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East Coast USA Roadtrip! incl. BGW, KD, KI, CP plus more.|June 2018

SilverArrow

SilverArrow

Certified Ride Geek
So, as some of you know already Daviddoc and I did a roadtrip in June (around the time lots of others ont he forum were doing similar kind of trips) around the east coast of america. We covered a pretty big area (2500+k miles) and I gained 137 new creds as I hadn't done anything that we did before. We did so much it's going to be hard to do a proper trip report so I'm just going to see how this pans out. It might end up like a list of coaster opinions or more of a travelogue, i'm not sure. I'm going to add to it in separate posts so you'll get more added as time goes on.

So without further ado,

Six Flags Great Adventure

My first six flags park! woo finally. There is so much at this park and we visited 3 times over three days (we had passes). Even just reviewing this park seems like a mammoth task! What a view you get when you drive in, so many coasters!

El Toro - My first cred of the trip and what a ride!! This was like nothing else i'd done, that first drop is something else! We got so many rides on this over the 3 days I lost count of how many times we did it, certainly a top rate coaster! My only complaint would be that it can get a little abusive near the end after many re-rides but I appreciate the intenseness so I'll let it off for that.

Kingda ka- I had put this off onto the final visit (partly due to having just come off of the plane on the first day and it being down half of the second) partly due to being slightly nervous of this one. For those who came on the ghosterforce trip know, I had (note HAD) a bit of a fear of launch coasters which Taron cured but I still was slightly nervous of doing the tallest and one of the fastest and most thrilling coasters on the planet! I'm sure lots of people have been a bit nervous to ride KK because, it is quite a beast of a ride! Finally got my butt on it and oh my goodness what a ride! We did a few rides and wow what a cred to get! I was chuffed with myself and actually loved it!

Zumanjaro- I was so hyped from riding kk that we decided that checking off the world's tallest drop tower was no mean feat (daviddoc had already done both). I don't usually do drop towers just because they're a bit scary (scared of heights a little) and aren't usually my kind of thrill, but here I was locked into the seat of the world's tallest, rising fast above the park. Oh well I though, yolo! It was walk-on and we were the only people on our gondola thing so no time for second thoughts! hahah It was a bit high but I wasn't nearly as scared as I thought I would be (I had sworn against doing this ride well before coming on the trip) and I survived so I was pretty proud of myself! I had also driven to the park on this day for the first time in the US so I had completed the trifecta of awesomeness on our third day!

Batman (Invert) - WHAT HAPPENED HERE?? Ok so batman just looked like a normal B&M invert, I'd done the batman layout before in Madrid bla bla. This this was pulling ridiculous forces!! It was as if they had greased up the wheels or something it was running so so fast! This was faster and more intense than any other B&M invert I'd ever done and we both came off gobsmacked. I could feel all the blood rushing to my feet and it got pretty uncomfortable! No wonder no one was queuing for the back. We didn't try it but I can't imagine what it would have been like. Is it normally like this???

Cyborg- we got on this on the member/passholder day and it was pretty much as weird as it looks. It wasn't as intense as a top spin or top scan but I expect it will freak out non-enthusiasts who aren't used to riding weird rides. We finished the cycle and then got stuck in the air for about 10 minutes while it failed to park. Luckily we were in the shade and in a relatively comfortable position. The ride then closed after that for a bit so I don't know how tricky this thing will be to maintain. I'm not sure whether they were running it at full speed (or even if it has speed settings). At a faster speed I think people might find it a bit gross, not sure. It was weird.

Rest of the creds
Green lantern really hurt my legs. I felt like all of the blood was going to them and they were about to burst or something, yuck. Nitro was great and has really good views, not my favourite B&M hyper but up there with the better ones, you get some nice views over the lake. Another ride that gives you views over a lake, or would if you ever stopped long enough upright is the joker. This was horrid!! I hated it so much! Bizzaroo and superman were fine, the pretzel loop on superman didn't feel as bad as Manta's which was nice. Skull mountain back row is great, the arrow mine train felt like it had square wheels. The dark knight ride had a horrible car horn that they blasted at you which was unpleasant but nothing else to report about that ride and the kiddie creds really.

Other stuff
The safari is a must-do. It lasts quite a while so I expect some coaster geeks have avoided it but if you like animals at all you'll enjoy it. It's informative, relaxing and in the shade in a breeze if, like us you had very hot weather!. We also watched the sea lion show which was decent and also in the shade! Obviously I had to try a larson looper.....and I'm going to say it...it wasn't that bad. I'm a fan of looping starships (well I like bgt's one) so this had a similar feel. Yes, it's not a cred but it was a decent flat. I'm a fan of cable cars and the great adventure one is fab! You get a great overview of the park and it saves you a lot of walking as the park is big! We also did the parachute jump which is another must-do because it's based off coney island's defunct one and I believe it may be the only operating one of that style. We probably did some other stuff but those are the memorable things that come to mind.

Here is a picture from the cable car because why not-you've seen all the classic photos before.
 
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Casino Pier
This was a cute little seaside pier that we did one evening. There are 3 creds, a eurofighter, weird unpainted pirate cred and a kiddie cred. The eurofighter was really smooth!! It has a nice location on the side of the pier and has lapbars. The lapbars seemed to be a different design to normal, they have big loops to hold onto. It also has an awesome lighting package similar to Hangtime's. One of it's settings includes following the car along the track with a different colour, which we loved! I think we both gasped in unison when we realised! Daviddoc tried to get a video but I don't think it came out.

You can see the effect in this video:

Pirates hideaway was really odd, it has a spiral lifthill and a lot more track than we were expecting. I can't work out from rcdb whether it is a one of a kind (it's by wisdom rides) but I certainly hadn't seen anything like it before that I can remember.
Here is the pov for those who are curious:

I also didn't realise that this was the place where the coaster had fallen into the sea during hurricane Sandy and that Hydrus was that coaster's replacement. You wouldn't even know by going there, they've done a a great job with sorting it all out considering everything looked badly damaged in the photos! Well worth a quick pit stop if you're heading that way.
 
Pear said:
It started running insanely fast last year for some reason. Good thing they haven't slowed it down yet!
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I wonder what they've done to it. It really took me by surprise! At least it wasn't just me that thought that!
 
Casino pier was really rather nice, we ended up getting there quite late, but it just looked beautiful at night, just like the video there. Our original plan had been to do it on the same day we went south and did the other seaside places, but it closed quite a bit later than gadv, so it made more sense to tag it on at the end of one of the days.
 
Next up is.....
Steel Pier, Atlantic City
The whole town wasn't as impressive as I had expected it to be (the original pier got damaged and rebuilt) but we did the two creds anyway because why not. Not much to say about this really.

Playland's Castaway Cove
Galeforce! It was open and both of us were impressed by how fun and smooth it was! This is similar to the gerst shuttle launchy things like Goldrush but this one had more airtime and thrill because it had tighter top-hatty type elements that it pulled you over quite fast. The rest of the park was pleasant and had a holiday vibe to it. I think both of us agreed it was better than Hydrus, not that Hydrus was bad though, it was just quirkier with snappier elements.

Morey's Piers

We pulled into Wildwood, NJ later that day which had a great atmosphere in the evening. The boardwalk was buzzing, the hotels and restaurants were all retro looking and there were lots of retro cars, vintage bikers in leathers around (possibly for a festival or something?) as well as families. The atmosphere was buzzing but not rowdy if that makes sense. When we got down to the seafront there were even monster trucks racing around on the beach!
On to moreys....
This was one of the great surprises of the trip. I had imagined this to be just your average pier park but this park is next level and at night it looked stunning. The attractions are spread across 3 massive piers that have tonnes of rides packed in (and two water parks!) that range from kiddie rides to bigger coasters and flats. The piers have a retro vibe but everything is well kept. It kind of reminded me of the aesthetic dreamland are trying to go with (but without the pretentiousness) or coney island's zamperla luna park and with a much much better line up than both bar the cyclone. I could see why they were proudly displaying their golden ticket award for best seaside park.

Great White is a fab woodie that goes out over the sand and has quite a long layout. It has a fun tunnel in it too and we had quite a few rerides because it was so good. We also found an SLC that was FUN to ride. Yes, FUN to ride!!! "Fly the great nor'easter" has new trains but the track is also so smooth!! The track was replaced in the 2016/2017 season and my goodness you can tell! Way to go Vekoma!! We even rode it more than once!! Insanity! It's cool also because it goes out over the waterpark so you're flying over the lazy river and stuff as you go around. Flitzer was fun, kind of like a zierer mini take on a jet star and the ghost ship walkthrough went on FOREVER. I hadn't mentally prepared for a scare maze and my goodness did I want it to end but it never did! haha We were the only ones going through and of course the actors (who could touch you) all pick on the girl.......! This was quite a ridiculous attraction in itself and certainly worth doing as it rivalled or even beat anything i'd done before (Tulleys/Thorpe/Alton). It has some gaps between scenes where you just walk round corners etc which worked really well for the suspense as you kept thinking it was over.

We also did this weird water ride where you wore 3d glasses and loads of nonsensical characters did things that made no sense. That was one of the weirdest rides I've ever done and I'm sure whoever made it was on something! They also looked to have this crazy game where you go in a battleship and sail round a pool shooting balls at people which we didn't do, but admired. There was so much to do there it's hard to remember what we even did! I would also recommend the fries they do with the flavour toppings. Very nice. I had such a great evening at Morey's and it is one of the standout parks for me from the trip as it was such a lovely surprise instead of just being a +7 stop.

Have another clip from youtube (obviously also not my footage), this time showing you the piers:
Skip to 1:47 or 5:22 or later to see the layout of the piers (I haven't watched the entire video)
Here is a pov of Great White
 
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I've always loved the aesthetic of Great White. It must take an awful lot of atmospheric abuse given it's location, but it looks great just heading out towards the sea. I love it!

Also didn't realise until you said, and it encouraged me to look up a POV, how tightly packed in Great Nor'Easter is too. The new track and your following praise, does go to show that the SLC layout isn't inherently bad, it's just so poorly executed!

Good stuff, keep up the interesting report. :)
 
Yeah, it turns out you can actually polish a turd! The water park stuff below also created some great foot choppers and made it seem faster. This was probably the biggest surprise of the trip for me!
 
So next up we got the ferry down to Delaware and were planning on splitting up the driving down to Williamsburg by stopping by a couple of the smaller seaside parks down this way.
The weather had other ideas.

There was a torrential downpour that flooded the coastal road down to Ocean City so the police closed the road. We got diverted further inland and decided that it wasn't worth the hassle for a boomerang and it was unlikely to be open anyway. It also meant I didn't have to deliberate over doing a zipper because those things look awful!

We decided to visit an original vintage diner instead called "Exmore Diner". It was awesome and the food was great. Would recommend for anyone who wants to try the real deal!

We then drove across a spectacular bridge and arrived at Williamsburg in time to go to a dog themed pub. Yay.

Busch Gardens Williamsburg

This park had been my number one park to-do for years and honestly I hadn't expected to ever get there so I was ecstatic to go! BGT is my favourite park so I was super keen to see it's sister park! The day we had chosen was also a food and wine festival day and as well as being part of the week celebrating the Loch Ness Monster's 40th anniversary. Sweet!

You can see instantly why this park continually wins the most beautiful park award, there is lush vegetation everywhere and everything is well landscaped. First up we did the Loch Ness Monster! This was another bucket list cred for me and whilst it rode like your usual arrow, slightly jolty it was an enjoyable ride. It looks stunning and you can tell they've looked after it well. The B&Ms are all really good fun, loved Alpengeist's theming and Apollo is nice how it goes out over the landscape.
Tempesto wasn't bad and I enjoyed Invadr. I think I said to David at the time "if Wickerman is this good I'll be content" or something along those lines. I know some slate it but for a fun family woodie it fits the bill nicely. Verbolten! This little ride is awesome. The indoor bit was fun and the big drop outside is very pleasant and scenic. One of the final turns is quite forceful too! Obviously I would have liked to have done BBW but I can see why people say this is a fitting replacement. It was my low key favourite of the day! Battle for Eire was decent, don't care much for those kind of things but it was one of the better VR things I'd done. We also saw the wolf talk thing which was cool.

We had some amazing ribs at lunch and later tried a couple of offerings from the food and wine festival. They were doing 40c beer samples in the german festhaus so obviously we had to stop by and David tried some other beers too. They were doing 40c popcorn to celebrate Nessie so obviously had to get some of that too! All of the food and drink lived up to the hype and was lovely! It really adds to the whole experience. Commemorative nessie merch was on sale as part of the celebration week which was another nice touch.

Despite it being a Sunday it wasn't overly busy but it did get busier in the evening as I think locals were coming for the food and wine festival.

A florida-style tropical thunderstorm proceeded to drench everyone in the park at closing which was delightful but we'd been lucky that it had come at this time and not earlier (although I think I would have just eaten more food instead of rides haha). I still managed to get a photo in the nessie ride car outside the entrance, albeit looking slightly like a drowned rat. Cred dedication.

Overall I loved the park and it lived up to the hype which was fab! It's definitely one of my top parks from the trip and also in general. I'd still rate Tampa just above it only because it has a more exotic vibe because of the theming (and probably due to nostalgia) but it is a stunning park! The two parks are equal in thrills and quality in my opinion. Great day!

I'll leave you with the cute video the park posted a while back for Nessie
 
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King's Dominion
This day was pretty wet. It was one of those days where it rained on and off all day and just wasn't amazing park weather, however all of the essential creds were got.
Volcano was down which I was a bit annoyed about but David assured me I wasn't missing much. I seem to remember reading other trip reports where people were hyped for it because it was unusual and it was either down or crap. So I guess oh well. The kiddie woodie was also down all day (possibly due to the rain). This was annoying but we did the clone or similar one at King's Island later so no big loss.

I305
This coaster was one I was really looking forward to because I was so curious about it. The black out coaster. The coaster people hate because it's TOO intense. What on earth is it going to be like I thought. Am I going to live? Why does this coaster exist? I had many questions.

So it's intense, but not as bad as I had expected. My vision went a little weird, like there were some darker blotches but that could have just been the wind?? Is that what greying out is?? I didn't find it overly intense, I still enjoyed it. I just didn't quite "get" it. It has that super intense bend, it has some airtime, it whips you around some turns with ridiculous speed but it didn't seem to fit into a coaster category very well compared to other things I'd ridden. I enjoyed it but probably wouldn't rank it super high.

Twisted Timbers
So, my first RMC. I was hyped for this too because it was my first RMC and obviously something pretty different to everything else I had ridden so far. The theme is cool too with the apples everywhere. I loved the drop inversion which is awesome with lapbars and the next few elements as they swooped around. I wasn't a massive fan of the jolty bunny hop bits. To reference the pov I enjoyed everything up until 1:15, then it got a bit uncomfortable, the angled airtime hills especially. My least favourite element was the one at 1:26 where you think you're going one way, but it quickly changes direction. If you had your hands in the wrong place you could easily smack people in the face (which I didn't do but I had to watch it). All of the inversions are great but these bunnyhop bits just seemed excessive and uncomfortable.

Things of note from the rest of the park:

Dominator- I couldn't give this a fair trial as we rode this in a torrential rain storm that started as they dispatched us. I couldn't open my eyes for half of the ride because it hurt too much. It seemed decent.

Grizzly- This was awesome. It just had a nice layout and it was nice how it went around the wooden part of the park. Not super smooth but not rough enough for it to ruin the ride.

Racer- I really enjoy the racing aspect of racers as it adds another dimension to the rides and this out-and-back was pure fun. Yes it was a bit rough but still enjoyable.

Flight of Fear- This was a funny story. So we queued up and after like 15-20 mins got on, sat down and prepared for launch. The ride launched but then lost power after moving about 6ft and just cut out. It was as it someone had pulled the plug mid launch! The funniest bit was everyone's reaction as straight after it stopped- no-one was sure whether it was a breakdown or whether it was deliberate to freak people out (as they were messing around with launch announcements etc). The guy infront of us was like "it's a joke, they're messing with us!" and everyone was nervously flapping for ages as the staff were confused before they finally confirmed that they could come and talk to us and then told us it was a breakdown. We had to get out of the car while the maintenance guys pushed it by hand back the 6ft it had "launched" before they launched a few test cycles. They had turned the house lights on so you could see the ride more clearly from the station, it looks a lot scarier in the dark! Luckily we then got on and got the cred. (How annoying would that have been if we had missed out! I don't think moving 6ft on the track counts!)

Anaconda was a bit painful but has a nice setting over the pond.

Backlot was weird but ok.

I had never done a Windseeker so decided to try one. I won't be doing one of those again in a hurry, I think that was the scariest ride of the trip! Worst than a star flyer I think, which I do on occasion. We also did some other flats and mopped up all of the available creds. The choose your own topping macaroni was good. Overall we had a good day but could have done without the soggy bits.
 
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SilverArrow said:
My least favourite element was the one at 1:26 where you think you're going one way, but it quickly changes direction.
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I've said this many times before about RMCs - some of their off-axis stuff is twisting just for the sake of twisting and doesn't actually add anything to the ride. I can understand why you disliked that bit.
 
Hixee said:
I've said this many times before about RMCs - some of their off-axis stuff is twisting just for the sake of twisting and doesn't actually add anything to the ride. I can understand why you disliked that bit.
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That's exactly what I said to David at the time. I felt like they were doing it for the sake of it.
 
Six Flags America
I had heard a lot of negative things about this park and this was probably my least favourite park of the trip, however I still had a good day.

Compared to great adventure this park is pants so my first two six flags experiences were quite polarised!

Coaster Notes
Superman- This was the worst of it's kind that I have done by quite along way. It was quite rough and half the ride is either a helix or a flat straight section. Not sure why it is so different from all of the others????
Joker's jinz was cool, after doing flight of fear it was cool to compare it and it was decent.
Batwing. JUST GROSS. I'd never done one of these before and I wasn't looking forward to it. The whole seating arrangement is gross as you spend far too long waiting on your back to either go/up the lift/or pull into the station etc. If you were a person who got sick on coasters/or panicked or anything I can imagine that this would be very unpleasant! The layout has a lot in it but none of it you actually want to do because it's so rough and gross.
Roar- was a bit too rough to enjoy. I think we talked about whether this would be a good candidate for an RMC. Possibly, but we concluded that SF would probably never spend anything on this park. The layout was decent but I just felt like I was being rattled around.
Mind eraser was gross, as expected.

I had calculated that I my last cred of the day would be my 300th. Apocalypse had been down all day so far and I didn't want it to reopen after I had done wild one as I didn't really want a stand up as my 300th. We decided the best plan of action was this.

This was nice and apocalypse was in view so we could keep an eagle eye out.
Finally it opened and we went to get the cred, which was less uncomfortable than green lantern but still nothing super enjoyable. We then went to ride wild one! This was a fun old coaster which was celebrated it's 100th year (including a relocation) last year. I later looked at my coaster count and it turns out that apocalypse could have been my 300th anyway but I did that with Olympia for my 100th so I just go for approximate milestones now! We both agreed that if this was an independent park, people would love it but it's because it's a sf park that people berate it. It certainly could do with the addition of something else not rough or uncomfortable to spice it up a bit. The water park looked quite scenic but the park is currently too much like a collection of rough vekomas with a sub-par intamin 'bonus'.
 
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SilverArrow said:
Batwing. JUST GROSS. I'd never done one of these before and I wasn't looking forward to it. The whole seating arrangement is gross as you spend far too long waiting on your back to either go/up the lift/or pull into the station etc. If you were a person who got sick on coasters/or panicked or anything I can imagine that this would be very unpleasant! The layout has a lot in it but none of it you actually want to do because it's so rough and gross.
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I found Batwing to be the best in the park actually! I really do love the Flying Dutchman models and I thought Batwing was by far the best out of the 3. Strange that you found it rough as it was pretty much glass smooth when I did it (and very forceful too!)
 
Pear said:
I found Batwing to be the best in the park actually! I really do love the Flying Dutchman models and I thought Batwing was by far the best out of the 3. Strange that you found it rough as it was pretty much glass smooth when I did it (and very forceful too!)
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Lol what!? Literally everyone in the world hates these coasters so I am very surprised that you like it. They have a reputation, like volares. I guess it's more uncomfortable than the traditional kind of rough but I know I didn't enjoy it. It was hard to pinpoint the individual failing points because together everything was so horrid and I was just waiting for it to end! it did have some force to it I will agree with that.
 
I've heard a lot of hate for Nighthawk at Carowidns but that ride is actually very rough and the layout isn't as good as its counterparts. I thought the ride was okay but much prefer the others!
 
I don’t think Flying Dutchman’s are anywhere near as bad as Volare’s, in fact I actually quite like them (not done Batwing, but Firehawk and Nighthawk). I agree though that the lying down position can be uncomfortable when you’re waiting around on the brake-run to go into the station, or just generally when the sun is beaming down on you. However, the actual coaster bit, I like.

SF America doesn’t seem great yeah; we bypassed it a few years ago when we were in DC because we had a limit on the number of parks we would do, and I chose Dorney Park over it since that has two custom B&Ms and this has mostly clones. Doesn’t seem like I missed much, though I’m sure I’ll get the creds some time.
 
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