Photo TR: Worlds of Fun + Silver Dollar City October 2021

[PKI Jizzman]

Hey TPR!

As the season was winding down it was time to plan one last trip for the 2021 season. Initially the plan was to visit Kennywood, but then they decided to close Steel Curtain and half the park. Lagoon was the next choice, but flights were insane and the last of fast pass during Halloween events was a bit too risky. Then, we were reminded of SDC and Time Traveler with rave reviews coming in from Ride to Happiness!

Our plan was:

Fly into KC Friday, go to WOF for a first time visit during Haunt.

Saturday drive to Branson for SDC at night.

Sunday full day at SDC.

Monday drive to KC and fly out.

Oh boy some of Sean Whalen's sheep spotted in the wild!

Arriving in KC, we got bbq right by the airport at Scott's Kitchen (https://www.scottskitchenandcatering.com/menus/) and the burnt ends were better than I could have ever imagined. Definitely go here if you want legit KC BBQ! 

The highway and roads in KC are a bit bizarre and so is the entrance to Worlds of Fun. The parking lot funnels you down into the woods to the new entrance. 

First impressions - this park is so pretty!

Lots of Haunt decorations 

Let's go to the coasters!

Slowly but surely checking off the B&M custom inverts. Patriot was one of four coasters I wanted to ride at WOF.

I honestly haven't heard anything overly positive about Patriot, but I was pleasantly surprised!

It's positioned on the side of a hill, it has some fun twisty bits and dips, and had a great flow to the layout!

It's definitely not close to the top tier of inverts but it was a lot more fun than I anticipated. Already off to a good start for the evening!

A nice sunset ride and by the time we were onto the next thing, it was dark. But you could still tell the park was very well taken care of.

The park had a lot of fun Haunt food and drinks - and lots of local brewery tents!

One of the many haunts, and just like any other park in October - it was busy. But not insane for a Friday.

The park is really wooded outside of where Mamba sits.

Timberwolf we get it you vape

Really good looking sunset here in KC!

Timberwolf wasn't bad, but we did wait for the front seat. It just didn't have much to offer and felt like a superior version of the Grizzly layout. 

Orion, is that you?

That's as high as it goes lmao

It's pitch black out here, it's time to see Jesus!

Prowler starts with some wild laterals right out of the station.

Come on Cedar Fair give this park some love!!!

October 2021 - Prowler was funning fantastic. It's right up there with Mystic Timbers, Gold Striker, and Renegade for me! What an incredible night ride. 

While others wanted to get the little credits I decided to check out a nearby 'scare zone' that was obviously the dino alive path by boomerang. 

There was a TON of love given to this Pumpkin - blair witch themed walk through in the woods! This was way more than a scare zone.

No one seemed to notice it since it was wedged between the boomerang and other haunts

Then, things got really scary!

This is what I get for skipping lame credits  Thankfully it decided it was more scared of me and ran the other way. Skunks are fast! Damn!

 

Sadly at this point in the night Mamba still hadn't moved and the ride op told us it would not be running at all, it was some sort of air brake issue. The crowds really poured in so our idea of a chill Friday night didn't really pan out so we voted to return in the morning in hopes that Mamba would be working. 

We found 54th Street Grill which had a ton of local KC beer on tap and a happy hour that went all night. We got a TON of food for cheap! Definitely a good spot to check out even if it's a bit basic:

https://www.54thstreetgrill.com/kansas-city-mo-zone-rosa.html

Seeing the park in the daylight was stunning! It felt like a Busch park! 

Please open please open please open please open please open please open please open 

At this point we were starting to creep in on our SDC night time. I wasn't sure if it was laziness or cold temps but the team didn't get Mamba open until about an hour after park opening. But it was well worth it! Mamba was really great! The layout is a smaller version of Steel Dragon 2000 and both front and back seat offered surprisingly good airtime. I think Mamba was the one where Morgan really got it right because their next coasters were - Steel Eeel, Steel Dragon 2000, and then Superman Ultimate Escape. Don't sleep on Mamba! 

Back over for more Prowler since we're here. Even early in the morning it was hauling, and we got a ton of rides in back to back!

The flume looked like a lot of fun, would love to visit this park when CF invests in a new ride!

Alright time, to get on the road to SDC!

So final report:

Patriot 1x

Timberwolf 1x

Mamba 2x

Prowler 6x

Worlds of Fun is an easy park to access flying into the KC airport. I'd love to visit again on the way to SDC and see more of the park in the daytime, it's really pretty. There's trees everywhere, a little Moroccan village, fun topiaries, and beautiful foliage everywhere. I know the park is getting some extra touches for their anniversary season so I can't wait to see how it looks! 

[Hilltopper39]

Nice report man. World's of Fun has always been an interesting park to me, it's kind of like Dorney a little bit. Not really worth a trip on it's own because the coaster lineup isn't great, but it's good enough that it's worth stopping into if you're in the area. Ironically I've been to KC and Allentown a couple different times for various reason's and have never visited either park. One of these days I'll get there, maybe. 

[tinaalsgirl]

Some of those pics really hit me with the nostalgia from when I worked there as an airbrush artist in 2014. The skunk especially. Brings back memories of being warned by co-workers who'd worked there longer than me about coming across the skunks.

I really do miss the park. Haven't gotten to visit since then. I haven't gotten to see the new entrance in person yet! They've done a lot of excellent work at prettifying the park over the last several years.

Were they still using the score from Edward Scissorhands as part of the atmospheric music for Haunt? I haven't gotten to go during Haunt season since.... possibly close to 15 years? Can't remember, it's been that long.

Loved reading your report! Looking forward to the SDC portion!

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Nice! Yeah, we got a lot of skunks around here. 

 

Glad you liked Mamba! I agree the park itself is really beautiful. They do a great job of making you forget you're right next to an interstate.

[cfc]

Good report. Kings Dominion is also renowned for its skunk population.

[grsupercity]

great report. thanks for posting it!

[DoinItForTheFame]

Great report!! And awesome photos!
 

We had a chance to visit WOF this summer... and as far as Patriot goes "It's definitely not close to the top tier of inverts but it was a lot more fun than I anticipated." is 100% the best way to describe it. I wasn't going in with any expectations for it... However, it ended up being so much more fun than I was expecting... Even if my foot hit a tree branch during the ride  Prowler was AMAZING!! Easily one of the top "new to us" attractions for this year. I can't even imagine it at night... Sounds awesome!

Can't wait for your SDC report!

[sdcfan88]

6 hours ago, DoinItForTheFame said:

Even if my foot hit a tree branch during the ride 

Wait what for real!? Did the park get notified? Hopefully they trimmed it back since then. The parks are usually good about that sort of thing. Otherwise, that could be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

[PKI Jizzman]

Thanks everyone!

I believe it was about a 3.5 hour drive to the 'New England Cottage" I booked through my Chase travel portal. Our group consisted of 4 guys, but Branson seemed to have a lot of cabins/cottages for a good price. 

If you can book where we stayed - definitely do it! https://bransonsnantucket.com/

The 'cottage' turned out to be a stunning little three bedroom house in this Cape Cod themed gated community on a hill overlooking one of the huge lakes and it was only a 5 minute drive to SDC. The funny thing is that it's mainly a time share - so I guess they have some inventory that if unsold/booked goes out to travel sites. When checking in we "didn't qualify for any of the couples activities" so being a group of 4 guys allowed us to skip any upselling/boat/show tickets, haha. There were 2 awesome restaurant bar restaurants offering crazy good deals for happy hour (I think 2 beers and a quesadilla was $15) and great views of the hills and water. 

Saturday Night we planned on just going into the park for the atmosphere, hoping that we could get a ride or two in on Time Traveler and Outlaw Run, but that Saturday night was one of the busiest days in park history, we learned the next day. 

It was so crazy Saturday night that even people we had the Time Savers/Fast Pass were leaving early - and we had some gifted to us for the last 2 hours of the park opening. With 1 train ops both days and lines closing early we were just able to get 1 ride on Time Traveler and one or two on Outlaw Run before the park closed. With a 10pm closing I'd bet the ops didn't get out until after midnight and the frustration was pretty clear on the op's faces.

SDC and their clocks...

Outlaw Run at night simply must be experienced! Wow. Even thought it's short on length, to me it feels like a complete top tier coaster.

~

Sunday! Surely all of those good ol Branson folks will be in church leaving the park open for ERT in the morning right? Wrong! It was a solid wait to get in to park and we headed straight for cinnamon bread at opening. It's been a while since I was at SDC but I didn't know that they held church services multiple times on Sundays, so there was already a healthy crowd in the park. 

Cinnamon Bread took about 30-40 minutes to get, the line was just outside of the door. I already ranted about this but the new location has the workers making bread, deserts, cashiering, anddddd nowww making Starbucks drinks. It just takes forever now that the workers have the juggle a number of tasks which leaves the warm cinnamon bread getting cold while you wait to get through the line and pay. 

Many of the fall featured food items ended up being sold out by the time we had waited in a 15-20 minute line to get said item - you only find out at the window. All around I am not sure any of us had a meal at SDC that stood out, which was a bummer. 

One train ops run as fast as they could all day but it was still busy and we had pre-purchased time saver to get in as many rides as we wanted to. 

The lantern tour was truly a highlight, it was very informative, entertaining, fun ghost stories, it was just a long tour. I don't mind tours going over the pre set time, but the lantern tour started at 5:30, ending at 7pm with the 9pm closing. Since the tour went long, we didn't get out of the cave until after 7pm which left us in a bit of a time crunch to get dinner and night rides. It didn't help that again the lines closed so early without warning - Time Traveler closed around 8pm. But it was very obvious the staff was overworked and wanted to go home. There were a few times a certain crew lied to other guests telling them 'this is the last ride of the day' and 'maintenance will be here to put the ride to sleep by the time you're back' but the coaster ran until a few minutes before close. 

It was great to get back to Silver Dollar City. I know the charm seems to be a bit lacking this year and I understand long time fans are missing some of the old nostalgia that is slowly fading away. A crazy busy year combined with lack of staff that is sure to showcase a park's imperfections and I'm excited to see how they are going to refresh/rebuild some of the current attractions. It was too cold for Mystic River but wow it looked incredible. 

This is the original Cinnamon Bread location right? Woops, guess they moved!

Ah, here you are. They're featured on the Today show now, so everyone knows about it. There's t shirts, coffee cups, all sorts of commercialized stuff to buy.

Here it is, just getting cold while I wait for 3 employees to make/serve the bread, cash people out, and make Starbucks drinks. I wish they would separate those just getting bread from those getting coffee and bread. 

 

This seems like a great place to have breakfast.

This whole area is simply beautiful. It's amazing how huge this attraction is.

Holy shit there's actually people on it! So it was about 47* this time in the morning... but the water is 52*! Come on in yall!

If you saw my Insta/or others, there's a guy who's only job is to sit at the base of the drop and tell people at water cannons how many people are on the incoming raft.

You have a high likelihood of coming off this ride drenched due to splashes or most likely, full pressure water cannons haha.

So so pretty day or night.

Okay so yeah, definitely too cold for Mystic Rivers, so let's get to the main reason I'm here!

Still flying through those barrel rolls into the brakes.

There were still plenty of leaves on the trees mid October, the weather was really nice!

Outlaw Run front seat just hits different!

About to be chucked off a cliff into the Branson hills!

Look at how open the front seat is. The views are amazing and I love how you take the inversions in the front. You've gotta come ride this beast!

One train ops everywhere, only one arm working on Barn Swing.....

Fire in the Hole has some fun drops but this ride is currently in 'ultra creepo' mode since many lights, sounds, and theming are not working. At times it's just....quiet. So you just hear the ride and the smell of that building.... freakYYYY!

The wait time for Powder Keg was comically long. With one train, and this is the only crew that had slow ops - but the ops seemed to be pieced from other rides (different costumes). I just felt bad for the regular line - it was probably 2-3 hours.

Powder Keg just didn't seem to have the punch I remembered and the rest of the layout is more of a family coaster. IF there's one SDC coaster I wouldn't mind leaving, it would be PK.

You certainly are an interesting one!

One of the best settings for a coaster, here we are!

The park is seriously missing a lot of charm. I really really hope they bounce back in 2022.

Seeing the inversions at eye level really lets you appreciate the size of the cobra roll.

Awesome first drop, smooth, forceful. 

"Oh, I've never done American Plunge! It doesn't look too wet! And it's a walk on!"

..

..

.

.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Even when splitting our 4 into 2 logs, we all goat absolutely soaked and the initial shock and cold was so intense I think my scream scared all of the bats out of Marvel Cave. That was a baddd decision! Thankfully it was approaching the warmest part of the day and my flannel held shed some water but we were all soaked. Hell no we were not about to double down on Mystic Rivers!

Let's go back in time to reverse that bad idea. 

Looking back, I enjoyed TT better during the day - I think you feel the spinning a bit more.

Flooded Mine seems to be in good shape!

There's some impressive effects that surprised me!

Getting close to dinner time, the Time Saver line dropped down to just a few people, so we took advantage of that with 3 quick rides before our Lantern Tour.

I don't think there was a single ride where we didn't have people coming out of the Time Saver line. The entrance is really squished in next to TNT so were people just mixed up or just not paying attention? 

Every ride is so different - front to back, the different weighted cars, man just so much fun!

Bigger in Texas? Pfffttt come to Branson!

 

You know you're in for a good time if you're here!

The lights are about to go...

Out! 

Definitely worth the $15 for the lantern cave tour if you're brave enough for it!

So much to learn about and explore. So happy everything worked out how it did to make SDC what it is today. You have the historic cave, new tech in Time Traveler, Mystic River, classics like TNT, Fire in the Hole, Wildfire. I wouldn't mind if SDC didn't put up a new attraction for another 5 years and just focused on bringing back the charm, organizing the food & bev better, and paid employees more to ensure for a better attraction experience. No one wants to be stuck listening to the clocks ticking for more than 15 minutes!

Thanks for reading!

-Zach

 

[SharkTums]

I'm so torn because I LOVE SDC so much and really need to get back, but I also would like them to get their operations back to where they were pre-pandemic before we go. I would cry waiting in line with my cinnamon bread getting cold! Great TR! Thanks for sharing!

[hoppedup]

Great report! Nice to hear some good things about WOF. It's on the list for 2022.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

..

[ytterbiumanalyst]

1 minute ago, ytterbiumanalyst said:

19 hours ago, PKI Jizzman said:

I wouldn't mind if SDC didn't put up a new attraction for another 5 years and just focused on bringing back the charm, organizing the food & bev better, and paid employees more to ensure for a better attraction experience. No one wants to be stuck listening to the clocks ticking for more than 15 minutes!

Expand  

This is very much how I'm feeling right now. SDC has had a lot of the same issues that the rest of Branson has had finding enough workers. I know several people from Branson who used to work in the tourist industry and  within the last two years have taken better paying jobs in Springfield and either commute from Branson or have actually moved to Springfield. Fewer people willing to work for low wages = longer lines. Sucks that the experience suffers, but I definitely am glad that people are improving their situation!

[mwg]

On 12/14/2021 at 10:12 AM, PKI Jizzman said:

Powder Keg just didn't seem to have the punch I remembered and the rest of the layout is more of a family coaster. IF there's one SDC coaster I wouldn't mind leaving, it would be PK.

It is a family coaster with a low 42" minimum height. We love that our whole family can ride it together. 

[TrippinBillie]

With respect to your post about "not minding if they were to wait 5 years for another attraction", I believe they're putting in a new attraction next year in the form of a re-make/re-vamp of Fire in the Hole.  There should have been a pretty large land clearing you saw while there.  That's where it's going - from what I understand.  I'm not certain what they're doing with the plot/area the current FITH is at.  I agree with the charm, I think Dollywood suffers from that now, too.  Could be staffing and supply chain issues, if I were a betting man.

[PKI Jizzman]

4 hours ago, TrippinBillie said:

With respect to your post about "not minding if they were to wait 5 years for another attraction", I believe they're putting in a new attraction next year in the form of a re-make/re-vamp of Fire in the Hole.  There should have been a pretty large land clearing you saw while there.  That's where it's going - from what I understand.  I'm not certain what they're doing with the plot/area the current FITH is at.  I agree with the charm, I think Dollywood suffers from that now, too.  Could be staffing and supply chain issues, if I were a betting man.

That's what I was alluding to beyond the FITH rebuild project, I don't know much about it other than it seems to be happening. Exciting times for the future of SDC!

[PKI Jizzman]

Thanks! Also, visiting Branson encouraged me to watch Ozark on Netflix. Jason Bateman is a legend. 

[Nrthwnd]

Photos are awesome! And I am definitely interested The Cave Tour.

I did one in Japan back in 1972 ..... and it really was an amazing tour.

And that's The Only Cave Tour I ever did, in all these years. <sad>

Thanks for sharing your photos of yours!