Time for the last part now! I’m going to try and keep it a little shorter than the last update if I can!
Part 4 – Post-Live Add-On
Day 12 – Thursday 5 August
Today Jerry had arranged a surprise park (much to Brad’s annoyance). Turns out it was
Lakemont Park, home of this:
Leap the Dips, the oldest coaster in the world!
It definitely had some old time charm, but it was so much fun. We were all in hysterics all the way round, with some really harsh ejector that literally threw you from the coaster. It has no restraints at all, meaning you basically have to hold yourself in. It was a lot of fun and easily put El Toro to shame…
We rode Skyliner next, see?
This ride was distinctly meh, with there only being one vaguely fun pop of airtime. We did go for the re-ride though, we had the tickets so we figured we might as well!
Lakemont Park was deserted and to be honest, the park wasn’t that special. If the Toboggan had been open and we cared enough we might have been able to spend a whole afternoon at the park, but we’d finished up what we wanted to do in a couple of hours. It was a nice way to break the huge drive back to Jerry’s and we got to ride the oldest roller coaster in the world! It was fun.
I got a bit bored in the car on the next stage of the journey, so I took some more pointless pictures:
It was just miles and miles of this:
Watch out for the ‘Falling Rock’. There’s only one, but be careful:
We were home!
Not much else to write about from this day, so I’ll leave it there.
Day 13 – Friday 6 August
Another two parks today, including the best wooden and steel roller coasters in the world. That’s right, we were at
Six Flags New England and later on we’d be at
Lake Compounce.
Unfortunately Six Flags New England was another one of the retarded Six Flags parks with no bins on the station platforms, meaning I’d have to pay for lockers all the time if I wanted to take my camera. I couldn’t be ****ed with this, so again I didn’t bother with the camera.
When we got to the park, and finally got through the gates, there was a massive queue because there was a big show in the middle of the midway. As they released the crowds there was a stampede towards Bizarro. It was truly the most horrible start to a day at a park. I got caught up in a group of kids and was seriously struggling not to just lamp them and bash my way though. Anyway, after that farce was over, we rode Bizzaro! I was very impressed by the ride, but I think I was expecting it to be a bit more like an El Toro. The airtime was fun, and the second half of the layout was cool with the pops of air and intense corners.
After this we headed over to Batman. Another fun little floorless (thanks to the ride-op for letting us sit at the front too) which was overall a good ride. I’d seen a lot about this ride from before I became a proper enthusiast, so it was cool to finally ride it. Next up was Mind Eraser. I think it was rubbish, but I can’t quite remember.
Nah, it was ****. We then headed over to the back of the park and rode Pandemonium. It was the same as the other spinners so I don’t need to go into anymore detail, do I? Then we rode Catapult, which was quite fun, and then Cyclone, which was not. I did like the fact they’d left the old track inside the structure, but the coaster was rough and uninteresting.
Next up was the kiddie credit, a new one for all of us and then onto Thunderbolt. Sadly it broke down just as we got in the queue, so we went to do Catwoman’s Whip before heading back to ride Thunderbolt. Neither of the them were anything special. Then we headed back to Bizzaro for one last re-ride before leaving the park. It grew on me the second time and I enjoyed it a lot more. It just sneaked into my top five.
Six Flags New England was my least favourite Six Flags park of the trip. Apart from Bizzaro it didn’t really have anything super-special and the stampede at the beginning really got the day off to a bad start. I wouldn’t mind re-visiting at some point and seeing if avoiding the stampede makes me like the park a bit more!
We left the park and headed on to Lake Compounce:
Apparently it’s:
We rode Wildcat first. It was a fairly tame woodie, with nothing really going for it. Still, it was a credit!
After this we rode Boulder Dash for the first time (see below), then onto Zoomerang for the last credit at the park. I thought this was the best Boomerang we’d done, and Gavin loved the trains:
They were two-tone! Overall the ride was extremely gay:
Anyway, back to Boulder Dash, the real reason we where all here.
This coaster was seriously incredible. I know we were taking the piss out of Taylor and Marc and the other guys who haven’t ridden it, but you guys need to ride this. The lift is great, barely getting more than 15ft off the ground:
The train makes a slow flat turn at the top of the hill and then swoops right down the first drop and around the bottom of the trees and flies back over the lift hill. By this point it already feels like it’s flying:
It then shoots back off into the forest:
It has that extremely incredible feeling of uncontrollability. I think this is why it ranks so highly. It uses the terrain
so well that it has to turn and jump around to miss boulders and other obstacles that clearly couldn’t be removed during manufacture.
It then goes well away from the park and continues to surprise with some incredible double downs and ups, as well as some brilliant corners. It then comes flying down another swooping drop and continues along the edge of the forest with airtime hill after airtime hill.
This is the only real part of the ride that feels like it has been made by the designers to suit their plans, not just ‘made-up-as-they-went-along’. Knowing this I was worried it was going to lose some of its flair, but it carries so much speed over the hills you’d never really know.
The ride was instantly at my #1 spot, without question. It was everything that a coaster should have been. It was fast, exhilarating, out of control, immersive, forceful and extremely fun. At night the ride gets
even better. You can just hear the coaster, the screaming and the incredible rush of nearby objects.
*sigh* Boulder Dash truly is a remarkable coaster. After re-riding it over and over and over again we were finally on the very last train of the night. CoasterForce had the back of the train, and everyone was so psyched (including the crazy man in the black shirt, remember him Gavin :lol: ) and it was great.
We left the park at closing time, and the entrance looked nice all lit up:
Lake Compounce was a really nice park. It was leafy and green, had free-soda again (which, like I said earlier, gave the park a much closer feel) and it had a great atmosphere. It’s also got Boulder Dash. This is one of very few rides I’ve done where I think everyone
has to ride it. We started the drive home in such good spirit, we’d had such a great time.
Day 14 – Saturday 7 August
Playland Park,
Astroland,
Luna Park and
Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park were order of the day today, with the last three being at the world famous
Coney Island.
First park of the day was Playland Park in Rye. It was a really small park with four credits. To be honest we weren’t really there for anything else. Still, it had a picturesque entrance:
We rode the Volare first, which was like a cross between being sat in a coaster and lying in a coffin. It rode ok, but it certainly was not very fun. It does have a cool lift though.
Next we rode the woodie, Dragon Coaster. It was fun, but like many of the woodies, highly average. It was fun being eaten, digested and shat out by the dragon though:
Then it was time for Crazy Mouse. The
ONLY interesting thing about this credit was that Gavin wasn’t allowed to ride for being too tall. It certainly was crazy! Still, Brad and I ‘enjoyed’ it:
We got the kiddie credit and left. Playland Park was nothing special. It was old, but it didn’t feel like the good old. It felt a bit run down really. Next we drove to Coney Island and got a cool view of the city:
We parked up and walked towards the parks, with Brad getting uncomfortable walking through the streets. Essex had toughed him well. :roll: Nah, he wasn’t that bad! It was the traffic that really scared him! First up was Astroland and the Cyclone:
Now I know Brad hated it, but that’s because he’s a moron
. It was old, it was fun. Yeah it was a little bit rough, but it had some pretty sweet, albeit unexpected, airtime and it has a cool layout. The Cyclone was another one of those rides that I’d wanted to ride for years and it was really fun.
Next up was Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park. We only really visited this park for this:
The world’s first? largest? I don’t know. Brad opted out of this one, so Gavin, Jerry, Aidan and I rode in one of the swinging cars where the carriages run in these rails:
It was really odd, but not as scary as I thought it would be. It did give some fantastic views though. The busy crowds on the beach:
The truly massive ex-chairswing:
Then for the last park of the day we headed next door to Zampera Land, or:
It was basically just a load of Zamperla’s new rides in a car park.
The only ride worth talking about was Air Race:
An extremely odd and unreliable ride, but it was quite a lot of fun. Brad opted out of this one too, and I guess if you don’t really get on with spinning rides this wouldn’t be good. Still, when we finally got on we had fun. I’m looking forward to seeing Jerry’s POV of this ride to see how well he captured it.
We’d got all the rides we wanted to on Coney Island, so went to Nathan’s for hot-dogs and corn-dogs, which were really good. I really liked all of Coney Island, it had such a great feeling of classic, old fashioned, busy fun. We headed back to the car and decided to take a quick tour of the city at night. We started off driving to Brooklyn to get the views of the city at night:
It was gorgeous:
We stopped off at couple of places along the way, including Little Italy and Chinatown, which were really cool. We also went to the Village which seemed really vibrant and bustling. We went to Washington Square Park:
And then to Time Square:
This was another one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit (well, all of NYC was, but Time Square is one of the bigger landmarks) and it did not disappoint. The amount of light was incredible! Tourist alert!
It was so alive, even at midnight:
Brad enjoyed it too:
After wandering around for a bit we headed back home. We’d had a fantastic day, but New York was truly mesmerising. I can see why it’s called “The City That Never Sleeps” and why Jerry fell in love with the place all those years ago!
Day 15 – Sunday 8 August
Today was theme park free, we’d be spending the day in New York again. We were in no rush to get up, had a leisurely breakfast and headed into town. We dropped Gavin off with his friend and said our goodbyes. The next stop was Jerry’s office. He’s got one hell of a set-up in there, and his rooms and rooms of computers and satellite links and TV systems were pretty sweet. We headed out to the roof for the view of the city:
I’m sure you’ll agree, spectacular.
We also got our photos taken with the backdrop that is often used on the news apparently:
Next was the Empire State Building, pictured here next to Madison Square Garden:
It’s mind-bogglingly tall:
We then just wandered around loads of the bits of the city. We went back to Time Square, the Rockefeller Center and Central Park (among other things). Just walking around was fun.
Central Park was nice too:
Finally, we come to the last photo of this trip report. I’m very pleased with how it came out, and for me it captures that something about New York. Not sure what or why, but I like it.
So we headed back to Jerry’s for dinner, got all packed up and were ready to leave. We said our goodbyes to Aidan and Christine and went to the airport. I’m not going to lie, it was a fairly emotional goodbye at the airport (for me at least). Jerry went and we got checked in and waited in departures. I can summarise the rest of the story quite quickly, the flight was less comfortable than the outbound flight. We didn’t have the legroom or recline-ability like we’d had on the way out and it was generally more uncomfortable. We got back to T5 on Monday morning, I said goodbye to Brad, got picked up and drove home.
So that brings my report to an end. 16 days, god-knows-how-many-thousands-of miles, 113 new credits, 19 new parks, loads of great new friends and tonnes of excellent experiences later and my tale is finally over. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, and I’m sorry it’s been very long, I did get a bit carried away.
Now it’s time for me to say the thank you(s)…
Firstly, I guess thanks got to all of those who joined us for the individual days. Kevin, Ben, Laurel and Athena at Kings Island. It was nice to finally meet some of you guys that I’ve seen on the forums and whatever. It was fun. Next up would be Emily, Marcus’ girlfriend. Again, another great person to add to the list of people I’ve met (and hopefully made friends with!) on this trip. Tom’s next! I thought it was really good of you to come along and join us for the day, you were a great sport and I think you fitted in perfectly (including some very good harassment of Taylor!). Also, cheers for recommending the BBQ place, that was excellent too. I hope we’ve inspired you to come to some more Lives in the future. Finally, Matt! Top bloke, really top bloke. Brilliant sense of humour and even though we only met twice he had me cracking up all day. Especially his announcer voice on Disaster Transport. Loved it.
Now I guess it’s Marc, Marcus and Taylor’s turn (alphabetical). After spending about eight days with you guys I feel like we really got on well. I don’t know if you guys feel the same (and I hope you do) but I feel like I genuinely made friends with you guys. It was great, thanks for ‘accepting’ (I know it’s a lame word but I can’t think of anything else right now) me and making the trip so fun.
Next up I guess are Brad and Gavin! I was excited to meet Gavin after finding out he was joining us for this trip. His forum posts can be priceless and you’ve got a brilliant turn-of-phrase in real life too! Brad also for coming with me on this trip. You’re credit-whore nature and wrong opinions were great!
Finally I think it’s my turn to thank the Hawkins’. Obviously, first of all thanks to Christine for being a great host. I know she’s unlikely to read this, but I have to say it. Next up is Aidan! What a menace! Really nice to meet you mate, it was great. Last but certainly not least it Jerry. You’ve helped me (and Brad too) sort ourselves out, even if we did test your patience several times! You also were a great host and did a great job looking after us! So thanks!
Hopefully I’ve not forgotten anyone, I don’t think I have! Overall this trip was incredible! We rode some amazing coasters met some amazing people and generally had a great time. I’m pleased that everything worked out, for the last six months (after booking the flights) I’ve been looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. I feel like I’ve made some great friends along the way (hopefully you all feel the same!) and its been brilliant. Thanks.
Until next time…
Matt
