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White Lightning or Mine Blower; which Fun Spot woodie do you prefer?

White Lightning or Mine Blower; which Fun Spot woodie do you prefer?

  • Total voters
    28
Matt N

Matt N

CF Legend
Hi guys. Within Central Florida, the two Fun Spot parks are unique in that they each have a wooden roller coaster. Woodies are a rare breed in Florida, but these parks have one decent-size woodie each! They are very different rides, though; White Lightning is a family thrill GCI woodie that opened in 2013, while Mine Blower is an inverting Gravity Group woodie that opened in 2017. So my question to you today is; if you’ve done both, which do you prefer?

I can’t currently pass judgement on this, as I haven’t done White Lightning, but for what it’s worth, I thought that Mine Blower, when I rode it in 2019, was very good, but not quite as good as the two GCIs I’ve done (Wicker Man and Wodan). It had a cracking layout, with fast pacing, a lovely inversion and a fair bit of airtime, but I thought it lacked something compared to the two GCIs that I can’t quite put my finger on. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the trains, and while I did not find it to be overly rough per se on my one front row ride, it was certainly a bit unrefined compared to the GCIs I’ve done, and I think I’d have liked it slightly more if it had been a little smoother.

I’ve heard that Mine Blower has deteriorated considerably since 2019, though, which makes me a tad reluctant to reride it…

With that in mind, my expectation is currently that I would probably prefer White Lightning, but my overall judgement for the moment is undecided. There’s an outside chance I might be riding White Lightning next June, but that is an outside chance, and until I do eventually ride WL, I won’t pass judgement.

But which ride do you prefer? Are you a Mine Blower fan, or is White Lightning more your thing?
 
White Lightning

I really want to like Mine Blower. When you're in one of the smoother sections, the ride is incredible, it's really fast paced, intense and a whole lot of fun and if it stayed like that for the whole ride, it would far surpass White Lighting and I'd probably even consider it as one of my top Woodies.

... but then there's the rough bits... There's only really about 4/5 actually rough bits in the ride, but jesus christ they beat the everloving **** out of you and it severely hurts the ride in my opinion.
 
I just rode them both for the first time last week, they're both great fun but Mine Blower is the clear winner for me, I thought it was brilliant from start to finish. People have been saying it's getting very rough, I found it fine but my friend found it unbearable so it's either my very high tolerance for roughness, or it varies depending on where you sit.
 
Mine Blower is one of the worst coasters I've ever ridden. Worst coaster in Florida and worst woodie.

So White Lightning wins by default.
 
So there's a very important caveat here - Mine Blower has two trains. One runs on what can only be described as blocked wheels from Geauga Lake's the Villain, and the other runs adequate. You know which train you have ridden on.

If you get the unlucky train of Mine Blower, it will be the worst wooden coaster you can ride in present day. If you get the other train, it's a pretty good ride.

White Lightning takes the cake for me, given the zero chance coin toss of being one train away from re-enacting Son of Beast. ;)
 
Mine blower is one of only 2 or 3 coasters worldwide that I’ve ridden and will never ride again. The layout is great, and it has so much potential, but it’s just way too rough to be enjoyable.

White lightning is pretty boring, it’s not a great coaster by any means, but it is better than it’s Plopsaland counterpart, and much smoother than Spine Blower, therefore it wins by default here.

Edit: it’s interesting to note that there’s two very different trains… I can only go on my own experience, which despite having wristbands, the rest of the night free, and it being the only decent coaster in the park, led me to flat out refuse a second ride… Perhaps next time I’ll send on somebody else to try it first and report back which train it’s on, as I’m never taking that chance again. 🙈😂
 
In Sept '22 Mind Blower was appalling. Painful unenjoyable rough. Gave it a second ride to be sure. The incredibly brief moment of inverted fun is like picking a whole peanut out of poo. The kiddie coaster had a better crowd.

I'd like to do Bandit again to see if I have a new worst woodie.

It was just one train and can only assume we got the bad one.
 
Last edited:
emoo said:
In Sept '22 Mind Blower was appalling. Painful unenjoyable rough. Gave it a second ride to be sure. The incredibly brief moment of inverted fun is like picking a whole peanut out of poo. The kiddie coaster had a better crowd.

I'd like to do Bandit again to see if I have a new worst woodie.
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Thanks... I feel vindicated now!

Apparently we may have caught a very bad train, on a bad night though. :( Which makes me even sadder, as we were supposed to be doing it on a different night, and may have had better luck :(
 
Also to note, after riding Heidi at the start of the year and being indifferent towards it, I was also very pleased with how well White Lightning rode (did that about an hour before Mineblower) and how much fun a night ride was.

Not that it matters much either way, any enthusiast traveling far would likely do both first time if they could and perhaps not rush back to either. Glad I didn't get the annual pass as even the one 'close' to Universal was out the way of a very long and exhausting day.
 
emoo said:
Glad I didn't get the annual pass as even the one 'close' to Universal was out the way of a very long and exhausting day.
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Yeah I had one of my peak "we must be mad" moments leaving universal at 9:30pm after an amazing but exhausting day (a solid 12 hours of riding), and heading not to the hotel, but to another park 😅.
 
Mine Blower is one of the best coasters in Florida.

The first drop into the zero G roll, the magic carpet finale, it all comes together in a fantastic package. The roughness is a detractor, but I've never had a bad ride on it in the hundreds of rides I've done on it.

You guys are all just babies.

It was running decent in April at least.
 
I don't recall Mine Blower being particularly rough, but that might be because I rode it shortly after it first opened.

Even so, I still preferred White Lightning.

I can't put my finger on it, but I find that GCI wooden coasters just "feel" better than Gravity Groups.
 
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