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#TX2018://Day 5-6~ One Last Yeehaw

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
It's that time of year again! Every year since 2014, my season has always been highlighted around a single trip, which I now refer to as a region trip. This trip takes me to a different part of the country to experience not only the coasters there, but that particular corner of the world, and this year it was bigger than ever. My buddy Ben and I headed to the great Lone Star State of Texas. Known for its size, extravagant culture, and for coaster nerds, being the RMC capital of the world.

And only a week before we left did I discover that it isn't a desert state.

Day 0

In typical region trip tradition, I did work the night before, and for the second year in a row, I got off and went home pretty ticked off, needing a vacation. Once I woke up, my parents were cool enough to send me off with a great surprise, my favorite pizza sub from Penn Station! After lunch, I hugged both of them goodbye and got on the road to meet Ben in Columbus, where I would be staying that night.

Drive to Columbus was a breeze considering I do it all the time to see my grandparents. After I got there, Ben (a former Cedar Point ride op) took me to his new place of employment to show me around, the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium where he works as their rides manager!

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Our first stop was Mapori in the zoo's newest area, Heart of Africa. Now I've been to Columbus Zoo before but never eaten there. At Ben's request, I tried their cookies and it was amazing, not only was the restaurant really well themed but sitting on the edge of that grassland with all those animals living together totally wrapped it up, it feels like you're really in Africa.

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Next up was what Ben said was their signature attraction, Dinosaur Island. A Hopkins water ride, the ride features a queue done up like a Dinosaurs Alive-type attraction but much better, including this incredible river view.

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The ride was fun! It's a nice fun scenic ride that's set up really nicely, but what got me were the special effects. No, they aren't Hollywood, but all of them were on and working. Didn't see a single effect turned off, as Ben told me was kind of their goal. I got a bit wet on it, Ben warned me not to take any electronics out on it because the dinosaurs spit water at you.

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After that we went to check out a part of the zoo I'd never seen before, the gorillas! They're smaller than I expected them to be, but also pretty smart. I love how they aren't afraid of humans at all, they'd just chill up by the glass watching people, it's like they find humans just as interesting as we find them.

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Columbus Zoo has an exhibit that doubles as a rehabilitation center for manatees. Nicely themed as a Florida bayou, all of the manatees here have been injured by a boat propeller or one of their many threats in the wild. The zoo brings them in, nurses them back to health, releases them, and when a manatee leaves they get a little manatee-shaped plaque on the wall with their name and how long they were there, and there were at least 25 up there.

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We were walking to another part of the zoo when we were able to catch Surfin' Safari, the zoo's pet tricks show. I've seen another one of these shows once at Busch Gardens Williamsburg 11 years ago so it had been a while. Columbus Zoo did a great job with it, but what made it special was there regardless of the show quality. Columbus Zoo rescues all the dogs and cats in the show, trains them to perform, and at the end of the show they're all available for adoption. It's the most positive thing I've seen a park do!

After this we went back to Ben's place, played Skyrim for the first time, and then hit the hay. The next day was bound to be brutal, involving a two hour drive to Cleveland to catch our flight to Dallas.

Day 1

I barely slept the night before, taking my sleep medication and passing out, but waking up at 3:45 to go catch our flight. I hung out for a bit while I waited for Ben to get up. But he finally got up, we got in his Mom Mobile, and headed for Cleveland.

Then Ben realized he left his ID behind.

So we turned around, drove back to his hometown, and got his ID from his mom. Then we headed back to the airport, got our stuff, and said goodbye to Ben's dad after he dropped us before heading into the gate.

Then Ben realized his phone was still in his dad's car.

We called his dad but before he even picked up he had already made the round and pulled over to drop the phone off. From there we got through security with no issues and made a run for the terminal, only to find ourselves still making great time, even enough for Ben to grab a sandwich for the flight.

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As a space geek, I LOVED this image of our Spirit plane pulling into the airport in front of NASA's Glenn Research Center.

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Time to hit the skies!

The flight there was awful. I got the middle seat, which was fine, but the guy next to me told me I could put my personal item (a backpack, the same one I used for school that I repurposed as luggage for this trip, holding all the clothes I needed for a week, my electronics, and some empty space for tat) in the overhead, reserved for larger carry-on bags, even though Spirit technically wasn't okay with it. Not wanting to break the airline's policy, I put my big, bulging backpack at my foot, not realizing I had just taken up a large portion of my already limited budget airline legroom. In my new tradition of buying a new album to listen to every trip, I bought the new Thirty Seconds To Mars album, making it a point to listen to Dangerous Night as we took off. Ben fell asleep after maybe ten minutes in the air, I tried to follow suit considering my awful sleep the night before. But in those tiny seats with minimal padding (think a public bus), over half of my legroom taken up by my backpack, and me not having my hat on to cover my eyes, I couldn't sleep. So I just listened to the album, busted my iPad out, and played RCT Classic until we landed. But eventually, we approached over the open prairies of Texas and touched down smoothly at DFW.

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Welcome to Texas! State credit 28 for me!

We got off and made a run for Hertz to grab my rental car that would serve as our transportation around the massive state, and that's where the trouble started. They built a nice new rental car facility in a really efficient airport and I was liking it, but then it went wrong when I tried to rent my car. I swiped my credit card...and then it declined. I'm traveling, my bank is just looking out for me, so I call them to tell them what's up. Turns out there's nothing wrong with my card, no travel block, but I look down and see a few scratches on the magnetic strip. The lady on the phone tells me it's not taking my CCV correctly, but trying it on another machine should work, as it's just a freak chance thing. Well the lady behind the counter decides she HAS to be right telling us it won't work, despite my bank telling her it would. Ben and I argued back and forth with her for about an hour until Ben put his foot down and she did it...and on another machine it took the card on the first try. Killed a full hour of our SFOT time, I was stressed and not happy, but we went and picked out a nice Nissan Versa like the one I'm thinking of buying once I have my adult job I'm looking for.

I took my car, threw our stuff in the back, and pulled out of the airport to head to the first park of the trip, Six Flags Over Texas! Ben had control of the music for the trip and picked an Ariana Grande song as our first song (and I HATE her), but his selection was perfect, getting dramatic just as we pulled out of DFW and entered the fray that is major city traffic, seeing our first Whataburger. It was a short shot through Dallas to Six Flags, but eventually we got there!

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We got in, used Ben's Diamond Elite membership to get flash passes for the only ride with a line, and used them on the first credit of the trip, and a very interesting one at that, La Vibora! Ben had ridden Disaster Transport but I'd not ridden an Intamin bobsled before, so first of its kind for me. I have, however, ridden Flying Turns and Avalanche, both of which I consider pretty amusing rides.

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Worst way. To start a trip. EVER.

There's no question that this is the worst bobsled I've ridden. And I don't say that because it was boring, I say that because it's actually awful. I was legitimately offended by it. There's a ton of space where you sit but no padding, and the car skips and rattles around the trough, jostling you around and into the hard, unpadded train, making for an absolutely terrible experience. This is my new worst Intamin right here, and not at all how I wanted to get the trip started.

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Regardless, Ben and I continued through the park, which we noticed pretty quickly was gorgeous.

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Next up was a dark horse cred you never hear about, Runaway Mountain. I went in knowing very little about this one. Why the park installed it, what the layout was, what restraints it had, what the theme was, I was pretty clueless. I knew the manufacturer was Premier and that it had a chain lift but that was about it. But it was really good, actually! I expected something kind of rough but it's really smooth, and actually kind of intense. There's a dive off an MCBR that really took me by surprise, it snaps around really nicely, and served as the perfect surprise coming off of La Vibora's disappointing experience.

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Now needless to say, it's Texas, and it was HOT. By this point, Ben and I had probably already asked for at least ten waters between the two of us, but one thing I'll give Six Flags Over Texas is that it's really well shaded. The whole Western area was practically in a forest and that took a lot of heat off.

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Didn't ride it, but El Asserradero was Arrow's prototype for the famous log flume water ride that eventally became a staple at parks everywhere, so seeing it in person was kind of cool.

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Heading back further, Ben and I encountered Titan, the park's Giovanola hypercoaster, and a sister coaster to Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain. It's in kind of an inconvenient location, branching off down a hill into a corner with virtually nothing else there.

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I was amused to see Nissan advertising on one of the trains, seeing as I tend to like renting their cars the best. I specifically picked the Versa for this trip because it seemed to be a good first car in my price range and I wanted to test drive it.

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And as with Goliath, it's pretty boring. No airtime, spending ages pounding us with the same force magnitude when it could be doing crazy maneuvers, nothing I hadn't seen before. As with Goliath and Intimidator 305, I'd label this as a gentle giant coaster. It's big, it's imposing, the GP trembles and wets themselves looking at it, but the experience is tamer than the Fun Sized cred in a shed just down the midway. One and done.

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It's strange, but I absolutely love cacti for some reason. So seeing that they seem to just grow wherever in this state made me really happy!

But more importantly, Titan was Ben's 199th credit, which meant it was time for...

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It's the one that started it all. There's now a divide in the coaster community over the ethics of ride preservation vs progress, a cult of nerds that practically worship a ride manufacturer, a household name in the industry often referring to precision and build quality, several wonky new elements more screwed up than ever imagined in the past, and parks now selling merchandise bearing the name of not the ride but the business entity that manufactured it, and this is the roller coaster that started it all. The industry debut from Rocky Mountain Construction, the company that sparked my interest in manufacturing and subsequently my major change with focus on it, Ben's 200th coaster, and the first featured coaster of the trip, New Texas Giant!
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The walk out to the RMC prototype takes forever but gets you some really nice views of the coaster.

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I stopped to take several nerd shots, noticing two distinct differences in structural hardware on the coaster, with this being the first. Every other RMC coaster has its rails held to the C-channel ledgers by means of a hinged bracket, two bolting plates held together by a pinned hinge allowing it to rotate about one axis, and enabling them to use the same part to connect any piece of track to any ledger, regardless of angle. New Texas Giant, however, has two bolting plates instead connected by a piece of what looked to be galvanized tubular steel cut on a bias, allowing the bolting plate to go on at different angles. This is obviously easier to make on a small scale as opposed to one of those complex hinged brackets, but to mass produce? Just get the robot to crank out a thousand of the hinged ones, one works for every piece of track as opposed to cutting a custom part for each individual joint.

The other mechanical difference I think I'll save for after the ride because it affects the ride experience...

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New Texas Giant's station is easily the worst station for any RMC I've been on. Now the theming is okay (it really reminded me of my RCT3 coaster 66 Turbo if anyone remembers it), but the problem is that there's no airflow. So you're baking in the Texas heat, it's stuffy, and there's no fan or open space for a breeze to come through. The back wall on load side is completely solid, and when you get a bunch of guests in there, it's possibly the hottest single place I've been for coasters.

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And it's a great ride! We took the back for our first ride and I was really impressed. The first half of this ride is actually really good, all of those air moments are killer and it flies into and around those overbanks with some serious gusto. Now the second half is why this RMC doesn't rank any higher for me, it seriously dies in the second half. The powerful RMC ejector dulls into floater and even airtime-less hills in the second half, plus the geometry on one of the turns in the tunnels is just a lazy flat turn. New Texas Giant feels like an a mid-high tier RMC in the first half, but dies into...something. It feels less and less like an RMC the deeper into the ride you get, and by the time you're in the tunnels, it feels like something that wouldn't even hit my top 30. But the first half of the ride more than makes up for it, landing it a spot above Goliath in my RMC rankings and narrowly squeezing into my top ten. It's not the worst RMC, but you can tell it was a prototype and that they wanted to play it safe for that reason.

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Another major differeince I noticed in the structure was that New Texas Giant doesn't have laminate on its rails. Most RMCs have strips of steel bolted to the tops of their rails, joining at joints cut at an angle, and now I see why. When New Texas Giant passes from one segment of rail onto the other, there's a seam that hits the wheel perpendicularly to the direction of travel, and you certainly feel it. It wasn't painful by any means, but there's a pretty distinct click when New Texas Giant passes from one segment to the next. Not sure if this is the main reason they did the laminate (though it definitely fixes the clicking completely), but you can see a very clear effect of it here.

Afterwards, we headed to the front of the park to clean out the other half of it. Forgot to take photos of either cred, but we went for Mini Mine and Runaway Mine Train next. Mini Mine wasn't too bad, but the layout was odd. However, upon getting on Runaway, we could tell Mini was designed to emulate elements of the larger one's layout. Runaway Mine Train is probably the strangest mine train I've been on. It obviously had influences from Wild Mouse coasters, but most of it was spent rolling along the ground past some nice scenery. The finale through the saloon and into the dive underwater was kind of cool.

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Thought we'd chill on the Texas heat a bit next with Mr. Freeze. I'd done the one at SFSL and it's one of my favorite rides there, and possibly my favorite themed DC coaster.

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The lack of station theming was a disappointment. St. Louis blasts their A/C in line for this, you enter the building through one of those clear plastic flap curtains, and there are large tanks of R134-a and stuff in the station accompanied by trippy music. SFOT had a bit more queue theming but the station was awful, just a shipping crate with badly painted graffiti on it.

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SFOT's Mr. Freeze is certainly a different experience. Launch is a bit stronger, ride felt more intense, but there was a very distinct rattle that SFSL's didn't have. Still though, I loved its clone and this one also blew me away, though I think I prefer SL's.

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Batman was next, and it wasn't much to write home about. Batman clone, pretty standard, we all know I find them kind of boring, but 1/3 on the trip. But the noteworthy part was that I'm now only two Batman clones from having every one in the US!

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Getting in line for Joker we walked past Harley Quinn Spinsanity, work was being done on it but it was obvious it wouldn't be up and running anytime soon. Would have been cool to try it but I'm not heartbroken about it.

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Continuing our pattern of systematically knocking clones out in the DC area, Joker was up next. Both of us had ridden one of these before and we got exactly that. Both SFGAms and SFGAdv's felt almost exactly like this one. Riding as the sun set over the huge Dallas metro area was kind of cool though.

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Our last cred of the day was Shock Wave, a Schwarzkopf double looper that was kind of out of the way, and it impressed me! New favorite Schwarzkopf coaster easily, the dives off those high turns actually had some really good ejector to them, and it didn't set you down until the coaster leveled out. It actually kind of scared me!

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Park closed early so we met up with a Six Flags employee that Ben worked with for sometime during his Cedar Point days for dinner. And what better place to grab a first dinner in Texas than their infamous fast food chain Whataburger? This is easily my new favorite fast food burger (emphasis on fast food, I still think Smashburger and Red Robin are both better). I got a simple cheeseburger and fries with Dr. Pepper, which I was told was the most Texan meal ever by another enthusiast who met us later on the trip. Burger was a knockout, fries were above average, but the appeal to Whataburger is that little black packet next to my fries. Their spicy ketchup is to die for, I was dipping my burger in it to get more in the bite, eating like seven fries dripping with the stuff, even worked up the nerve to go ask for more. They're proud of their condiments here to the point that they bring out a whole tray of sauce cups with your food for you to pick from. Liked the spicy ketchup so much I got more and threw it in my 3-1-1 bag for the flight home. This was the perfect Texas welcome right here!

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Our last stop of the night was to replace Ben's phone charger he accidentally left in his car back in Ohio, and where better to go than the place where I got days off from to take this trip in the first place? I burn PTO at Walmart so I can go to Texas instead of working there, fly halfway across the country in some medieval torture device passed off as an airline seat, and I still can't escape this place. :p

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But that Walmart (which was much bigger and much more crowded than mine) was right across the street from Dallas's Texas-sized AT&T Stadium. Home of the Dallas Cowboys, this is easily one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen, photos don't do it justice. You could see it all over SFOT, but driving right up next to it just shows you how massive it is.

After this, we got back to the hotel around 9:30, meaning I was up for almost 18 hours at that point with no sleep on the plane, so when we got back to the hotel, I just about died instantly. I took a nice long cold shower, threw on the new pajamas my parents got me for my birthday the week before, called my folks, and just blacked out the second my head hit the pillow. With how much we managed to get done at a dead Six Flags Over Texas that day, I knew we would have a much less stressful day tomorrow...

UP NEXT: More fun at the OG Six Flags Park, a hidden gem, and my RMC Coaster Curse strikes!

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Hixee

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Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
That Gorilla looks pissed. He's staring at the camera with a look of pure hatred.
Maybe he read this report ;)
Reading this report would understandable make anyone angry. I'd be furious if I saw that somebody was forced to fly with Spirit, that's inhumane! ;)

He sounds like an absolute liability!
Good start to the report - glad to see that NTG was still good fun.
Haha I'll probably look even worse once we get into the brunt of things. The ID was the only real issue, his dad brought the phone back in less than a minute and he found his charger packed somewhere different from where he thought it was.

-x-

Day 1
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I left this out of yesterday's update because I thought it was done on Day 2, but looking at Coaster-Count I was wrong, we did Pandemonium the previous day. The ride ops let Ben and I ride alone on one side, severely unbalancing it and giving us a great ride. Now I expected it because I've ridden a few of these Gerstlauer spinners and I really like them, but Ben hadn't before, and walked off with a new favorite spinner.

Alright, onto Day 2!

Day 2

I woke up somewhat early again, though it was well after the crack of dawn, and went outside. The warm Texas air was actually pretty pleasant in the morning, but I knew it was about to get pretty nasty. While Ben was still asleep, I went downstairs for some breakfast.

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I couldn't help but smile a little when I saw that their waffle iron was shaped like Texas. I was starting to see that while several of the stereotypes I had heard about Texas in the past were false (being a desert state is probably the biggest lie), some of them were very true, and one of them is that they're extremely proud of their state. Things shaped like Texas, longhorn steer heads, Texas flags, and Lone Stars are everywhere here.

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After Ben got up, we headed to SFOT for what we decided would be park 1/3 that day. With how thoroughly we cleaned house yesterday, that only left a small handful of creds to snag before hitting the road to San Antonio. Only Judge Roy and Canyon Blaster were left.

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I love Mexican areas in parks (some of you might remember my family vacation to Mexico in 2013)

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Our first stop of the day was New Texas Giant for its first lap of the day!

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I stand by my statement that NTG's station is terrible because of the bad airflow, but this made me smile. This is the Chicken Coop, if someone chickens out they're jailed to this little screened in room (which might have enough airflow for a tiny breeze) and a chicken cluck is heard.

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Wanting to compare it to the back, we rode up front, and the ride op was cool enough to get our photo!

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It's a great ride up front too for sure. Airtime actually retains the same magnitude it does in the back, no more and no less, but the first lap is much better in the front.

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It's a lower tier RMC for sure. As I used the term yesterday to describe Titan, it's kind of the New Texas Gentle Giant of the RMCs. It's still RMC, you're still going to get a great ride out of it, there are several moments on it that are insane, there are also several dead spots and missed air hills. I wish I had ridden this earlier in my little mission to get every RMC in the US.

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We then made our way across the park for the final two creds. I really like the design of this kids area, having the shade and misters built in so kids can stay out and play safely in the Texas heat.

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Canyon Blaster was your typical kiddie cred, didn't rattle like a Zamperla death machine so I didn't complain. +1 and done, but Ben did just about lose it seeing a mom force her scared child to ride.

After that, our visit took a major nose dive...

Well we go to ride Judge Roy Scream, only to see that they don't open it until later. Okay, that's understandable, so we went to use Ben's meal plan and grab lunch before coming back for it. All-American Cafe or whatever was all that was open, so that was our choice. The service we got was horrendous, and that's putting it lightly. Long line, they messed around in the kitchen instead of handling it, the kid I got didn't know how to use his register (maybe he was new, okay, I'll let that slide as everyone was new once), the girl who rang me up was really rude and just casually dropped Ben's Diamond Elite lanyard behind her register before walking away forcing me to reach behind it and pick it up. And to top it all off, the food we got was disgusting. we're talking half frozen school cafeteria fries and large sticks of fried breading with a tiny sliver of chicken in the center, if that were my park I'd be embarrassed.

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And to top it all off, Judge Roy never opened when we got back. It was down due to mechanical, not sure how you manage to break something that basic but they obviously found a way. Might be the first time I've ever seen an old outdated wooden coaster down, to be honest.

With a stop by guest services to tell them they need to get All American Cafe sorted out (which got us exit passes, remember that), we decided to hit the road and continue the trip to San Antonio. Thankfully, Six Flags is right off the highway so that minimized that awful city driving that I'm horrible at. The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area actually isn't that bad for driving, and traffic was non-existent. However, if you need to get over, it ain't happening. Another Texas stereotype that turned out to be true is that everyone who lives there drives a truck. Now back at home in Ohio, we definitely have rude broflakes driving pickup trucks that drive like they own the road because they're insecure about their masculinity (maybe even the reason they bought a giant F-350 that gets 2 miles per gallon in the first place), but when you have a state packed full of them, you HAVE to drive aggressively. And I'm a very cautious, passive driver. As in, I failed my drivers' test 3 times for being too cautious. Ben was constantly on me about being too nice on the road, learning to drive aggressively was a theme for this trip. So we got out of Fort Worth and continued to speed down the prairie to San Antonio.

Then we got a text that changed the entire trip.

Phoenix, an employee both Ben and I know, texted Ben and told him that Wonder Woman had some kind of mechanical issue and looked like it might be down for a fair bit of time. So with that, we were sold on hitting up ZDT's on the way just to knock out Switchback and not have to worry about it later, giving us as much time at Six Flags Fiesta Texas as possible to widen that window to get Wonder Woman.

So that meant I needed to floor it to cram three parks in in the same day, and luckily for me, we were coming up on the Austin bypass, colloquially referred to by Texans as the Texas Autobahn for its breakneck 85 mph speed limit. Tristen told us about this at SFOT, said that you can go 85 just fine but 86 will get you thrown in jail for wreckless driving. However, I said I was lucky to hit 80, knowing I wasn't sure how comfortable I felt going that fast, but Tristen told me people would get mad if I wasn't going at least 75. But I got on just fine and before I knew it, I was cruising over the rolling Texan prairies at 83 mph (didn't want to risk breaking 85 on a downhill since I was driving on cruise control). And to be honest, as a passive driver with a clean driving record that comes from a state known for having too many state troopers, that was really liberating to be able to actually floor it in my little Versa and hit those speeds. Add in TxDOT fixing the road by means of adding little asphalt bumps here and there that provide airtime when you speed over them and you have the most fun I've ever had driving. 85 is now the fastest I've ever driven a car, it also amazed me how much bite that little Versa had to it. The crappy little Chevy Spark Hertz gave me for St. Louis probably would have blown up if it hit 70... ;)

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So we get to Seguin and drive through a somewhat sketch area and in the middle of a few sketchy gas stations and houses, there's this little steel truss and four silos peeking out, we're at ZDT's! Place was dead so we just ran in, got our wristbands, and headed right for Switchback.

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Switchback impressed me, a lot actually! Our first ride was in the back, hoping to get a good yank down that drop. The first turn at the top of the lift is terrifyingly tight (think a wild mouse, the turn radius of those Timberliners is probably one of the nuttiest dimensions on any ride system), and the drop is extremely steep for such a tiny coaster. I was expecting Wooden Warrior to follow...wrong! This ride is nuts, there's ejector everywhere, it charges right through those turns, and when you haven't memorized the layout, the return trip is even nuttier because despite the momentum loss, you have no idea which way you're about to be thrown next. I might get some major hate for this, but I liked it better than Ravine Flyer II.

Wanting our money's worth of the wristbands, we went around to get in the front only to find a few unattended snotty kids run past us on the ramp and jump into the gate for the front, one of them even stuck his tongue out at us and yelled "HA HAAAA!!!" I was content with just waiting for the next train, hoping maybe their parents would be at the exit to remove said nuisances from the park (annoying juveniles on Gravity Groups would become a theme on this trip), but to our surprise the ride ops kicked them right out of the station gate. The two young ladies working Switchback were really friendly and good at their jobs, getting trains out really quickly and chatting with Ben and I about our current adventure and Ben's time at Cedar Point doing their job.

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And she's even better up front! Force magnitude is about the same all around except on the drop, but climbing that spike and seeing that there's nothing to stop you if you overshoot the spike (while knowing you won't) is nothing short of terrifying. All in all, a great experience and more small parks should get Gravity Group rides. Places like Waldameer and ZDT's have literally been put on the map by smaller Gravity Group coasters, wonder what other parks we could see this from in the future.

With Switchback taken care of, we left ZDT's and went from the rural random town that was Seguin to the hustle and bustle of San Antonio in an effort to make it to our final park of the night. Traffic downtown was difficult to navigate with how populated San Antonio was and us hitting towards the tail end of rush hour. But once you've gotten a bite out of it, the highway design is probably the coolest I've ever seen. It splits into an upper level and a lower level, with the upper level on two separate overpasses supported on either side of the lower level, passing between the two sets of pillars. We got through so efficiently once we were on that section of highway and before we knew it, we were seeing a park peeking over the edge of the quarry. We were there!

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Hello, Six Flags Fiesta Texas!

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The park entrance is gorgeous! Its themed as a little Mexican town, and as many on here know I love Mexican architecture. It took me right back to the Mexico family vacation in 2013, the buildings looked extremely similar to the ones on the island.

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Our first step of the trip was to run by Wonder Woman and see if we could get any info on just how closed it was. No ride op at the entrance turning people away, all trains transferred off, no activity in the station, it was a ghost town.

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But the test seat was accessible so I managed to cram my flab in there and see if I fit. They're definitely the most restrictive OTSRs I've seen, if you have a wide chest it's a tight fit, but I fit in with room to spare and we all know I'm somewhat portly.

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Such a beautiful cred and it was closed...

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Toyed with the idea of doing Superman or Batman next...but with the goal being to ride as many RMCs in a day as we could, I thought we'd at least try for two and hit the other one next, which happened to be the main thing that attracted me to the region.

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As a kid, I had a book called The American Roller Coaster that was full of pictures and information on, you guessed it, American roller coasters. My favorite page featured this absolutely insane photograph of some rickety wooden contraption hanging off a cliff. The drop looked almost vertical, it nearly struck the rockwork several times, it looked totally nuts. When I first saw it, I fired up RCT2, moved some terrain around in 5x5 blocks, and built some wooden death machine hanging off of it I liked this so much. In 2013 when they RMCed it, this really cool cliffside coaster looked like it got even more nutty, and it was probably my most anticipated 2013 ride, even though I was following GateKeeper in my home state like a hawk. It's been sitting in the top 3 of my short term bucket list for years, taking back seats only to other RMCs and hot new rides in their debut years.

My childhood dream of riding that crazy thing in the picture in my book was about to be realized! One of the most innovative designs I'd ever seen, taking disused mining infrastructure and using it for one of the most twisted-looking machines I'd ever laid eyes on, and now the second featured coaster we rode on the trip, Iron Rattler!

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Pretty climactic moment here, with the sun setting as this menacing thing came into view as my childhood dream was just a few trains away from us. However, I'll be the first to say that the country music they play in the station is absolutely atrocious. So I'm waiting for the back, the back car of one of the trains is blocked off, the playlist is playing music from any staticy country radio station you hear driving to Cedar Point, needless to say the wait felt like years.

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Finally we were on! Same trains as New Texas Giant but with slightly narrower bars and no plexiglass panels. A Darius Rucker song came on right as we boarded (he's possibly the only country artist I like), my bar was down at just the right height for a comfortable ride, the sun was setting over the quarry, we were ready to go!

And then a mom lost her kid in the station and held up the dispatch until they fortunately found her. :p

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Jesus Christ! :eek::eek::eek:

I actually kind of prepared this to disappoint me a bit, know I'd wanted to ride it for so long and knowing I was going in with some pretty extreme expectations for it, but it shattered those expectations. Iron Rattler shot right to my top five, landing a solid spot as my #3 RMC, #3 steel, and #4 overall. The lift hill provides an incredible view of the canyon, the park, and the San Antonio metro area all at once, but the special bit is the slowdown at the top, leaving you creeping over the apex of the rickety structure. From there, it sends you into my new favorite RMC drop, jerking you to one side and then the other as it narrowly misses that infamous quarry wall. After diving down to a shallow water pool, it climbs back up into a great airtime hill, a side hop, and then a beautiful dive back off the cliff to the quarry ground. You then rocket up into the first inversion on a hybrid coaster, a nice roll with some good hangtime to accompany some great visuals, and then into another very powerful air hill. After three sideways hops that throw you around a bit, there's another airtime hill followed by my favorite part of the ride: another air hill leading into a spectacular dive off the cliff and back down to the water. From there, the ride enters a tunnel, while there isn't much in here (and I understand why there couldn't be), it's pitch black, it's cold, and the walls are solid quarry rock. Finally, out of nowhere daylight emerges and you fly over a very strong final curved air hill into the brakes. That first ride was all I needed to rank it highly, which is good because there was a pretty bad wait

Didn't get pics, but after that we went over to Superman and Batman. Superman is now my new favorite floorless, I love the interaction with the cliffside, I'd say it was about Afterburn quality for B&M. Batman on the other hand totally surprised me. That thing has its fins configured differently from the New Jersey, Dallas, or Illinois versions of itself and it pays off. It flips you right off the lift and from there you're just bucking around relentlessly, I got thrown face first into the ground on the top pass and we flipped a total of four times. These are some of my favorite clones but this is the best of the bunch!

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On the way out, Ben and I stopped a bit to watch the fireworks, but you could tell there was more to the show in in the viewing area. Much more. We made a point to stay and watch the following night, knowing that what was going on over on that quarry wall had to be special...

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I'm a foodie and I'd always wanted to go to San Antonio to try their Mexican food, so that's what dinner was. Phoenix also wanted to hang out after park close, so I headed out, grabbed some tacos and alcohol for Ben and I, and picked up Phoenix. After nearly landlocking my car in a curbed in apartment complex gate and only getting out because he was able to find me and stand on the curb so I didn't damage my rental car, we headed back to the hotel room. Now I hadn't eaten much today, I was starving, I had three incredibly good tacos and a giant thing of Lime-A-Rita in front of me. The tacos were absolutely to die for, we got them from a small local chain called Taco Palenque that was packed to the teeth, with me ordering a pineapple taco and two cheese and avocado tacos. I noticed they cooked their tacos differently than I was used to, with all the hot ingredients being grilled together and then thrown into a double corn tortilla shell before topping with the cold ingredients, a technique I plan to replicate very soon in my kitchen at home. Meanwhile Phoenix got to enjoy watching me just get drunker and drunker as that Lime-A-Rita hit me like a ton of bricks, ending up with me laughing so hard I fell off my bed where I was sitting and then bonking my head on a stray lampshade when I stood back up. He then Ubered home and then Ben and I hit the hay, with high hopes for Wonder Woman to be operational the next day...

UP NEXT: The Curse of the RMC strikes in full force, one park's washout is another park's cleanout, and Six Flags Fiesta Texas nearly moves me to tears!

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tomahawk

Strata Poster
I'm sorry, but I've literally never heard of anyone calling it the Texas autobahn. Also, like a month ago, I was driving like 98 on that road, you dont get reckless driving going the speed limit. Its 25 over for reckless.

Anyways...Switchback forward is great, backwards is not.

Be happy you missed JRS...it's absolute ****.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
I'm sorry, but I've literally never heard of anyone calling it the Texas autobahn. Also, like a month ago, I was driving like 98 on that road, you dont get reckless driving going the speed limit. Its 25 over for reckless.

Anyways...Switchback forward is great, backwards is not.

Be happy you missed JRS...it's absolute :emoji_poop:.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
Strange, I got all that information from Tristen who's local. Googling it I didn't see the term directly used to describe the highway, but it was definitely compared to the German autobahn several times. Most people were right at 85 though, strange they weren't going faster if it would have been okay.

Really liked Switchback both ways though. I actually ranked it above Ravine Flyer II, which I'm expecting to get some heat for.

-x-

Day 3

I woke up pretty late, given that I was up until 2 am drunk the night before, but it was still well before opening. Today was set to be our full day at Fiesta Texas, the highlight of the trip, but we ended up having to go with the flow for a bit...

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Time to make the chimichangas!

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As expected but still unfortunately, Wonder Woman still was down, and we were told it wouldn't be operating that day...so we used Ben's two Diamond Elite flash passes for Iron Rattler!

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We rode towards the front but decided that it's a back seat ride all in all. This coaster absolutely hauls all around, most POVs look like it barely makes it over the hills on top of that cliff but if there's a hill, there's air, and lots of it. But even without being yanked off of that canyon, it's still a very special experience. I was actually contemplating raising it in my rankings and maybe even putting it at #1, but it sadly lacks those little twisty bits that you find in newer RMCs that both Rod and Vengeance have. Those side hops where the carousel used to be are good, but it's no substitute for Rod's quad down or Vengeance's final bunny hills. But still, it's incredible, and I would definitely consider it one of the best coasters in the US that belongs on the world stage.

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Not an RMC, but still a Schilke ride, Road Runner Express was down for an extended period of time. Such a shame, we all know I like Alan's rides but I was also a huge fan of the theming here.

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I don't see how someone can walk around this park and not just fall in love with it! It's like the visuals are not only stunning everywhere you look, but they're stunning for different reasons. This walk to Rockville is beautiful!

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After that, we got down to business going around to mop up creds. With their boomerang down, our next stop was Poltergeist, the fourth and final Premier spaghetti bowl for me, and one of only two to be built outdoors. I was dangerously close to not fitting on this one, needing a major shove from the ride ops, and assistance undoing the buckle at the end of the ride because there was so much friction between the pin and the buckle. Phoenix later told us that we got the train with the tighter belts, which explained it, but I was brutally stapled the whole ride and it barely even did anything. Better than Joker, but still a one and done type of ride. Mr. Freeze up the road eats it for best Premier in Texas.

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We headed up the Rockville midway next to see how Wonder Woman was coming along. Did they have an employee turning people away? Was it off the website? Were Fred and Alan in the station getting their hands dirty? It was still a ghost town like yesterday, but the ice cream stand next to it had possibly my favorite park treat ever...Dole Whip! And Ben's Diamond Elite made it only $3! I stared into the closed RMC's queue for a bit, drowning my misery in pineapple, before heading off in search of more credits.

Up next we did their Kiddee Coaster, or however you spell it. Not too bad, liked that it went over water, but nothing to write home about in the slightest.

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Lunch was BBQ turkey nachos, and they were great! The cheese used in these was much better quality than at SFGAdv, though I went a little much on the peppers because this definitely hurt to eat.

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We headed up front next to hit the creatively named Goliath, their hurricane-battered Batman clone from Six Flags New Orleans. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had a bit of an Aztec theme to match the Mexican-themed entrance plaza, though the theme stops when you walk under the arch. We waited in line with two very nice local guys who told us it was actually a dead day, which surprised us because the place was rocking. Like, Iron Rattler had a 45 minute wait all day rocking. The coaster was okay, definitely one of the weaker Batman clones for force, but it didn't beat us up as badly as I was expecting. However, this one is unique because it only runs 7 cars instead of 8, which results in the train only able to store 7/8 the momentum of its other US octuplets I've ridden, which leads to an obvious pacing issue. Wish they'd taken the theme and run with it a bit more than they had, too.

This is where the bad luck started.

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We went to Pandemonium only for it to close due to lightning when we got in line. We looked at the radar and saw that there was a pop up shower barreling towards San Antonio. Now our next morning was supposed to be time for SeaWorld San Antonio, but with us realizing we might need that time to come back and get Wonder Woman if she's open, the decision was made to pop out of the park and do SeaWorld as an early afternoon thing.

Drive to Seaworld wasn't too hateful, it was a bit further than I expected it to be but we were there in about twenty minutes, just enough time for the storm to pass. We got out of the car, I reach around to grab the five important things I was keeping track of at all times. Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. Apple Watch? Check. Car keys? Check. Camera?

My camera was nowhere to be found. I hoped and prayed it had been forgotten at the hotel, decided to just use my phone for the remainder of the day, and headed in.


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Keeping in the theme of things I've wanted to do since I was a kid finally happening, we headed into SeaWorld. As a kid I heard that there was a whole ocean-themed park called SeaWorld somewhere in the US, and I had always kind of wanted to go simply because I love water and oceans and the like. I actually kept fish in an aquarium in high school up through college, which was recently put on hold temporarily when the lone Jack Dempsey that had roomed with me for five years passed away, I broke my tank down and stored it so I wouldn't have to deal with moving a full tank when I leave home soon. Parents even bought me the Shamu PS2 video game for Christmas one year (turns out Ben owned it too at one point when I brought it up), remember gameplay being a bit wonky but the visuals being gorgeous. Anyway, SeaWorld. I knew this wasn't the fantastical magical place in Orlando I saw pictures of a kid, that this was the chain's sort of runt of the litter, but still, I was finally getting to go to a SeaWorld park.

And walking up, I was already kind of not impressed. Possibly the ugliest promenade I've ever seen, and the centerpiece is fittingly this fugly eighties glass archway thing that's yellowed over time. Speaking of eighties anything, they were playing eighties music when we walked in. This wouldn't turn out to be one eighties song on an otherwise very diverse playlist with something for every park guest, this was the park choosing to play exclusively eighties music. You walk under that ugly glass thing and there's a second plaza that diverges into two park gates, one for SeaWorld and one for Aquatica.

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Here we go!

Park was absolutely dead but it took forever to navigate our way to the first cred of the day. Ben and I did Shamu Express first just to get all the garbage out of the way, cute trains ruined by a totally unnecessary "crotch fin" (no idea what else to call it) on the front of the seat, not to mention it rattles around. Not Zierer's best work but it's just a kiddie cred, now onto the real coasters!

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Okay, Seaworld, time to break out the big guns, next up we had their tallest coaster. While not fully a hyper, Steel Eel is a Morgan product that was still shuttered for the tail end of the storm. Ben and I walked up to it just in time for them to cycle a train and then open it up. Ben and I elected to sit in what Phoenix was calling the "car crash" seat in the back of the train, no idea why he called it that...

One hill in, you see why he called it that. There's some fun floater over the hills and I actually kind of liked it. But then it valleys...WHAM!!!! There was no effort made to separate the less than 1G of airtime force zone from the positives at the valleys, causing you to slam back down into the unpadded seat with some pretty solid striking...down there. That thing must have paddled my poor bottom harder than the headmaster of a boys' school after finding one of his students crying because he was homesick. Also found it comedic that they had a speaker on the MCBR that played the same 80's music playing around the park, so you'd get a split second of synth going past. It was a fun ride, but definitely to be avoided if you're a wuss about cracking your tailbone.

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Next up was SeaWorld's newest coaster, Wave Breaker: The Rescue Coaster, new as of last year. I'd done one motocoaster but it was a Zamperla, so I was sure this might be a bit different.

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By the time we got to the station to ride, it could have ridden like an SLC and I would have had respect for this coaster. Why? I absolutely love the theme on it! The ride is easily the most heavily themed at the park, paying homage to SeaWorld's conservation efforts in the wild. They have profiles on dolphins, turtles, and other animals that SeaWorld has rescued in the queue line. To me, I like inspirational themes, but it's definitely a gamble. Herschend is really big into these, and usually I feel for them it's either really well done (Time Traveler, Wild Eagle, ect.) or okay but kind of cringy (Outlaw Run, FireChaser). This one was well done. It looks nice and modern, there's a mix of visual appeal and utilitarian hardware, and it conveys the message really directly. You can't get on this ride and not see that SeaWorld cares.

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It's solid and it's enjoyable. Ride starts out with a preshow where you're taken into a building equipped with TV monitors and assigned the animal you're rescuing, which was a sea turtle in our case. The door then opens to a countdown and the ride starts with a launch with a good kick out the gate, but it slows down. You then crawl over this hill before rolling down into an all speed layout with virtually no height difference, skimming the water on your jet ski through a series of shallow S-bends. Then you round a nicely paced curve before heading into another launch that dies out at the end and into another poor hill. Then it rolls down into my favorite part of the ride, it navigates a few more turns before clipping over an island and racing back into the brakes. Did it make a splash in my rankings? No. But did it end up as my favorite ride in the park? Yes. It feels like a miniature Cheetah Hunt, taking what limited momentum it has and not only doing cool stuff with it but also conserving it beautifully. For such a slow ride, the pacing on this is on point, and add in one of the most positive themes I've ever seen on a ride and you have a solid ride.

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Great White was next, which if I'm correct is just a Batman clone with a slight scaling difference. We all know I'm not a big fan of Batman clones, but this ranked up there in the set due to how quickly it tears through its usually boring layout. It's a lot snappier than the others, as well as a lot smoother. Batman #2 of the day complete, and with that I have every one in the US! Still think the OG one is the best due to how well it handles and its location, but this is a very good second.

Next we did Journey to Atlantis, which I was too lazy to even photograph, but this was easily the worst major coaster there. It's based on the other heavily themed Journey to Atlantis rides around the chain, but like the rest of SWSA, this one got the short end of the stick. You have a queue line that's literally a sidewalk through the woods, no rails or theming or anything, just concrete, and a themed cattlepen and station structure. That's it, no dark ride, no storyline, nothing. The ride is just a lift hill, a turntable with blown out crackly speakers playing Two Steps From Hell, a rattly roll down a sheet metal channel, another turntable, and a nice, refreshing splash in the Texas heat. The coaster isn't anything to write home about, but the execution is so hilariously bad that it makes the experience a bit less monotonous. At least it wasn't :emoji_zipper_mouth: La Vibora...

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We headed around once more and nabbed one lap on Wave Breaker and one lap on Steel Eel, this time doing Breaker in the back and Eel in the front. Eel's air is a bit stronger in the front and much less spanking. From there, we continued around to the one non-credit run thing I wanted to do here, see the fading phenomenon that is SeaWorld's killer whale shows. Once an icon for the brand, these are now sadly being phased out of SeaWorld's already struggling parks. As we headed in, Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Tears For Fears, one of my favorite songs ever, started playing, setting it up for what would be nothing short of an amazing experience.

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They only ran One Ocean once, and Shamu Stadium was a little under half full, but it was obvious that nearly everybody who was in the park that day was there. This is the main event at SeaWorld, you don't come here and not see this.

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The idea of One Ocean was that one act is all it takes to save the planet's oceans, and I loved that. I'd like to say I'm one of those people that is environmentally conscious but isn't at the same time.

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The whales were actually a lot bigger than I expected. This was my first time ever seeing an orca in person and I was amazed at not only how much larger than their trainers they are (I've seen two dolphin shows at nationally acclaimed aquariums, knowing orcas are in the same family I expected them to be just a bit bigger), but how smart they are as well. These are smart creatures with unique personalities, and SeaWorld recognizes that.

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Welp, his fin flopped over. Chop him up into sushi, boys, a man's gotta have his California roll.

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Shamu Stadium is shaped like a plus sign in a sense, with the leftmost arm extending to their holding tank, and the other three ending in shallow stages for the trainers to bring the whales to do tricks. Ben informed me it's actually supposed to vaguely resemble the top profile of a whale. The two stages opposite each other are where most of the show takes place, with one trainer per half of the stadium.

Our orca didn't want to perform, so want to know what SeaWorld did? They didn't break out the cattleprod and force it onto the platform, he swam back to his enclosure and the show went on with just one opposite us. We could still see well, it was still cute seeing how happy this one was performing with his handler, and as we said when I did theater growing up the show must go on. But that's a company-wide thing, the whale doesn't want to perform they aren't forced to. They do this because they LIKE to do so. It's completely their decision.

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We sat up high because I wanted to take pictures and my waterproof phone case had a tear in it (which I still need to glue back together), but most people actually went right for the splash zone, and the whales got them SOAKED. People afterwards were slogging out in dripping, saturated clothes drenched in 53 degree saltwater.

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This whole show is great and it's a serious shame it's on its way out, especially due to just an hour of fake news. This show is definitely an icon in this industry as a whole, you think SeaWorld you think Shamu just as much as you think Space Mountain when you think Disney. Now granted, I think the natural habitats they plan to make of the Shamu stadiums sound insanely cool as well, it's just progress, just like RMCing an outdated wooden coaster. However, I seriously think they need to do something to either rebuild or change their brand since these shows were such a big part of it. Remember that video game I talked about earlier? The final level was Shamu beating the final boss and then going out to perform for a crowd just as these six orcas did for us today. Maybe SeaWorld is now an EPCOT-style education park, maybe it's a high adrenaline Six Flags-style park with a deeper message of environmentalism behind it, but this won't be any ordinary show or ride removal, this would be like Cedar Point tearing out Millennium or Dragster. And I really hope they can recover from it.

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Well as a park operator, SeaWorld definitely has a plethora of issues. You can tell they're desperate for money just by walking around. It honestly felt like that RCT1 scenario with the giant lake and the path around it that you struggled to fill out, leaving miles of nothing between rides. You definitely can't go charging $70 to get in a place with four coasters, two shows, a kiddie area, and maybe a few animal exhibits we didn't even see walking about. Not to mention $10 more gets you so much more substance down the street at Six Flags, and if people vote with their dollar, the tribe had definitely spoken. However, you can tell that their heart is in the right place. They care about their animals, they care about the environment, and I really hope for this reason alone they can pull it together and stay afloat.

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On the way back to Fiesta Texas, Ben and I stopped at another burger chain that has yet to come to the Buckeye State, California's In-N-Out Burger. While I maintain the claim that the reason the chain is so well known by tourists is mostly because their name is a pretty obvious sexual innuendo and not because of their food quality, it was a lot better than I remembered when I had it in LA in 2014. I followed Ben's advice, ordering my fries animal style, and I must admit it was pretty good. However, it's not the best burger in the world like some maintain, and Whataburger still shuts them down any day. Shuts them down like SFFT and Blackfish shut down SWSA. ;)

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Back at Fiesta Texas, contrary to the long stretches of path where Ben and I were the only ones visible at a time, the park was still packed. Our first ride was their boomerang up at the front, which we rode in front of an arguing high school couple, adding some comedic value to an otherwide painful ride. Afterwards we went back to Fiesta Bay Boardwalk to snag Pandemonium, swinging by Spassburg to grab food and a potty break.

So I'm in the bathroom, Ben's getting water cups, and I finish doing my business and head out to find Ben...when this catches my eye out the window!!!! I ran across the Festhaus screaming Ben's name trying to find him instantly, as they had just sent a Wonder Woman train!!!! SFFT's park president had posted that they were shooting for late this day on a social media channel I'm involved with, so this was starting to line up with that claim! We completely forgot Pandemonium and bolted right over there!

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There was a guy walking around the station wearing an RMC shirt tinkering with stuff, sending out test trains like clockwork. A crowd began to gather at the entrance, headed by Ben and I, anxiously waiting to see if they might call a ride crew to get her taking people.

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My favorite shot of the trip right here, I liked it so much I just ordered a nice canvas print of it with a nice little "Texas 2018" written in the corner.

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Our little Black Friday crowd crush against this beautiful sunset set to the three generic Six Flags songs (the plaza cycles the instrumentals for the renderings from Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster, Wonder Woman Coaster, and Wicked Cyclone) was crushed by the gift shop attendant, bringing us an update. He said that they wouldn't be open tonight, the new goal was tomorrow.

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After one more lap on Batman, we headed to this little grassy hill to see Celebrate Summer Nights, Fiesta's famous closing show. Lots of people here, so it must be somewhat impressive...

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One thing I was not aware of going into this trip was that it was San Antonio's tricentennial, so they mentioned that in the ads before the show started.

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In the later hours of the countdown, the show unofficially started with a laser show celebrating Texan culture. Set to an arrangement of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," they projected cowboys, Mexican dancers, bulls, desert landscapes, and Lone Star flags such as this onto the quarry wall. This is a state that loves where they are and sometimes it can get kind of laughable, but this was the perfect way to celebrate its culture, and I loved how it mixed things that could be considered stereotypes with things that maybe aren't.

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The show starts off with the projection mapping showing the rockwork cracking and falling away, revealing this logo as fireworks start going off, and from there it just takes you with it. The special effects here are amazing. We're talking beautiful, eleborate projections, lasers, and fire.

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After about ten minutes, Fiesta Texas did it. They just lost all chill and went all out. The music for the show had been excellent for the whole duration, but their choice for the finale is what set it apart. As they started emptying a virtual magazine of fireworks into the sky, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite came on. Now you may not know the piece by name, but I'm sure at least over half of CF has heard it. Anyone who knows me knows I'm an Olympics nut, and this was the piece played during the opening ceremony to Sochi 2014 when they lit the cauldron, which is always my favorite part of any OC. It's kind of been a dream of mine to see an OC in person, and while it may not be the most attainable for now, hearing that piece kick on while Fiesta was toasting all those explosives high above that beautiful quarry wall was pretty damn close to how I'd always imagined it to feel, add in an actual Olympics tie in and you have one of the most special things I've ever seen in my travels for coasters.

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And this is why there's no question that Six Flags Fiesta Texas is my new favorite park. The place looks incredible, their ride lineup we'd ridden up to that point was extremely good with Iron Rattler, Superman, and Batman adding enough for me to consider it a good ride collection, the location for the park is unique and incredible, and this show at the end of the night was the perfect icing on the cake. Cedar Point has been my favorite park since 2011, it was bittersweet kicking it out of the spot, but it wouldn't be fair not to give Fiesta Texas that number one spot after the incredible experience that it was.

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Getting out of the park was a bit of a mess, on the way I felt my phone buzz but I didn't have time to look at it. We finally got out of the chaos and floored it back to the hotel, exhausted after hitting both parks.

Getting some merch out of the car, I felt something heavy in one of my Six Flags bags. Something I didn't remember buying. So I looked in it and guess what's there? My camera that I thought I had lost.

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Ben sent me around the corner to Seven Eleven to grab us some booze when I found this! I love Bud Light's Lime-A-Rita and related line of drinks, even though I haven't tried them all. But they now have pineapple, my favorite fruit, as a limited time option! I had to get it, and it was just as awesome as I expected. So I'm finally sitting back in the hotel room drunk sipping this really potent can of alcohol, when I look at my phone I see what the notification we got at Fiesta Texas was.

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The Six Flags Fiesta Texas park president in the group I mentioned earlier? Commented on our post about the park's night show that Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster would resume three train ops tomorrow.

UP NEXT: One final shot at that Golden Lasso credit, a visit to Texas's most famous landmark, and the worst operations either of us have ever seen on a coaster!

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Pear

Strata Poster
I haven't been to SFFT yet but there's no way in hell I'd ever put it above Cedar Point as a park lol
 

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
Day 4

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One does not simply start their day in Texas without a Texas-shaped waffle.

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Made a friend in the lobby too!

Our second to last day in the Lone Star State started with possibly the most climactic moment of the trip. Ever since we had driven into San Antonio, Wonder Woman had been down for some reason for an extended period of time. As you read, the previous night there was a gentleman from RMC sending trains and working on it, and everything looked fine as it cycled like clockwork. SFFT's park president had said in the RMC group that they would resume normal operations on it today, the real question being what time they would start.

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My Steel Vengeance hat I had been using to keep the hot Texas sun off of my face was deliberately left in the car. It's bad juju, and we didn't need anymore curses today.

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Rise and shine, Rockville!

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Ben and I gate rushed Wonder Woman the second the park opened, joining the crowd that was headed back there to catch the first rides of the day. As the crowd spilled into Rockville, we were instantly directed into the overflow queue as they tested and made sure she was ready to roll for the morning, it was now or never. And knowing our luck, we got stuck waiting between the awnings without shade, just standing there not sure if it was going to open...

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And then they let us in! After we saw them bring Flash Pass into the station, they directed us around the corner from the overflow queue and let us in the main queue. Wonder Woman was ready to rock and roll finally!

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Fire wasn't lit yet, but this visual in the queue is really impressive. As I said earlier, I know very little about the Wonder Woman character but Ben said she comes from an island of only women with Hellenistic aesthetics, which would explain the columns and arches.

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I'm actually in line for Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster finally! Despite the seemingly trash capacity, they actually chewed right through that line.

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15.5 Inches
I knew this dimension going into this trip, even threw it all over social media at times when people would talk about track size. I took 15.5 inches out on a tape measure and compared it to other things around the house just for fun. I told so many people that Raptor Track can fit through a regulation household doorway, that's extremely impressive considering how big most coaster track is, even for smaller rides. But seeing it in person...man! Everything about it, not just the track but the whole scale of the project is just so strange to look at. Not sure how I felt about doing all those flips and tricks on this narrow little beam...

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It's time to ride! Ben and I both took the backs of our different trains, with me going two cycles before him.

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I expected it to be different, but not that different!

For starters, the transport wheels in the station lift the train up a bit, so when you sit down, it rocks from side to side about 1 degree. I was concerned I was about to deal with some major rattle, but once it engages the lift, it rides like glass. On the way up, the same three looped songs from the plaza, queue, and station also plays through lift speakers as you rise against that lovely quarry wall, getting a great view of the park. Once you're up there, it dawns on you that you're 100 feet in the air straddling a little model train with upstops and an OTSR rolling along a steel box that might as well be a balance beam. After a terrifying turn all the way up there with such little hardware in play, there's a great pop of ejector as the back car is yanked down to the water feature below. Now, the OTSRs definitely do a lot of holding you in on this one, and the harnesses much moreso than the lap bar, so you do get thrown into it, and the magnitude is pretty strong. However, it wasn't painful in the slightest. From there, you climb into the dive loop, which flips and slams you back into the ground at a great pace with absolutely no chill. Next up is my favorite part: the off axis airtime hill. The ejector here might actually be Skyrush level magnitude, but it's not at all sustained. Next up is the climb up to the high level S-bend, which let me down a bit as I was expecting some lateral action up there, but the air magnitude of the drop off more than made up for it. From there the forces stay pretty constant and it stops jostling you around (which definitely hurt it in my rankings), but it flies through the rest of the ride with some decent pacing, if a bit forceless and tame, before one more violent air pop into the brakes. This definitely isn't a layout engineered for enthusiasts like me, but the ride system is what makes the ride. Cruising along that narrow yellow bar is always terrifying, but the first half is really violent and the second half is really fast, which cemented it an okay spot in my rankings.

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When Alan Schilke autographed an RMC catalog at IAAPA for my ACE rep to give me, he quoted Eminem in said autograph. I'll do the same by saying that Wonder Woman was so great, I'd hate to have only given it one shot if it had for some reason missed its chance to blow. Much too good to do only once. So Ben and I went back to the Flash Pass building and redeedmed his two Diamond Elite flash passes for another spin on Wonder Woman!

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Ben was content with the back because he was already floored, I was thinking it would probably rank somewhere within the lower (but not bottom) tier RMCs like Twisted Cyclone and Storm Chaser, I wanted to see if maybe riding it elsewhere would make me enjoy it a bit more. Because it's so easy to get the seat that you want on this ride, I managed to snag a front seat to see if that could maybe impress me a bit more.

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But first...nerd shots!

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Everyone knows I like those little job tags RMC puts on their machined parts, and this is no different. This bolting plate had it square in the center between the train wheels, denoting joint 50.

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Ops were super quick, even with a bag drop. Mainly I took this photo just to get some scaling between the people, track, and trains, which you have to admit is interesting.

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Six Flags and RMC have a winner on their hands!

The front was much better, the drop is terrifying in that you can see just how narrow that beam is in front of you at all times, making for a terrifying visual when you creep over that hop before the descent, seeing that it's all that stands between you and a 100-foot fall. First half rode about the same, but in the second half, being able to see that makes it so much more enjoyable. You can really tell how fast you're going, how rapidly the track is twisting, and how you don't even feel it. It really is a perfect narrow ribbon of track with a perfect heartline and that rose it a few spots for me. I'm totally cool with seeing this innovative terror machine cloned like a boomerang, seriously can't wait for SFGAm to get one next year as rumors seem to suggest! It's a Flitzer on steroids!

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Like I said, I know very little about the Wonder Woman character so I was on the fence about merch. But the park has this nice one that focuses more on the ride than the character, and since I have a shirt for every other RMC I've ridden, I had to get it. Talk about bragging rights next time I'm at Kings Island!

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Our next stop was to snag the last attainable cred at SFFT, Pandemonium! Sadly, even with it unbalanced, it didn't spin nearly as fast as the SFOT one. In fact, I'd say this is the weakest one of these I've done, but I only need two more to complete the set in the US if I'm correct.

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Went back to Rockville for a bit for Ben to use his dining plan before taking one photo lap on our way out.

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Shame the train wasn't running when we were there, because this is easily one of the prettiest locations I've seen for a park. I feel like any park that is going to really blow me away has to be in a great setting, from the Ozarks of Silver Dollar City to Cedar Point's lakeshore. But this quarry was such a smart choice for a park location because it adds so many interesting visuals. The place feels like its own little isolated world from the inside, and not just because you can barely see it driving up to it.

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Iron Rattler's wait was sadly massive and we had such a packed agenda for the day that we didn't wait it out, but I stopped to get a few photos of Texas's best roller coaster.

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But after 3 days, it was time to call it quits and head for greener pastures. The walk out of Fiesta was bittersweet, I don't know when I'll be back here but I was so glad I finally got to go, as well as blown away with how great the place is. This beautiful park has two well-paced, violent, beautifully located RMCs, the best of the S&S free spins, the best of the B&M floorlesses, and the most stunning special effects show I've ever seen. I almost feel like Six Flags doesn't deserve this park, but it had plenty of charm despite its corporate ownership, and I hope they keep it this way in the future.

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Our next stop was short, somewhat cliche, but very important, and a must for anyone in San Antonio, The Alamo! We had to pay to park for just a little bit but it was worth it, as the mission is free to the public.

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Let's go check it out!

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Because The Alamo was once a church and people died there, Texas has this stupid rule that it's now a shrine and you can't take pictures inside, so here's a model of the property. Inside the sanctuary there's not much, it's a nice vaulted roof and a few flags and mementos put up, but take your camera out and they'll yell at you.

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I had to get a photo with the cactus, as we all now know I love cacti.

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This felt exactly like one of those gardens behind those old school antebellum homes you see in Charleston, SC. The whole downtown felt a lot like a Latin-influenced Charleston, to be honest.

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Thought this door design was clever, simple yet effective.

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The humidity was messing with my camera lens so like none of the pictures in this little nook came out right, but here's a baptismal font from the mission.

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Afterwards, it was really hot downtown and Ben found out I had never had Hagen Daas, so he dragged me across the street to grab some. Their chocolate cookies and cream was to die for! It really hit the spot on a hot Texas day, especially when all the buildings were blocking the wind and the asphalt was like magnet for that brutal sun. After that we went to a little tacky souvenir shop right next door (where this was taken). Now when I visit a landmark I try to get a little desktop model for my dresser, and I was able to find almost the same Alamo model that was $17 at the Alamo gift shop for $6, even threw in a little Christmas ornament for the family.

Next up we bidded San Antonio a lovely Hasta La Vista and got on the road to our final city of the trip, Houston! Drive was pretty seamless aside from Waze sending us down a deserted country road around traffic. Once we got there, Houston traffic was a straight up nightmare but we got through it. Eventually the scruffy plains turned into swampy bayous and the ocean came into view. We had done it! We had reached Texas's gulf coast, the final stop on the trip for credits!

Galveston Pier was to be first, Kemah Boardwalk second. Both properties are owned by Landry's Restaurants, the parent company behind several touristy restaurant chains such as Joe's Crab Shack, Bubba Gump, and Rainforest Cafe. Now, my family has some...history with Landry's after an incident we had there when I was a kid. I doubt anyone wants to read exactly what happened but if you want the full details, I'll spoiler it below.

Growing up, there was a Joe's Crab Shack in our part of town. For those of you who don't know the restaurant, it was a large chain owned by Landry's Restaurants themed to a seedy seafood dive, disco lights and fake tin roofs and stuff on the inside, kind of overpriced. My family has a tradition of going out to dinner every Friday that we've had since before I was born. And as a kid, summer was going to Joe's Crab Shack on Friday night and sitting outside and playing on their playground until our food came, probably sipping on their Kool aid mixed with Sprite with whatever seafood we ordered. And when we would go out with neighbors and they would take their kids and all of us were on the playground it was the most lit thing ever.

Flash forward after a few years of this being one of our more regular Friday night places. Their service was slowly going downhill so we stopped going as often. Well one time we took a break from this being our Friday night place, but came back once more in hopes we could have a good experience again. Well we walk in, I'm sitting at the table as I had outgrown the playground at that point, and it's already clear nobody's serving us anytime soon. Now Joe's Crab Shack always brought out these fried corn drop biscuit fritter things before you ordered, similar to Red Lobster cheddar biscuits or Olive Garden breadsticks. When they finally serve us, no corn fritters, so we ask for them. Our server brings us a tin pail of them in what seemed to be a suspiciously short amount of time, but we're hungry so we chow down. My mother picks up a corn fritter, takes one look at it, and looks at it like she had seen a ghost, wide eyed and pale faced. She shows it to Dad, he takes one look at it, and just glares at this little drop biscuit as if he had caught it red handed robbing his home in the dead of night. I reach for one, mom tells me not to, I ask why, she shows me a corn fritter with a very deliberate Jaws-style shark bite taken out of one side. Our server had picked up a bucket of half eaten corn fritters off an empty table and dropped it on ours like a doggy bag for us to pick off this table's leftovers.

Now, my parents don't verbally abuse people working in service, but that's completely unacceptable, probably a health code violation even. So we wait for our food, they never bring us fresh corn fritters, it takes us forever to get our food, and my parents are getting more and more frustrated as time goes on. Finally, we get our food, we're able to be happy eating it, the food there was great as it always is. But by the time we're done, dad demands to speak to a manager, tells him what's up, but then refuses to take any compensation so that corporate couldn't blame it on him wanting free stuff. I know he told corporate what was up and let them have it, and about two months later the place closed as their business was already slipping. It sat disused for sometime before it was turned into a Fricker's. The building was painted red and the playground was taken out.

Tl;dr version: we ate at a Landry's-owned Joe's Crab Shack that was already struggling with customer service and they gave us an order of half eaten drop biscuits that another table didn't finish. Dad let corporate have it, restaurant closed down about two months later. So my family has a history with the parent company for these two parks, and not a good one at that...

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Galveston was one of the crappier touristy beach locations I'd been, reminded me a bit of Wildwood, NJ where Morey's Piers was but not quite as populated. However, we got there to an...unfortunate surprise. $10 just to park our Versa. Now $10 isn't that much, though a bit frustrating if you're planning to just run in and ride one or two things. But we get up there, it's $10 just to step onto the pier, plus your ride ticket or wristband. That's $26 for just Iron Shark. Now I understand charging a bit to get on the pier because you don't want it to be Galveston's city park, but $2 is enough to deter that, $10 is completely unnecessary.

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Despite it being called Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, this is actually the newest park I've been to to date, opening in just 2012 as a continuation of the original pier that was destroyed by Hurricane Carla. The place actually had a nice atmosphere, felt a lot like a mini Morey's.

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Our only stop here was GIHPP's only credit, Gerstlauer's Iron Shark. The newest Eurofighter I've ridden, it was also the first I've been on to feature lap bars. This layout's also popped up a few other times but this was the original, let's hope it deserved to be cloned!

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Here we go!

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There was no wait but the ops here were really rude. Ben and I accidentally grabbed the tight seats (I know this is a problem for Eurofighters having lights come on at different bar heights) so the ride ops were barking at us to get out and switch with the other people. Ben's shoe came off getting in the train and it almost fell through the platform into the ocean, so that also contributed to an interesting loading process.

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And it's pretty good! The layout rocks, not a single dead spot on it, and the seaside location makes the ride. The visual in the rollover is great, good speed through the S-curve and overbank, but the inclined loop was my favorite part of the ride. I'd totally be cool with more of this layout popping up, it's easily the best Eurofighter of the three I've been on.

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Had to snap a selfie on the way back to the parking lot to prove I was there, refused to buy souvenirs and give this place anymore cash than I already had.

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The drive that followed to Kemah wasn't at all what I expected. After leaving Galveston, we turned onto the frontage...and got sent to the middle of nowhere. Despite being so close to the fourth largest US city, the drive was pretty rural. It was about half with nothing but bayous and a few oil processing plants as far as the eye could see. Finally, in the middle of literally nothing on the coast, it was like someone just decided to throw up a few seedy hotels, touristy restaurants, and tacky souvenir shops. We then turned into a typical affluent coastal neighborhood and Boardwalk Bullet appeared in the distance. The final major coaster of the trip was in sight!

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Kemah Boardwalk from a distance looked really nice! Well taken care of, palm trees everywhere, and effort made to make it look nice.

Up close, however, the ticket booth was barely staffed, like three switchbacks of people full. Ben and I elected to get two Boardwalk Bullet tickets and then upgrade to a wristband if we had time.

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Final coaster of the trip! Let's do it!

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Different venue, different state, same old Landry's that gave us the half eaten corn fritters. The first thing you notice is how awful their operations are. There was a clear and noticeable lack of effort by the two ride ops to get the trains out in a timely manner at all. Like, they had two boys there so you can't expect lightning fast Cedar Point ops, but it's like they would just dispatch it when they would dispatch it, no regard for speed at all. Add in one train, and you have something that annoyingly takes much longer than it should.

And then just when this couldn't get anymore interesting, two teenage boys who had very obviously smoked a joint or eight before showing up to the park hooted and hollered into the station and picked, you guessed it, the row right in front of Ben and I's second to back. They were already insulting and trying to start fights with other park guests.

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Color me impressed! I often get poked fun at for my fondness of using the term "violence" to describe certain rides. This, my friends, is exactly what I'm talking about when I say a ride is violent. This coaster has no chill, throwing you every which way as it relentlessly tears through that knot of track and truss, and just when you think it's done, somehow there was room for one more turn, transition, or air pop that you didn't expect. It's a very brash, irreverent ride experience, and it's in a great natural location on the water like that. Airtime magnitude was sadly this coaster's weak point, only getting as strong as Voyage or Mystic Timbers when I know Gravity Group has done much stronger on Hades 360. But it has a bit of all three things I look for in this coaster type, it goes on forever, and it's absolutely nuts. I decided to ride again in the front before ranking it, but I knew I had a top tier wooden coaster about to enter my count.

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Remember our friends on the devil's lettuce earlier? They waited until we were rolling off the brakes to start insulting us, only for Ben to shut them down right away. But fear not, there was a whole other train of people to antagonize and irritate, so they locked in on this lady and her husband, hurling profanities and insults at them in hopes they'd start a fight. I tried to film to show security but they were too far away to pick anything up. But just before they were out of earshot, I hear her husband accuse one of their mothers of doing certain sexual acts, so that was amusing. I told a nearby employee to call security because these two boys were causing trouble but it just went in one ear and out the other.

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Front row? I think so!

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These might be up there with Voyage and Legend for best looking PTCs I've seen so far.

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After Ben and I went Facebook Live to show off how piss poor these ops were, it was our turn to ride! Boardwalk Bullet in the front, let's see this!

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And it did it again! It was practically dark enough to be considered a front row night ride and man did it impress me! It's so crazy not knowing where the train is going to go next, and being dropped down those dives into the transitions in the front makes for a really edgy ride. I felt really bad doing this, but I think this might actually be a hand-cut wooden coaster that goes above an RMC. Got a new third favorite wood out of this, behind only Lightning Rod and Outlaw Run. It landed just shy of my top ten, with only New Texas Giant keeping it out of there...

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I took a photo of this sign on the way out as it's so me, when I told Ben I needed a picture this girl randomly yelled "YES!!!!" and ran up to me and gave me a high five.

On the way out I shamefully grabbed a Kemah Boardwalk keychain for my collection just because I wanted something from Houston, but that doesn't mean I don't have issues with this place. It's nice but it's just so mismanaged, which sounds like the Landry's that ran that Joe's Crab Shack in the months before it closed. Boardwalk Bullet is the only reason anyone should go, but it's definitely reason enough for making the trek out there. Such a shame it's at that park, Landry's isn't good enough to deserve that coaster.

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We checked into our hotel and then ran out to run some errands. After I almost ran Ben into oncoming traffic thinking one side of a median had both traffic directions (the road sign was sticking out of the median, which I've always seen as marking the corner, it's NEVER in the median in Ohio from what I've seen), we swung by a gas station to get some celebratory pink moscato and a Whataburger for one last experience with them. Sadly, they messed up my order, giving me mustard and no cheese when I asked for a plain burger with just the cheese and patties. So I wiped the mustard off and smothered it in spicy ketchup. Whataburger and pink moscato, no better way to end a trip! Afterwards we went to bed, knowing we had to race to Dallas to catch our flight back.

UP NEXT: A Texas-sized storm, the obligatory stop for fresh coastal seafood, one last yeehaw, one last travel nightmare, and Jarrett REALLY REALLY REALLY messes up on the plane! Stay tuned for an awesome conclusion to this trip report!
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(Sorry Ben, I had to!)
 

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
I haven't been to SFFT yet but there's no way in hell I'd ever put it above Cedar Point as a park lol
It honestly felt like CP's flagship lineup meets Herschend placemaking, all tucked into a gorgeous location, and that's why it ranked so highly for me. Good variety of area themes that I like, four incredible coasters to round out a lineup, and it's all set in possibly the most creative location I've ever seen for a park. And Celebrate Summer Nights Spectacular blows any multimedia display I've ever seen completely out of the water, I still get chills when I watch the YouTube video.

-x-

Day 5

Day started pretty late, both of us slept in knowing we had quite a lot of ground to cover as we headed back to Ohio.

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Breakfast wasn't even a thing, so we instead went right to lunch at Tookie's Seafood down the street from the hotel. Place looked a bit touristy, but their prices were actually very reasonable, and a steal for fresh seafood. Got some blackened catfish with crawdad etoufee with red rice and mac and cheese. Definitely get fresh seafood here if you're in the area, it's awesome!

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As we were finishing up and about to ask for our checks, both of our phones dinged with an Accuweather notification. A Texas-sized storm was barreling right for Kemah! Before we knew it, visibility was completely washed out, thunder was shaking the ground, and lights were flickering in the restaurant garnering reactions from diners wondering if the power would go out.

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Deciding to ride it out instead of hitting the evacuation route (as with Atlanta, all of Texas thinks the world is ending when it rains evidently), and Ben got some cheesecake. I had a bite and it was absolutely amazing. But more importantly, I snagged this photo and I want YOU to make it into a meme. Someday decades down the road into our friendship I know this will be "the embarassing picture" that ends up on someone's car when they least expect it or something.

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And here we see Ohio parking on the left, Texas parking on the right.

With the storm passed over, we headed back to Yolanda (yes we named the Versa, it was like a family pet for the week) and took off for Dallas. Houston traffic wasn't terrible on the drive back, and we actually drove where we could see the skyline, so city credit for both of us! From there...the drive was fun. Ben kicking my arse to drive more aggressively might be the best thing a friend has done for me just for this reason, we tore up that drive back to Dallas! There was one stop for gas and sweet tea but eventually we ended up in Dallas around 4:30 with a 6 pm airport time...and with some unfinished business.

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Remember how we walked off without Judge Roy Scream? And remember how we walked away with two exit passes in their system for a later date? Remember Ben's Diamond Elite dining plan? We were fifteen minutes from the airport, there was no telling when we'd get back to this state, we got this!

We parked around back by Titan and Amazing Race-style ran into the park, trying to make a Six Flags day out of the hour we had. As soon as we got in, we obtained both sets of passes, walking away with two exit passes and two flash passes. Judge Roy didn't have Flash Pass so we burned the exit passes on it, despite no line at all. And thank god, the layout is similar to Blue Streak but completely devoid of any airtime and somewhat rough. There's a tiny pop of weak floater coming into the brakes but that's it. Now normally I'd say #RMCitorWreckit and move on, but heard that the park is actually not allowed to make major modifications on the ride, as the agreement with the City of Arlington was that the ride can only get seasonal maintenance or they lose the land. And to be honest, that would be fine. I doubt it gets ridership, it has to be expensive to maintain in that brutal climate, and the park doesn't even need it as a family ride, with both Runaway Mine Train and Runaway Mountain filling that niche nicely. The only enjoyable thing about this were the inside jokes, as I once infamously told Emily that my name was Roy when I was talking in my sleep as well as a bunch of other ridiculous stuff.

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Still got Flash Passes, 45 minutes till we have to leave, what a better way to spend that time than by closing out the trip on its most technologically influential coaster? Ben and I darted right back to New Texas Giant for one last Texas-sized yeehaw! We sat in the back and just as we got on day one, it was a ton of fun! It solidified my opinion that the coaster belonged below Boardwalk Bullet because of its weak second half, but it was still an incredible ride. Airtime in the first half was still killer, those three rapid fire overbanks are awesome, and hopping through the brush on the last lap is still nice and scenic buried in the scrubby overgrowth like that.

If this coaster hadn't been built, the other two RMCs that drew me to the area wouldn't have been there, and this trip might not have ever happened. New Texas Giant, while not the best RMCs, should always be respected as the original RMC that started one of the most innovative time periods in this industry, right up there with the likes of Matterhorn Bobsleds, Batman SFGAm, Magnum XL-200, and KI's Racer. Wonder Woman might be Falcon Heavy, but New Texas Giant is Falcon 1, and it wouldn't have been possible without it. Add in the brash Texas theme and you have the perfect way to close the trip out, it was a bittersweet experience.

After that we headed back to the gate and I snagged a hat on the way out with Ben's discount, realizing I hadn't gotten a hat at all on the trip, despite having debated a Seaworld Rescue one at SWSA.

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Time to hit the road! Ben did some rudimentary packing up as we got on the road for the fifteen minute drive to DFW, ending the trip on the song it started on as the open prairie surrounding the airport was turned a nice orange color in the setting Texas sun.

We returned the car to find that Hertz hadn't listened when I said I wanted to purchase the gas in the car, sticking me with a nasty $28 charge that I shouldn't have. So she not only has to be right, but can't listen to her customers, that's lovely. We crammed our stuff in our backpacks, threw out our road trip trash, and ran to catch the bus to the terminal.

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Back to Ohio!

Getting there was a total breeze, DFW is by far the most efficient airport I've seen. Free boarding pass printing (Spirit charges for that usually), security went off without a hitch, and we were actually there early. Ben and I charged our devices in the terminal for a bit and tied up a few social media loose ends before we were herded like cattle into the public bus of the sky.

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Here we go!

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Took a bit to taxi out there but before we knew it, we were in the air soaring back towards Ohio, and in two hours my feet would be on the ground in my new home state. Finished listening to the Thirty Seconds To Mars album, and then decided I wanted dinner...

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Spirit's food prices are so outrageous that someone tried to eat the menu, as seen here. I opted for a muffin and a cocktail, knowing we were Ubering back to the hotel and I was finally getting a break from driving. This is where the really big mistake happened.

Our really cool flight attendant came around and took our order, she was having a ton of fun with it and clearly cared that we had pleasant service. So she brings me my bourbon and apple juice, and without thinking, I just tell her, "aw thanks, you're the bomb!" Then Ben's elbowing me and she's telling me, politely but concerned, "whoa, man, don't say that you're on an airplane!" And I'm just sitting here, wide eyed and not sure why everyone's all of a sudden concerned about what I said. Then I rewind and realize exactly what kind of horrific thing I had done.

"Aw thanks, you're the bomb!"

"You're the bomb!"

"Bomb!"

And I said it. The mother of all words you do NOT say on an airplane. The B dash dash dash word. I instantly realize the mistake I made, and immediately apologize profusely. "Ma'am, I am SO sorry, that toally slipped out!" Now she was cool so she just kind of laughed it off and told me it was okay. So here I am, feeling like a total moron and wanting to die with Ben just cracking up next to me. I knew it wasn't a big deal, if there was a security threat every time someone accidentally said "you're the bomb" on an airplane I'm sure about a quarter of first time flyers would end up on the no fly list. It was a completely innocent slip of the tongue and word choice mistake, and anyone who was around could tell it was just that and nothing more. Still, you do something like that you're going to feel like a moron. Definitely going to be more careful about that on the flight to Oakland next year!

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Scotty, 28. Lives in parents' basement, enjoys Grand Theft Auto and a good beer with the boys. Working as a Dominos delivery driver while waiting for rap career's big break.

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I was riding bitch so getting this picture without bothering Ben in the window seat was hard, but this is the Dayton-Cincinnati metro area as seen from the sky at night! The plane turned over this and proceeded to start its initial descent into CLE. The landing we got was incredibly smooth (a rarity according to Ben, something about it being an awkward place to land with the lake and buildings) and we were right out of that place within like ten minutes of landing.

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We headed for the rideshare pickup area to get our Uber to our hotel. I knew we were back in Ohio when we stepped out and both of us commented on how chilly the air felt, even though it was still June and still 75 degrees at midnight. However, it did hit me just then how I was so close yet so far from home. I was back in my state, but clear in the opposite corner of it. Still had three hours of travel the following day to look forward to.

But it isn't over yet without another travel nightmare!

So we get our Uber to the Howard Johnson a few blocks away and go to check in, only to be greeted to the sight of these two sketchy people verbally abusing the night clerk, I thought Ben was going to blow up on the girlfriend he was getting so mad. Anyway, we go to check in when something came up. Ben had booked the hotel previously with a card that was starting to have problems, so on the way to the airport to catch our outbound flight he called them asking to change the card on the room. Well we were told that he could do that at the hotel but if it declined our room wouldn't get cancelled. Well we get there and find that they cancelled our room because, you guessed it, they cancelled our room. So Ben got on the phone with Wyndham Rewards to see what they could do for us. So he got his points back and they set us up at a nearby Ramada. I remembered I had credit on my Lyft app so we tried that for the first time. Our driver was Eddie, who was giving us a ride in his little SUV...turns out Lyft is the Spirit Airlines of rideshare apps. Eddie's car smelled faintly of marijuana and tobacco smoke. Now someone may have smoked in his car without him knowing earlier that night, okay. But the second we pulled onto the street, there was a loud, ominous rattle coming from the rear driver's side wheel well. And not just like something being loose, like something was broken and flapping around on the suspension. I thought we were going to die before we got to the hotel seven minutes away. But we got there in one piece, got into our room, and hung out for a bit before going to sleep.

Day 6

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like crap and got sick in the bathroom, but for some reason I woke up for real the next morning feeling just fine, maybe my system was just that disgusted with the thought of being back in Ohio. Ben's dad was driving us back that morning, but gave us time to sleep in. When he showed up, we checked out, thanked Ramada for being so cool with us the previous night, and went to grab lunch.

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We went to Red Robin as Ben's dad had never been and we decided that that needed fixing. So we went, I enjoyed my burger, enjoyed my bottomless fries and campfire sauce even more, and then headed back out to start the long drive home.

Drive back to Ben's place was fine, stopped in to see his dog for a bit before loading back up in the Mom Mobile and returning to Columbus, a drive that went pretty seamlessly. Then I got into my car after a week of sitting there, powered her up, and drove the final hour of the trip like it started, just me in my personal car driving between Dayton and Columbus. After I got home I wanted to just relax, enjoy being home, and crack open a cold one, but I had to work that night. I sadly was only home for about five hours before going back to my first shift at work after the trip.

But I still walked away with some pretty cool stuff!

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Let's start with the keychains for my collection! Got a total of five here, two moving RMC ones to match the other three I have (Twisted Cyclone, Twisted Colossus, and Goliath), a SeaWorld one, a Kemah one (just because I wanted something to show I'd been to a Houston park, I would otherwise be opposed to giving them anymore money), and an Alamo one.

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RMC shirt 1/3, for the OG RMC. This one had some pretty crappy merch selection, but this one had the red rails and vaguely resembled the ride, so I picked it.

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This Iron Rattler shirt was a bit of a hassle. It was an XL like the others, but when I tried it on it was like 10 lbs of potatoes in a 5 lb bag. So I posted in a Texas theme park group on Facebook asking if anyone knew the best way to contact the park to get it swapped out for the next size up. Fiesta was way ahead of me and someone from their merch team saw the post, contacted me, and I now have one that fits! You can see how much smaller this one is compared to the other XL below it. Which brings us to...

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Wonder Woman! I almost didn't buy this because I know and care very little about the character, but this one showed enough of the machine that I decided to get it so I could have a t-shirt for every RMC I've ridden. And in hindsight, I'm glad I did.

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And the SFOT hat I got! Simple, low key, and respectable. Love the colors on it too.

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As with the rest of my travels, when I visit a major landmark I try to get a small model of it for my dresser. Here's my Alamo, chilling with a few Eiffel Towers up there.

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What an incredible, crazy, memorable, and even at some moments emotional trip that was! Seven years ago this little manufacturer nobody had ever heard of did this outlandish refurb job on a crappy wooden coaster nobody had even heard of before, and to be honest I didn't really get it. Who would have thought that they would have not only become one of the big dogs in the coaster world, but innovated so much that their work inspired me to change the world in the same way that they did. So to get here and ride not only the one that started it all, but also another one of their prototypes and their improvement of a concept that captivated me as a child has made this easily the most special coaster trip I've been on. Not to mention having a new favorite park that I'm determined to get back to within the next five years, that place really shows what a place as simple and commercial as an amusement park can really be. Special shoutout to Ben too for being such a good travel buddy and keeping this as hilarious as they normally are with him. So glad this trip went off without a hitch and I can't wait to get back at it for more RMCs on next year's region trip!
 

Edward M

Strata Poster
Who would have thought that they would have not only become one of the big dogs in the coaster world, but innovated so much that their work inspired me to change the world in the same way that they did.

Wait, you changed the world? How? And RMC did as well and in the same way????
 

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
Wait, you changed the world? How? And RMC did as well and in the same way????
Well, their work is kind of what outlined my new career goal. So I haven't yet, but I'd like to. I want to contribute something to a field I'm passionate about from a manufacturing standpoint, which could be several things. But seeing the way they changed coasters forever from the same standpoint is kind of what made me want to do it.
 
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