witchfinder
Giga Poster
We’re recently back from our 3 week road trip through Western Canada, with a short drop into Idaho and Montana along the way, and while this wasn’t primarily a theme park trip, there was a chance to pick up a few creds along the way which I obviously took advantage of.
I’ll share a few highlights from the rest of the trip once I’ve got the park reports out of the way, but let’s get on with what you all really care about first eh?
Playland (22nd August)
We started our trip in Vancouver on 21st August and our visit coincided with the annual PNE Fair, which takes place in the exhibition area that Playland occupies year-round. As a result there was much more to do than just visiting the amusement park, including live music, full-contact jousting, animatronic dinosaurs, performing dogs and more variations of fried food than you could possibly imagine.
With the event open until 11pm, we arrived at lunchtime, focussed on the other attractions to begin with and so I picked up the twilight ride pass at 5pm to save a few dollars. There was only one ride to start on, the park’s vintage woodie and the oldest coaster in Canada, known simply as Coaster.
Here’s where the operational nightmares that give this report its name began. The queue for the ride didn’t seem too bad but it soon became clear that I was in for a pretty long wait as the coaster was only running one train (despite having another one on the transfer track) and the ride ops were not filling the empty seats even though that’s what it said they would do on the ride information board, so I was frequently seeing trains dispatched with single seats available here and there and on some occasions even entire rows empty! To be fair, the ride ops were dispatching the trains pretty quickly once they returned to the station but it was still frustrating.
So ultimately I waited about 45 minutes in the blazing sun and went for the back row as I’d heard the tales about the airtime at the back. It certainly lived up to its reputation, with the most ridiculous ejector airtime I’ve experienced, which combined with the buzz bars meant I was standing up on nearly every drop. I honestly have no clue how smaller riders aren’t flung from the train but as far as I know there’s never been an accident on the ride.
(This was about the only photo I got of the ride in action as most of the structure is behind a load of buidlings!)
Aside from the insane airtime it’s a pretty straightforward cyclone-style layout which was pretty rough in places, especially on the corners, so the airtime really is what makes the ride. I would say this is probably the most scared I’ve ever been on a rollercoaster, although I was still laughing as I went around.
With the signature ride done I then headed off to get the other two creds, both of which are kiddie coasters. I was concerned that I was in for more long waits but it turned out most of the other rides in the park had minimal queues. So first I did the Kettle Creek Mine, a cute coaster that would probably offer some decent airtime on its singular hill if it went a bit faster.
After that I went to the park’s newest cred, Bug Whirled, which is every park’s go-to kids coaster these days - the SBF Visa spinning coaster. This was probably the best-themed ride in the park and it had a couple of trains’ wait, which is the longest I’ve ever had to wait for one of these things. Bizarrely they had three ride ops on this ride, one of whom was measuring the smaller riders while the other two were going through an incredibly laborious loading process where all the seatbelts were checked, then the restraints went down which were then checked by two ride ops. I know it’s a kiddie cred and safety is paramount but this was a bit over the top! Anyway, I got my ride after around ten minutes wait – three disgraceful laps – and then we headed off for some food and other Fair activities for a while with the intention of returning to Playland once the sun started going down.
We returned around 9pm and my hope was that the queues had died down and I could get a couple of night rides on the Coaster. One look at the queue dashed all those hopes as it was no shorter than it was earlier and the idea of standing around for 45 minutes didn’t really appeal as we were starting to get tired and it was at least half an hour’s journey to get back to our AirBnB. So instead we wandered around looking for something else to ride, but the only other appealing ride was the drop tower which also had a pretty long queue, so just to try and get some value out of my wristband I rode a couple of the temporary carnival rides that are added to the lineup while the Fair is on.
Haunted House was a Ghost Train on a Truck but the ride system was pretty robust for this kind of ride and while it was incredibly short, it was also pretty creepy and intense as most of the animatronics were people being tortured or killed in some way, plus the usual scary little girl and skeletons of course.
And finally Stampede Fever was a quirky Wild West themed funhouse which looked like it was going to be quite extensive from the outside but turned out to be tiny.
It was only about 9:30 but we’d had a long first day in the country and were still tired from travelling so we called it a night. We had a really good day overall at the Fair but I’d have to say Playland is a bit of a dump tbh – apart from the woodie, the ride selection is pretty bad, mostly being travelling fairground type rides, and the park itself wasn’t very nice to look at and seemed a bit sketchy in places with loads of staff trying to get you to play the midway games.
I believe there are plans to expand the park once the SBNO Corkscrew has been sold, so maybe they will invest in a decent modern thrill coaster – they certainly need one. On the positive side though, riding the Coaster was a pretty amazing experience and I was disappointed not to get a night ride.
So all in all, not a great day rides-wise but this was just the beginning of the trip and better was to come.
A few random pics of the Fair and Playland to finish off...
I’ll share a few highlights from the rest of the trip once I’ve got the park reports out of the way, but let’s get on with what you all really care about first eh?
Playland (22nd August)
We started our trip in Vancouver on 21st August and our visit coincided with the annual PNE Fair, which takes place in the exhibition area that Playland occupies year-round. As a result there was much more to do than just visiting the amusement park, including live music, full-contact jousting, animatronic dinosaurs, performing dogs and more variations of fried food than you could possibly imagine.
With the event open until 11pm, we arrived at lunchtime, focussed on the other attractions to begin with and so I picked up the twilight ride pass at 5pm to save a few dollars. There was only one ride to start on, the park’s vintage woodie and the oldest coaster in Canada, known simply as Coaster.
Here’s where the operational nightmares that give this report its name began. The queue for the ride didn’t seem too bad but it soon became clear that I was in for a pretty long wait as the coaster was only running one train (despite having another one on the transfer track) and the ride ops were not filling the empty seats even though that’s what it said they would do on the ride information board, so I was frequently seeing trains dispatched with single seats available here and there and on some occasions even entire rows empty! To be fair, the ride ops were dispatching the trains pretty quickly once they returned to the station but it was still frustrating.
So ultimately I waited about 45 minutes in the blazing sun and went for the back row as I’d heard the tales about the airtime at the back. It certainly lived up to its reputation, with the most ridiculous ejector airtime I’ve experienced, which combined with the buzz bars meant I was standing up on nearly every drop. I honestly have no clue how smaller riders aren’t flung from the train but as far as I know there’s never been an accident on the ride.
(This was about the only photo I got of the ride in action as most of the structure is behind a load of buidlings!)
Aside from the insane airtime it’s a pretty straightforward cyclone-style layout which was pretty rough in places, especially on the corners, so the airtime really is what makes the ride. I would say this is probably the most scared I’ve ever been on a rollercoaster, although I was still laughing as I went around.
With the signature ride done I then headed off to get the other two creds, both of which are kiddie coasters. I was concerned that I was in for more long waits but it turned out most of the other rides in the park had minimal queues. So first I did the Kettle Creek Mine, a cute coaster that would probably offer some decent airtime on its singular hill if it went a bit faster.
After that I went to the park’s newest cred, Bug Whirled, which is every park’s go-to kids coaster these days - the SBF Visa spinning coaster. This was probably the best-themed ride in the park and it had a couple of trains’ wait, which is the longest I’ve ever had to wait for one of these things. Bizarrely they had three ride ops on this ride, one of whom was measuring the smaller riders while the other two were going through an incredibly laborious loading process where all the seatbelts were checked, then the restraints went down which were then checked by two ride ops. I know it’s a kiddie cred and safety is paramount but this was a bit over the top! Anyway, I got my ride after around ten minutes wait – three disgraceful laps – and then we headed off for some food and other Fair activities for a while with the intention of returning to Playland once the sun started going down.
We returned around 9pm and my hope was that the queues had died down and I could get a couple of night rides on the Coaster. One look at the queue dashed all those hopes as it was no shorter than it was earlier and the idea of standing around for 45 minutes didn’t really appeal as we were starting to get tired and it was at least half an hour’s journey to get back to our AirBnB. So instead we wandered around looking for something else to ride, but the only other appealing ride was the drop tower which also had a pretty long queue, so just to try and get some value out of my wristband I rode a couple of the temporary carnival rides that are added to the lineup while the Fair is on.
Haunted House was a Ghost Train on a Truck but the ride system was pretty robust for this kind of ride and while it was incredibly short, it was also pretty creepy and intense as most of the animatronics were people being tortured or killed in some way, plus the usual scary little girl and skeletons of course.
And finally Stampede Fever was a quirky Wild West themed funhouse which looked like it was going to be quite extensive from the outside but turned out to be tiny.
It was only about 9:30 but we’d had a long first day in the country and were still tired from travelling so we called it a night. We had a really good day overall at the Fair but I’d have to say Playland is a bit of a dump tbh – apart from the woodie, the ride selection is pretty bad, mostly being travelling fairground type rides, and the park itself wasn’t very nice to look at and seemed a bit sketchy in places with loads of staff trying to get you to play the midway games.
I believe there are plans to expand the park once the SBNO Corkscrew has been sold, so maybe they will invest in a decent modern thrill coaster – they certainly need one. On the positive side though, riding the Coaster was a pretty amazing experience and I was disappointed not to get a night ride.
So all in all, not a great day rides-wise but this was just the beginning of the trip and better was to come.
A few random pics of the Fair and Playland to finish off...
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