[TPS] Screenshot Trip Report

[LiftThrill]

One of my all-coaster "parks" that I made. I had fun with the photo-TR-styled showcase.

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Our crew of six headed out to FunWorld this past Tuesday to check out their new strata coaster, Stratosphere. The old Moon Landing woodie was becoming a rougher ride than Ghostrider, and even locals who agreed it had some nice history said that it was in dire need of fixing. The park always listens to its customers, and by popular demand Moon Landing was demolished. With the extra space and station available, FunWorld called up Intamin and the result is easily the best of the holy trinity of strata beasts. We took a big van to check it out, and it definitely lives up to the expectations set by its raw height and speed. It's still not the best coaster in the park, though, because Draco is the best coaster ever, let alone in FunWorld. Firebird is an awesome woodie, and Loopin' Leopard is a (relatively) smooth Arrow looper that packs a serious punch for its size.

This is the aerial on the park's website. The four coasters are Firebird, Loopin' Leopard, Draco, and Stratosphere.

Stratosphere's layout. As you can see here, it has some promising-looking airtime hills, a straight vertical drop as opposed to the twisty spirals you get on Dragster and Kingda Ka, and some huge G-pulling turns.

It was almost a walk-on today, since the park was closed other than ERT for all rides for us and some school groups that could afford to book the park. The launch is amazing.

The best shot I could get of the people in front of us. Good thing my camera has great optical zoom. I was incredibly giddy at this point. This thing really does stand out with its height alone, although I was soon to find out that the rest of the ride is insane...

...especially THIS AIRTIME HILL. Holy crap, this thing has the best ejector air I've ever experienced; better than all of El Toro (which is saying something) and totally blows Millennium Force out of the water, sky, and space (not saying quite as much). The speed of the ride shoots you into the stratosphere on this hill. If the OTSR's (which weren't a big deal like they are on Kingda Ka; these ones just attached the lap bar to the seat for extra measure) hadn't been there, I probably wouldn't have stopped accelerating until I hit Neptune. Holy crap. This hill is amazing.

Stratosphere is fun, but FunWorld isn't all about Stratosphere. There's something better than an Intamin accelerator at this park, even one with an airtime hill that makes El Toro look like a kiddie credit. The best ride of all time, Draco. Some people say most B&M hypers are overrated. That's true. However, Draco isn't most B&M hypers. It's super long and has a varied layout. Tons of airtime hills don't stop B&M from adding a few helices and double helices. There's also an amazing mid-course drop that's almost (but not quite) as good as the first drop.

Here's a group of people that I'm very jealous of as I wait in the queue line. I'd also like to mention that this lift hill is super fast for a chain hill.

The pre-drop on this ride is the best pre-drop. Ever. It's like they took the classic turnaround at the top of a classic woodie and put it on some major, major steroids. Draco has the best pre-drop ever. The real first drop doesn't disappoint either.

This tiny double helix pulls some serious g-force. After those airtime hills, some powerful positive g's should balance things out. But wait, this is a roller coaster! If things balance out, it'll roll back! Don't roll back, Draco! You still have the awesome mid-course drop! (and yes, I know that's not even close to how rollback & airtime/g-force work, haha)

The mid-course drop comes after another bigger and less forceful double helix. This part serves as a mid-course brake run as well, since going up that double helix uses up alot of kinetic energy for potential... and this drop pulls it back into full force.

More fun twisty helices. I love this g-force as much as the next guy, but g-force alone doesn't make a coaster (no offense, Batman The Ride fans!)....

....AIRTIME, AIRTIME, AIRTIME, AIRTIME, FEAST UPON THE AIRTIME!!!! WE'VE GOT IT ALL!!!!! EJECTOR, FLOATER, STRONG, AND STRONGER, LONG, AND LONGER, AAAIIIRRRTTTIIIMMMEEE buffet!!!!

The airtime buffet can't last forever, we thought as we headed to the next coaster, the Loopin' Leopard. Last time we were here, this ride was conveniently closed so we had an excuse not to ride an Arrow looper, but this time it was open so we figured credit and pain was better than no credit and no pain. We were sure in for a surprise...

Let's climb the lift hill. Brace yourselves...

...for some smooth inline twists??? I thought this was an Arrow..?

...serious hangtime in the loops. Especially the second one, that also has a bonus of a double up and a double down on the way in and out of it. Way better airtime than I expected.

...and just as you thought it was good, we hit the final brake run. Short and sweet (for an Arrow). So far, everything here has been awesome. Let's head over to one of my favorite woodies, the Firebird!

Here's a shot of Firebird from the park entrance. It's a great-looking coaster. RMC recently gave it topper track so now it rides as good as it looks. Shame they couldn't smooth out the Moon Landing.

More Firebird. It has a double out-and-back layout that has only a few moments of headchopper. There's quite a bit of decent airtime on this ride, especially in the back. The main drawback to it is that the bottom of the first drop transitions rather quick and it's pretty neckbreaking in the back if you don't brace yourself for that one moment. This shot also captures the mini double down and mini double up. They aren't super noticeable on-ride unless you're in the back seat. They still provide some great floater in the front if you're looking for it.

Having fun?

A really awesome first drop for a woodie. Very smooth thanks to the topper as well.

Let's go back and reride Draco with the remaining time we have. It's just a few hours before we have to head out for the Swamp Park Afternoon Bash event with Amusement Park Critique.

And let's reride Stratosphere while we're at it. That is why we came here anyhow.

Another Draco reride, anybody?

Firebird isn't to be left out with our reride party. We had about 30 minutes left, and since everything was still a walk-on, we decided that we had time for two more rerides.

A run on Loopin' Leopard while we're at it...

Firebird is close to the entrance, let's hit that up one last time before we hit the van and prepare for another hour of driving. We clocked out at 2:46PM, just the perfect time to be ready for the Swamp Park Afternoon Bash at 4 o'clock.

We'll update with pictures from Swamp Park tomorrow. By the way, this trip brings my credit count to 249 with Stratosphere and Loopin' Leopard. Swamp Park should push it up past 250 since I've never been there before!

Edited July 29, 2015 by LiftThrill

[LiftThrill]

So, that was a fun day! It was my first time at Swamp Park and I had some fun with the few coasters they had. Hyperdive was the weirdest dive coaster I've ever been on, Swamp Mine was a fun mine train, and there was also a Boomerang I rode for the credit.

An aerial photo of Swamp Park. It's very small but at least it has two decent coasters.

Good afternoon, Swamp Park! We arrived just in time for Amusement Park Critique's Afternoon Bash. There's a Boomerang here, but other than that it looks promising.

We started off with a ride on Hyperdive. It's weird in general, but the ride elements are just flat out ridiculous, in a good way.

One of the weird things about Hyperdive is that it uses standard floorless trains rather than dive trains. That's nice because the back seat actually has a different experience as opposed to the front and there are some middle trains.

The right-hand side of this hill is going up. Major ejector airtime here.

What even is this thing? I'd wager a guess at some sort of inverted cobra roll. It goes through a half-loop, banks 180 degrees outward and ends up on top, goes around an elevated curve, then falls while banking 180 degrees outward down a sort of dive loop.

Overbanked turn

Another 180-degree turnaround, but not overbanked.

This is the weirdest zero-g roll ever. Instead of being a smooth transition, it sort of clicks into three different positions that are each 60 degrees further banked than the last.

Credit #250!!!

I've heard good things about the mine train, but let's get this over with first.

Ouuch!!!

Headbanging!!!

Oh, and this thing. It makes it different from other Boomerangs, apparently. I'm quite glad this is over with.

The mine train lived up to my high expectations. Very twirly, as Bobb Astley would say. We got to ride on the same train as Bobb and it was awesome. Great little mine train.

A good mine train can't forget some airtime!

Oh, and since we got to spend some time with Bobb on Swamp Mine, we were pumped to ride Hyperdive again... also with Bobb.

Around 6:30 we hit up Swamp Mine a last time and headed out. Afternoon Bash was super fun.

We had fun with Bobb. This brings my coaster count up to 252. #250 was Hyperdive.