2019 Adventures Photo TR

Whew, it's been a busy summer/fall for me thus far. I didn't even realize I hadn't posted an update since the end of July and now it's the end of October. Anyways...

The second and final park of this trip up to the Northeast was,

Six Flags Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom Hurricane Harbor

Or whatever we're calling it nowadays. One of few Six Flags parks that (maybe mercifully?) has never been officially "flagged" with the Six Flags name...although sometimes in publications they do include the Six Flags name...and the hotel is called Six Flags Great Escape Lodge...and the entirety of the property is called Six Flags Great Escape Resort.

Annntyways...this serene park in upstate New York is the one I used to call my home park and I even worked in the finance department here for a stint in my late teens. Having not visited since 2017, I was looking forward to coming back. Now, pictures.

Hey, if the lack of "Six Flags" in the name is what's keeping these nice planters at the entrance instead of steel concert barricades, I'm cool with it.

It's either completely genius or totally idiotic that Six Flags has these "VIP DIAMOND PLATINUM ALL ACCESS ELITE PLUS" entrances at the front of each park. Idiotic because it's so hilariously stupid, but genius because b*tches like to feel special and "walking through the VIP entrance past the plebians" is a mood.

Not that you'll have much of a wait getting into this park's entrance even on the busiest of days.

"Hey Disneyland, you seen this?"

Instead of a main midway, Great Escape has a collection of cute shops leading up to this area in front of their carousel, with the skyride overhead. Wholesome af.

It's a hike up a hill to the park's Ghost Town area, featuring one of the few old haunts left from Opryland.

This is Canyon Blaster, formerly Rock'n' Roller Coaster from Opryland. It had to be modified a bit for Great Escape but is still mostly it's same old self. That is, an old Arrow mine train that doesn't do much at all

In true Great Escape fashion, though, they do give you some nice things to look at while queueing and on the ride.

Believe it or not, this was actually Great Escape's last "big" roller coaster put in, way back in 2003. I was in middle school in 2003.

The coaster's single train beginning it's descent into the helix that's the fastest part of the ride

Speaking of older things...the Nightmare building still stands as a large, expensive piece of theming for the log flume.

From 1999 to 2006, there was a Schwarzkopf Jet Star in this building, which was removed and scrapped in the off season between 2008 and 2009.

Nightmare was at Beech Bend, Kentucky Kingdom, and Six Flags Darien Lake before spending it's twilight years here. It only ran 2-3 cars at a time and double-sitting wasn't permitted, so a queue of 30-40 people would consistently take an hour or more.

The Desperado Plunge log flume sure was popular on this high-80s day in upstate New York. Rest assured, however, that even a full queue for this ride clears in about 15-20 minutes.

So the new for 2020 Vomatron ride, which I'm perfectly okay with never riding, will go immediately to the right of where this photo ends.

Although tbh I'd be perfectly okay with Wells Fargo getting torn down too.

From what I've heard, the Condor will live to see yet another season.

And you know the Dippin Dots guy is never wrong.

The mascot on the Steamin' Demon is...a wide-faced, buck-tooth rat thing?

Fun fact about Steamin' Demon; the coaster originated down in New Orleans at a now-defunct park called Ponchartrain Beach. The previous owner of Great Escape, Charlie Wood, bought it when the park closed in 1983 and it opened at Great Escape in 1984.

The first drop and loop on these older Arrow loopers are always great! Good airtime in the back, good positive g forces through the loop...

...sensing your pleasure from the first bit, Arrow then goes into full S&M mode

If Six Flags put in a swear jar on their Arrow coasters, they wouldn't have to buy into the leases for other parks just to expand their membership/dining plan purchases in order to pad their metrics and please their shareholders. Boom.

Here we have a typical Great Escape queue...

Speaking of pain, here we have a Boomerang.

Actually, Great Escape's Boomerang, called Flashback now for some reason, is pretty smooth.

This park is beautiful.

Arguably the best-themed area of Great Escape is their Fest Area, which is a Bavarian-themed area with nice shops and buildings, a Fest Haus food hall, and of course, Alpine Bobsled

...well, that's a bit embarrassing now, isn't it?

New! Now Open! Machismo Nachismo!

...well, that's a bit embarrassing now, isn't it?

Mucho good! Mucho closed!

Well, maybe the park is one step closer to being flagged by re-naming their water park Hurricane Harbor

Part of the Hurricane Harbor re-theme of Splashwater Kingdom was re-theming the Black Cobra from it's "Pollen-Colored Cobra" state it's been in for the last 15 years to...Orange and Blue Cobra. Cool.

The rest of what we used to refer to as "Lower Splashwater" (the waterpark is split between the top and bottom of a massive hill) appears to have gotten some paint and new umbrellas.

The Comet.

The Comet is one seriously underrated woodie. It was designed by Herbert Schmeck, who brought us greats such as Phoenix at Knoebel's and the also-named Comet at Hersheypark.

This coaster is actually a whole lot like Phoenix, even in layout, but is a little bit larger and longer. When maintained well, I actually prefer Comet over Phoenix. However, the past several seasons have been kind of odd for this ride. For a few years, it ran pretty rough, then some track work got done, and the past 2-3 years it's seemed a little slow. I mostly ride it in the back for the strong airtime, but I suspect that a few trims have either been newly installed or dialed up a bit. Areas that have always had strong airtime, including the double-down, felt a lot weaker on this visit.

That aside, it's still one of the very best classic woodies out there and you should hit up Great Escape and ride it!

Walking back from the Comet, the next thing I saw made me wonder whether or not Herbert Schmeck had just knocked a few screws loose in my mind from the afterlife.

This couldn't be real. Surely, some kids knocked the sign down and pushed open the gate...

Not only was it open, but I had not seen the Great Britain sled out on the track in at least 15 years. Like whaaaaat

Now, rest assured, one thing Great Escape doesn't...escape, is Six Flags' oh-so-stellar operations. Running one station platform (they have two), plus the back row of each sled roped off, they still managed to take quite a while between dispatches and did the seat belt check before allowing riders to lower their lap bars like it was a f*cking RMC.

I'm happy to report that some of the easier-to-reach sections even got a little bit of fresh paint, including what appeared to be almost the entirety of the inside of the trough. You can see here in this photo which sections got fresh paint and which didn't.

Which begs the question...Six Flags, would it really kill you to go over the transfer track area with a white sprayer FFS?

While a little rough and tumble, I actually really enjoy these rides and they're becoming extremely rare. I believe Alpine Bobsled and La Vibora are the only two left hanging on in the world, now that Bob at Efteling has met it's demise. This one and La Vibora are both the "Sarajevo Bobsled" layout, and theres a moment where the train seems to "hop" off the track in one spot that's crazy fun.

Luckily, Alpine Bobsled is likely to stay with us, for at least the time being. I know that several years ago, a rumor ran rampant about the coaster's demise. Since this is old enough and now-irrelevant information to share; back several years ago, the park and corporate had been looking at plans for this site, which included removing Alpine Bobsled and replacing it with one of a few different proposals that had been made. Plans got put off for a few seasons before they were ultimately shelved. Unfortunately, Great Escape is kind of a back-burner park for the company in terms of capital, they just don't do the volume necessary to justify a huge expense, and most of the money made at this park comes from the waterpark.

What a difference 2 hours makes.

I'm pretty averse to water rides, but I'll ride this flume, knowing it's typically just a few drops or small splash. Also, old Arrow flumes are awesome.

In the exit area of Desperado Plunge, just after the photo sales area, you'll see some frames from the park's history, including this photo of Steamin' Demon in it's inaugural year

An old frame of the park entrance, showing off the Huss Rainbow that once sat where the Sasquatch S&S towers now are

And a frame of their old Huss Skylab, similar to a Huss Enterprise, which once sat where the Skycoaster is now. I may be wrong, but I think the difference between an Enterprise and Skylab was that Enterprises have single gondolas while Skylab models have double.

...and just like that, I feel old.

One last look at the front area of the park on the way out. Thanks for reading what turned out to be a pretty long PTR! Hopefully I'll get the next report out sooner than later.

Great report! In my visit earlier this year, I found the blue train on Comet was running way faster. That being said, it wasn't running quite as well as I remembered even last year but it was still smooth.

nice report! i'm putting this place on my trip list!

Great photos! Rikki and I visited the day after the girl fell out of the Sky Ride, so we unfortunately couldn't give that a go. Glad you had fun!

Looks like a family owned park. I dont get six flags vibes from your report

This park has always fascinated me, I'd love to get my kids up there sometime while they're still fairly young.

If anyone watched Succession on HBO this is were they filmed some scenes from this most recent season. The family in the show owns some theme parks (among other things) and take a visit. The park looked great on camera.

I'm definitely behind in this year's trip reports, so now that it's the off-season for most of the seasonal parks, there's no time like the present to get a little caught up. I'm going to perhaps skip a park or two that I've already wrote about in the past and fast forward a little bit to the Europe trip my friend and I took in mid-October.

We bought some slightly-complicated flights, in order to fly both on a budget but also comfortably for what is a good amount of traveling to Europe from Florida. The first park we had to hit was one I'd never even heard of two years ago, but that's been interrupting my sleep and stirring my imagination since the beginning of last year. That park was:

Energylandia

We planned this trip some time in July, and once the reports from the TPR Europe trip started coming out, I began to worry if we'd made a mistake spending the extra time and money adding Poland to our trip that was otherwise focused on parks in Germany and The Netherlands. Like most enthusiasts with a pulse, I'm mildly obsessed with Intamin Mega/Giga coasters, because they are really all really awesome, even when they're trying to make you a double amputee ala Skyrush, giving you a karate chop to the neck like Maverick and Storm Runner before the merciful invention of soft shoulder straps, or trying to give you an aneurysm like i305. Naturally, as Hyperion got built and POVs of it came out, I just had to get there. When the less-than-stellar reviews started to surface, I was really bummed, as this was one I'd been seriously hyping up in my brain.

However, I was very excited that Zadra would be open for our trip, as the pics online of this going up, too, were borderline pornography. I know Intamin sometimes makes a coaster here or there that can be a little too violent or does the track layout right but throws in restraints that make the experience less pleasant, but RMC has been spot-on since the moment they built New Texas Giant.

To make it kind of a double-whammy of a worry going in, we sadly could not possibly fit Legendia into our plans despite my repeated re-writing of the trip itinerary, based on the park's lack of weekday operations during the time we'd be there and the flow of our trip between other parks' hours and flight schedules and costs.

So...how was Energylandia?

To sum it up, our day and a half spent at the park were f*cking awesome. That being said, they could have just as easily not been awesome, we just really lucked out. Yes, operations at this park suck. Ride operators are slow and detached, and I'm somewhat convinced that they're just really well-detailed robots. Animatronics have come a long way in recent years, after all. Plus, whoever is bankrolling Energylandia clearly just shovels money at manufacturers and says "just build us the absolute best thing you can possibly make, cost be damned"...so they can definitely afford high-end ride operator bots. Does anybody know who owns this place? I wouldn't mind having them as my sugar daddy.

Rules for rides, especially the previously-discussed station-sorting systems, seem to make no sense at all. There's a crap ton of fluffy bunnies, and the ride instruction videos say to put all your things in them, but they still allowed loose articles to be left in the station, so that's nice at least. You can definitely tell, as again has been previously reported, that some of the rides and areas of the park were installed before they came up with their vision for the future. But it's still unclear what that vision really is. Just don't be tricked into expecting Universal or Disney. Look at it more along the lines with the old Paramount parks, where they'd throw in a cool name and theming but it was just kind of there.

So normally I don't do the whole "paragraph where I describe and rank coasters", but I have to for these two:

Zadra is absolutely incredible. It smashes the crap out of every other steel RMC. It has that totally insane, out-of-control feeling like Lightning Rod, but with a longer layout. Yes, it has many elements very typical of other RMCs, but moves through the layout more quickly, if that was even possible. Huge drops, head choppers, airtime, hangtime, a speed turn that feels like it's trying to fling you out, this coaster really has it all. This thing is nuts, yet also completely re-rideable. I already had 3 coasters to rank as #1 when I eventually complete the TPR poll. Now I have 4. We were lucky enough to get about 10 rides on this monster in the day and a half we spent at the park. It would have been double that or more if not for the queue.

But- holy. crap. the. queue. You guys who hate the queue for Hyperion are really going to hate this. It's seriously obnoxious how long it is. It's at least twice as long as Hyperion's queue, maybe more than that. That's one thing that people are NOT kidding at all about. If Zadra is a total walk-on, which we experienced 2 or 3 times during our visit, you might be lucky to get 2 rides in a half hour if you walk very fast, considering the length of not just the entrance queue but also the exit path. This park needs to build shortcuts. Even if the park was "Cedar Point Halloweekends" busy, I don't think 1/20th of Zadra's queue space would be full. Remember Dueling Dragons old queue with the castle and when they had the longer outdoor section? It's got to be 4 or 5 of those in length. There's also a pointless elevated section where you walk up a bunch of stairs just to walk back down a bunch of stairs again. At least you can take pictures of almost every angle of the ride, as the queue goes around 3/4 of it.

Hyperion is also an amazing ride. This was the one I was worried about due to previous reports I'd read. It was only running one train, and I got one of the Operator Bots who spoke English to tell me that the other train was "away for repairs". I suspect but also hope that the reviews about roughness on this ride got some attention and lit a fire under the park's ass. The rides we had on Hyperion were super fast and glass smooth, even in the outer seats. Hyperion's layout kind of reminds me of a new-age SFNE Superman, in all the best ways. The drop is seriously terrifying, especially in the front row, with the newer, minimalistic Intamin lap-bars. The second hill is full of airtime, mild ejector in the front, hard floater/borderline ejector in the back. The turnaround/maybe/non-inversion scares the sh*t out of me. When you invert (or not quite invert), the lap bars just don't seem adequate and you feel like you're going to fall out. Then, the rest of the layout has a few moments of orgasmic ejector airtime, some weird twists that were seemingly taken out of RMC's playbook, and this one low-to-the-ground twisted hill element that seriously feels as if you're about to be ejected from the ride.

The totality of this ride is what makes it. The airtime isn't quite as strong as coasters like EGF or El Toro's best moments, but it's there. The pacing, speed, airtime, and general terror of going through this crazy layout with such a small lap bar, elevated on a bare platform, makes me have 5 coasters to rank as #1. Seriously, it was that good.

So, now we have two #1 coasters in one park, which just seems crazy. Anyway, that was a whole lot of text for me, now let's let the photos do the rest of the talking.

Welcome to Six Flags over Auschewitz.

Another Intamin masterpiece for the books. Hyperion begins with a HUGE 269-foot drop into an underground tunnel.

Immediately after, you rush up into this also-huge hill providing loads of airtime for the kids.

Hyperion then threatens to end your life, the way any good Intamin coaster should.

A back-side view of some of the action, taken from a rest break in the middle of the mile walk to Hyperion's station.

Hyperion's finale is this small airtime hill. While floater in most of the train, it's borderline ejector in the front row.

Eventually, those who aren't left to die in the desert make it to the HYPER_NOVI station.

Nerd thought: it kind of looks as though Hyperion was originally intended to have a cable lift, considering it has what looks like the catch car rest position spot in the track that coasters equipped with cable lift have. Maybe they decided to go with a chain lift last minute?

After a looooooong walk through what is a pretty large park, we made it to our second immediate order of business. The newly-built Dragon or whatever area. It looks kind of like they copied Universal's Wizarding World homework here.

I'm pretty sure we were skipping with excitement at this point.

I'm going to quote my earlier self here:

Zadra can jizz all over my face and I'd be sticking my tongue out.

Hey, at least Energylandia is nice enough to let you know that it's going to take a while.

Yep, the park's bizarre 1-2-3 system of pre-organizing the station made it to Zadra as well.

People didn't seem to understand this at all and I would seriously hate to have to deal with this on a busy day.

But like, Zadra tho, yo

You close?

Alright, if you didn't finish yet, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that you see a doctor about that.

I'm happy to report that the Operator Bots are Energylandia are treated well. They're given cups of coffee and a chair to sit in while they stare at their iPhones between dispatches.

The then-new-for-2020 pile of dirt that we now know will be the new Aqualantica section, featuring new coaster Abyssus

Oh yeah, so Energylandia also has this awesome little Vekoma coaster, Formula. It packs a punchy little launch, followed by a quick, albeit short layout with a couple of fast, zippy inversions.

You can definitely tell the progression of theming from what the park was doing for this coaster in 2016, to Hyperion in 2018, to Zadra and it's land in 2019, to what looks like a stunning new land in 2020.

The coaster's theme is very "Top Thrill Dragster".

Also pictured is the new generation Vekoma trains, which are supremely comfortable. Honestly this new Vekoma was every bit smooth as a B&M.

Some inversion and some sky

In 2015, Energylandia installed "Roller Coaster Mayan", which is a Vekoma SLC. It would seem suspect that a park would be drunk enough to buy a brand new SLC nowadays.

Roller Coaster Mayan was far and away the smoothest SLC I've ever been on. My friend even said, "I didn't think it was possible to like one of those".

Not only did Mayan feature the new age Vekoma trains a la Mind Eraser at SFNE, the transitions even seemed like they'd been smoothed out, likely by some CAD programming.

Energylandia has several "pathways to nowhere" that make you feel like a lost RCT peep. Zadra got built across this path that seems like it existed beforehand. The entrance and exit queues both cross directly through it, with just temporary-looking barrier walls like these on the sides. Odd.

Also, this outward-banked element on Zadra was insane and taken at speed, going from extreme banking in one direction and rotating the other direction before flipping back again. I'm happy to see that Iron Gwazi has this exact same element.

This "20 min" marker in Mayan's line came not after, but before a "30 min" marker. Very strange...

"Viking Roller Coaster" was the spinning Wild Maus of death. From first glance, as a non-Wild Maus enthusiast, I assumed it was a Zamperla or Reverchron model. Turns out it's made by the SBF Visa Group and is VERY different from a lot of the others I've been on.

First off, it was running absolutely balls-to-the-wall fast. I don't think we got trimmed a single time, so before we even hit the first dip, we were flying around corners so fast and hard that I don't know how the ride vehicle hasn't gone off yet.

Second, the ride vehicle's unnecessary over-the-shoulder restraints were hard as an old SLC's and there was no padding on the sides of the car. Every single one of the aforementioned turns slammed us around so hard we had bruises for days.

The park's zillion-kiddie-coaster collection also includes one of these new-age Family Boomerang coasters. The ride wasn't memorable but the theming was cute.

Going from the frames on the walls, the theme for the family boomerang apparently is wine and grapes. It also featured a station fly-through like a GCI woodie.

Some of the seemingly-newer areas of the park were very cute and had plenty of detail

Others were very "state fair". Hopefully the park is in the process of updating these other areas, as some of them really stick out as eyesores in comparison.

You enter through the "O". At this point, after going on most of the rides we wanted to and skipping the kiddie coasters because we aren't that desperate, we spent the rest of the day going back and forth between the park's three major, awesome coasters.

Despite being very long, Hyperion's queue was definitely cool and futuristic-looking.

Here you can see what Hyperion's trains are like. They're a plain, flat platform kind of like Skyrush's, but with the platform below all 4 seats and with much, much more comfortable restraints.

Hey, Hersheypark, could you guys PLEASE buy some of these newer Intamin restraints and convert? They'd honestly improve Skyrush tenfold.

Although the park was only open until 18:00 that day and it was never dark, they did have these stilt-walking scareactors roaming around not really scaring anyone.

"Halloween theming" came in the form of a ton of random pumpkins and bales of hay scattered throughout the park, but it did add a nice touch.

Oh, look, I had a picture of Zadra's "stairway to nowhere", after all. At least it made for some good overview shots of the coaster.

Autumn at Energylandia

I'll end the report with a few photos taken of Hyperion and Zadra during the rest of the first day and the following day before we headed off to Germany.

That wraps it up. Thanks for reading!

I would definitely recommend Energylandia to anyone, considering the great coasters they have and their continued future expansion plans. Poland is also a fantastic country and everything is very cheap, considering their currency is about 0.25 to 1 US Dollar!

Great report! Zadra and Hyperion look great. This park definitely has some odd operational quirks, but those two coasters will be enough to get me there.

Looks like you had a great plan going into this park as a good day or bad day at Energylandia seems to be a coin flip. This park is so alluring, especially with the new Vekoma hotness on the way. Thanks for the great report! Hilarious, as always.

Great report! This just seems like the weirdest place...

I'm glad you had a good day and I do believe that our trip and report spurred them to take some action as the park and some of the manufacturers contacted us after we posted about our day! The park surely has potential but it's going to need some consistency and that crazy Vekoma new thing to get me back in a few years.

glad to see y'all had such a good visit, and those are some fantastic pics you have posted.

thanks for sharing.

Great photos and report. Zadra and Hyperion look insane.

Thanks for all the comments, guys! I'll definitely clarify and say I'd recommend this park; just visit on a weekday when it's not peak season, as there are definitely a lot of quirks about this place and our visit probably wouldn't have been so great if it wasn't a ghost town when we were there.

I'm glad you had a good day and I do believe that our trip and report spurred them to take some action as the park and some of the manufacturers contacted us after we posted about our day! The park surely has potential but it's going to need some consistency and that crazy Vekoma new thing to get me back in a few years.

I honestly can't thank you guys enough, as you guys have a platform and use it very well. After I read the reports about Hyperion I was concerned, as I've definitely experienced some shaky rides on winged Intamin coasters (ie Furius Baco), which can really make or break the ride. Hyperion rode so smoothly for us that they must have listened and gotten right on it with maintenance.

And the new Vekoma looks awesome!

Hyperion looks amazing. Zadra looks really good and that new Vekoma coming out looks incredible as well. This park will have an epic top 3. Very nice trip report