After spending around 10 days in glorious Wrexham at the start of the summer holiday, I headed over to the US for just under 3 weeks. The original plan was to start in Denver, head across to Salt Lake City – both for new stuff - then go east to do some park revisits of places I hadn’t been to since 2010. As this plan was formulating, Madonna announced the dates of her greatest hits tour, with a stop in Denver at a perfect time, so I started booking stuff.
The plan to head east for park revisits changed since I decided instead to catch up with old friends in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, all very close to each other and places that had been on the “at some point” list, so I just decided to do it this time instead. As such, this became much less of a park trip, but still with a few places squeezed in.
Madonna cancelled/rescheduled the US tour dates, which was annoying, but I wasn’t stupid enough to fly to Denver just for that, so it wasn’t too much of a spanner in the works and the trip still went ahead as planned.
Denver
I think I got to my hotel at around 7pm on the first night, which was around 2am UK time, so I forced myself to stay awake for a couple more hours and slept early. This also meant waking up early the next day, so I spent it just walking around the city, which on a Sunday morning was dead apart from a handful of drunk/drugged/mentally ill homeless people wandering around and yelling at nothing. It was a nice city though. Like I said, I just wandered a bit and headed into a fairly decent art gallery.
There was also this house where a Titanic survivor/women’s activist/philanthropist used to live. Kathy Bates I think her name was.
Giving off theme park haunted house vibes
It was only early at this point, and I didn't have much to do, but I was near a cinema so went to watch Barbie before heading to one of the two parks here.
Lakeside Amusement Park
What a dump.
The Lakeside experience starts with the most thorough bag check I’ve ever seen, including crossing borders in the Middle East, then getting tickets from a tiny ticket podium – calling it a “booth” would be a gross exaggeration – before getting in. You can get a wristband or individual ride tickets, and at the ticket “counter” they said I could just get tickets inside, which I couldn’t, so ended up having to go back.
Kiddy cred first:
Other stuff:
I knew that there were two SBNO coasters according to RCDB, so here they are. F**k knows why they can’t get them running or just remove them. Well, money obviously, but still.
The park’s website – one of the worst park websites I’ve ever seen – said that the main draw here, Cyclone, was closed. I’d checked the website months previously in the planning stages of this trip, so I was hoping that things might have changed since then, but no, closed. I’ve just checked it again now and it’s still closed, so it basically hasn’t operated at all this year.
The only other operating coaster, Wild Chipmunk, was fun but felt sketchy as all hell. I enjoyed it though, and it only cost a couple of dollars to ride if I remember correctly. Probably soon to be SBNO as well.
So yeah, 5 coasters here, but only 2 actually operating in a park that looks and feels completely run down. I honestly don’t know how it stays open.
I had more time than I needed for just Denver, so did a day trip out to Glenwood Caverns the next day.
Glenwood Caverns
When I looked into doing something like this years ago, I saw that there’s a train from Denver that goes to Glenwood Springs and then on to Salt Lake City, so I’d thought about doing that. However, with it being a train in the USA, it wasn’t in the least bit convenient and would’ve required at least an overnight stay in Glenwood Springs, with the onward travel to Salt Lake City needing more or less another full day.
Nope.
Instead, I just day tripped it from Denver, which was easy enough. There were a few buses a day in each direction from Denver Union Station, taking about four hours. Driving would’ve been around 3 hours, so the bus option wasn’t too bad, and the scenery is all very nice anyway.
You take a cable car up to the park and get a great view of Defiance, which just opened last year.
It was a walk-on, so I did a couple of rides on it and really enjoyed it. It’s not very big, but it has the illusion of being bigger due to the location.
I headed to the screaming swing next, thinking of it as pretty much a “must do” at this park and knowing it would have crap capacity. Luckily, I only had to wait a couple of cycles to get on it, and I got the side facing down off the mountain. It’s another example of a fairly simple ride making the most of its location.
One of the “will I or won’t I” factors in deciding to head out here was the closure of Haunted Mine Drop, but it’s now reopened with some changes and a new theme, now called Crystal Tower. The ride vehicle is now enclosed in a cage, and I think there’s a different restraint, but it’s still basically just a seatbelt, which is better than a full OTSR in terms of feeling more exposed. It was very good, but I’m sure the original iteration was better. I fully understand getting rid of the haunted theme though. Now, you drop to the bottom and there are a bunch of glowing crystals on the floor and on the walls.
I’m sure it’s a reaction to the accident, but on every ride at the park the restraint checking was extremely thorough. Guests were told not to even touch the restraints at all; the ride ops did everything. It’s obviously reactionary to what happened on Mine Drop before, which was clearly park/operator error, and I guess it works towards helping guests trust the park again, but Crystal Tower never got anything resembling a queue while I was there.
I did a cave.
I did the alpine coaster, which had the longest queue I waited in at around half an hour, but it was pretty good.
Kiddy Cred:
I did the other cave, which brings you out to a viewing area where the most common pictures of the screaming swing are taken from, but I didn’t catch it running.
The final coaster was walk on, probably due to it being up a bit of a hill. This didn’t surprise me given the number of people at the first cave who decided not to bother once they realised a few stairs were involved.
I did a few rerides, but I was still finished with quite a bit of time left before the bus back, so ended up just getting some food at the restaurant overlooking Defiance and then heading back down and mooching around a Target near the bus stop for a bit.
I’m glad I made the effort though; it’s one of those quirky little parks that doesn’t look like much if you just look at a coaster list on RCDB, but is actually really decent.
Denver 2
I started the next/last day in Denver with a tour of the capital building, which was decent enough, and free. You can go in and have a wander about without being on a tour, but it’s the only way to get up to the dome, which has some decent views.
Then it was on to the second Denver Park.
Elitch Gardens
The park is right next to the Ball Arena, where I should have been going that night for the concert.
The observation deck thing was closed and not featured on any park map, so it’s just standing there, visible from many places in the city and looking ugly. Otherwise, the entrance area is quite nice, but stereotypical.
Kiddy cred:
One of the only interesting things here is Sidewinder, one of very few Arrow shuttle loops, which was closed.
Their Intamin Halfpipe was also closed. I’ve just realised I either didn’t take a picture of it or I missed it in the upload, but it looked pretty beaten up. RCDB has both of these coasters as open but looking into other recent reports/visits/reviews, it seems that they’ve both been closed for quite a while. What needs to happen for them to get listed as SBNO?
Oh well, at least there’s a Boomerang (not bad at all) and SLC (f**king vile) to make up for it.
No thank you:
I like an old-school Intamin drop tower, but it was also closed.
The woodie has been recently renamed as Twister 3. It was closed during the 2022 season and apparently had some work done on it and sold as a whole new experience, but I can only imagine how crap it must’ve been before if what I rode was the refurbished version. Not good at all.
Meh. Better than Lakeside, but that’s hardly a glowing endorsement. I feel bad for Denver. It’s a really nice city and the only amusements parks they’ve got nearby are those two s**tholes.
Next up: Salt Lake City and Lagoon.
The plan to head east for park revisits changed since I decided instead to catch up with old friends in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, all very close to each other and places that had been on the “at some point” list, so I just decided to do it this time instead. As such, this became much less of a park trip, but still with a few places squeezed in.
Madonna cancelled/rescheduled the US tour dates, which was annoying, but I wasn’t stupid enough to fly to Denver just for that, so it wasn’t too much of a spanner in the works and the trip still went ahead as planned.
Denver
I think I got to my hotel at around 7pm on the first night, which was around 2am UK time, so I forced myself to stay awake for a couple more hours and slept early. This also meant waking up early the next day, so I spent it just walking around the city, which on a Sunday morning was dead apart from a handful of drunk/drugged/mentally ill homeless people wandering around and yelling at nothing. It was a nice city though. Like I said, I just wandered a bit and headed into a fairly decent art gallery.
There was also this house where a Titanic survivor/women’s activist/philanthropist used to live. Kathy Bates I think her name was.
Giving off theme park haunted house vibes
It was only early at this point, and I didn't have much to do, but I was near a cinema so went to watch Barbie before heading to one of the two parks here.
Lakeside Amusement Park
What a dump.
The Lakeside experience starts with the most thorough bag check I’ve ever seen, including crossing borders in the Middle East, then getting tickets from a tiny ticket podium – calling it a “booth” would be a gross exaggeration – before getting in. You can get a wristband or individual ride tickets, and at the ticket “counter” they said I could just get tickets inside, which I couldn’t, so ended up having to go back.
Kiddy cred first:
Other stuff:
I knew that there were two SBNO coasters according to RCDB, so here they are. F**k knows why they can’t get them running or just remove them. Well, money obviously, but still.
The park’s website – one of the worst park websites I’ve ever seen – said that the main draw here, Cyclone, was closed. I’d checked the website months previously in the planning stages of this trip, so I was hoping that things might have changed since then, but no, closed. I’ve just checked it again now and it’s still closed, so it basically hasn’t operated at all this year.
The only other operating coaster, Wild Chipmunk, was fun but felt sketchy as all hell. I enjoyed it though, and it only cost a couple of dollars to ride if I remember correctly. Probably soon to be SBNO as well.
So yeah, 5 coasters here, but only 2 actually operating in a park that looks and feels completely run down. I honestly don’t know how it stays open.
I had more time than I needed for just Denver, so did a day trip out to Glenwood Caverns the next day.
Glenwood Caverns
When I looked into doing something like this years ago, I saw that there’s a train from Denver that goes to Glenwood Springs and then on to Salt Lake City, so I’d thought about doing that. However, with it being a train in the USA, it wasn’t in the least bit convenient and would’ve required at least an overnight stay in Glenwood Springs, with the onward travel to Salt Lake City needing more or less another full day.
Nope.
Instead, I just day tripped it from Denver, which was easy enough. There were a few buses a day in each direction from Denver Union Station, taking about four hours. Driving would’ve been around 3 hours, so the bus option wasn’t too bad, and the scenery is all very nice anyway.
You take a cable car up to the park and get a great view of Defiance, which just opened last year.
It was a walk-on, so I did a couple of rides on it and really enjoyed it. It’s not very big, but it has the illusion of being bigger due to the location.
I headed to the screaming swing next, thinking of it as pretty much a “must do” at this park and knowing it would have crap capacity. Luckily, I only had to wait a couple of cycles to get on it, and I got the side facing down off the mountain. It’s another example of a fairly simple ride making the most of its location.
One of the “will I or won’t I” factors in deciding to head out here was the closure of Haunted Mine Drop, but it’s now reopened with some changes and a new theme, now called Crystal Tower. The ride vehicle is now enclosed in a cage, and I think there’s a different restraint, but it’s still basically just a seatbelt, which is better than a full OTSR in terms of feeling more exposed. It was very good, but I’m sure the original iteration was better. I fully understand getting rid of the haunted theme though. Now, you drop to the bottom and there are a bunch of glowing crystals on the floor and on the walls.
I’m sure it’s a reaction to the accident, but on every ride at the park the restraint checking was extremely thorough. Guests were told not to even touch the restraints at all; the ride ops did everything. It’s obviously reactionary to what happened on Mine Drop before, which was clearly park/operator error, and I guess it works towards helping guests trust the park again, but Crystal Tower never got anything resembling a queue while I was there.
I did a cave.
I did the alpine coaster, which had the longest queue I waited in at around half an hour, but it was pretty good.
Kiddy Cred:
I did the other cave, which brings you out to a viewing area where the most common pictures of the screaming swing are taken from, but I didn’t catch it running.
The final coaster was walk on, probably due to it being up a bit of a hill. This didn’t surprise me given the number of people at the first cave who decided not to bother once they realised a few stairs were involved.
I did a few rerides, but I was still finished with quite a bit of time left before the bus back, so ended up just getting some food at the restaurant overlooking Defiance and then heading back down and mooching around a Target near the bus stop for a bit.
I’m glad I made the effort though; it’s one of those quirky little parks that doesn’t look like much if you just look at a coaster list on RCDB, but is actually really decent.
Denver 2
I started the next/last day in Denver with a tour of the capital building, which was decent enough, and free. You can go in and have a wander about without being on a tour, but it’s the only way to get up to the dome, which has some decent views.
Then it was on to the second Denver Park.
Elitch Gardens
The park is right next to the Ball Arena, where I should have been going that night for the concert.
The observation deck thing was closed and not featured on any park map, so it’s just standing there, visible from many places in the city and looking ugly. Otherwise, the entrance area is quite nice, but stereotypical.
Kiddy cred:
One of the only interesting things here is Sidewinder, one of very few Arrow shuttle loops, which was closed.
Their Intamin Halfpipe was also closed. I’ve just realised I either didn’t take a picture of it or I missed it in the upload, but it looked pretty beaten up. RCDB has both of these coasters as open but looking into other recent reports/visits/reviews, it seems that they’ve both been closed for quite a while. What needs to happen for them to get listed as SBNO?
Oh well, at least there’s a Boomerang (not bad at all) and SLC (f**king vile) to make up for it.
No thank you:
I like an old-school Intamin drop tower, but it was also closed.
The woodie has been recently renamed as Twister 3. It was closed during the 2022 season and apparently had some work done on it and sold as a whole new experience, but I can only imagine how crap it must’ve been before if what I rode was the refurbished version. Not good at all.
Meh. Better than Lakeside, but that’s hardly a glowing endorsement. I feel bad for Denver. It’s a really nice city and the only amusements parks they’ve got nearby are those two s**tholes.
Next up: Salt Lake City and Lagoon.
) but yeah, I did love it lots. Sadly, it sounds like the Haunted Mine Drop has been neutered somewhat - lemme tell ya, v1.0 was scary as hell. 
) but yeah, I did love it lots. Sadly, it sounds like the Haunted Mine Drop has been neutered somewhat - lemme tell ya, v1.0 was scary as hell. 
i'm fairly sure I did look at going there as well as Glenwood but with only 2 full days, 2 brewery tours and the fact I don't drive (something that in the USA seems to be looked upon as a disability on the same level as having no limbs) it would have been overly difficult and expensive.
