friend Steve, his sister, Laurie, and her husband.

That's a big beer. My friend's brother-in-law, James, is behind me.

Here we are again.

In case it has been too long in this report since you have seen us.

They had the old-style Coca-Cola bottles too.

Couple more photos of the restaurant's decorations.

The restaurant was decorated incredibly.

The place was in Springfield, MA. It has such a small town atmosphere.

Here are a few photos of the restaurant/bar.

My friend was getting married and we went to dinner with them Friday night.

The trip wouldn't be complete without smashed pennies.

This shows you how close it is to the skyride.

Here comes Boulder Dash.

Oooohhh

Nice view though.

It is way too long. It was so hot that day that this was miserable.

This skyride was nothing like the one at Knoebel's

Boulder Dash again.

Here is the waterpark area. It was really crowded that day, but it wasn't bad at the rides.

This was how full the tram station was.

Boulder Dash on the way to the skyride.

Their bumper cars were nice.

This dude invented the Boo Blaster.

Here's the car.

Getting scared.

Nice little dark ride.

Had to ride the flap-jacks.

Some neat theming around the park.

Worst flyers ever. Especially after having just been to Knoebel's.

I survived it.

There was some pain, but...

I'm in the second row if you can see that far.

Here comes my first headache of the trip.

This is their kiddie area.

We did get our on-ride photo.

Showing some love for the train.

The dispatcher was hilarious. One of the ride ops was going really slow and he made the comment of, "Now that the second ice-age is over, we can dispatch the train." That made my day!

The wait was very tolerable.

but this is why you go to Lake Compounce.

and there were really good flat rides,

They have a nice drop tower...

With the long wait, we decided against riding Wildcat until the end of the day.

Here's the entrance.

My favorite thing, going through the tunnel to get to the park.

We made it!

Didn't we pick up this car in Connecticut?

They had this display at the AAA office, so I decided to get a pic with it.

We had to go to AAA in Hartford to get our tickets to Lake Compounce.

This photo is all too familiar. Franco Harris and George Washington.

The couches were comfortable in the club.

Where do you go when you have a 3 hour lay-over in Pittsburgh?

We closed our day at Uno's restaurant next to the hotel.

LcHg5265 · September 15, 2007

You actually caught the Lake Compounce General Manager, Jerry Brick, in one of your pictures. haha

(The one labeled, Boulder Dash on the way to the skyride.)

Hattuchili · September 17, 2007

Hey Rick, great pictures so far. Lake Compounce looks like a nice little park with some good attractions. The restaurant looks cool with all the beer stein theming. I am looking forward to more pictures.

Coaster Palooza · September 17, 2007

^^I had no idea that was the General Manager. Thanks for letting me know.

^Soren, I will get more photos up soon, hopefully later tonight.

thefitness · September 17, 2007

Lake Compounce looks like and awesome park...mostly because Boulder Dash looks amazing!

Is it as good as it looks?

Nice pictures, can't wait for the rest of the TR.

Coaster Palooza · September 17, 2007

^Lake Compounce is a great little park. My wife and I really enjoyed our time there. It was extremely hot and pretty crowded, but we had a great time.

Now, onto the rest of the Trip Report.

We tried our best to get up early for SFNE, but it wasn’t working out. We arrived at SFNE around 12 noon, kiss of death! The park’s entrance was still packed, but it wasn’t up the stairs….yet. We were told on the weekends that it usually gets all the way up the stairs. Those of you that have been there know what I am talking about.

Today’s main mission was to ride Superman – Ride of Steel. The wait was over 90 minutes, but we didn’t care. If it was the only ride we got on today, we were going to ride it. S:ROS is truly a top 10 steel coaster for me. It gave us an awesome ride. We were in the second to last row. Mucho airtime! Next we headed to Catwoman since it was the closest. We realized we weren’t going to get on every coaster this trip. We went to the back to ride Batman and surprisingly, it was a walk-on. It was getting late for us at this point because the wedding was at 5pm. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and left. We will return SFNE.

The wedding was great. It was hot and humid, but the ceremony was terrific. It was just what we needed after a hot day at the park.

We closed UNO again!

We waited 90 minutes to get on.

You are one hell of a ride.

The queue however wasn't that great.

Superman has some great drops and airtime.

This is where Superman lives.

I like what 6-Flags did with having characters walk around the park.

Hey, is this another "one of the oldest" carousels?

With all the time we had, I decided to take a picture of the #1 coaster sign.

We can't believe that everyone isn't already in the park.

Holy cow! This place is packed and it is noon.

oh man, is that the line?

Coming across the bridge...

Still on the tram here.

We're troopers though.

Here is a view of the parking lot.

When we arrived at SFNE, we saw a ton of buses and the parking lot was getting full.

Coaster Palooza · September 18, 2007

Sorry for the double post, but I couldn't continue uploading my photos yesterday.

I can't believe this photo was taken!

Yeah, I know Derek, but what are you going to do? When in Rome...

The groom and me.

The wedding party and family.

Me, filming and snapping photos.

This was the wedding ceremony. It was very casual.

Awwww...

This is us at my friend's wedding. Yes we had matching Hawaiian outfits on.

Random character

Even though it was August, they were already getting prepared for Halloween.

There's the gigantic toilet bowl.

These guys were playing their trashcans.

Sorry, no imitation, just a random photo.

They have some nice swings too.

I found a couple of my pals.

We decided to have lunch instead.

NO WAY!!! Not Today!

This was a good ride. Nice and smooth, like Medusa at SFDK.

Shall we ride in the front row.

This is a better wait than Superman was.

Lifthill goodness

It's not like the other Batmans at other 6-Flags parks.

Yes it is!

Is that Batman I see?

More flat rides.

Some random Wiggles' stuff.

Yep, it's Catwoman

We decided to hit the little rides because of the crowds.

S:ROS is just awesome!

Ohhhhh....

Aaaaaah....

Ooooooh....

mcjaco · September 18, 2007

Ah Uno. What was once a pizzeria only in Chicago, it went franchise and now lost it's charm.

Great PTR Rick. As usual!

Coaster Palooza · September 18, 2007

^Thanks Matt

Here is the rest of the TR:

We were so happy to finally be able to sleep in today! Our day started around 11:30 with a run down to the hotel’s restaurant, not UNO, for breakfast. This was starting out to be a long morning and we were struggling to leave for Foxwoods. We finally left around 3pm. Foxwoods is the largest casino in the world and the Hard Rock Café isn’t small either. We have been to many of them and this is one of the best. The HRC in San Antonio is still the best in our book though.

The short, 1 and a half hour trip back suddenly became a little longer once we hit Hartford. There was a 3 mile back-up to get through the city. We detoured around it and made it back to the hotel in time for dinner with the group at the NBA Hall of Fame.

This was a great trip!

Day 4: 8/5 – Early Flight home (got up at 4:30am), nothing adventurous, we’re just happy to be here. Oh yeah, by the way Gyendolynne left the next day for Mexico! Hasta la Vista.