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New for 2017 OWA Trip Report

Edward M

Strata Poster
I’ve remembered OWA since it was first announced. It was a large project that seemed almost too ambitious for a small theme park in Alabama. I’m not saying that it’s a huge park by any means, but the closest park of a comparable size is about 5 hours away. Well, I’ve visited the park now, and it’s really nice. The park is the first phase of a large resort planned. There is a sort of “Downtown” opening area that will soon have restaurants and things to do. It seems they are also opening more hotels and maybe even a waterpark. Judging from the heat that day, it would be a good choice.

OWA has a surprisingly pretty opening. In fact, the whole park is very pretty. Rollin’ Thunder is the centerpiece of the park, and it separates the kid’s area from the flat ride area. The coaster’s length is pretty much the length of the park as well.

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I started my day with Crazy Mouse. It was right by the entrance and seemed like a good first ride. It is a fairly traditional spinning wild mouse, but it was very smooth. Definitely one of the best wild mouse coasters I’ve done. Nothing special really, but I would ride it again.

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I thought about doing some nearby flat rides, but I wanted to get all the coasters first. As a result, I went ahead to Rollin’ Thunder. I had heard horrible things about Thunderbolt at Coney Island (this coaster is a clone), so I was expecting the worst. The most notable thing was just how empty the queue was. The whole park was empty! No ride ever had a full train or was running at full capacity. However, they still had everything running with multiple trains and a full staff. The staff was great in fact, nice and very efficient.

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Rollin’ Thunder was the most surprising coaster I’ve probably ever ridden. I was partly expecting a bottom 20 roller coaster, but it was a top 20. The coaster is just insane really. It was full of airtime, hangtime, and very snappy inversions. I just loved it so much. The first drop had fantastic airtime followed by a loop with fantastic hangtime. I really don’t like hangtime, but this felt a bit like floater airtime. The best comparison I could make would be Full Throttle’s loop. The next two inversions had that same sensation. However, what makes this is the insane airtime. I rode Storm Chaser last year, and I would say this ride had more intense airtime than SC’s final hills. It was truly that “throwing you out” airtime. That first hill is up there with El Toro’s final hill. It’s insane. The next few hills also had great airtime, and the final Zero G had a great snap to it. It’s a simple ride, but it works brilliantly. It has a lot of issues though. It only provides a fantastic ride in the back. It’s also quite rough overall; you get thrown around. There’s one bad snappy transition after the loop that always hurt a bit too much for my taste. I’ve heard complaints about the restraints from a lot of people, but I had no problem with it. It had a comfortable vest (like B&M’s Wing coasters) in place of Thunderbolt’s odd straps. It still had that bulky lap bar/OTSR thing, but I had no issue with it. Overall, I just loved it, and I’m really happy I have this coaster within a 2 hour drive.

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Well, I got 2 more rides on Rollin’ Thunder (2 more later as well), and I continued to enjoy it more and more with each ride. I found that the second row was the most uncomfortable with the back row being the star row here. I continued on to the next credit Southern Express which was a simple but decently fun kid’s coaster.

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Wave Rider came up next, and it was my first Disk-O with a hill in the middle. Oddly, I preferred Silver Dollar City’s simpler version. Still, these Disk-Os are a ton of fun, easily one of the best flat rides being produced in my opinion.

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Air Racer was right by this, so I hopped on it. I’d never done one of these but had also heard good things. It’s a solid flat ride, but it’s just not my style. I don’t really like being hung upside down for more than a second, but the flats here tended to have you upside down for 5 seconds or so. It just made me slightly nauseous. I decided to do something a bit more relaxed after that. I went with their traditional chair swing Flying Carousel. I love a classic chairswing, so this was nice. Since I had done the traditional chair swing, I decided to go on the elevated version of that. Freedom Flyer was their SkyScreamer style ride. I like these a lot actually, and this was one of the better ones I’ve done. It doesn’t go very high, but it’s just great to have the wind in your face. Very pleasant.
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I was really starting to feel tired now. I went for a few more rides on Rollin’ Thunder, but I was wanting to go ahead and end my day. Still, I had two more rides to go. First up was Alabama Wham’a which was Enterprise 2.0. Instead of the cages, they replaced them with a suspended car. I greatly preferred this to the usual Enterprise and throughly enjoyed it. Last ride of the day was the just opened back up Twister. I had tried one of these at a tiny park right down the street from me, but I wanted to complete the park in a way. I liked this other than the hangtime. You were just simply upside down too much.

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Well, this was a shorter trip report than usual, but it was also a smaller park than usual. For a park that was 2 weeks old, it had a good collection of rides. It had a fantastic coaster and plenty of flat rides. It didn’t have enough to really justify a $35 ticket, but it was also free parking which made it feel a bit more reasonable. The park has good operations and looks fantastic. The park has a lot of water fountains all around Rollin’ Thunder which made the park a lot more energetic. I really hope this does well and can add a new coaster. If it just had one more solid coaster, it would a park I would go to often. If you’re in the area, I would highly recommend a day here, if only for Rollin’ Thunder. I’m also excited to see where Zamperla may take their coasters. I mean, if Vekoma can make Lech, then Zamperla could really surprise us with some great coasters. If their new coasters are similar to Rollin’ Thunder, I’ll surely enjoy them then.

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Hixee

Flojector
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You know, I don't really recall hearing about this park at all! The rides certainly look pretty good - nice and shiny and clear (which you'd expect, I suppose)!

Sounds like a good day too, glad you enjoyed Rollin' Thunder.
 
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