Tripping across the pond [FINAL POST]

[toofpikk]

So last year I was fortunate enough to have a business trip out to Orlando near the end of the year. One of my friends from my stint at working at Europa Park was on the CRP, so I spent all my free time with him, catching up, talking about our previous doomed road trip, and theme-parking. During my short free time there, I managed to visit all the Disney theme parks, both the universal parks, and Sea world. I managed to do most of my bucket list rides, including completing the universal parks, seven dwarves mine train, and Mako & Pipeline. I did not, however, manage to ride a significant amount of Disney's E-tickets, including Tron, Guardians, Ratatouille, Test Track, or anything Avatar.

Haunted by this, my mind had been locked on working out how I could make a return trip economically viable. That was until I found myself in the incredibly fortunate position of being gifted several thousand soon-to-expire air miles, and a desperately needed gap in my career; my head started whirring like crazy. You can kind of see the process here.

So what was the thought? Well, 7 years ago, whilst sitting in our air-conditioned room in 38c heat, me and my old room mate used to construct pipe dreams of the ultimate theme park road trips. Having failed to complete our European one due to a broken down car 2 years ago, rather than focusing solely on Florida parks where I wouldn't be experiencing that much which was new to me, why not turn my focus to have another stab at one of these long-ago concieved biblical pilgrimages? I texted my old pal, and within an hour, I got the thumbs up, as he was Canadian he would essentially treat the trip like the most drawn out drive home in history; and I started spreadsheeting every concievable detail you could possibly comprehend that would be required to have an informed trip. Distances from park to park, crowd calendars, the cost of fuel in each area, where the cheapest but reasonable motels were, where I could spend air miles on hotels instead, which cultural hubs I thought were worth visiting... Charlie Kelly does a fantastic job at summing up my composure when it came to getting everything booked for this trip:

So what was the final plan?
This, grotesque, glorious masterpiece:
June 20th: Fly from Heathrow to Charlotte, transfer from Charlotte to Orlando, spend the evening in EPCOT, drive to Tampa
21st: Busch Gardens Tampa, drive up to Valdosta
22nd: Drive to Six Flags Over Georgia, evening at Fun Spot Atlanta, stay in Atlanta
23rd: Drive up to Nashville, spend the evening on the strip
24th: Drive to Holiday World, stay right by Kentucky Kingdom
25th: Kentucky Kingdom, then onto camping in the Daniel Boone National Forest
26th: Drive to Dollywood, stay in Asheville
27th: Drive to Carowinds, stay in Greensboro
28th: Drive to Williamsburg, spend the evening in the Old Town
29th: Busch Gardens Williamsburg, drive up to Richmond
30th: Kings Dominion, drive to Washington DC
July 1st: Spend the morning in Washington DC, drive to Knoebels for the afternoon, then drive to Hershey
2nd: Hershey Park, then drive to Philadelphia
3rd: Drive to Six Flags Great Adventure

---

And then another 6 weeks later, I found myself at Heathrow airport boarding the plane.
After a rather long flight to Charlotte sat next to a young family with a very screamy child, I experienced the horrendous stress of 90 minute transfers State side. I strongly DO NOT recommend this. Security is such an arguous process and then having to re-check haul luggage made turn rounds scarily tight. Alas, after another 3 hours, and about 4 hours sleep to the 16 hours I'd been awake, I touched down in Orlando, and was scooped up by my pal so we could spend the evening saying goodbye to his colleagues around Epcot.

As usual! I will keep the written content of my park reports slim, and try my best to let the pictures do the talking.

EPCOT really was serving itself as a flying visit. My previous experience with the park was not the best, firmly ranking it my least favourite of the Disney properties I've experienced. Inaccurate queue times, aging rides everywhere, the most mundane in breadth of attractions... As sucky as a top tier park can get. This time, however, with the emotion bolted on of my road trip partner saying goodbye to his colleagues of a year and a workplace he gushed about enjoying so much added some charm to the visit.

A quick go round on Spaceship Earth, a drink and a snack and a chinwag with some friends I knew who were also on park, and then a sneaky little smuggling through Ratatouille.

First time I've done this ride. I get the complaints but also I actually really liked it.

And then to seal the park visit off, a Zen ride on Guardians.

Yup, my group of 4 were the only people in the entire ride station.

Guardians is an absolutely wicked coaster. Not as intense as I was expecting but it does have some really quirky moments and was buckets of fun.

As my mate said his final goodbyes, I took a quick reflection on EPCOT. It's a very pretty park. But I don't think I'd ever enjoy the process of feeling like you've got the most out of your day with all the loopholes Disney now throws at it's patrons. Visiting with park staff, however, was very fun.

A 90 minute drive down the road in a Jeep absolutely filled to the brim with stuff, we made our way to Tampa, and a late hotel check in, before my mate realised he left his wallet in his apartment back at Disney... 3 hours later, he comes back into the hotel room and I realised my passport was also back at his old room.
Bollocks.
Was this an omen of another cursed theme park trip? God, I hope not..

 

[toofpikk]

Busch Gardens Tampa was just out of reach from my previous trip across the pond. This time however, it made quite the impression on me.

We rocked up to the park at about 11am, having tried to recoup some sleep from the turbulent night beforehand. It was pretty damn busy.

But also, it was pretty much exactly how I'd expected to be, which was tbh, really quite good.

Queue times were wildly inaccurate, the food choices weren't great, and generally ops were pretty shoddy... We had an anxious 40 minutes as a storm passed through half way through the day, but man, BGT is a really pretty, well rounded park.

Finally getting on rides which I used to try to recreate in RCT3 was quite magical. Montu and Kumba were both far better than I was expecting, and I even really enjoyed Cheetah Hunt despite my mate warning me about how dull it was (and the absolutely crawling cattlepen queue). We took time to do the skyway and train too, which were both welcome pauses from the coasters. There's also an INCREDIBLE jump scare behind some of the aquarium tanks, where you'll find a lone lion model ready to make you jump out of your skin as you walk round one of the wooded corners.

We had plenty of time to re-ride everything we wanted to, despite the busyness of the park.

One particular highlight was Flacon's Fury, which was closed in the morning but opened around 4pm. I hate hate drop towers, but this thing looked so quirky and jank I just had to give it a go. It was as scary as it looked for me, but there was an added element of fear for the fact there's clearly a hornet's nest in the top of the ride at the moment, so as you're tipped to face the ground, you're also suddenly swarmed by a mob of scary buzzing yellow things too.

As it came into the late afternoon, a series of very ominous clouds started sweeping across the park. Looking at our phones we thought we'd probably have another 90 mins or so to get a couple more rides in before a hailstorm was due to hit, so we decided to head towards Iron Gwazi, which we'd ridden first thing in the morning.

This thing hauls.

BUT - on first ride, not quite as much as I thought it would. Don't get me wrong, it was intense as hell and snappy and huge and terrific, but it stands so intimidatingly near the entrance to the park, and it felt like it didn't quite deliver a full punch when we first got on it...

Well, as we jumped into the train for the second ride, ops had to pause for 5 minutes to let the first burst of hail pass over. Sunglasses now equipped in place of goggles, we crawled up the lifthill as the rain started properly lashing down again. I don't think I could ever tell you a moment before where I've had a rainy ride on a coaster and noticed myself travelling quicker than the raindrops, but there was a proper matrix-like moment on that first drop... And then sheer insanity followed.

Having spent the day warming up, and now covered in rain, Iron Gwazi ripped through the layout. After about a minute of uncontrollable manic unhinged laughter, during which you're thrown upside down, back to front, inside out, and being so disoriented from the rain smashing our faces... we smashed into the brake run. What an incredible machine.

(unfortunately there aren't many good observation points for Iron Gwazi so enjoy this picture of Sheikra instead)

That rainy ride on Iron Gwazi was unlike anything I'd experienced on a coaster before. Utterly relentless, there were some genuinely scary moments when the train was pummeling through the elements so fast, I thought it was going to rip itself to shreds. Insanely intense, but such crazy fun.

It became clear that the major rides weren't going to be open again for the rest of the day, so rather pleased with ourselves for getting the last ride on Iron Gwazi, we made our way out of the park.

---

Aquaplaining our way out of the state, we just made it to Georgia to get some shut eye for the night. Tomorrow held for us Six Flags Over Georgia, and Fun Spot Atlanta, over doubling my RMC count in the space of 48 hours..

 

[toofpikk]

The morning started with a 3 hour drive to Six Flags. The parks entryway is really, really cool, with Goliath twisting and turning around the roads, and several other coasters creating a wall of steel and wooden mess, hiding the rest of the park's content from the outside world.

I was expecting this day to be a bit of a ball ache for the sake of a few credits, but in all honesty, I actually really, really liked SFOG.

The park suffers from some traits we found to be a common thing at the Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks, in that the food options are limited, they are over priced, and there's a lot of gross, uncovered concrete walkways around the park.

But SFOG benefits from interesting terrain, lots of natural canopy in the centre of the park, and some seriously strong rides awith decent operations.

Personal highlights for me included finally riding a batman clone, which was, by the way, INSANELY intense.

Mindbender also shocked us, was a lot of fun and again, kicked our butts.

I was blown away by how impressive the Justice League dark ride was.

Daredevil dive was a bit disappointing, but it was satisfying to ride another bucket list coaster.

Monster Mansion cannot be missed; fantastic unhinged dark ride nightmare content.

Twisted Cyclone was also really good. Having said that, it is, in my opinion, the weakest RMC I've ridden. With that considered, it's quite the feat that it still sits as high as my No. 29, with 8 more RMC's sat above it!

We spent a good few hours ticking off all the parks major creds, including Superman and of course the Great american Scream Machine.

Goliath was the highlight ride of the park, and the ride experience matches it's impressive, imposing presence in the entry area. By the end of the day, with the 40c heat, this thing was flying, I'm sure far quicker than B&M could have ever accounted for.

Everything after the first drop was menacing and intense.

My mate and I greyed out for a good 3 or 4 seconds coming out of the turn-around helix.

The air time on the second hill is very, very strong, and that intensity was kept up throughout the rest of the layout, finishing in a grand crescendo of ejector (On a B&M??) bunny hills which induced some slightly terrified screams.

We wrapped up the day with a couple more laps on Twisted Cyclone, actually pretty content with it all. Having visited Six Flags New England about 6 years ago, where I also, surprisingly, had a good day, was I just getting good flukes each time I visited a Six Flags? Was I bcocming dillusional? Or are Six Flags, actually pretty decent parks? TBC. More data required for a fair conclusion.

As the sun was setting, we walked back to our car and drove the fairly short drive to Fun Spot Atlanta. With our windows rolled down so we could enjoy the evening breeze, we approached the dark and ominous structure of the barely illuminated ArieForce One; lift hill clanking away as we pulled past it and into the Fun Spot car park, with 45 minutes left til park close. We marched up to the ticket stand, purchased 2 tickets for the coaster each, and briskly walked past the rest of the park's fairly sad and bizarre offerings before standing, gawping, in awe at this monstrosity of a car park coaster that was stood before us.

The train rattled past at seemingly a million miles an hour, my mate turned to me, jaw on the floor, and simply said 'thats.... not right(?)' And with a series of childish, excited giggles, we ran through the queue line and walked straight onto front row.

From the name, to the location, the ride experience, RMC have done it again: Deliver a totally unhinged, insane coaster. ArieForce One does not let up. It absolutely rips through the course, doing it's best to throw you into Rick Ross's nearby estate. What right does a coaster of this calibre have, being dressed in this way at this park? No idea, but it's glorious.

We wrapped our day up, somewhat traumatised from another RMC punching its way into our top 10s very easily. That evening we spent our night in a hotel in central Atlanta. One of my favourite DJs was playing a set about 2 miles from our hotel, so I was hoping that I might stay awake long enough to head down and buy a ticket on the door, but after walking 30,000 steps and gawping at the gangsters on horseback riding through the city centre, I was asleep as soon as we got into our hotel room.

---

Any of you reading who may have looked at my thread in the trip planning section will have seen the dilemma I had in wanting to squeeze a night on the Nashville strip in, but also not wanting to do more than a 3 hour drive either side of a park visit. Our way around this was rather than spending the day before SFOG just driving: we ended up splitting up the drive from Tampa to Atlanta over night, and then spent a day driving on the other side of Atlanta, up North. This meant we had most the afternoon and the evening to spend relaxing, and then hitting the Nashville strip, but before reaching Nashville, obligatory stops at Bass Pro and Buc-ee's (which had already become a morning staple of our trip) had to be made.

We were lucky to have booked a really well positioned hotel, so we were walking distance from the strip. After getting a couple hours shut eye, we went and found the home of Nashville Hot Chicken, ordered extra hot, regretted our decision immensely and the fallout it would cause tomorrow, before hitting the town for some Honky Tonk.

And by god did we get honked and tonked. After nearly a dozen bars, some flirtatious looks, chats and dances with some cow girls, and a drunken stumble back to our room, we were pretty elated to have decided to make space for Nashville on our trip. Felt like we got the most out of the evening we had at hand too. Nashville is really, really awesome, and if you enjoy a drink, fried chicken, and music, it's the place to be.

When all was said and done, we got back into bed at about 3am. My mate broke his phone during the evening, so once we'd slept off the whiskey, we went to the apple store, got him all sorted, we continued to work on sobering ourselves up as we made our way further north to a small town called Santa Claus...

 

[Hixee]

Catching up with this, but really enjoyed this. I like the photos of the Buckees and Bass Pro especially - something about the style of photo, subject, and composition makes me smile.

 

[toofpikk]

Catching up with this, but really enjoyed this. I like the photos of the Buckees and Bass Pro especially - something about the style of photo, subject, and composition makes me smile.

Thanks for the reply Hixee! I should apologise for the long delay in updates, I've been very busy between being face down in English countryside whilst at festivals and balancing a new job, whilst also doing some freelance work...

---

After a couple hours of driving through the late morning sun, we arrived at Santa Claus in the early afternoon, with a huge water tower looming over head. First impressions of Holiday World were pretty good - Raven zipped round it’s first turn over the lake as we walked past it, making for a really picturesque (and noisy) intro to the park.

The whole front portion of the park was completely dead. It was scorching hot, and probably about 80% of the people in the resort were in the water park.

Might as well say this now, but Holiday World was the only park on our entire trip where we regretted not doing the pools and slides. Not only was it really hot, but it looked like so much fun, and although we got to make the most out of a quiet park, it was a bit of a loss on our part to not go and do some of the water rides they had too.

Holiday World is in one word, Charming.

Nostalgia oozes from practically every corner of this park. We were immediately entranced by the park’s character (shoutout to the 80s diving show). It really doesn’t do, well, anything, when it comes to theming, but it doesn’t matter. We loved it anyway.

With the theme park section so quiet, we immediately went for multiple re-rides on The Raven and The Legend. I preferred The Raven, my mate preferred The Legend.

The Raven really packs a punch in it’s layout, with a great combination of lats, positives and negatives with interesting maneuvers through loads of different terrain.

The Legend really packs a punch in it’s layout, with a great combination of lats, positives and negatives with interesting maneuvers through loads of different terrain.
Wait a second…

To be fair, the first drop on the Legend is arguably the best in the park. It just keeps on going. But the helix-of-doom was unhinged to the point of being uncomfortable, so despite the impressive weaving the rest of the layout does, I just preferred The Raven more.

After a good beating up on the park’s front 2 woodies, we descended into the rest of the park, making use of the free drinks refills on the way. We walked straight to Good Gravy, the parks newest attraction, a completely forceless Vekoma boomerang.

This is one of the few rides where the park has put some effort into doing something with theming, but it’s a bit flat. Not that this is a problem though, because the park is so self aware, and in a round-about way, suuuuuper camp, it’s actually kind of hilarious. Anyway, this was probably the most boring boomerang I’ve ridden, and as the only real family coaster in the park it was getting long queues, so we didn’t come back round for this one.

A brisk walk up the hill and we found ourselves at Thunderbird; another one of those rides that I’d seen the animations and POVs of years ago, never really expecting to get on it, but I guess here we were!

Thunderbird is awesome, the launch really packs a punch, and the spaghetti bowl in the forest is really wicked, especially if you get a synced dispatch with The Voyage rattling underneath you as you float around.

We came back down the hill, and basked in the goods of the thanksgiving themed restaurant, absolutely feasting on our picks before heading into the park’s shooter to capture some turkeys. This was honestly some of the best theme park food of the entire trip.

And finally, we got to The Voyage. Straight onto front row. And… it was… a bit… naff?

The first few drops didn’t really do anything for me, apart from jack hammer in the valleys. The jack hammering continued around the spaghetti bowl, with an incredibly aggressive snap into the MCBR. You could tell the ride really wanted to start delivering some forces on the way back down the hill, but we were getting sh*t all. Sure, the ride was fun, but where was this illusive flojector? Where was the unhinged tunnel sections? Where was this legendary ride experience we were told about for so long? The ride has such an incredible presence on the park, and after that first ride, very little pay-off.

Thinking maybe it was the train or the row, we went round again on the other train in the back, but nope, same thing again.

But,
we’d already been here before on this trip with Iron Gwazi.

That ride absolutely kicked our ass at the end of the day compared to our rides in the morning, so although we had already spent half of the 8ish hours we’d have at the park, we decided to go back round the other woodies and repay The Voyage a visit a little bit later on.

After another go on The Legend, The Raven, and the log flume, as well as a quick visit to a couple of the parks shops to check out the merch, we came back to The Voyage. 90 minutes more of operation, and now with a full train, it had definitely stepped up a gear, with the second half giving us some pretty decent forces, but the entire first half was still just… meh? Surely, a ride this colossal, this prestigious, must have something more to give us, right?

RIGHT???

One more go up on Thunderbird, and as we walked back down the hill we saw swarms of people leaving the water park and funneling straight into The voyage queue. Not that this was an issue, with the ops throwing out trains pretty rapidly, the queue wasn’t longer than 20 mins. We got a seat somewhere in the middle of the train, and the ride experience felt like it was creeping into another level… Okay, cool, we MIGHT be getting somewhere, but will the ride start punching before park closure?

Having wrestled with the heat for the whole day, we took about half an hour to chill on a bench by the final turn of The Voyage and rehydrate, and get some snacks. Rejoining a now much shorter queue, we once again aimed for the back, getting the second to last row.

The Voyage train ascended the lift hill as the last rays of sunlight reached over the trees of the nearby forest, casting some pretty magnificent golden rays across the coaster. Smoke and fog rose from the campfires and trees of the adjacent camping site.

Something felt a bit more magical about this one.

And then, BAM.

Like a wrestler grabbing you from your waist and dragging you through the hell in a cell cage down to the floor of a wrestling ring, we plummeted down the first drop. I thought to myself, ‘so THIS is what flojector is?’
The first airtime hill had some nice floater to it, but the second air time hill once again delivered pretty bizarre, and new to me experience of floating, aaaand slamming against your restraint.
What was happening? Why am I laughing so crazily? Why have I just locked eyes with my mate, him nodding madly and screaming, ‘OH THIS IS THE TITS’. It seemed with this new found speed, a lot of the potholes and jackhammering were glided over now instead. Traversing to the forest, hitting the spaghetti bowl had us shuffling left and right, thrown up and down, hands locked on the bar one second, as high as they could reach the next. We coursed into the MCBR, and then spent the next 20 seconds virtually standing up in absolute hysterics in complete darkness, before being spat out of the tunnel into the series of overbanks, finally crashing into the brake run. My mate and I once again locked eyes, jaws in the floor, as a swarm of fire flies blinked around us. If coaster enthusiasts ever got a Disney princess film, this felt like it would be the peak of the movie. Just utter fairytale content.

Coming off like a pair of giddy children, we went round again, and again, and again, until we'd ridden it over half a dozen times since dusk, and managed a couple of kind of night rides too.

In hindsight, I do think it’s a tiny teeny bit of a shame that these internationally renowned coasters require such specific conditions, or such an extensive time to warm up to deliver the ride experience you hear about. Having said that, it’s so, so worth it, and the anticipation of doubting the hype, wondering if you’ve come on a day worthy of the experience just makes it so much more special when that golden ride finally happens.

We left Holiday World a lot later than we were expecting. Neither of us thought it was a full day park on paper, but came away absolutely charmed. Holiday World is charming, and the reason that I've failed to mention in this post so far isn't just because of their pretty stellar lineup of rides, (lack of) theming, or anything to do with the physical elements of the park; but more for the fact that the park is ran by locals who so obviously love and are proud of their place of work, and are treated well, and that positive energy channels strongly into the guest experience. The place is clean, tidy, efficient, but most importantly sincerely and genuinely happy.



That evening we made our way to Lousivlle riding on a high. This trip was really shaping up to be one for the books.

 

[toofpikk]

Kentucky Kingdom marked the shortest time at a park on our trip. Sandwiched in the middle of a concrete jungle consisting of a pretty sizeable airport, expo center and multiple sports grounds, it’s location is very grey and barren.

KK has very little shade, and with the heat surpassing 100f (that’s about 38c to you and me) by 11am, we decided that today we weren’t going to indulge our time in the park, and instead get the creds, have a nosy, and then head off. Considering its location and the state the water park looked like it was in, we had no desire to cool off today, so we’d focus on the rides instead.

KK is home to lightning run, a chance hyper that rides a lot like an RMC. This is likely because they share the same train seats, and the layout designer has also worked for both Chance and RMC.

For real though, this thing is the definition of a pocket rocket. It was doing pretty well dealing with moderate crowds on 1 train, and it was a lot of fun, with some seriously impressive and punchy ejector all the way through it’s layout.

Kentucky flyer is the parks latest addition, a small timberliner that zips along the perimeter of the parks water park. It’s fun enough, has a small bit of floater here and there, but it really doesn’t do anything that impressive and is quite isolated on it’s corner of the park, so after a couple of re-rides we were happily done with it.

The park is also home to Thunder Run, which wasn’t as rough as it looked, or as we had been told.

We also rode a collection of the flats including the flying clogs, the cocks of the carousel and the big wheel which gives a really impressive view of the park and surrounding area… It would be more impressive if there were actually interesting things to see from it though.

And finally, the park is of course home to Storm Chaser. This is a proper killer RMC, complete with upside down ejector, head choppers, and the loudest lift hill on a hybrid I’ve ever heard.

In terms of the smaller RMCs, this is probably the hardest hitting. It really does throw some fists throughout it’s course, and the fun didn’t let up with each re-ride.

We probably only spent about 4 hours on the park, but between the lack of free water refill areas, the masses of concrete and dramatic lack of shade, we were quite content with our rides on Lightning Run and Storm Chaser and decided to depart KK to make good time for camping that night. KK was the first park on our trip that didn’t exceed our expectations. The lack of natural (or manmade) canopy and sprawling slabs of concrete make for quite an uncomfortable setting. The park also felt very tired, maybe a bit of a reflection of how we were doing too.

We were spending the evening in the Daniel Boone National Forest, which was roughly halfway between Asheville and Pigeon Forge.

After a drive via walmart to pick up some camping supplies, we were greeted by the warden asking if we were armed or if we wanted firewood. When I approached the camp bulletin to sign in just minutes later, I came to realize that she was probably asking if I had a gun due to the sheer amount of bear sightings that have been had this year.

Having worked our way through a crate of twisted teas, we tipsily got into our small, fragile pop up tent, and went to sleep to the sounds of a dying flickering fire, crunches on the overgrowth nearby, coyote howls in the not-far-enough distance, and the echoes of gunshots… It’s fair to say that we did not, have a good night's sleep.

 

[toofpikk]

After a very light nights sleep, we woke up bleary eyed and immediately packed up our bits, and headed to the nearest Buc-ee’s to get our morning brisket fill. We needed to line our stomachs properly and pattern up today, for we were headed to probably the most anticipated park of the entire trip:

Dollywood.

Dollywood unapologetically destroyed our expectations, and despite a pretty healthy dose of fatigue, gave us (probably) the most enjoyable visit of the trip.

Every ride was running incredibly well with the exception of Lightning Rod, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

The park's layout favours itself to be completed in an anti-clockwise, chronological manner, and because we arrived just after opening, it seemed like we were 20 minutes behind the main body of the crowd the whole time, meaning our wait times were minimal.

Dollywood is incredibly well maintained, very pretty, and has the most complete lineup of attractions of any park we visited on our trip.

Honestly I was most excited to ride mystery mine, which was another POV I’d watch when I was a teenager and marvel at how much could be done with a humble piece of coaster hardware. It's rough as hell but so much fun.

Thunderhead was a total sleeper hit for me. I knew it was at Dollywood but never really gave it much more attention than that; ironic for what turned out to become my new favourite GCI. Night rides on this thing slap.

There’s very little to criticise here. Park entry is expensive, sure, but once you get inside everything is very reasonably priced, and you feel like you’ve paid for a very high quality product.

The level of authenticity is unmatched, anywhere. Actual ironmongers, stone masons and falconers on display give the park a really amazing sense of kinetic energy. And that damn steam train might be the single coolest theme park attraction I’ve ever been on. I’m not a train guy, but I was for Cinderella.

We did the full park loop twice in a day, racking up nearly 30 rides on the various different attractions. This includes 40 minutes on the train, and some pretty lengthy stops to get our energy back and devour the parks food. Which, by the way, was also some of the best of the trip.

Yeah, Dollywood stole our hearts.

When my ‘normie’ friends ask me about the trip and I tell them I went to Dollywood, they always raise an eyebrow and go ‘oh yeah, how was it?’ When I unironically explain to them that it was one of the best regional parks I’ve ever visited, confusion sweeps across their faces. I guess they’re expecting me to say something outlandish or berating as I’m hardly an extreme Dolly super fan, but honestly the park operates on such a high level, it’s right up there with the likes of Eteling, Asterix and Phantasialand.

Some of you may have read the review I posted the evening of our visit to Dollywood about Lightning Rod:

‘Lightning Rod, our first and last ride of the day.
There’s a bizarre sensation a nerd gets when riding this coaster; tensing at the base of the first hill ready for a launch sequence - complete with surrounding audio… Only to be slowly, anti-climatically dragged up a lift hill on a chain instead.

Our first ride was so damn mediocre I couldn’t believe this was the coaster that people were so excited about riding just a couple years ago, even when it had a launch. How could a ride be so heavily neutered and still maintain its reputation? Dunno, but the forceless meandering that was going on during our first ride felt like a wooden reflection of Big Bear Mountain across the park.’

Yeah, our first ride was dull at best. But this seemed to become a bit of a theme for our trip now. I’d come to learn by this point that the great coasters I’d seen and heard, and now finally ridden, all performed way better (at their 'legendary status standard') towards the end of the day.

‘After completing the park and revisiting later in the day, a back row ride sparked some reconsideration from us. The quad down suddenly had become a lot more fun, but the first portion was still underwhelming and to be frank, kinda rough.

We found ourselves at the foot of Lightning Rod one more time at about 9:40pm. Let’s see if riding in the dark after a day of good ops and super hot weather has given it a chance to almost impossibly warm up to a degree where these huge elements in the first half actually do something.'

'Lo and behold, Lightning Rod finally, absolutely kicked our ass. Barrelling down that first drop in the complete darkness of the smoky mountain valley is genuinely terrifying and we found ourselves standing up in our seats and flying through elements that felt dull and un-necessarily drawn out during our rides earlier on in the day. Still rough, but suddenly the ride had gained a tenacious personality that was seriously fun. This was the coaster I wanted to ride. This is the one I had heard about before.

Coming off rejuvenated - we went back round once more for a front row ride. In the front the roughness was vacant. That wave turn had me in hysterics. Sideways air time? Stupidly hilarious. You get shoved through all the elements. And watching the fireworks across the other side of the park as we flew through the quad down; just me, my mate and 2 teenagers in the back, was probably the most magical night ride I’ve ever had on a coaster.'

Lightning Rod ended up being a truckload of fun and a pretty unique ride experience for me. It’s just so unbelievably inconsistent and needs a lot of time to warm up.

So yeah. Dollywood, eh? Home to so many iconic rides, great operations, great scran (btw we got the nachos in wildwood grove and I kid you not it was some of the best nachos I've ever had) and an un-rivalled level of authenticity; all under the name of one of the most reputable celebrities in the world.

Definitely worth a visit. Definitely worth a return. Doable in 1 day for sure, but more would be welcome. A must visit park.

---

At this point, my previous top 20 had been absolutely obliterated by new creds on this trip. And tomorrow, with a visit to Carowinds, I was expecting it to become even more fragmented…

 

[Ollie]

Great to hear that Dollywood is as good as it looks. I was the same growing up watching videos of Mystery Mine and being wowed by the overall experience and theme (although it's nothing compared to rides nowadays). Glad that Lightning Rod warmed up nicely for you as well.

 

[toofpikk]

Great to hear that Dollywood is as good as it looks. I was the same growing up watching videos of Mystery Mine and being wowed by the overall experience and theme (although it's nothing compared to rides nowadays). Glad that Lightning Rod warmed up nicely for you as well.

Thanks for the reply Ollie! Yeah, Dollywood was amazing. I think what was so impressive was the lack of true standout attraction for me, as everything had it's own character and strong traits. The park is on such a ridiculously consistently high level.

---

We arrived at a slightly dreary Carowinds as it approached midday. Although well rested, the extent of our trip was certainly getting to me, and tbh, in combination with the weather and the sheer size of the coasters that skirt the park, I was semi-gritting my teeth at the thought of today’s park.

You may have noticed from my pictures, but until now we hadn't had a significant run in with poor weather. Sure, it had been RIDICULOUSLY hot for a few days, but we’d not been rained out of a park unduly early. Yet. The drizzle that greeted us at Carowinds was therefore, semi-welcome.

Having just done what I was pretty sure was gonna be my favourite park of the trip, this felt like a credit sweep of a visit, something I don’t even care that much about anyway. Fury 325 has an incredible presence at the front of the park. Walking in, the park generally appears well maintained from the front, but slowly sprawls off into chaos the further in you go.

Afterburn kicked ass. If the ‘airtime’ hill was an inversion it would surely be a contender for top invert, but the element is such a pace killer on an otherwise very strong layout.

I finally did a vekoma flyer, and felt like I was taking part in the next saw movie. What an ugly, scary, jank contraption.

There wasn’t really that much else of note. I quite enjoyed copperhead strike, but it wasn’t anything particularly special to shout home about.

Intimidator (or thunder striker soorrryyyyy) was also really good, but we had a pretty severe lashing of rain on our first ride. Coming off feeling slightly abused, combined with the trip's fatigue, I could feel myself crashing a little.

One of my mate’s friends joined us a couple hours into our visit, which bolstered our energy for the rest of the day.

We saved Fury 325 until it was the last coaster on our to-do list; a mix of not wanting to ride it too early, and also with it being slightly out of the way of the rest of the park.

Initial thoughts: Lots of fun, re-rideable, very noticeably big. Sometimes when you ride these big coasters, you don’t appreciate the sheer scale of them when onboard. You definitely do with Fury.

Grabbing a beer and then having a waddle round the park again, re-riding the coasters we enjoyed the first time round, we ended up back at Fury 325 with about 90 mins until park close.

Marathon o'clock?
Marathon o'clock.

Fury 325 is a lot of fun. Like, a lot a lot. I can see why it ranks as so many people’s number 1, but it just isn't intense enough for me. Re-rideable? Sure, however with a ranking at 20th, it’s not even my favourite B&M, with Goliath at SFOG ranking higher than Fury for me.

It pulls all of it’s punches, so whilst the ride experience is really pleasant, it never really followed through to deliver any seriously stand out moments of intensity.

What WAS impressive however, was the cult of Fury fans who seemed to come out of nowhere for the last 45 minutes of operation. On first name basis with the hosts and operator, these guys were kitted out in alllll the Fury merch, chatting with the workers like they were pals, and filling up all the empty seats on each and every train.

One enthusiast told us it was her 1500th ride, exclaiming ‘This my hubby. This my man. No one gets me like he do. He understands me.’ - She then spent the duration of the ride helicopter-ing her hair and screaming like a banshee.

Sat next to us on one of the rides was a kid who was aiming to ride it 100 times in a day. He was at ride 89 with about an hour to go.

I have never felt so GP in all my life.

Impossibly tired, we dragged ourselves out of the park after a couple of night rides on Fury and a sizeable dose of second-hand overstimulation.

We drove to a small city called Greensboro, where we had a terrifying stay in a motel that was being used as a project-housing overflow. The room smelt like crack, there was yellow ooze seeping from the top of the walls, the bed was falling apart and the shower didn't work. All of this, and at 4am we were woken up to a pair of crack-heads throwing each other against our window throwing out death threats to the next white person they saw. Quivering in my bed about 2 feet from them, I didn’t get back to sleep, and as soon as my mate woke up, we got out of there.

---

Grateful for the break day built into our itinerary, but really, very tired, we made our way to Williamsburg. We stayed in a much cuter motel here, just on the outskirts of the old town, and had a wander through the streets.

Williamsburg is worth a visit, with live actors, traditional food on offer, and generally just a nice picturesque small walkable town, which is a total rarity in the US. But I’m glad we only earmarked a couple hours for this, I feel like I’d get bored pretty quickly if we were doing it for a whole day (and I’m supposedly a bit of a history buff).

After a nap and a quick shop for some supplies, we found a smokehouse, and I finally had a proper brisket. Buc-ee’s aint got sh*t on the real thing, this meat is crazy, and as an Englishman who spends the majority of his holidays in Europe, I can confidently say I don’t think I’ve ever had food like it. If you find yourself stateside, find a decently rated smokehouse and just go. You might regret it for the first 40 minutes after you finish, but it’s so worth it. My stomach was making happy noises right until I passed out and entered a food coma.

Hearts and stomachs full, and ready for a good night's kip, we were blessed with a lie in… For the next park on our hitlist, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, was only a 10 minute drive away..

 

[toofpikk]

Busch Gardens Williamsburg was up there with Dollywood as a park I was really excited for, and with the new-found bounce in our step thanks to being well rested, we were ready to take this one head on. Things weren’t off to a good start though, with Escape from Pompeii, Le Scoot, Roman Rapids, Apollo’s Chariot, Loch Ness, Verbolten and Pantheon all closed as we entered the park.

We headed right to the back of the park to get on Darkoaster, a ride I was warned gets stupid wait times thanks to it’s low capacity. We were on it within 10 minutes, had a lot of fun on it, but were also grateful to get it done and out of the way, as it sat at a 90 minute queue for the rest of the day and wasn’t super impressive.

Busch was noticeably busier than every other park we visited. A mix of visiting on the weekend before the 4th of July, and it just being a well established park probably caused this, but thankfully most of the queues were below the half hour mark despite the sheer amount of attractions unavailable. We saw Verbolten had opened and walked straight onto it, the ride breaking down again with the train after ours.

It’s a shame more doesn't happen after the big bad wolf drop, but Verbolten is a really solid coaster.

Quickly realising it was going to be another boiling hot day, it was really disappointing to know the parks water rides weren't open.

We spent the next couple hours navigating full queue lines, huge groups of guests blocking paths, the summer heat and the impossibly expensive food (we ended up sharing a meal plan).

BGW’s landscape is beautiful, with a good mix of terrain and natural canopy, but it really isn’t the easiest to navigate and is very spread out. We decided to give Alpengeist a go, and were very, very pleasantly surprised.

This ride has an incredible presence at the centre of the park, really stealing the show from all the other coasters as it bolts through its first half.

I also absolutely adore the theme. The park got a lot of things right with this one.

I’m not sure specifically what, or why, but Alpengeist struck a chord with me. It’s silly, self aware, but thematically well dressed, and delivers a very punchy but narratively appropriate ride experience. Charming stuff, and surprising that B&M would make such a contraption. Sure, the second half feels a little neutered, but man that first half is menacing.

By this point, Pantheon had opened, so we headed back over that way to jump on.

Having ridden Toutatis, this was... meh.

Meh to the point I didn’t even bother working out where it would sit in my ratings. Whilst it shares a lot of elements with Toutatis, its pacing and sequencing is way, way off. There’s nothing there thematically to justify the experience, and it really didn’t deliver any of the forces your eyes promise you from looking at it zip through it’s layout. Tout comfortably sits in my top 10, Pantheon is not even close.

A few more bits had opened and the crowds had spread out across the park by now, so we did the sky ride, then the train, and then headed over to Le Scoot and Invadr. Invadr was fun enough, a very decent step up from Wickerman in terms of ride experience, but Le Scoot really hammered home the fact that the guys across the pond need to take notes from the Europeans on how to do a decent log flume.

Walking our way back round to the front of the park, we heard a certain arrow lift hill clanking away in the distance. Running to the entrance of Loch Ness, we got straight on it, front row.

Very cool to get on this one. The same effect Alpengeist had on me seemed to enchant my mate with Nessy, so we promised to make it one of our last rides of the day and revisit on our way out (oh and whoever did the new queue dressing did a stellar job; absolutely littered with nerdy and cute easter eggs).

With the sun setting, we did one more quick loop of the park, re-riding Pantheon, Alpengeist and Nessy. Coming off Loch Ness, we still had half an hour before park close, so chanced our luck with getting back one final night ride on Alpengeist, and maybe a go on the re-opened Verbolten.

Great success.

Overall, a pretty solid park visit but with a lot to be desired. I was pretty shocked at the ride availability and operations so close to the biggest holiday of the year stateside, and the park really does rinse its guests for cash. Although it has high cap rides and has clearly been built for large crowds, BGW didn’t seem that good at dealing with them. With all that said, the attractions we did manage to do were pretty class, so I was glad for the visit.

I’m not a theme park merch guy, but BGW got the perfect balance for me of casual, discrete nods and references to attractions without being in your face. Really liked what they had on offer.

---

Driving up to Richmond, reflecting on the highs and lows of our day, we pulled into our hotel parking lot to get some shut eye before a visit to Kings Dominion, where we’d ride what was proooobably the coaster I’ve been most scared of for this trip..

 

[toofpikk]

Kings Dominion drove home something pretty plain and simple for me. I hate amusement parks that don’t really try to make the experience between attractions pleasant. This place reminded me of Kentucky Kingdom, just with a much better selection of rides.

For real, the concrete motorways between each section of the park was so uncomfortable, I really wasn’t a fan.

Having said that, Kings Dominion is home to a pretty impressive roster of rides, and has a slick park entrance. Our plan was simple: ride everything once, revisit attractions we liked, then get to i305 and marathon it until we die.

So of course, we headed there first, and worked our way round the park in a clockwise fashion.

Flight of Fear is a great coaster with a really cool queue line.

I305 punched me in the face. What an intense ride experience. Not as much of an endurance test as I was expecting, but still, it really doesn’t let up.

The only other real coaster of note is Twisted Timbers. The twisted drop is just ridiculous. How?! I’ve never experienced forces like it. The airtime hills at the end were bordering on too intense, but still a lot of fun.

Oh and racer 75 was running so efficiently my mate and I got an entire train to ourselves. Each.

Some parts of KD are covered by trees and have little streams running near by. If anything, the nicely landscaped areas cause a harsher contrast to the slabs of motorway that take up the majority of the park.

The new area for the new wing coaster has been dressed really well. This was a pleasant place to be, and the restaurant was actually really good; both food wise and with the amount of creative easter eggs they had dotted around the seating area. The theming is actually up to a pretty high standard too.

Unfortunately, KD is also situated in a very flat area, but with the raised stations of many of the rides, they can see for miles and miles. So when there’s a supercell storm on its way, the park policy is to shut down everything when they see lightning. Even if it’s 30 miles away. Overhead, it still looked like this:

At about 3pm, our day at KD was pulled from under our feet. The only cred we didn't get was Anaconda, and we patiently waited in the station with the gusts blowing through to see if operations would start back up again. After about a 20 minute wait since the last lightning sighting, the ride started testing again, only for it to immediately stop because of a new lightning strike.

TBH I wasn’t too upset by this early finish, and by the time the wind picked up and we made it back to the park entrance, it did start properly storming down on us.

I didn’t like being at KD. I liked going on the rides, but I would’ve had a much better time at the majority of the other parks we’d visited so far, and actually the adverse weather highlighted how poor their all-weather attraction selection was.

Sure I was a bit gutted to have missed Anaconda, and re-rides on Flight of Fear, Twisted Timbers and 305, but I was hardly heartbroken. Almost relieved?

Taking the early finish on the chin, we drove through the storm onto Washington DC, where we had a nap, and then went for a really rather lavish late night meal at The Hamilton, adjacent to the White House.

The following morning we went for a march along the Smithsonian greens, walking from our hotel, past the white house to the Capitol Building, then back along to the Lincoln Memorial, before realizing the time and the fact we had another small theme park named Knoebels to spend the afternoon at…

 

[toofpikk]

We didn’t reach Knoebels until about 4pm, with it only open until 8. My mate was a bit wary that we’d spent too much time in the morning walking around DC, but the parks selection on paper really didn’t warrant a full days visit.

I wasn’t wrong, but also I wasn’t right. Knoebels deserved a lot more time from us, and the parking lot was ominously rammed.

It’s difficult to explain it, but Knoebels hit us hard with a slice of nostalgia. The gravel pathways, the back of house (literal houses) just open to the public in the middle of the park. The grannies making milkshakes with huge grins on their faces (and giving us passive aggressive death threats for asking for their secret recipe).

The teenagers with braces, picking their noses running the huge rides so nonchalantly, like they’re just not phased by operating heavy machinery. It felt like all the nice, cute and pleasant slices of all the regional parks I’ve ever been to, and all the attractions my parents took me to as a kid, bundled up into one place.

The park was heaving, so we needed to attack it quite efficiently. We started by heading to Twister.

Fun coaster. Really gorgeous. Weird lift hill. Some nice forces. Nothing to complain about, but not much going on either.

Next we marched over to the Haunted Mansion. This thing is TERRIFYING.

Yeah. Loved it. Really fun(ny).

I lost my shades half way through because I jumped so badly but the kind grandpa who was running the ride ran in straight away to grab em for me. We decided now was the time to chest the Impulse queue, which was easily the longest on park.

Fun coaster - up there with the off the shelf gerst models. We then had a look at flying turns, which also had a pretty sizeable queue, so did black diamonds instead.

What a weird, cursed ride. No further comments.

Finally, the ride that we came here for.

This thing sits quietly at the back of the park, not really asking for any attention. What a humble ride it is.

The ride experience is unexplainable. It just doesn’t make sense. How can a simple figure of 8 woodie be so outrageously fun? The question on our minds wasn’t really why, or how. We just accepted the lunacy we were experiencing. The real question for us was, if this was a run of the mill coaster in the 1940s… Did they have more coasters that would obliterate all the tech and engineering that go into modern rides?

If Phoenix can stand the test of time this well, surely there would’ve been other classics that would also be just as ridiculous?

We left it quite tight to get on Flying Turns, getting on the ride 5 minutes before the park was due to close.

Another bucket list cred. Quite underwhelming ride experience force-wise, but we were blessed with the front row. Ended up being very fun.

With about 3 minutes until park close, we ran back over to phoenix to get one final ride. And then when we came off, we went round again. And again. And again.

The coaster closed about 20 minutes after the rest of the park, allowing for the same 40ish people to go round about 4 more times each before they called it a day.

Knoebels is an honest park. Unlike chains, or parks with renowned and wealthy owners, smaller parks don't have this kind of reputation to lean on to gather customers. Knoebels looks like a shanty town that happens to have a few rides around it, but the atmosphere is warm, the rides are good, the prices are reasonable and the staff are lovely. At the core of it all, these are things that have huge inputs into how your day goes at a park.

At Knoebels we had the best customer service of the entire trip, which is pretty amazing considering some of the other places and parks we'd been to. They have one of the best coasters you could ever ride. I can't think of any other theme park where it's completely normal to have a group of high school kids in their own clothes marching around playing brass band covers of chart pop songs.

There were a lot of parallels between Knoebels and Holiday World on our trip. They were both humble, small, locally ran parks with a huge personality that was just lovely. Another sleeper hit.



As the sun set, driving through the hills of Pennsylvania, we were headed to our next, and penultimate park. Hershey.

​

 

[Dan Nguyen]

I was waiting for this review. A lot of people tend to sleep on Knoebels. Little do they know, its truly one of the best parks in the country. The operations are phenomenal, there are tons of rides to choose from, and you can easily spend a couple hours there and still find more stuff to do. It looks like you missed out on a lot of the park's other famous rides like the brass ring carousel and the bumper cars. You definitely need to hit those on your next visit.

Phoenix runs well because the park takes great care of it. The lack of restraint really helps with the airtime too. Its a shame more places are getting rid of their buzz bars for more restrictive restraints. I love buzz bars on old woodies like Phoenix.

 

[toofpikk]

I was waiting for this review. A lot of people tend to sleep on Knoebels. Little do they know, its truly one of the best parks in the country. The operations are phenomenal, there are tons of rides to choose from, and you can easily spend a couple hours there and still find more stuff to do. It looks like you missed out on a lot of the park's other famous rides like the brass ring carousel and the bumper cars. You definitely need to hit those on your next visit.

Phoenix runs well because the park takes great care of it. The lack of restraint really helps with the airtime too. Its a shame more places are getting rid of their buzz bars for more restrictive restraints. I love buzz bars on old woodies like Phoenix.

Yeah our conclusion was also that the buzz bars must help with the floater. I heard that some people from the UK who paid visits to Knoebels weren't big fans. It was really pleasantly surprising for us!

---

Our day at Hershey started with a very long walk from the car park to the theme park. Thankfully by now the weatherman got our memo, and the sun was beating down on us again.

Through the fairly generic new front plaza and past Candemonium, we beelined straight for the back of the park where we knew the lower cap rides were, starting with Farenheit.

I always thought this ride looked awesome, and wondered why it gets so little chatter in enthusiast circles. And to be honest, post riding, I still don't understand.

I thought it was so much fun, and such an awesome coaster model that does a lot for solving problems similar small-footprint high-intensity coasters suffer from. Huge thumbs up from me, and yet another bucketlist cred acquired.

Next we headed to Laff Trak. A strong competition between this and the shooter for biggest queue (and waste of time of the day). I was glad to have got this out of the way, and have no need to ride it again. We aimlessly wandered around afterwards, trying to work out where we should head next, ultimately concluding with Stormrunner & Jolly Rancher.

Stormrunner was running 1 train. Again like at BGW, I found this pretty surprisingly operationally considering we were 2 days from 4th of July, but thankfully the queue wasn't too long so we got on it within half an hour.

And man, this thing is everything I wanted it to be (unfortunately because of the intervals between dispatches I don't have any pics of it going through the course, so you can just imagine instead xox)

Stormrunner is the perfect hydraulic launch coaster. The way it towers over the valley at the centre of the park is really clever design.

The elements perfectly undulate between snappy and drawn out. It looks good, and it rides good. A proper home run of a coaster.

Jolly Rancher was a Vekoma boomerang. Need I say more?
Okay fine. The lights were fun and it was surprisingly smooth. But I've done this ride 100 times. Some glowing candy wrappers and smoke doesn't polish the turd quite enough for it to be enjoyable.

Hunger started to get the better of us, so we went for some food. The park was pretty expensive and the food quality was surprisingly pretty bad, so we decided to jump on the nearby park train and were disappointed to find ourselves back at the station after a rather short loop. Keeping our heads up, we headed over to Comet and Skyrush.

Comet was a lot of fun. Another classic woodie that doesn't seem to be doing too badly. We had some nice interaction with Skyrush too.

We quickly jumped onto skyrush. That first drop is absolutely ludicrous, but the forces excerpted on the valleys of each of the hills continue to pin you so aggressively the second half of the ride feels rather monorail-esque.

Next we ticked off Super Duper Looper. Another pleasant, as expected iconic attraction.

We headed all the way up the hill and hit the kissing tower, the log flume, and a couple of rides on Great Bear. The queue crawled on this one despite running 2 trains and a pretty sizeable layout. Still, the ride itself was quite fun.

(obligatory funky support pic)

We headed back down to Skyrush, grabbing another ride. Same again, lots of fun, but also lots of pinning.

Grabbed some scran and then queued for the shooter. This thing is so damn weird, awful, and has a throughput that struggles to get out of single digits per hour. This was followed by another arduous queue for the monorail, which at least provided a decently lengthed aerial view of the park.

We walked up to Wildcats revenge, finally feeling like we were in the right state to give it a go, but the queue was scarily long, so we headed to lightning racer instead (which was conveniently walk on).

Yeah, this one was a lot of fun, and actually properly raced too, with our side winning both times.
We headed down into the valley to do the mine train, and get some nice views of stormrunner from between the willow trees. Very pretty corner of the park.

Finally we headed back up to Wildcats revenge.

This one is another hauler.

Awful operations, amazing ride. This coaster absolutely rocks. WR was really intense, but superb fun. The continuation from Schilke to Draves' layout designs is pretty perfect.

So after a couple of re-rides, the day started drawing to a close, and headed for one final ride on Skyrush.

Now having learnt how to ride skyrush, we had a much more intense experience. It really grew on me throughout the day.

And then Candemonium. Another sleeper B&M. A barrel of laughs. For the type of ride that it is, it really flew through the layout. A shame about the clouds of bugs at each valley!

So, Hersheypark, eh?

One of those staple parks that any international enthusiast wants to hit. The rides definitely live up to that standard. Lightning Racer, Wildcats Revenge, Skyrush, Candemonium, Stormrunner and Farenheit would be a pretty lean, mean coaster lineup by themselves. But man, for a place with a level of prestige to it, this park sure does suck with operations. And ironically, for a place that makes food, the dining choices are also pretty bad. It's got the bones to be a really wicked park, but it just doesn't function on the level of some of the other places we've visited on our trip.

We decided to not get dinner at the park and instead opted to do the little dark ride just outside, and hit the road just before park close so we could beat the crowds and grab a bite to eat some place else.

Hershey was fine. In some areas it was way beyond my expectations, in others, quite a lot below it. As much as I enjoyed the rides, I had a better day at most of the other parks on my trip, but I am glad to have visited and get it ticked off my bucket list.

As darkness consumed the sky we beelined our way out of Pennsylvania to New Jersey, where we would be spending our final day at Six Flags Great Adventure...

 

[toofpikk]

We were riding on a high when we pulled up to Six Flags. Kingda Ka loomed in the distance. El Toro tested just above the tree line. The car park was quiet, we were once again blessed with a wonderfully sunny morning. What an epic way to finish such a gargantuan road trip.

We were buzzing as we approached the park entrance, which seemed to be swarmed by dozens of camp groups. A sweet old lady checked our tickets, and we were in.

Aaaaaand to be honest, that’s where the excitement ended.

We marched across to Kingda Ka to find a security guard and a ride op at the gate to the area telling us both Zumanjaro and Kingda were closed, and weren’t going to open today. Jersey Devil was also closed. El Toro was testing and wouldn’t open for a while. Medusa, the Log Flume and the Mine Train were opening at 2pm because of works going on for fireworks. A few other coasters weren’t yet open including Nitro, and of course Flash was a building site. We counted 15 rides that were closed as we entered the park.

My stomach dropped.

Ah - Is this what everyone talks about when they talk about six flags?

Scratching our heads whilst wandering through the derelict highways of the park that honestly look and feel like a scene from The Walking Dead we tried to work out what to do.

This park sucks with just how much vast empty space there is.

Gawping over how utterly depressing and horrible the park looks that I had never seen anyone talk about in any capacity that does the ugliness justice, we ended up headed towards Batman.

This was quickly followed by The Dark Knight, and a go on Justice League.

In some form or another, I’d done all of these rides already on this trip.

Then Skull Mountain. I think this might be my most cursed cred.

Nitro had opened by now, so we jumped on that too. Another surprisingly decent B&M Hyper. This ride type has really grown on me in the last year.

We went to get some food, but the system had been down all morning and they were only accepting cash and card payments, no dining plans. This led to a rather large and angry bloke behind us cussing and yelling because he desperately needed a burger and couldn't possibly wait for us to work out what we could do to get food.

Funnily enough, when his order came, one of those camping kids holding a full slushie ran straight into him, bashing his order out of his hands and covering him in blue sticky ice.

‘Hey, what the hell are you doing you fat f**k kid’
‘You can’t say that’
‘Yeah I can, cause I’m fat as ****, but at least I’m not as dumb as you *various rude and frustrated noises*’

One of my favourite GP interactions at a park, maybe of all time.

After going back and forth to customer services with a fairly large crowd of people doing similar, to try and get vouchers of some kind so we could just get some food, we finally got an order in, and noticed that El Toro now had people on it. We lined our stomachs and headed towards one of the most anticipated coasters of the trip.

Guys. What are you all talking about? El Toro is jank.

The first drop, insanity. The 2 hills that follow - great fun.

The rest of it? Wouldn’t be out of place in Blackpool. The ride was rattling like crazy.

If you’ve ever talked about B&Ms having a rattle and being rough?

Grow up.

El Toro nearly shook my eye balls out.

The Mine Train (when it opened) was surprisingly quite fun. Medusa was very meh. Superman we had done in a much nicer setting. Harley Quinn and Joker did what they said on the tin. Jersey Devil was going in and out of being operational.

The clientele of SFGAdv was easily the worst of our entire trip. We got on the sky swing, and a group on the other side to us started throwing canned drinks at each other, and sparked up some weed at the top. We were floating there for 20 minutes whilst park security contacted the police. We went to another place to get a drink on our dining plan, and they just straight up refused us because they didn't accept the dining plan there, despite having banners everywhere advertising that in fact they did.

We made our way back to Jersey Devil having seen it running from over the trees, and decided to just chest the queue and accept whatever delays we’d face. Thankfully for us this time, it didn’t go down because of technical issues but rather - the ratio of fast track to standby queue was just insane. When we finally got on the damn thing, an engineer was strapping us in and stapled each and every guest quite violently. The ride experience was therefore pretty forceless, with some nice meandering going on for just about the entire ride's duration.

We decided to brave el Toro a couple more times, but I really couldn’t do it more than twice. I felt like it was trying to rip my spinal cord away from me for the majority of the layout.

On our way out we thought we’d try for one more ride on Nitro, only for it to ‘temporarily shut down’, and then evac 20 mins later.

And that’s all she wrote. I now understand that ‘Have a Six Flags day!’ is actually a threat.

I would like to go back to the park and revisit to get on Kingda Ka, but I don’t really want to give that park any money. The lack of communication anywhere before you got into the park that so many rides would be closed was a really sad way to end the trip. The customer service was dire. The park looks like it’s ready to keel over and die. Undoubtedly the worst visit of the whole road trip, which was a real bummer to end on because believe it or not, I’d been having a pretty good time.

We decided to leave the park after about 5 hours. We headed to a fairly local pizza joint that had some great reviews, and then checked into our last motel, spending the evening snacking on our leftovers and watching National Treasure.

It probably didn’t help that at this point, we were absolutely exhausted. But man, to have such a broken park mid season, right before 4th of July just didn’t make sense to me.

I wasn’t going to let this concluding visit be the summary of our trip though, and spent the next few days in Connecticut with some family reflecting on what the hell I just did...

 

[toofpikk]

Between helping my cousins run errands, seeing Bob Dylan live at the Woodstock bowl, doing 4th of July celebrations and going shopping, I had a lot of time before my flight home to properly process the fact that for the first time, I’d had a proper stab at ticking off a lot of bucket list coasters and parks.

I’m nearly all even again after paying the costs of the holiday back off my credit card, but smashing out 100 coasters in 2 weeks is no small feat. Here are some highlights and reflections I had:

My favourite park was easily Dollywood, but Knoebels and Holiday World both deserve an honourable mention.

BGT is significantly better than BGW.

Iron Gwazi is my favourite RMC.

My top 10 before the trip went from this:

To being spread out like this:

I don’t like American amusement parks. The straight, long highways of tarmac and asphalt aren’t nice. The places which carefully use their terrain and allow for more intimate, sprawling pathways with good canopy are just inherently nicer places to be, especially if they have good theming too.

This, and I never appreciated just how significant customer service is to a park visit. A marked up entry price and then reasonably priced, high quality food and merchandise is a much better way round to do things than a cheap entry fee with everything inside marked up. Places where the staff clearly cared, had fun, and were sincere were much more enjoyable from a guests perspective too. Things were tidier, happier, and felt more genuine. Nice.

Nashville may be my favourite US city.

My favourite ride of the trip was Alpengeist - even if I don’t rate it as a coaster very highly.

Sometimes, dining plans ARE worth it.

I’m more of a thoosie than I ever cared to admit. I always took myself as one of those people who enjoyed coasters and parks, but never took it too seriously. Well, now I have a credit count, and within a fortnight of returning home, have already planned the next 2 road trips with my mate. I love this sh**, and can’t wait to do more.



Thanks for any/all of you who took the time to read through! It’s been a pretty long trip report by any standards, especially mine.

For your time, I leave you with one parting gift. Rollercoaster montage to Lynyrd skynyrd:

 

[toofpikk]

Apologies for the rather sizeable bump, but I just had to share some of the film pictures I recently got developed from this trip;

and my favourite of the trip:
​

​