Photo TR: Frontier City

[Shavethewhales]

Frontier City hosted the American Coaster Enthusiasts for a great event dubbed 'Oklacoaster!'. The park really bent over backwards to cater to us with a bunch of ERT on all the coasters, free meals, behind the scenes tours all over the park, and some great prizes and give-aways. I was really blown away by the star treatment, but it probably helps that the director of operations is a dedicated coaster enthusiast himself!

 

The new ride, a Zamperla Power Surge dubbed 'Gunslinger', isn't ready yet, so the day started out with us taking a couple ERT laps on the Wildcat - complete with free shirts from the park celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ride at FC. We split up for awhile until the afternoon, when it was time for a trivia game and a Q&A session with the GM Stephen Ball and several maintenance people. Mr. Ball confirmed that the old nightmare mine building is being fixed up, and the seasonal scarehouse inside is being expanded (eventually it will be two stories!). I can't recall anything terribly interesting that we don't know about, but we did talk about how much effort the park has been putting into things like paint and maintenance and how they've taken advantage of some hail storm claims to do things like improve the lighting on the ferris wheel and put a roof over the old train car. Speaking of the old train car, Mr. Ball actually opened that up to us exclusively after the Q&A session, which was amazing. If I can recall correctly, it was the personal car of the owner of the Frisco Railway, and ended up at the park when it was built in the current location back in 1958.

 

After all that we took a close up tour of the Gunslinger under construction (they seriously let us walk right onto the ride pad), and then we went over to the infield of the Wildcat coaster to get some exclusive photos and see the remnants of the ErUPtion ride. Finally we took a tour of the boneyard, which once housed ride remnants from across the entire six flags chain. It still has a TON of old stuff, including a number of coaster trains and most of the old Nightmare Mine coaster.

 

The park itself is looking amazing. I've raved before about what a good job Premier has done with the place, but it had actually been over a year since my last visit and the place is even better. They've seriously painted and fixed up every surface in the park. There's hardly anything left to be improved. As they keep updating their rides with new attractions, this place is seriously going to turn into a bit of a destination for enthusiasts.

 

This was the only ACE event I've been to other than one Coaster Christmas event a couple of years ago at SDC, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but now I'm convinced that these events are far and away the best way to experience a park. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming, and it was great meeting a bunch of other people crazy enough to travel around the country just to ride coasters.

Did you know frontier city has one of the oldest operating scramber attractions? It's literally run by a motor and a break. Since we were on the last ride of the night, the operator opened it up to full tilt, which was amazing.

[DoinItForTheFame]

Awww the old Inverter ride. . . RIP!

 

Nice report, and thanks for the photos! Glad to see that this park is getting some much needed TLC, and attention! I might just need to make a trip back out there, last time I was there Eruption was still operating. . .

[PhantomPoster32]

I wish they'd do something with the Nightmare Mine Building. How hard could it be to configure a Mouse or even something like the coaster in Skull Mountain for inside that building?

[djcoastermark]

The bone yard is really neat looking. I would love to have some of that "stuff" that's just sitting around.

[DoinItForTheFame]

I would love to have some of that "stuff" that's just sitting around.

 

Same! Theme parks should so auction off stuff sitting in their ride graveyard!!

 

1.) It would give them a little more money.

 

2.) It would help clear up the clutter!

 

I'd buy some stuff!

[SoCalJasonland]

I used to run their Scrambler and Tilt a Whirl back in summer of 1985. Cool photos, thanks.

[RyanTPM]

Nice photos, thanks for those. Gunslinger is looking decent, for some reason i really like that name. That's a nice little touch that they've added with the guns as themeing too, i like it.

[Geauga Dog]

Thanks for the photos. Frontier City has become one those smaller parks that are on my radar to visit if I ever get around to going down to Dallas and driving up. I really like the look of the park.