Jarrett's 2018 Season Lookback://Part 1 of 4~ Spring

[Jarrett]

This season was incredibly successful for me, both on and off the midway. Lots of changes going on in my life now, lots of changes going on in the industry, and while that can be scary it does mean one thing we all know I love: progress. Over the span of this season I finished my degree in engineering technology, left my job of six years to start my first real adult job in my career, I'm taking steps to fix certain interpersonal connection issues I've dealt with for as long as I can remember, and with how things look financially I'll probably have a new car of my own before I hang my RMC hat for the season. Speaking of RMC, my favorite ride manufacturer had quite a big year as well. From their biggest project yet to new trains to those crazy prototypes with track that fits through a doorway, I think it's fair to say 2018 was one of their best years if not their best. But if life's a roller coaster, it's fair to say 2018 could be one of my favorite parts of the ride. Let's take a look back, shall we?

Part 1: Spring

As with 2017, my season began under the roof of I-X Indoor Amusement Park in Cleveland. They had sadly cut their credit count from 5 to 4 and one was inaccessible and two others not set up, leaving just some traveling Pinfari thing held together by pins to be claimed. So on paper it wasn't a good day but Connor, Ben and I had a great time trying out their crazy traveling flats, and getting my first traveling Larson loop was a terrifyingly interesting experience as well. But this wouldn't be the only time Ben and I headed up to the Cleveland airport in 2018...

Once Kings Island opened I made it down for a bit on Passholder Preview night with Ben and some of his other friends. New for 2018 at my home park was Coney Barbecue, a restaurant built in an effort to bring Soak City's popular Island Smokehouse to the dry park. And man did they outdo themselves! The food here is of really high quality, from sausages to tri tip, hushpuppies to mac 'n' cheese, it shows that the park is in good hands with Chef Major. If chain parks keep building stuff like this, I could seriously see the notion of theme park food being corn dogs and funnel cakes being a thing of the past.

The week leading up to finals week was awful for two reasons. First off, it's the week before finals week so naturally it's going to get tough and stressful. But on top of that, I was anxiously waiting until the end, because once that week was over the time was here! I was slated to ride the most anticipated new ride of 2018: Cedar Point's notorious Steel Vengeance! I went in with the point of ranking it fairly, making sure that the hype and anticipation wouldn't sway my opinion. If it was going to take that number one spot from Lightning Rod it would have to earn it. My first ride I ranked it just under Wicked Cyclone but when I rode again in the back, both of us ended up putting it right in our number one spots!

That evening was also special for another reason, after all the encouragement I've received on social media from them I finally got to meet Anne Irvine-Ondrey and Brian Ondrey of Irvine Ondrey Engineering, the control system supplier for quite a few coasters including this one. Both of them, like me, had a dream to work in the industry at some point and chased it and look where it got them! Getting to talk technology with both of them was great, and getting a compliment on the 3D printed steering wheel I designed and made for capstone from Brian Ondrey was probably just as much a highlight as riding the big bad RMC that I'd been following for so long. Getting to meet them was like a graduation present, and quite the nice kick of motivation going into finals week!

Speaking of which, that following Sunday I finally did it! After tons of studying, wracking my brain, awkwardly asking for help during office hours, ending it all with by far the worst experience I've ever had with an instructor, and a major change, I finally finished my degree, graduating with an AAS in Mechanical Engineering Technology walking the stage with an interest in manufacturing I couldn't have predicted four years ago. Getting an associate's degree when you started out pursuing a BS might not be seen as an accomplishment by some but with the circumstances surrounding it and what I've had to overcome at the end of the day to get it I'll take it and be proud of it. Note the phrase I chose to put on my cap and where it might have come from.

Up next for my season was another great step in the right direction socially for my group of friends, and a step away from petty Cedar Point coaster drama. In my circle of friends are Jenny who I met in 2014 and Ben who I met in 2015. In early 2016 there were two separate instances of drama in our little circle of friends, Ben and Jenny over a view expressed in a Skype call and Jenny and I over my relationship at the time. Both my girlfriend at the time had made up with Jenny last year but Ben and Jenny still had yet to work it out. Well it just so happened that both of them were able to be at the park on the same day and were open to talking about things, so I got them together and they managed to work it out, no more drama! All of us were able to get together and ride rides just like old times and it was awesome! That this petty coaster drama that could have gone on years longer was able to just go away was amazing to see, and man am I glad it did because that day was amazing. Seeing Steel Vengeance throw a seat pad from the car in front of Jenny and I, the poopy diaper that ended up under my car at the end of the day, the whole thing was lit.

The following week was a really cool opportunity as an ACE member turned into a total mess of travel problems, but I got a really good RMC and a ton of funny stories out of it! Twisted Cyclone Media Day is stupid early Wednesday morning, Survivor finale is at 8 that night, I opted to do the furthest overnighter in my coasting career to Atlanta for this event. Getting to the rental agency south of town and dropping my car right at open, I endured a grueling 8 hour drive alone armed with only the music on my iPhone and a freshly downloaded U2 album to combat boredom. In the end I showed up to a slight on/off sprinkle that had shut the park's rides down for the evening (spiting me on Dare Devil Dive and a chance to rerank Goliath) and turned traffic to a standstill, making it impossible to meet up with the enthusiast I was supposed to grab dinner with after close. So after grabbing gas station pizza and spending the evening alone watching coaster videos on the streaming player in my nice hotel, I got a bit of sleep, and went back to Six Flags at 5 am! Twisted Cyclone was absolutely incredible, my first ride was a rain ride televised live in Knoxville. It surprised me just how much they were able to pack into that tiny little layout, I loved how they executed the theme, and getting to ride it on media day before public opening was such an honor. After my time slot I shook the hands of SFOG's event organizers and motored back up still fairly early in the morning, leaving me with 3 hours between my ETA and Survivor. Wrong! Because Kentucky can't get down to two lanes for construction that's obviously been there a while, my ETA was driven way, way up. I ended up jumping out of my rental car, dropping the key in the key drop, getting in my car, and having to really hustle at the speed limit to get inside right at 8 pm for the finale. 36 hours. I was away from home for 36 hours when all of this had happened, easily my most stacked trip ever.

After that, there was a really rough week for me at work but Ben and I had matching days off so we decided to go hit up Cedar Point and pregame a bit for the Texas trip coming up. I left my car at his place in Columbus and then we did an overnighter there, staying at Cedar Point Express. Lots of crazy stuff happened over the span of those two days but the funniest was watching Steel Vengeance make these two high school girls cry.

UP NEXT: The summer season is in full swing kicking right off with the region trip, a very long term friend of mine gets home from Disney College Program to the new RMC in his home state, and I ride a coaster I've been eyeing since 2011!

 

[Jarrett]

Part 2: Summer

My summer season really heated up along with both my job search and Walmart workload! But with extra stress you gotta get it out somehow, and what a better time to do it than in the prime of coaster season?

After a fair bit of work drama, Ben and I realized we both had the same days off so thought we'd pregame the region trip a bit at Cedar Point. Steel Vengeance was still on one train so that made waits a bit annoyingly long but hanging out at the park and having a nice, relaxed time was nice. That being said, however, that's not to say this wasn't eventful! Watching Steel Vengeance make two poorly behaved high school girls come back to the station shaking and crying was not only hilarious, but made for a great story for those who might not grasp how brutal this machine actually is.

And after going back to Walmart for more toxic workplace drama for a little over a week, it was finally there! The highlight of every one of my seasons, my iconic region trip, had finally rolled around! Texas was in the crosshairs for 2018, picked primarily for how much significant work RMC had done in the region but with other stuff in mind too, namely two Gravity Groups.

After landing in Dallas, getting into a nasty spat with Hertz that left me stressed and on the phone with my bank for an hour in the rental car building, we were given a red Nissan Versa Note (the car I had been looking at) and got to Six Flags Over Texas! The first Six Flags park, operating in the shadow of the massive Dallas Cowboys Stadium, was the perfect welcome to a state that's that prideful. Our time there was fairly short but extremely eventful. Their lineup, packed with strange coasters, had a few nice hidden gems here and there, but the best also held special significance for me. New Texas Giant proved to be quite nasty for a prototype, missing a few airtime moments but hitting others quite strong. Add in some of the unusual structural differences I noticed from what's standard on an RMC now and it added a dimension of quirkiness. Setting it amid the scruffy Texan overgrowth and traveling over a creek with a muscle car theme and you had quite a special experience. Not as good as what RMC's cranking out seven years later but anybody who'd ridden this should have been able to tell that the little company from Idaho meant business and would go on to innovate as they have. While in Dallas Ben and I also tried Texas's famous Whataburger and, ironically, ended up at a big Texas-sized Walmart across from the stadium. I fly halfway across the country and I still couldn't escape it!

Having decimated Six Flags Over Texas much more quickly than we expected, we ended up getting on the road and making an early dash to San Antonio, with plans to knock out ZDT's on the way into Fiesta Texas. Seguin wasn't exactly the type of place I would have expected to find a nice park, but across the street from a gas station there was this little 30-something foot truss and a near vertical spike sticking up. Watching a Timberliner train rolling around backwards was kind of amusing as we walked up to it, but that little coaster meant business! Full of airtime, pacing was ballistic, and in the front that near-vertical stall into the rollback is absolutely terrifying with nothing to stop the train rolling off immediately visible.

Unfortunately, on the drive we got a text that changed the entire course of the trip. We were told that Wonder Woman had suffered some kind of malfunction and might not be operational during our window of time at Fiesta Texas, adding an extra dimension of cred anxiety to an already stacked trip.

After that, we rolled into Fiesta Texas and checked the place out a bit before heading to the most anticipated coaster of the trip, Iron Rattler! And man oh man is this coaster great! Easily the best first drop of any RMC, the interaction with the canyon is beautiful, and the shear amount of airtime and smoothness in that beautiful setting makes the ride. Everything about it comes together for an insane cliff diving finale down to the water and into a tunnel that ends in an airtime hop into the brakes. I loved this thing so much! Wasn't sure where I was ranking it but it was top tier RMC material for sure!

Iron Rattler was one of two childhood things I'd wanted to do on this trip, having wanted to ride that rickety wooden thing on the cliff I saw in my roller coaster book as a kid. But the other was to visit a Seaworld park. With the Wonder Woman situation, we systematically knocked out Fiesta Texas that morning and took advantage of an afternoon rainstorm to head back to the hotel and go to Seaworld San Antonio. Ben had been to Orlando but this was my first Seaworld-branded property. I knew it was kind of the runt of the litter so I went in with low expectations but I was actually pleasantly surprised. The place isn't bad to look at (though there are a lot of stretches of nothing and wasted space), they have a nice little lineup, and their Shamu show is a dying thing I'm extremely glad I experienced. My favorite coaster there was Wave Breaker, a Blackstone-style all speed family launch coaster with a wonderful theme, paying homage to Seaworld's animal rescue team. It was nice not waiting in line for anything but the park was so dead compared to Fiesta that it really concerns me. Seaworld's slowly making a comeback, there's a nice modern woodie planned for it, but with a place this dead costing only $10 less to get in than rocking Fiesta Texas it'll be hard to bring people in unless something serious changes.

We hit In-N-Out for an early dinner and then went back to Fiesta that evening to catch a few more rides, get a few more credits, and catch their famed night show. Do NOT miss this show if you're there, it is absolutely beautiful. Projection mapping on the canyon, lasers, water effects, pyrotechnics, and of course a ton of fireworks put on quite the extravagant show. Add in a grand finale set to the Firebird Suite used at the 2014 Olympics as Sochi lit its cauldron and that was the icing on the cake for me. Wonder Woman or no Wonder Woman, that park was special and for the first time since 2011, I had a new favorite amusement park.

However, up until this night I had felt sort of a cursed vibe from this trip, with both Wonder Woman and me losing my camera. When we got back to the park, there was a tech from RMC running Wonder Woman's trains, a fairly high up park employee posted in my RMC group that it should be back up tomorrow, and I found my camera in a bag of tat I had thrown in the back of the Versa. Hope was not lost!

The next morning we got up, headed to the park to gate crash Wonder Woman, and began the agonizing wait to see if we would get to ride it, needing to be in Kemah by that night. It was now or never...and after a few test rides they let Flash Pass on! We were being herded like cattle into an overflow queue but they took that overflow and threw it into the regular. We were on! And OH MY GOD this thing is impressive! I took my first ride in the back, immediately noticing how terrifying it is straddling that narrow beam of track, and the actual ride means business. Snappy, twisty transitions, a few instances of extreme airtime, pacing in fast forward, and great cliffside visuals to tie it all together. RMC hit it out of the park with this one, I'm so glad we got to ride it!

We made it a point to experience Texan culture while we were there and with Ben's dad loving Western movies, we had to visit The Alamo. With that and a quick stop at Riverwalk for souvenirs and ice cream, we headed back to the Versa and headed to Houston. To be honest, I was kind of sad driving away from San Antonio, having spent two nights there and I'd fallen in love with it. It's so clean, well designed, the food there is amazing, it's easily my new favorite city.

Fun was still had but the...quality of the experience did a nose dive after we got to Houston. We actually shelled out $26 ($10 parking, $10 just to walk on the pier, $6 for a ride ticket) for Iron Shark and encountering some of the rudest ride ops we've ever dealt with. From there we headed to Landry's Restaurant's other property, Kemah Boardwalk, for what we were told was a great wooden coaster. And it was, Boardwalk Bullet is like a little winding aggressive ball of hell on wheels that feels like it's never giving up. It became my favorite non-machined wooden coaster and a very welcome #3 wooden coaster. But we only got a few laps on it...because it took them 15 minutes to dispatch one train! We got our laps in before deciding to head to the hotel, get Whataburger, and call it quits.

Our final day we managed to squeeze in a stop at Over Texas for missed Judge Roy Scream (which was awful) before catching our flight, ending the trip on New Texas Giant and getting to DFW to drop our car in time for our evening flight back to CLE. That flight got kind of eventful and so did our return to Ohio, with a hotel screwing up Ben's reservation and a Lyft driver with a suspiciously rattly car. The next day Ben's dad got us, took us for Red Robin, drove us back to Wooster for Ben to drive back to Columbus, and for me to drive back to Dayton...and go back to work that night.

But I wasn't sad because it was over, I smiled because it happened and I was glad to be home. Even doing just the highlights of the trip you can see how much there was to say about it, it's easily been the best travel of any kind I've done as a coaster enthusiast. Nothing is topping this one! And having nailed the taco recipe from San Antonio, I managed to bring a piece of the Lone Star State with me for life!

After I got back from Texas, work kicked into serious overdrive as things just got more and more chaotic. Us part timers were putting in 40 hour weeks, sometimes blocking 6 nights in a row together. However, I would still go to Kings Island and close it out in the off chance I got an off day that worked out. July was a very dead month over the summer, but I made up for it later...

And just like that, I got a new job in my field! And with a few extra PTO days with Walmart to burn, that spelled out another coaster trip! Rocking both a brand new RMC I wanted to ride and a very unique multi-launch I've been wanting to ride for years, Virginia was the obvious choice. My buddy Connor also had that week off so we headed out that morning for Kings Dominion...and get there to a pouring rainstorm. We did a lot of waiting out the storm catching up with another local enthusiast we knew that happened to be at the park...when I looked at the app and saw Twisted Timbers was operational! We got a few rides towards the front in a light sprinkle, and it landed as a mid to low tier RMC in my rankings. After a great evening there, we headed to, you guessed it, a Walmart so I could get some new shoes that weren't ruined and some Angry Orchard to celebrate my 11th RMC!

The next day was all a very dead and somewhat rainy Kings Dominion to ourselves! We met up with a park employee in the morning and then a member of my RMC group in the afternoon. We managed to get a ride on Twisted Timbers in the back in the rain that day...and that was enough to leave me floored! The airtime goes from solid RMC magnitude ejector to the extreme "borderline snap your legs off" ejector on lovely Steel Vengeance...in a package half the size! I was extremely impressed and almost ranked it at #1, but decided that a relatively weak middle portion of the ride wasn't as good as Steel Vengeance's nonstop insanity. So it took #2, but this showed me that while Steel Vengeance might as well be the greatest coaster in the world, things might not be that way in a few years.

The next day we went from tractors on orchards to German sports cars in the Black Forest at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, back for the first time in 11 years to grab what was added since I last went. And I had my eye on a very special coaster: Zierer's standout project, the extremely innovative Verbolten. Since I was obsessed with Cheetah Hunt my junior year of high school, naturally I was all into its sister coaster when it came a year later. This coaster just looked so unique to me, the indoor/outdoor aspect, the reuse of the footers from Big Bad Wolf (which I sadly didn't ride in 2007), the rotating storyline concept that eventually made its way to my home park, and of course that surprise drop track. I thought I'd like it as long as the fabrication quality didn't ruin the layout, but I didn't expect to put it in my top twenty! The rest of that day was spent stuffing our faces with a dining plan (their knockwurst is amazing!), getting some credits I didn't have previously including last year's addition InvadR, and of course grabbing a beer here or there. Nothing ends that day like drinking a beer in line and then getting on Verbolten! It was a great day at a beautiful park that now had what I thought it was missing, a quality ride experience to match the caliber of theming all over that beautiful valley. This and Alpengeist provide the perfect 1-2 punch of speed on one hand and inversions/exposure on the other, and with how it looks Project Madrid might be I think you could expect to see me here in 2020 again!

Shortly after I was offered the new job, Kings Island unveiled they were getting their beloved Antique Cars back for 2019! I spent the Labour Day weekend before starting the new job there, while it was an...interesting experience with the Dollar Days crowd I still had a great time. It was nice to see that they were getting ready for time to march on and promoting this cool new attraction we were getting.

UP NEXT: Kings Island gets spooky with Halloween Haunt and my first time going in 4 years, a trip back to the Bluegrass State for my home RMC, and one Cedar Fair experience couldn't be more of a ghost town and one that was an absolute madhouse!