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I went to the Puyallup Spring Fair!


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Classic Coaster, previously known as Coaster Thrill Ride

 

Hey, I just heard on the radio that the spring fair is here already, and I miraculously have Saturday off! I loved The Fair last year, they had a pretty solid ride selection and their wood coaster is the coaster equivalent of a sleeper- looks mellow and innocent, but turns out to be a pretty badass little ride! It's got some pretty great airtime and really fun laterals in a couple of spots, and it can run 3 TRAINS! Not bad at all for a little 60ft guy, and much more thrilling than the 20' taller Timberhawk, the only other wood coaster currently operating in WA. Looks like they should have their Schwarzkopf Wild Cat and they also have Rainier Rush and plenty of other rides to get sick on. The downside if they don't seem to have an unlimited bracelet, but look on the bright side; waiting in lines will make your tickets last that much longer

 

I will be going if the weather cooperates (and if so it will probably be packed) and posting a TR- who wants to come with me!? I randomly got this Saturday off, and I usually work weekends, so this must be a sign from the coaster gods!

 

http://www.thefair.com/fun/details/midway-rides_1

Edited by LuminousAphid
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I did not know they were running a Spring Fair! When did they start doing this?

 

But - sadly, I won't be able to make it down this coming weekend. Timing and $.

And too bad people can't time it along with Playland up here. It's not opening

until May 7. Nonetheless...

 

Hope you have a great time there, if you go.

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Hope you have a great time there, if you go.

I will, thanks! I know you love your fairs, wish you could make it. I want to really try getting up to the PNE this year, I got my EDL so I can actually come to Canada now!

 

For Saturday I'm gonna buy the pre-order tickets which apparently come with some sort of "ride coupon" $17 for 6 rides, doesn't count the Coaster or drop tower but still a better deal than using tickets if I end up wanting to ride anything else. I will most likely just get 120 tickets and ride the coaster 10 times

 

$5 is still quite a price to pay for a ride on a coaster, but worth it!

 

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Remodel finished last year!

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^ $5 isn't too bad, when you consider how prices go up on everything else in life, pretty fast.

 

I believe riding Coaster during the PNE goes for about $8-10 a ride. But for you guys now... $6?

And you are able to buy separate tickets for that. They have the ride pass as well, but I

never go for that, since I can ride most of this stuff during Playland's upcoming season (May 7 start).

 

And during the PNE I only ride anything that is truly different. Or a cheesy carnival dark ride.

 

When the fair gets closer, plan your day and I can meet up with you, for your visit. I am now getting

the full Fair Season Pass, which is worth it for all the stuff they offer. And it's my current "best thing",

compared to any season pass for a theme park, etc. And you usually get a coupon book as well, which

gives several discounts on food and games and stuff ~ no ride discounts unfortunately.

 

P.S. The PNE also has discount Passes, sold through sponsors like 7-11 for it's one day entry, or a

one day entry with a rides pass combined. Let me know your day, I can buy the Pass for you, we meet

up at the Main Gate, and you pay me back. Easy! P.P.S. There are also passes available for Playland

as well. Same thing, let me know, and I can get you a Pass, that's cheaper than at the Gate, or online!

 

http://www.pne.ca

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Yeah, I think I will head up sometime before the PNE to familiarize myself with the area, and figure out what to do for parking and everything. I think I remember you use transit, which is smart, but I might ask you later for some tips on driving/parking in the area

 

I bought my discount ticket for the spring fair today, and it comes with the 6 for $17 "coupon," which I might use if I feel like some spin'n'pukes. Since I don't get to go to theme parks this time of year at all, I'm putting aside $100 to spend at the fair, and since they have free parking (and I found free street parking 4-5 blocks away during the summer, closer to the rides!), that should get me a decent amount of rides and food. I'm going to gorge myself this time. Last year I was just so into rides I basically rode all day, with breaks to go look at flowers and found one of my other hobbies, carnivorous plants.

 

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Here is the one I found at the fair- pretty impressive cluster of sundews

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I think I will enter one of these into the fair this summer- my seed-grown Drosera capensis

I think this time I will take plenty of breaks and eat lots of food while looking at exhibits, and get the full fair experience. Hope they are running more than 1 train on the coaster; last summer when I was there on a Sunday for some reason they were running ~30 minute lines with one train? Saturday should be packed so I am expecting lines but I want to see them run all 3 trains The ride ops were just the right amount of carny-weird for a fairground coaster, and the lady who was assigning people seats eventually just knew me when I came back and always put me in the back car Also, true single-position "lap" bars riding about 8" above your legs make for some great out-of-control sensations

 

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Safety measures were non-existent compared to today's rides

I'm getting myself excited and I need to go to bed to work at 6:00 tomorrow, but stay tuned for a trip report with plenty of photos!

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Photo TR - Part 1 - Journey to the south & Welcome to the fair

 

I have been feeling just "off" since the morning after I raved about how fun this was going to be, sick stomach and trouble sleeping well, so I was starting to wonder if I cursed myself by getting myself psyched up on my last post. Either way I forced myself out of bed this morning, ate and showered, then took off to go to the fair. There was of course traffic on the way through Seattle; lucky for me spring is wonderful here, particularly this year when we have had perfect conditions for everything to just start growing like mad, while the rest of the country is getting god knows what. I try to keep this a secret and perpetuate the rumor that Seattle is super depressing and rainy, but this area is the best.

 

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Why?

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Looks gray but mainly due to car windows

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Mythical Pizzamobile spotted!

When I got there I again found parking within 2 blocks of the "Red" entrance which is where all the rides are, but unfortunately that means everything else I might want to see is further away. I passed a house with an extremely nice yard, it was the best themeing I saw all day!

 

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Better themeing than the actual fair

The "Puyallup Spring Fair" only runs 1 weekend each year, typically in mid April, and is the only time of the year other than the Washington State Fair in September when guests are able to ride their Classic Coaster, Schwarzkopf Wildcat, and Extreme Scream- I think it's an S&S Combo Tower judging by the "Combo Ride" plaque on one of the truss beams. I guess this will be the bigger, older brother to the Double Shot that's supposedly going in up the road at Wild Waves this year

 

I got inside and went to get $50 worth of tickets, which almost lasted me all day. There was also a better deal for 250 tickets not listed online if your family wanted to get more rides in.

 

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Tickets: to trick you out of your $$

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I watched the Round Up while waiting for tickets

I quickly headed over to Classic Coaster for 2 rides without much of a line; I was a bit disappointed in those first rides, so I guess my memory had hyped it up over the months. It didn't help that the back seat lap bar was ziptied closed and they weren't using it on either train, because that's the best seat! I think having a little less weight made it a little more tame.

 

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WA's best coaster

There were a few other rides of interest along the way down the midway, and I snapped some pics as I tried to decide what I wanted to do next

 

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Haunted Mansion for Nrthwnd

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My first Schwarzkopf that I know of, a Wildcat

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Rainier Rush, the Top Fun Typhoon that I will never ride again. There's a joke behind this coaster...

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The punchline is that everyone pays to get beat about the head and neck for 30 seconds, and it has a longer line than Classic Coaster

And I tried some things that were disappointing

 

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Mobile farm sounds sweet, lets check this out

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Well... not as cool as I was expecting

I also ran into some things that were funny

 

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I found God...

And then I found lunch!

 

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This place looks snazzy indeed

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It looks promising!

This fish and chips looked very good, but sadly it was not very hot (barely warm) by the time I got it, but I didn't want to complain- looked like it was cooked through at some point, so I wasn't worried. I just ate the fish quick while some warmth was left, and with their home made tartar and fry sauce it was pretty tasty. The fries were nice and hot!

 

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Full of fried fish I was

With the lunch break I will also take my break and end part 1, but stay tuned for more photos and fun from the fair. Don't forget Sunday is the last day, so if I've inspired you, today is your only chance!

 

I will leave you with a preview of the next part, with video I made for a certain user up north of me. It's pretty bad, both the video and the ride, but enjoy buddy!

 

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Not quite a Disney Haunted Mansion

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At least you only had to pay $6 to ride that terrible coaster. Some of us on here may or may not have been guilty of paying a lot more to ride this when it was still at Satan's Village...

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Yay, Carnival Haunted Mansion!

 

That actually looked pretty good, as cheesy as it all usually is.

Lot of sound effects in there, I heard. Mostly screams but that's ok.

 

Glad you are enjoying yourself there, and thanks for all the photos,

AND the POV inside the HM! Looking forward to Part 2...

Edited by Nrthwnd
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Great trip report!

The tower is an S&S Combo? That makes sense, with the program on it. Google didn't help much with that info.

 

I went today and the weather was great! Crowds put me off rides, and they removed the HUSS Jump I wanted to ride so I didn't go on anything. Wild Waves opens in less than a month anyway!

There were a lot more things I'd never gotten to before that were pretty amazing!

 

Oh man the Rainier Rush crowds are a sad sight. But humourous! And I went to that same fried food place and tried their fried zucchini. Not so great, they were long slabs of whole zucchini with no salt.

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Part 2 - Rides & Rides & Rides

 

I was planning on doing some other things with my day, like checking out some exhibits or shows or something like that, but it turned into mostly going back and forth between the midway and the showplex area where they had the good water fountains. My plan to "gorge myself" went by the wayside when I saw the crowds of people at all the food places, some of which were longer than ride lines at that point. I did find the rooftop beer garden, which had a great view of the rides!

 

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Midway from the roof

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Orn'ry Orange heading up again

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There's that other silly coaster

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Extreme Scream - (not kidding)

I got an $8 beer, which I figured was equal to or less than theme park prices except I actually got a decent beer, so I was happy. It was starting to get hot and I'm pretty sure that's where my head started to cook, but I didn't notice thanks to the sweet Elysian nectar I had imbibed. A.k.a. Elysian Immortal IPA. I had never tried it but found it quite refreshing, even though I don't usually like IPAs. The other choices were Bud/Light and Hefeweisen, so not a great selection. Later I found more places serving beer but I didn't bother

 

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Classic Coaster Park

I then went back to the roller coaster, because hey, I had never tried this one buzzed yet. Yes I can get a buzz from 1 beer, and yes I know I am a teetotaler. Either it made the experience much more fun, or the coaster had "warmed up" a bit, but whatever happened it was super fun again so I went twice. Afterward "Classic Coaster Park" has some nice tables and a grassy area that's right next to the coaster, you can watch the trains go up the lift and over the camelbacks in front. They were advertising for paving stone dedications, that might be a cool thing to support the upkeep of this cool little coaster. They just finished a big rehab and hopefully they will keep up the maintenance!

 

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Some flowers

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The lines were starting to get longer

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The 2nd turnaround is right above the queue and has no outside rail, so it looks strange

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There's a great view from the station

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Trains load and unload on the same side at separate platforms

This is the point when everything started to get a little too warm and a little too crowded, so I headed inside for a while to look around and see if there was anything I wanted to buy. What I found was almost exclusively junk, with some interesting and out-of-my-budget things thrown in here and there. I have always hated the commercial part of these things ever since my best friend's parents brought us here and made us spend half a day in there when we were younger, and now I know I still find it depressing to have people from every direction trying to pitch you things to get more of your money.

 

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Spring foliage everywhere

I had no problem leaving the fair and getting a hand stamp so I could go back to my car, but the mistake I made was trying to drive somewhere outside the grounds to eat. I soon got stuck in an oozing mire of cars trying to either enter or exit the parking areas, and the police had helpfully blocked off any chance of turning around. I swore a bit while I got to the other end of the mess, then swore some more as I realized I had crossed under a freeway and could not take back roads, and had to go back the same way. I swore more and more until I was free of the madness on the other side, and finally found a jack in the box. I got myself a nice sourdough jack, and felt better right away. So next time I will know, saving $5 is not worth the stress of trying to deal with that. Ain't nobody got time ferdat.

 

Luckily I found another good spot to park and was back inside soon. The lines for everything were getting ridiculous now; I thought about going on the Zipper but found out the line was literally what I would estimate to be a city block. There was no overflow queue for anything so the lines just stacked out into the midway, crisscrossing the whole area with random lines that went around corners and completely past other rides. It was crazy, but interesting how people just sort of figure it out and make a line on their own, even if it was right out in the middle of everything. Somehow it worked and no one was cutting or anything, it was pretty amazing to me. I couldn't get good pics but here is some people:

 

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Guest 1854: "It's too crowded here!"

 

I wanted to try the Schwarzkopf, and was lucky when I found 3 people right next to the line attendant who let me ride with them. One guy was from England working at Intel in Portland, to me it's always interesting to see what other people you can meet who are all having fun together. One thing I noticed is that the crowd was very diverse, but everyone was there for one thing: to have a good time! The Wild Cat was actually a really nice little coaster, with great drops and some fun helixes near the end. The last one really had a tight bank, it felt like nearly 90 degrees but was probably closer to 45

 

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The little 4 seater cars were fun

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You can barely see the "12th Man" car behind the red one, it's painted in Seahawks colors

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I took this one later in the evening

Next time I needed a little break I popped outside to get some more pictures of the wooden coaster, which is very visible from the road

 

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That's the weird turnaround above the queue, you can see the rail on the inside on the turn

Funtastic Shows is the company that always (as far as I know) operates the rides for the fair grounds, and I saw many of the same flats as I did in the summer. Some of the people were the same as well, and a couple of the people on the coaster actually recognized me from last year's fair, probably because I rode it so much that day This time I had to pay for each ride, so I think I only rode it 9 times The people are great though, aside from the one dude working the coaster who kept bitching out the ticket scanner guy for stupid reasons

 

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Tilt a puke

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This thing wasn't "back," it never moved because no one wants it

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I really like the art on the facade for Haunted Mansion

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Orange is the new "No"

After hearing the thing purge and refill all day, I decided I could spend $10 and go on the Extreme Scream; after all the only other S&S tower I have been on probably cost twice that--Big Shot on top of the Stratosphere. The line was not too long but this tower only holds 12 people, so I got to watch about 8 other loads before I got in to ride. It was honestly an awesome experience, and definitely worth $10 to try it once, although I'm sure all you more experienced park addicts would probably laugh. Hey, I'm new to this so everything still has its novelty, and I loved it!

 

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later I had adrenaline in me

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Mfg. By S&S Power Inc, Logan Utah USA 1999, Max. Cap. 12 Passengers

I really began to need a break as the sun started to set, as dehydration had started to take its toll. I filled up my jack in the box cup in a drinking fountain--my cheapass instincts had taken over again by now--and had a good hour break in Classic Coaster park, just watching both trains go up and back and forth. That reminds me, I forgot to mention they still weren't running all 3 trains, but with 2 running even a full line only took 1/2 hour or so.

 

Until the final part, I will leave you with this thought: A lot of what we hear about in the news these days centers around how different people are from one another, but one thing I love about roller coasters is that they can temporarily erase those differences and let us all just have pure, unadulterated FUN!!

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At least you only had to pay $6 to ride that terrible coaster. Some of us on here may or may not have been guilty of paying a lot more to ride this when it was still at Satan's Village...

The dude in this clip thought Typhoon was so fantastic that he stutters whenever he talks about it.

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Oh wow there was a commercial featuring it? That's just wrong! I knew it came from Santa's Village but I didn't know it was a main attraction at some point... I'm sorry to those who went there just to get a ride on this. I did not ride it this time because I remembered the person behind me screaming, "OW MY HEAD!" the first time I rode it last September

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Part 3: I'm tired

 

Alright, I'm sick of being long winded about this, you get the impression anyway. I'm just going to dump the rest of these pics here, enjoy!

 

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It was an awesome day

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This is beginning to stress my limited amateur post production skills

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This little wheel had some nice LEDs

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Oh god not again

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'merica wheel

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I asked what this button was, and I was told it's not a button, it is "a bolt"

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Hope you enjoyed, if anyone wants videos of anything let me know, I took some but I'm too lazy to do anything with them ATM

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"Guest 1854: "It's too crowded here!"

 

 

This was a great trip report! Was the Typhoon the same one at Santa's Village in Illinois by chance? I never went to Santa's Village during its operation and I knew it was there at some point so I.m curious.

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This was a great trip report! Was the Typhoon the same one at Santa's Village in Illinois by chance? I never went to Santa's Village during its operation and I knew it was there at some point so I.m curious.

Thank you sir! I believe it is the very one, according to any source I could find. They repainted it from white to orange when it went to the LA County fairgrounds, and now we have it as a double-hand-me-down. I can't believe people ride it

 

I also just found this regarding that coaster; it seems we all avoided permanent physical injury from this beast

http://prev.dailyherald.com/story/?id=339548

 

Enjoy some unedited video I took, just in case it will convince someone we should meet up in the fall to hit up the fair!

 

Here is each train on Classic Coaster doing a couple of laps when I arrived around lunchtime

"Ghost Pirates" is really very bad, I experienced it during the fair last year and it was not worth $4.50

You want janky slingshots? We got janky slingshots

LOUD HORN WARNING

This was my view from the beer garden, it was a nice place to be for a person who likes rides

I could also watch the drop tower from there

Listen to how funny the anti rollback sounds... I don't know what makes that noise, can anyone enlighten me? It's charming

There are some pictures of the remodel and a fire that happened a long time ago, it has been rebuilt several times

One of the vendors actually had some amazingly beautiful plants for sale, I wish I had the money and the yard for that

More coastering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyC5M9p_vc

This was actually pretty great, sometimes fake screaming is annoying but everyone was actually laughing at this girl's crazy freak out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlhesFau1E0

Some night action on Classic Coaster is always fun, that lift hill kills me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8enM06WVg

And I will leave you with everyone's favorite "white trash carnival ride":

 

The Zipper is a low-capacity ride, so I wasn't surprised when all day there was somewhat of a line for it, especially since it was running a decently long cycle- enough to make me question whether I wanted to ride it. When I finally got the courage to try I found it had a huge line, I kept walking and walking and eventually about 3 rides down the midway I asked someone,

"Are you waiting for the Zipper?!"

"Yep."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaKlxh1H25M

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Long Live Zippers!

 

Thanks for the video. I Wish to Gawds that the PNE

would get one of these back to The Fair, etc. Been

a long, long time since one has been part of The Fair.

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It's a pretty good one too, I think they'd fixed it up somewhat since last year, it seemed to be running pretty well. Last year it was horribly noisy and kept making alarmingly loud clacking noises whenever they reversed the drive to load/unload, but maybe that was just because I spent more time near to it--it was right next to the coaster queue that time! I will have to ride it this fall if I make it back

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