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Tex-Mex 2010 - Milestones Don't Matter

rollermonkey

Strata Poster
So...

I went to Tejas and Mexico City. Here's some pictures and words.

First, I went to Sandy Lake Park. It's a smallish park in Carrolton, T.X. that caters largely to groups and businesses. It's kind of like Stricker's Grove, but with more public access.

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They have a Pretzel dark ride, a Herschell Little Dipper, and a bunch of older flats. I tried to go here two years ago, but they didn't bother to open the day I was there, despite the calendar on the website and a phone call to the park to confirm. As soon as I got there this time, I figured out what was up. They are laid back, to a fault.

The guy who opened the gate dragged his feet, puttering around with everything and eventually actually settling down to accept cars in the lot about 5 minutes after the park was supposed to be open. The lady in the ticket booth hadn't even put her drawer in the register when I walked up o get ride tickets. The few ride ops didn't speak English and seemed put off that people had actually showed up and wanted to ride. I took a ride on each of the coasters, plus one spin on the Pretzel and got the heck out of there.

Over to 6FoT, I hoped to pick up all the coasters I'd missed the first time I'd been to Tejas. I didn't actually take any pictures, but I did get some video footage and all the credits.
 

rollermonkey

Strata Poster
About 2pm, I'd gotten on all the coasters, and I realized that I was still a little short to set myself up for La Feria the next day, so I added Joyland over in Lubbock to my plan. This worked well, as they don't even open until 7pm, and it's a 4.5 hour drive. Each way.

Fridays are wristband days, so it was a little busy, but most of the patrons were with smallish kids and they stuck with the smaller rides.

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This is a smallish park, located within a city park. They have a Galaxi, a Herschell Mad Mouse and (yet another) a Little Dipper, plus a variety of flat rides.

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So, after quick laps on the coasters, plus a ride on the ARM drop tower, I hit the road back to Dallas, to catch my flight to Mexico City the next morning.
 

rollermonkey

Strata Poster
Next morning, I met up with Eric at DFW, and we flew to Mexico City. After clearing Imagracion and Customs, we picked up our rental car and were off to La Feria Chapultapec.

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Parking for the place was kind of odd. It's located in a city park with lots of winding roads, and you have to find a place to parallel park. This is somewhat aided by guys with tattered ID placards hanging from they necks, who for just a few pesos, will point out an open spot to you.

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First order of the day was to hit up Cascabel, the park's Schwarzkopf Shuttle Loop. We had some difficulty finding the entrance at first, as the (not free) park maps showed the location as the station, when the entrance was actually by the spike after the loop, clear at the far end of the ride. The launch on this one was a bit slow, as there was significant hang-time in the loop.

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Following that, we headed for the park's centerpiece attraction Montana Rusa, a large wooden mobius coaster built in 1964 by NAD.

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It was pretty decent, with very slow fan turns, but surprisingly explosive ejector air at several places.

After riding the right lifthill portion of the track, we worked our way over to Montana Infinitum, the park's newest coaster. This used to operate on the German fair circuit before stops at Sunway Lagoon in Malaysia and Flamingoland in the UK. This Schwarzkopf triple looping coaster was forceful and still remakably smooth for a raide that's been moved so many times. It did have some annoying OTSR-type straps, though.

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Next we went back to Montana Rusa to ride the left lifthill portion of the ride.
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We were feeling pretty hungry, so we grabbed some tortas de bistek on the way to the last coaster in the park, a Reverchon spinning mouse named Raton Loco. The operations of this ride was a little odd. They'd load all the cars, and sned them all once. When they were all back in the station, a ride mechanic would climb up to the point where the pin gets raised and the cars start spinning and bend it back up into position.

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RCT inverting swinging ship?
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The park had a large number of classic flats such as both an Eyerly Loop-o-Plane and an Eyerly Roll-o-Plane. We did however leave about an hour before closing to go to Perimagico, not knowing how bad traffic would be.
 

rollermonkey

Strata Poster
Perimagico is an FEC located within the Perinorte Mall. Neither the park, nor the mall were in the GPS, and the address I put in the GPS brought me to the wrong mall at first. After some futzing around, I found a hotel with the Perinorte name, and tried driving there. Turned out that the place I wanted was 500 meters away from the first place, on the far side of a ridge. Go figure.

Anyways, we eventually found the place and I found a parking spot...

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...and we headed into the mall.

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The park's first coaster is a custom Tivoli, Huracan. The ride has a small lift hill, before proceeding around the perimiter of the park. Due to space constraints, there's a couple booster tires, but there's a cool bit where the track makes a tight helix around a trabant. Two laps, and we were ready to start looking for the exit.

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Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, we made a wrong turn, and instead of finding the way out, we found our way to a new, outdoor section of the park. Besides a Zamperla kiddie ride package, there was also a Zamperla Dragon (With no fencing! ) and a Wacky Worm.

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Bonus credit, like whut?
 

rollermonkey

Strata Poster
Although tempting, we did not stop here on the way back to the hotel. (We did Hard Rock Cafe instead.)

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The view out our hotel window:

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On Sunday, after breakfast, we headed out to 6 F.lags Mexico. To say that we were pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. Personally, I was very impressed with the level of theming and the beauty of the park.

Medusa absolutely towers over the entrance plaza.

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Since the VIP wristbands were only 200 pesos, we dropped the queso for them, DBJ.

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Our first stop was The Dark Knight coaster. I thought that the ones in NJ and IL were well themed. They got nothing on the 6.FM version.

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From there, we hit up the Roller Skater right next door and then it was off to Superman - El Ultimo Escape for Eric's #600.

Again, the theming in the queue was amazing. From the receptionist's desk and waiting area with leather sofas to the offices of Clark Kent and Lois Lane with dektop PC screens showing personalized photo screensavers, the Daily Planet building impressed the heck out of me. The ride was pretty darn good, too. As far as Morgan machines go, I'd have to say only SD2K is the better. We grabbed a second lap before heading on.

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Next up, we hit the large Tivoli coaster in the Polynesian section of the park.

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From that point, we decided to hit the park's two remaining Vekomas before the woodie with G-trains. In the end it didn't actually matter, as none of the three were actually rough enough to cause any headaches.

Both the Boomerang and the SLC were in a California themed section, complete with RTC styled Corona stand.

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We grabbed a late lunch of ribeyes and nachos before Medusa. Although fun, it was a little odd that there were some spots we weren't sure the train was going to make it, and other places where it was just flying. I still say that G-trains aren't the problem with these coasters. The ride in the back was decent and we rode a 2nd time, thanks to those VIP wristbands.

Anybody else find this a bit creepy?

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On the way out, we decided that taking 3 more laps of Superman would be a good idea. Well, it was and it wasn't. It was nice to ride a really good coaster repeatedly with little wait, but...

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I didn't know that the Teotihuacan Pyramids closed at 6pm, so this was as close as we could get.
 

Snoo

The Legend
TOTALLY could have put that in one post.. but congrats my friend! Finally get the legit 1,000. :)
 

Antinos

Slut for Spinners
It's good to hear somebody else's opinion of Mexico other than mine. I was surprised by SFM as well. Glad to hear that you liked Superman too. It's a great ride.
 

ECG

East Coast(er) General
Staff member
Administrator
Love the way you avoided your 1000th. LOL!
I gotta get back to Mexico City. We (the wife & I) have been there 4 times, but never ridden a single coaster. I also think we stayed at the same hotel because we had a similar view of El Angel in the Paseo de la Reforma. My company's office is just down the street from there.
Really wish your trip hadn't been at the same time as the CF-Live so that I could have joined you.
 

RCF

Strata Poster
You could've mentioned you were in Tejas my friend. I'm dyin down here :wink:

But awesome trip, great way to get a milestone.
 
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