Every year since starting to post here on Parkscope, I've transitioned away from doing trip reports to doing year end reviews of all the coasters I rode in any given year. It saved me a lot of time so I could do other things, but also because I grew tired of writing them. Once the pace increases, the challenge increases with it, after all.
2019 was not projected to be another epic year as the prior two had. Then I had some expendable income, and that's what it became. 76 coasters later, 2019 became my second most productive year in terms of coaster count. I wound up visiting 30 states & the District of Columbia, 8 countries on 4 continents. There were 45 parks/FECs/etc (46 if you count the Helen Mountain Coaster I was denied due to weather) along with 12 fairs or carnivals (10 of which had coasters, 4 classified as state fairs).
2017 100 Coasters
2018 100 Coasters
Showing posts with label Trip Report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trip Report. Show all posts
Friday, January 3, 2020
Monday, August 21, 2017
Ontology of Coaster Enthusiasm (As viewed through an Canadian credit whoring trip)
In the past, I've tried to provide some sort of review of concepts in the realm of theme park/amusement park fandom here at Parkscope. You can see variations on that here and here, for example. What is sometimes good is to extrapolate on ideas that are often thrown out as though everyone understands the terminology. Preaching to the choir is easy. It's everyone else that's the challenge. This past weekend, I took a trip that is extreme for most, and yet the sort of thing that is almost commonplace within the coaster enthusiast community, and beyond just offering a trip report, it is a good way to better describe that community to those in the theme park or non-theme park fan space who aren't familiar with it.
As detailed previously in "What is Theme Park Fandom?," coaster enthusiasts are a major sub grouping/umbrella term of theme park fans who emerged like the other tribes in the mid-1970s during the first great wave of modern American nostalgia movements. Coaster enthusiasts are generally, but not always, ride motivated rather than brand motivated. This doesn't mean that there isn't strong association with individual brands or companies, however the motivations behind those come from a different place. Disney is an all encompassing media corporation which is able to not only project the idealism of its founder through a vast number of channels, but also provide so many products (physical and content) for sale that one could spend their entire lives taking in nothing but fresh, new to them "Disney." Universal is similar.
However, for the regional park scene, this is not the case. Cedar Point cannot offer wall-to-wall Cedar Point; the park operates seasonally, and aside from the Peanuts characters which they have rights to, there is no never ending stream of external media to associate with. Smaller family run parks without any intellectual properties can offer even less. Their connections are still emotional, but stem primarily from things like geographic proximity and reactions to their attractions rather than the attractions' capability to act on their existing predilection to characters and stories. More simply put: fan communities like Cedar Point's are much more a result of how much people like the action of their roller coasters, not because the roller coaster is themed to Harry Potter.
No one understands this engagement more than coaster enthusiasts themselves. An exact number can only be guessed: millions watch videos on Coasterforce and Theme Park Review's Youtube channels, but only thousands join the official clubs such as American Coaster Enthusiasts, European Coaster Club, and Greater Ohio Coaster Club. Coaster enthusiasts still make up only a small fraction of the greater visitor base for theme parks, but they're often among its most vocal. Regional parks will often seek out feedback from coaster enthusiasts because of their large experience base of park going, and some individual enthusiasts become trusted advisers to manufacturers and park operators. Most enthusiasts are assumed to be comparatively casual: interested enough to pay money for publications or follow construction footage online, but not active in being regulars at coaster events or posting content. They are a sort of invisible mass known to be there and to occupy space at big coaster events, but unknown to the often insular worlds of the more hardcore in the scene.
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Life is a series of risk/reward equations. Getting up in the morning, leaving the bed, taking a shower, going to work, what we choose to eat, the entertainment we decide to observe, so on, so forth; they are all risky to varying degrees. Some people spend little to no time thinking about this; others see their lives become almost impassably difficult as anxiety from decision making wracks their minds. For me to pull off and try to find the Bayfield Fair, advertised on various signage posted along my route in rural Southern Ontario, is not a great risk in the grand scheme of things. Ontario is not a terrifying place in my estimation, and while it increased the overall likelihood I might meet a deer with the front of my car later in the evening, there was a 0% chance of cool rides and roller coaster "credits" by not going to the Bayfield Fair, and a >0% chance of that if I did go.
Bayfield's fairgrounds is close to downtown area and central square, with plenty of free parking available on surrounding streets. As I wandered up to the gate, I was informed there would be a $5 CAD fee to enter. I looked past the woman requesting the money at the midway; several games booths, a Round Up (no more classic a ride than that), and the unmistakable light and vinyl pattern of a Wisdom Dragon Wagon sign. The ride itself was obscured by food trailers, but there was a real possibility of a coaster! I couldn't hand over the money fast enough. To my right, a tent offered the ability to partake in "RibFest" for $22 CAD - this well outside of the accepted BBQ zone as I recognize it, and while it was possibly very good, I calculated the odds of pleasure were maximized by just the entry and the potential of another ride for the count.
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When I first became a "coaster enthusiast" back in 1996 watching those old Discovery Channel specials, I didn't know anything about the scene, the mentality of the people doing it, the goals of the club, anything like that. In my first two years in the hobby, I approached it as though the only thing that mattered were the biggest rides. I wound up skipping parks and coasters I regretted missing because of that. I could have easily been on Screechin' Eagle, Americana Park's airtime filled wooden coaster back in 1997. Same with the Clementon Jack Rabbit in New Jersey, which came down after the 2002 season. I never rode what I considered to be "carnival coasters" - portable style smaller steel coasters like Dinosaur Beach's Spinning Mouse and Golden Nugget, or Morey's Zyklon. That all changed when I went to my first coaster event, ACE's Ultimate Preservation Conference way back in 1999.
Many coaster enthusiasts probably had, at some point, a mentality like mine at age 14. Ride the big stuff, don't care about the rest. But it isn't the late 1990s anymore. People who engage with the coaster enthusiast community directly have probably heard a whole host of terms created in the USENET era to describe what the most hardcore of the hobbyists do. Much like birders' life lists, many coaster enthusiasts keep what are most often referred to as "counts" or "track records". Coaster Counts consist not of coasters in the parlance, but "credits," and one can only obtain a "credit" by riding a roller coaster. Enthusiasts who choose to keep record of their coaster riding do so in a variety of fashions: my master list has been kept in a spreadsheet format, constantly updated, since 1999. Richard Bannister utilizes a database he built himself. Some people still use paper records. Others choose to use websites like Coaster-Count and Coastercounter.
Unlike birding life lists, "counting roller coasters" is not nearly as cut and dry. Birds are birds: Most people who bird are unlikely to discover entirely new species, so their lists are based off known species of birds, each counted precisely one time. On the other hand, the definition of what is or is not a roller coaster and what is or is not a different roller coaster differs from person to person. Most people agree that a "roller coaster" is a ride that operates on rails powered by gravity. However, within that space, there is a lot of wiggle room.
Mountain Coasters were and are still a controversial topic among those who count: They roll. They certainly coast. They often have both rider control braking mechanisms and gyroscopic braking to limit speeds. Space Mountain at Disneyland features two entries on Roller Coaster Database, as the ride was entirely replaced. Incredible Hulk at Islands of Adventure, meanwhile, only has one entry in spite of nearly all of its track (station excepted) being replaced along with the trains. Wooden coasters by their very nature have their track beds and supports changed frequently. The layouts of even the most well known antiques have seen drop and turn profile changes, with most of the knowledge of that having been lost to time as irrelevant prior to the internet. In 2002, I rode the Looping Star at Margate Dreamland. Since then, the ride has found two new homes, its most recent being in the nation of Croatia. Some people will count it at each place; others (myself being one of these) would frown at the notion.
Perhaps the most extreme example possible to show what challenges there are in discussing "coaster counting": Knott's Wacky Soap Box Racers opened as Cycle Chase in 1976, but the low capacity of the Steeplechase style vehicles led to them being replaced with the higher capacity Soap Box cars for the 1980 season. Each of the four tracks on the roller coaster was independent, meaning that it could theoretically be removed from the ride and operated as its own individual roller coaster. When Soap Box Derby Racers was removed in 1996, it was replaced with the Togo racing looper Windjammer Surf Racers for 1997. There were two individual tracks to the ride with different layouts and lengths. Depending on one's predilection, the same space at the same park with only two fully constructed attractions could be counted to be as many as 10 coasters due to the modifications in vehicles and the number of individual tracks.
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Heading straight for the back of the midway, I wasn't accosted by a single games barker for a change. Perhaps that was Canadian good will, but I'm guessing the local authorities asked them not to yell at passersby they thought would be good marks for winning ring toss or roller bowler. It didn't take me long to arrive to the coaster, and, oh damn. Of course. The tell tale sign of the third rail. And there's the cord running from the train to the center, and yup, it's powered. The term "roller coaster" has two parts. The first, "roller," comes from the fact that the rides are supposed to roll over some sort of path or track. The second, "coaster," comes from the idea that once a roller coaster is released from either a launch or highest hill (aka the "lift hill), the ride is primarily powered by gravity until it hits the station brakes at the end of the ride. Powered coasters certainly roll on track, but they aren't powered primarily by gravity, but rather an electric (or occasionally, internal combustion) motor.
Some people still count powered coasters like the ubiquitous Zamperla Dragon, and their logic isn't unsound. The rides are powered, but are still intended to run and be like a roller coaster in terms of what it actually does. There are also things which both roll and coast that are generally not considered roller coasters: Alpine Slides have a defined track, defined vehicle, roll, and coast, but are not listed on RCDB or any coaster counting website. Pretzel Amusement Company has two surviving gravity driven dark rides: Devil's Den at Conneaut Lake and Hawnted House at Camden Park which appear and generally ride like classic dark rides, but also have chain lifts and wild mouse qualities. More controversial yet: Dollywood's Blazing Fury and Silver Dollar City's Fire In The Hole have electric motors which power the rides, but also has periods with no third rail and power during several gravity driven coaster style drops. Those who count coasters all have their own personal rationale for what does or doesn't count: For me, "powereds" and "relocates" are an uncrossable, incontrovertible "no" when it comes to being counted as a coaster.
Defeated, I looked back at the Rib Fest. I had fucked up, and I knew it. I also felt as though leaving at that point after only moments inside the fair would be seen as an affront to the woman who took my money: I, interloper, rejecting her community swiftly not because they lacked a particular ride designed for small children, but because they had brought one incompatible with my absurd demands. Risk/reward was all inside of my head, but rather than create any potential by which I would be inside that one rural Ontarian's head for the rest of the weekend and perhaps days, weeks, and months afterward, I turned and went back towards the food vendors. $22 was too much for me to accept spending for a snack, as I wanted to go drinking later. But the potential of whatever the hell a peameal bacon sandwich was for $5.50 seemed a good compromise. I ate it, texted my wife, took some pictures with my phone, and then felt satisfied that I could leave without demeaning the people Bayfield, Ontario.
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Coaster nerds are no different than other types of nerds. They too are obsessive to frightening degrees and willing to let abstract or meaningless concepts effectively ruin their lives in the search for meaning and acceptance. The act of counting invites activity that under no other conditions would be termed reasonable. I remember having a conversation with a coaster friend about traveling to Peru several years ago. I was interested in going, and they had been. Had they gone to Cuzco? Machu Picchu? No, they informed me. They had spent most of their time around Lima and been on every Wacky Worm in the country. This person is still very much in the hobby, and still going to very unexpected locales to find new coasters for their track record. In fact, she has the highest track record of any female in the world. She'll also tell you that it's very possible Dr. Lisa Scheinin has been on more than her; she just stopped recording her count (with a caveat: "Did you know she counted relocates?").
Anyone who is seriously into the coaster scene and tells you that when they first started there was no attraction to having a gaudy count number is lying. Everyone has their opinions, but the beefier the number, the more the experience, and the more the experience, the more merit that opinion often gets. Sure, there's the visual signalling via coaster t-shirts (like concert going, you never wear the shirt of the park you attend), patch jackets, signature lines, and Facebook avatars. But once you start actually interacting, the coaster count almost always seems to come out.
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Saturday morning, I woke up reasonably refreshed from my bed in Walkteron, Ontario. I had a coffee maker in my room, but I also had neglected to get smaller change than a $5 for housekeeper tip, forcing me across the street to the Foodland for a Starbucks iced coffee. At least then I could leave a toonie for maid. She did a decent job with what she was given, and realistically, it was probably also the wife of the owner. I know how these operations work, and when you've got a whole 10-12 rooms in the middle of nowhere and you're charging $63 USD to stay, corners get cut. Like how my venetian blinds were duct taped in the center to prevent them from falling in front of the A/C window unit. Things like that.
Walkerton is within reasonable distance of Owen Sound, Ontario without actually being in Owen Sound and thus charging Owen Sound pricing. The city there reminds me a bit of Sydney, Nova Scotia or Oswego, NY: port towns that accidentally wind up with tourists around. For me, Owen Sound has a clear attraction, and that was Story Book Park. It's a family operated kids park running on the border of the Canadian frontier, and it follows in the grand tradition of 1950s era and after "story book parks". Idlewild, which actually started life as a trolley park at the turn of the 20th century, is probably the best overall known of the storybook parks out there, but there's many more throughout the nation which have either changed drastically (Great Escape in Lake George) or maintained their theme with only occasional updates (Storybook Land in New Jersey). In lieu of "riding the movies", one interacts with the trademark free stories of yore through dioramas, moving displays (often with home built attempts at constructing audio-animatronics), and attractions intended to resemble various things from children's stories. A lot of them have a castle facade: Story Book Park is no different. Petting zoos are also popular, and again, Story Book Park offers that too.
Like many parks which are unmoored from big urban areas and population centers, there are challenges to attraction acquisition. Most of the rides are used: some of the rides probably predate the park they're in by a solid 15-20 years, if not much more. The sole coaster at the park, Python Pit, hasn't even been renamed. The name is synonymous with the Jeepers chain of Family Entertainment Centers, many of which acquired identical Miler models. This one in particularly began its life in Greenbelt, Maryland inside the Beltway Plaza Mall. Now, long after that facility has closed, it appears here in the back of a kiddie park in the middle of nowhere, Canada. And for me, unfortunately, I'm waiting for it to open. Rains have swept through on and off throughout the morning, so things need to dry before I can get on.
Lucky for me, there's actually something else to check out at this park beyond the storybook scenes. Haunted House is a self guided walk-through scare house constructed by someone at some point. The most effective scares come from blasts of air triggered by individuals movements. There's a couple good size scenes to check out along the way, and an undulating floor was installed to give it a little more dimension at points. It's nothing so great as to demand intercontinental transit to see, but the kind of thing that I find all too cool about the hobby of going to parks.
Nothing had happened over at Python Pit when I got back. Inquiring with employees, they'd have it up in just a few minutes. 5 or so minutes later, the covers were pulled back, and the test runs started. As I and a bunch of age appropriate for the ride (read: 3-5 years old) boarded, I went through the process of lowering my own restraint mechanism and locking it. I, perhaps sadly, know way too much about what to do on these rides. Coaster #817 began chugging up the lift hill - a whopping 11.5 feet - as rain began to pour again. Like most of Miler's kiddie rides, this is inoffensive. A curving first drop leads to a hill and descending helix before a pair of small angled "bunny hop" hills as it returns to the station.
Usually, rides of this sort have operators run it endlessly: as an enthusiast, I need only one lap to count it, but usually get 5-8. The first one is amusing. The second gets a "Hey, whoda guessed we'd actually had done this stupid shit?" feeling. The third the smile starts to recede. By lap 5, there's a sense of inner shame and a desire that it end already. I got it. I did it. That was fun to say I did. But I have better things to do even if each individual lap takes but 20-30 seconds to complete. Python Pit at Story Book Park ended after one lap, with the train blowing halfway through the station and needing to be pulled back by reversing the lift motor. I was spared the embarrassment as well as the possibility my camera bag might be soaked being left out in the rain. I also nearly managed to fall on the exit ramp, which somehow would be sadder than being left to ride the kiddie coaster for 5 more hideous laps. Mission accomplished: it was time to move on.
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For each people who have counted coasters, there are probably two who stopped. Most of those who stopped are the hobby's equivalent of lapsed Catholics; the people who believe in some sort of God and think the Pope is a good guy, but the idea of actually going to church every Sunday and putting money in the basket is something they no longer can connect with. They don't buy into the community aspect of it, they don't feel better about themselves from their communing with Christ on those terms, and they never feel the weight of their sins pass, no matter if they do the Hail Marys the priest prescribes in the confession booth or not. Religious fervor can be on their terms.
Why does the fervor leave? Enjoyment of roller coasters is replaced by many with enjoyment of the roller coaster community. The meritocracy of counting benefits those with many coasters, and thus it behooves one to ride many, many coasters. Most people new to the scene know about the big coasters and parks around them. Then they will go and seek out other big, gnarly rides wherever they can be found. Orlando and Los Angeles' metro areas are obviously popular places, but there are many, many other hubs of activity throughout the world when density of parks meets density of human beings. For all those bent on increasing their count, the balance of cost/benefit eventually begins to tilt. This is where one goes from the beginner/casual stage of enthusiasm into the intermediate/expert/"serious" zone.
What about the kiddie coasters at the big parks? What about the kiddie coasters at the small parks? What about kiddie coasters at indoor family entertainment centers? What about carnivals? Tracking carnival coasters is tough, especially when you don't count relocates - they move around all the time. A ride owned by one company can show up at an independent midway one week and be at a different company's midway the next. It might be put on a trailer in winter quarters and not seen for 10-15-25 years before being brought back out after some sand blasting and electrical work gets done. You might do every permanent coaster in your state - how about transportable ones? How about every permanent and transportable coaster in every neighboring state and province? States can be big. You ever see how long of a drive it is from Kemah to Amarillo? It's far. Real far. But even that can be cheaper financially to add 3-5-7 coasters to a track record when your alternative is getting on an airplane and flying internationally because you've been to every Cedar Fair or Six Flags park already.
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After making a quick phone call and making a switch on routing on my GPS, I wandered my way up to Blue Mountain, on the edge of the Georgian Bay. I've been to the region once before and went on the mountain coaster located at the local ski resort. However, that trip was in November, and by that time, Blue Mountain Go Karts has long since packed up for the season. This time, it was a Saturday in August, not one in the throes of winter. And while the rides are mentioned on their website, the woman who answered the phone assured me the coaster was available to ride. It's an Allan Herschell Company Little Dipper model coaster - RCDB notes it is of an older style for the ride with flatter curves. Rides like it are generally of a 1950s vintage, so who knows where it came from or how many owners had it before. It runs though, for sure- the skid brakes come in from the side and pinch the train through the station when its to be stopped using straight up wood as the friction material. The trains are original and still have the "AH" logo up front, and as far as sketchy Herschell coasters go, this is probably mid-pack in terms of fear that it would simply collapse under my weight. There's an urban legend in the hobby about it occurring to a train load of ACE members in 2008 at the now defunct Fun Spot in Indiana which was intentionally hushed up, but I can't confirm it.
This left me two hours of driving to my next destination with pretty tight windows to ensure that I'd be able to hit everything I wanted before I needed to be back in metro Toronto. I wound up eating a champion's lunch: bottled water, beef jerky, and an Oh Henry! bar. They're much more popular up north.
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Before the internet had dominance over all information ever, us fogies had to get books and magazines to know where to find amusement parks at. Tim O'Brien's Amusement Park Guides (5 editions were made) were a major source of info and included both amusement parks with and without coasters. I still reference them now when it comes to historical documentation, and even today there's stuff he mentioned few people seem to realize never went out of business. But the tome of tomes, the bible of coaster enthusiasm, that was Guide to Ride.
Guide to Ride was published in 1991, and following the philosophy I mentioned I came into the hobby with, it detailed every unique and large non-production model roller coaster in the country at the time. A supplement was published a couple of years later with new rides, but demand still existed for both to continue warrant them being printed (even when way out of date) well into the 1990s. The ACE Publications committee then worked hard on producing the final version of it, a hard bound bible of coaster riding known as Guide to Ride 2000. It, like the original, offered phone numbers, addresses, and basic directions to get to the parks as well as photos and descriptions of the rides, but expanded the reach of the original to include every and all known roller coasters in the US and Canada. It sold out an eternity ago. I honestly can't believe ACE hasn't just removed the listing from their publications page. Like, c'mon, there's no reprinting it. Does anyone even still have the proofs?
Ultimately there was never a need for another book like it. Duane Marden's Roller Coaster Database became the source for any and all info regarding coasters. He welcomed submissions from every corner of the globe too, unlike ACE. And the unlimited capacity of the net meant he could also catalog every historic ride too. There are over 8000 recorded entries on RCDB of coasters throughout the world and time itself. Each submission has been vetted by the site's main man, Duane himself. The expansion of knowledge about just how many coasters there were between RCDB and Guide to Ride 2000 versus what was available before was enormous. That knowledge also fed into the growth of the coaster enthusiast community via the internet and the desire of those new members to inflate their personal track record by any means possible.
New terms became en vogue among enthusiasts. "Credit runs," most often associated with the Jersey Shore and its enormous number of rides in a small geographical area, became common place. Rather than go to a park and ride the same coaster 10 times, there was increased cache in going to 10 parks and ride each coaster once regardless of what the coaster was. Credit runs would become ever more complex: single day turnarounds from flights, epic drives, oodles of kiddie coasters at arcades. The need to obtain this social cache expanded endlessly. When amusement parks would attempt to limit access to kiddie coasters by requiring adults to have a child with them to ride, coaster enthusiasts would beg parents for the opportunity to take their kids with them for the purpose of obtaining the nebulous credit. At coaster events, obtaining access to kiddie coasters (Rye's being most difficult) was often a major selling point for attendees. Barring that, those enthusiasts who had actually managed to produce offspring often watched as their kid rode the same ride 20 times in a row for the benefit of their fellow enthusiast.
This led to a pejorative term of endearment for enthusiasts who would partake in this behavior: "credit whores"(sometimes shortened to CreHo, one of many innovations from the late Matt "Mamoosh" Sullivan). Those willing to do whatever to get the credit; whether it was bribing ride operators, bribing their managers, begging, borrowing children, etc. ultimately wound up with the title. "Credit whoring" was totally ridiculous, but also generally a lot of fun. At least, it's generally a lot of fun at first. It also tends to be physically and mentally grinding to do for long periods of time. As one exists within the hobby long enough, their social connections build up regardless of their willingness to expend money and time on riding coasters, and the value of telling people they've been on 20 new coasters this month (none of which were objectively good) drops precipitously. If no one you know cares if you've been on every Vekoma Boomerang in existence, and you don't actually like Vekoma Boomerangs, why keep seeking them out?
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By 1:45 PM, I had arrived at my third and priciest stop of the day: Santa's Village, Bracebridge, Ontario. Opened in 1955, it is one of a great many storybook style parks (like the one I'd been to earlier) but with an overarching Santa theme. Santa themes are prevalent throughout the industry because, well, he's a beloved character that the rights to cost $0. There are Santa's Villages in Illinois, New Hampshire, and California, not to mention the Santa's Workshops parks in New York and Colorado, and Santa's Land (bigger than a Village) in the mountains of North Carolina. When Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana references that they're the first theme park in the world, they do so on the claim of having opened as Santa Claus Land in 1946 and expanding into "Holiday World" by adding the 4th of July to the mix in the 1980s. Santa is and will always be big business for the little guy.
This park in particular has a few different sections; there's Sportsland, which has go karts and zip lines, as well as a campground. Story Book Park had a campground too, I guess making it so both had "on property" accommodations for whatever that's worth. Santa's Village though is a much higher level overall operation than the Owen Sound park, and that's reflected in the existence of a brand new ride. Peppermint Penguin Spinning Coaster is a pretty ridiculous name, but they've built a huge Penguin statue out in front of it, and it is a factory fresh roller coaster from SBF. Fifty-three SBF spinning coasters have been sold the theme parks and many more to carnivals since the model was introduced in 2014, so they're probably not the most expensive rides to procure, but I'm almost certain they still price out to a higher level than a larger used Zyklon. The spinning is not extreme, and the layout doesn't necessarily feature any kind of abrupt directional changes that would send cars twirling like tops. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and kids raced back into line after going on. Also: lots of kiddie coasters are embarrassing to ride, and these aren't. They feel...okay. Their lift hills are tire driven however, and that means that rain is their enemy. As I was loaded into my car, misting rain started to fall. The operators looked at their manager, who shrugged. We went around and did our two laps. That's all I needed.
The park had more than just the coaster this time: Hey look, a powered coaster! I don't typically bother with these because, well, I don't count them, but Santa's Roller Coaster is an exception in that it is a customized Zamperla Dragon with an extended layout and good interaction with the trees lining the park's boundaries as well as a great sense of height due to the placement on the side of a hill. Rain started to come down much more prodigiously as we pulled into the station, and the longest wait in the park only wound up getting longer, as they were told it couldn't operate until it cleared. My time crunch meant that a trip on the Summer Sleigh, a jet boat tour of the Muskoka River, was a nonstarter, but I did get a trip on their surprisingly long train ride. The park features a lot of really nice tree growth and shaded space. I'd love something like a wood coaster here to really take it to a different level, but there seem to be some pretty serious space considerations, not to mention the distance that it has from any big towns (Barrie and its 185Kish residents is an hour south; Toronto is more than two hours away by car). One can dream, though. 45 minutes was sufficient, though I suppose with the boat ride that easily could have become nearly two hours.
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Lapsed "crehos" typically wind up on one side or the other of the hobby depending on how their friendships in it went. Those who's social circles didn't completely collapse under the weight of the inevitable adult drama and nonsense will likely stick around in a lesser, but more sustainable capacity. Those who saw more dramatic changes in their cohort will find new things to obsess unhealthily over, repeating the same cycle as before. But what about people who don't lapse? What about the people who keep at it year after year after year?
The attraction to enter coaster enthusiasm is self evident: roller coasters. When socialization and friendships supplant the coasters rather than complement them, the obsession is no longer about theme parks and instead is about the people around theme parks. Those that don't leave then are people for whom the interpersonal relationships are good - great even! But they didn't come to the dance to posture in the corner for their friends. They came to the dance for the dancing. None of them are under the illusion that the Wacky Worms and Python Pits mean anything great, but they're an effective excuse to travel the world and go places sometimes few global tourists see. If you really, really love going to amusement and theme parks, its a great reason to go to new and different places than just the same 2 big corporate names most commonly associated with theme park going.
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In 2015, Neb's Funworld finally opened the Sparetime Express. Another Python Pit from a Maryland Jeepers location, they had acquired it years earlier and started construction on it in 2009. I checked into Neb's around 4:30 with a bogey time of 30 minutes to get in, piss, ride the thing, and bounce so that I could make my 6PM "date" with the Airbnb guy and check in out in Brampton on time. Neb's is a bowling alley with some sort of indoor extension which this is a part of that is the size of some hockey rinks. The coaster sits on a metal floor elevated above their electric go kart track. It is surrounded by tall metal fencing resembling a steel cage. I handed my ticket to the operator and went inside after he unlocked the door. Unlike the seemingly identical ride at Story Book Park, this has newer style Miler trains with individual lap bars that are released by a pneumatic system of some sort. Otherwise, the action is the same, just in a vastly different environment.
As I headed out, I also noted they had a Moser Spring which was indoors with lighting effects. Who knew you could do such fantastic things with that in a bowling alley? I wound up arriving at 5:59 PM; yes, I'm patting myself on the back for telling the Airbnb host that I'd arrive within one minute of that 3 days prior. I can do those things. That evening I spent quality time in the Powerade Centre at a boxing match and later at a brewery in the High Park - Swansea neighborhood of Toronto. You probably don't care about those things. If you do, and you were hoping for more, I'm sorry. This is a theme park blog.
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What all coaster enthusiasts like, whether casual or hardcore, are big roller coasters. Really big ones. But this too leads to some separation: many enthusiasts will commit first and foremost to big rides, whereas others want their big rides with something else. Jeff Putz of Coasterbuzz, often a "big rides first" guy, created the annual April Fool's Day gag of Charmland updates, a theme park with no coasters but lots of trees. Amusingly, Jeff had never considered that Charmland was actually a real place: Charmland is basically every city, state, county, and national park. People don't hate Grant Park for not having coasters, they like it. They actually really like it. They like Central Park in New York City too, and even now that Brooklyn is generally accepted as a "safe-for-whitey" zone again, they still like it more than Coney Island. People actually like to just be able to relax too, which is generally why the parks that serious enthusiasts wind up pumping up are parks that have big rides and a chill factor too: Dollywood, Knoebel's, Silver Dollar City, Lagoon, Knott's, and Kennywood, just to name a few.
Even Cedar Point with its mass of coasters has a swimming beach, a marina, jet ski rentals, fishing charters, parasailing, a petting zoo, pony rides, a museum (Town Hall), static exhibits like the Mill, glass blowing classes, and one of the largest classic arcades in the world, just to name a some of the things not necessarily associated with it being home to some of the most famous and enormous rides on earth. Kings Dominion doesn't have many of these, and even though it has a 300 foot coaster, it doesn't get the same play from super fans. Sorry, KD.
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I don't have a lot of skills or sell-able talents, but dependability and sturdiness are two of them. Yeah, I was out until past 1AM, but screw it, there's rides to go on. First up: Canada's Wonderland. I've gone there many times before, so I know how things work. Early entry started at 9AM as it does on every Sunday, and this week I could choose from Behemoth and 3 other rides that weren't Behemoth to ride. Behemoth is a hypercoaster - 200+ feet tall - from the good folks at B&M. It's maybe not the best of its kind, but it is a really good ride with stout throughput that kept the wait to no more than a single train. I didn't get there at 9AM because, seriously, it's a miracle I didn't have a hangover of any kind, but I did get my fill of rides in. By the time 10AM hit and the park opened to the public, I dawdled too much. Should have gone straight to Wonder Mountain Guardian (their dark ride coaster hybrid from 2015), but instead just slowly paced to Leviathan and found a big ol' line waiting. Leviathan is good, but it's a ride I've been on before, and I was looking for fresh and new. There wasn't even a line to exit when I got back to the gate, so I kinda forced my way through going the "wrong way".
35 minutes later I was on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto paying $15 CAD for parking and jumping on a water taxi to Toronto Island. The island is basically Toronto's Central Park, except it's an island. So it's more like Detroit's Belle Isle, except most people reading this have no clue what that means. Well, unlike both, it also has a metro airport that's mighty convenient for those taking intra-canadian flights, as you can walk from the city center into the terminal. But I'm not there for that, I'm there for the amusement park. And its been a rough year for Centreville Amusement Park.
It isn't that the crowds don't accept it or like it, it's that funky things are happening with our world. Lake Huron's levels were so high this year the park was flooded out until the month of August. Clean up has taken place and while most attractions are open, the park's zoo, train, and mini golf probably won't see the bell in 2017. Water taxi revenue is down this summer 90-95%, but at least weekends like this one show there's plenty of demand. I might have been lucky with timing when it came to the water taxis, but when I got back on shore, there was a line hundreds deep to get on. The ferries, which hold literally thousands, were looking at hour line queues. Hey, they need it here.
Since I'd last been to the island, Centreville obtained a replacement for their Zamperla Dragon in the form of - what else? - a Miler kiddie coaster. Unlike the Python Pits I had hit the day prior, this was a larger 15 ft tall model with an extended layout. It has the individual lap bars like Sparetime Express, and I guess it is moderately better, but being on a concrete slab makes it about the least interesting ride in the park. And yeah, the park has some interesting rides. There's a great windmill themed Eli Wheel, multiple car rides, a train that's impressively long when it runs, really solid kiddie attractions, a decent log flume, and much more.
I bought a bunch of tickets, so I was doing "a bunch more". That "bunch more" included the sky ride, which is a replacement of their previously existing chair lift attraction and actually brand spankin' new. It's about a 15 minute scenic ride that takes you over a boat channel on the island between the marina and beach area as well as the petting zoo. Then there's a great old school dark ride called the Haunted Barrel Works. It's still a bit of a hidden gen in dark ride circles, as even though its in a big city, it's in an out of the way location for most park enthusiasts rushing through. The stunts were all in working order and have been placed behind plexiglass rather than mesh to prevent vandalism. And finally, the Dentzel carousel. This is the final year it will run here - the flooding was such a huge loss to the company running the rides that the carousel had to be sold off in order to cover costs. Luckily, they demanded it be sold as a whole machine, and Carmel, Indiana has taken it in with the intent of making it the centerpiece of an urban renewal project. It's a lovely machine that moves at a solid rate of speed and has excellently carved/painted pieces. It's a real shame for Canada to lose this, especially at a community park like Centreville. I did feel much better seeing the crowds coming, however. Torontonians love this place, and for good reason. Huge green spaces, restaurants, cafes, food stands, rides, beaches, and amazing views of the city.
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In summary, coaster enthusiasts, like any big umbrella group, aren't a monolithic subculture. Some obsess over riding everything, some only love that which is familiar. Some are restrained by geography, and some will ignore the warnings of the US State Department. Some love wood coasters, others steel. Some purely want to be thrilled, and others can't enjoy those thrills without the hope of quality time in a rocking chair afterward. What do they all agree on? That they love rides, and above all, they like the one type of ride that is the centerpiece and main drawing card in the past, present, and of the future for the amusement and theme park industry: the roller coaster.
As detailed previously in "What is Theme Park Fandom?," coaster enthusiasts are a major sub grouping/umbrella term of theme park fans who emerged like the other tribes in the mid-1970s during the first great wave of modern American nostalgia movements. Coaster enthusiasts are generally, but not always, ride motivated rather than brand motivated. This doesn't mean that there isn't strong association with individual brands or companies, however the motivations behind those come from a different place. Disney is an all encompassing media corporation which is able to not only project the idealism of its founder through a vast number of channels, but also provide so many products (physical and content) for sale that one could spend their entire lives taking in nothing but fresh, new to them "Disney." Universal is similar.
However, for the regional park scene, this is not the case. Cedar Point cannot offer wall-to-wall Cedar Point; the park operates seasonally, and aside from the Peanuts characters which they have rights to, there is no never ending stream of external media to associate with. Smaller family run parks without any intellectual properties can offer even less. Their connections are still emotional, but stem primarily from things like geographic proximity and reactions to their attractions rather than the attractions' capability to act on their existing predilection to characters and stories. More simply put: fan communities like Cedar Point's are much more a result of how much people like the action of their roller coasters, not because the roller coaster is themed to Harry Potter.
No one understands this engagement more than coaster enthusiasts themselves. An exact number can only be guessed: millions watch videos on Coasterforce and Theme Park Review's Youtube channels, but only thousands join the official clubs such as American Coaster Enthusiasts, European Coaster Club, and Greater Ohio Coaster Club. Coaster enthusiasts still make up only a small fraction of the greater visitor base for theme parks, but they're often among its most vocal. Regional parks will often seek out feedback from coaster enthusiasts because of their large experience base of park going, and some individual enthusiasts become trusted advisers to manufacturers and park operators. Most enthusiasts are assumed to be comparatively casual: interested enough to pay money for publications or follow construction footage online, but not active in being regulars at coaster events or posting content. They are a sort of invisible mass known to be there and to occupy space at big coaster events, but unknown to the often insular worlds of the more hardcore in the scene.
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Life is a series of risk/reward equations. Getting up in the morning, leaving the bed, taking a shower, going to work, what we choose to eat, the entertainment we decide to observe, so on, so forth; they are all risky to varying degrees. Some people spend little to no time thinking about this; others see their lives become almost impassably difficult as anxiety from decision making wracks their minds. For me to pull off and try to find the Bayfield Fair, advertised on various signage posted along my route in rural Southern Ontario, is not a great risk in the grand scheme of things. Ontario is not a terrifying place in my estimation, and while it increased the overall likelihood I might meet a deer with the front of my car later in the evening, there was a 0% chance of cool rides and roller coaster "credits" by not going to the Bayfield Fair, and a >0% chance of that if I did go.
Bayfield's fairgrounds is close to downtown area and central square, with plenty of free parking available on surrounding streets. As I wandered up to the gate, I was informed there would be a $5 CAD fee to enter. I looked past the woman requesting the money at the midway; several games booths, a Round Up (no more classic a ride than that), and the unmistakable light and vinyl pattern of a Wisdom Dragon Wagon sign. The ride itself was obscured by food trailers, but there was a real possibility of a coaster! I couldn't hand over the money fast enough. To my right, a tent offered the ability to partake in "RibFest" for $22 CAD - this well outside of the accepted BBQ zone as I recognize it, and while it was possibly very good, I calculated the odds of pleasure were maximized by just the entry and the potential of another ride for the count.
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When I first became a "coaster enthusiast" back in 1996 watching those old Discovery Channel specials, I didn't know anything about the scene, the mentality of the people doing it, the goals of the club, anything like that. In my first two years in the hobby, I approached it as though the only thing that mattered were the biggest rides. I wound up skipping parks and coasters I regretted missing because of that. I could have easily been on Screechin' Eagle, Americana Park's airtime filled wooden coaster back in 1997. Same with the Clementon Jack Rabbit in New Jersey, which came down after the 2002 season. I never rode what I considered to be "carnival coasters" - portable style smaller steel coasters like Dinosaur Beach's Spinning Mouse and Golden Nugget, or Morey's Zyklon. That all changed when I went to my first coaster event, ACE's Ultimate Preservation Conference way back in 1999.
Many coaster enthusiasts probably had, at some point, a mentality like mine at age 14. Ride the big stuff, don't care about the rest. But it isn't the late 1990s anymore. People who engage with the coaster enthusiast community directly have probably heard a whole host of terms created in the USENET era to describe what the most hardcore of the hobbyists do. Much like birders' life lists, many coaster enthusiasts keep what are most often referred to as "counts" or "track records". Coaster Counts consist not of coasters in the parlance, but "credits," and one can only obtain a "credit" by riding a roller coaster. Enthusiasts who choose to keep record of their coaster riding do so in a variety of fashions: my master list has been kept in a spreadsheet format, constantly updated, since 1999. Richard Bannister utilizes a database he built himself. Some people still use paper records. Others choose to use websites like Coaster-Count and Coastercounter.
Unlike birding life lists, "counting roller coasters" is not nearly as cut and dry. Birds are birds: Most people who bird are unlikely to discover entirely new species, so their lists are based off known species of birds, each counted precisely one time. On the other hand, the definition of what is or is not a roller coaster and what is or is not a different roller coaster differs from person to person. Most people agree that a "roller coaster" is a ride that operates on rails powered by gravity. However, within that space, there is a lot of wiggle room.
Mountain Coasters were and are still a controversial topic among those who count: They roll. They certainly coast. They often have both rider control braking mechanisms and gyroscopic braking to limit speeds. Space Mountain at Disneyland features two entries on Roller Coaster Database, as the ride was entirely replaced. Incredible Hulk at Islands of Adventure, meanwhile, only has one entry in spite of nearly all of its track (station excepted) being replaced along with the trains. Wooden coasters by their very nature have their track beds and supports changed frequently. The layouts of even the most well known antiques have seen drop and turn profile changes, with most of the knowledge of that having been lost to time as irrelevant prior to the internet. In 2002, I rode the Looping Star at Margate Dreamland. Since then, the ride has found two new homes, its most recent being in the nation of Croatia. Some people will count it at each place; others (myself being one of these) would frown at the notion.
Perhaps the most extreme example possible to show what challenges there are in discussing "coaster counting": Knott's Wacky Soap Box Racers opened as Cycle Chase in 1976, but the low capacity of the Steeplechase style vehicles led to them being replaced with the higher capacity Soap Box cars for the 1980 season. Each of the four tracks on the roller coaster was independent, meaning that it could theoretically be removed from the ride and operated as its own individual roller coaster. When Soap Box Derby Racers was removed in 1996, it was replaced with the Togo racing looper Windjammer Surf Racers for 1997. There were two individual tracks to the ride with different layouts and lengths. Depending on one's predilection, the same space at the same park with only two fully constructed attractions could be counted to be as many as 10 coasters due to the modifications in vehicles and the number of individual tracks.
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Heading straight for the back of the midway, I wasn't accosted by a single games barker for a change. Perhaps that was Canadian good will, but I'm guessing the local authorities asked them not to yell at passersby they thought would be good marks for winning ring toss or roller bowler. It didn't take me long to arrive to the coaster, and, oh damn. Of course. The tell tale sign of the third rail. And there's the cord running from the train to the center, and yup, it's powered. The term "roller coaster" has two parts. The first, "roller," comes from the fact that the rides are supposed to roll over some sort of path or track. The second, "coaster," comes from the idea that once a roller coaster is released from either a launch or highest hill (aka the "lift hill), the ride is primarily powered by gravity until it hits the station brakes at the end of the ride. Powered coasters certainly roll on track, but they aren't powered primarily by gravity, but rather an electric (or occasionally, internal combustion) motor.
Some people still count powered coasters like the ubiquitous Zamperla Dragon, and their logic isn't unsound. The rides are powered, but are still intended to run and be like a roller coaster in terms of what it actually does. There are also things which both roll and coast that are generally not considered roller coasters: Alpine Slides have a defined track, defined vehicle, roll, and coast, but are not listed on RCDB or any coaster counting website. Pretzel Amusement Company has two surviving gravity driven dark rides: Devil's Den at Conneaut Lake and Hawnted House at Camden Park which appear and generally ride like classic dark rides, but also have chain lifts and wild mouse qualities. More controversial yet: Dollywood's Blazing Fury and Silver Dollar City's Fire In The Hole have electric motors which power the rides, but also has periods with no third rail and power during several gravity driven coaster style drops. Those who count coasters all have their own personal rationale for what does or doesn't count: For me, "powereds" and "relocates" are an uncrossable, incontrovertible "no" when it comes to being counted as a coaster.
Defeated, I looked back at the Rib Fest. I had fucked up, and I knew it. I also felt as though leaving at that point after only moments inside the fair would be seen as an affront to the woman who took my money: I, interloper, rejecting her community swiftly not because they lacked a particular ride designed for small children, but because they had brought one incompatible with my absurd demands. Risk/reward was all inside of my head, but rather than create any potential by which I would be inside that one rural Ontarian's head for the rest of the weekend and perhaps days, weeks, and months afterward, I turned and went back towards the food vendors. $22 was too much for me to accept spending for a snack, as I wanted to go drinking later. But the potential of whatever the hell a peameal bacon sandwich was for $5.50 seemed a good compromise. I ate it, texted my wife, took some pictures with my phone, and then felt satisfied that I could leave without demeaning the people Bayfield, Ontario.
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Coaster nerds are no different than other types of nerds. They too are obsessive to frightening degrees and willing to let abstract or meaningless concepts effectively ruin their lives in the search for meaning and acceptance. The act of counting invites activity that under no other conditions would be termed reasonable. I remember having a conversation with a coaster friend about traveling to Peru several years ago. I was interested in going, and they had been. Had they gone to Cuzco? Machu Picchu? No, they informed me. They had spent most of their time around Lima and been on every Wacky Worm in the country. This person is still very much in the hobby, and still going to very unexpected locales to find new coasters for their track record. In fact, she has the highest track record of any female in the world. She'll also tell you that it's very possible Dr. Lisa Scheinin has been on more than her; she just stopped recording her count (with a caveat: "Did you know she counted relocates?").
Anyone who is seriously into the coaster scene and tells you that when they first started there was no attraction to having a gaudy count number is lying. Everyone has their opinions, but the beefier the number, the more the experience, and the more the experience, the more merit that opinion often gets. Sure, there's the visual signalling via coaster t-shirts (like concert going, you never wear the shirt of the park you attend), patch jackets, signature lines, and Facebook avatars. But once you start actually interacting, the coaster count almost always seems to come out.
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Saturday morning, I woke up reasonably refreshed from my bed in Walkteron, Ontario. I had a coffee maker in my room, but I also had neglected to get smaller change than a $5 for housekeeper tip, forcing me across the street to the Foodland for a Starbucks iced coffee. At least then I could leave a toonie for maid. She did a decent job with what she was given, and realistically, it was probably also the wife of the owner. I know how these operations work, and when you've got a whole 10-12 rooms in the middle of nowhere and you're charging $63 USD to stay, corners get cut. Like how my venetian blinds were duct taped in the center to prevent them from falling in front of the A/C window unit. Things like that.
Walkerton is within reasonable distance of Owen Sound, Ontario without actually being in Owen Sound and thus charging Owen Sound pricing. The city there reminds me a bit of Sydney, Nova Scotia or Oswego, NY: port towns that accidentally wind up with tourists around. For me, Owen Sound has a clear attraction, and that was Story Book Park. It's a family operated kids park running on the border of the Canadian frontier, and it follows in the grand tradition of 1950s era and after "story book parks". Idlewild, which actually started life as a trolley park at the turn of the 20th century, is probably the best overall known of the storybook parks out there, but there's many more throughout the nation which have either changed drastically (Great Escape in Lake George) or maintained their theme with only occasional updates (Storybook Land in New Jersey). In lieu of "riding the movies", one interacts with the trademark free stories of yore through dioramas, moving displays (often with home built attempts at constructing audio-animatronics), and attractions intended to resemble various things from children's stories. A lot of them have a castle facade: Story Book Park is no different. Petting zoos are also popular, and again, Story Book Park offers that too.
Like many parks which are unmoored from big urban areas and population centers, there are challenges to attraction acquisition. Most of the rides are used: some of the rides probably predate the park they're in by a solid 15-20 years, if not much more. The sole coaster at the park, Python Pit, hasn't even been renamed. The name is synonymous with the Jeepers chain of Family Entertainment Centers, many of which acquired identical Miler models. This one in particularly began its life in Greenbelt, Maryland inside the Beltway Plaza Mall. Now, long after that facility has closed, it appears here in the back of a kiddie park in the middle of nowhere, Canada. And for me, unfortunately, I'm waiting for it to open. Rains have swept through on and off throughout the morning, so things need to dry before I can get on.
Lucky for me, there's actually something else to check out at this park beyond the storybook scenes. Haunted House is a self guided walk-through scare house constructed by someone at some point. The most effective scares come from blasts of air triggered by individuals movements. There's a couple good size scenes to check out along the way, and an undulating floor was installed to give it a little more dimension at points. It's nothing so great as to demand intercontinental transit to see, but the kind of thing that I find all too cool about the hobby of going to parks.
Nothing had happened over at Python Pit when I got back. Inquiring with employees, they'd have it up in just a few minutes. 5 or so minutes later, the covers were pulled back, and the test runs started. As I and a bunch of age appropriate for the ride (read: 3-5 years old) boarded, I went through the process of lowering my own restraint mechanism and locking it. I, perhaps sadly, know way too much about what to do on these rides. Coaster #817 began chugging up the lift hill - a whopping 11.5 feet - as rain began to pour again. Like most of Miler's kiddie rides, this is inoffensive. A curving first drop leads to a hill and descending helix before a pair of small angled "bunny hop" hills as it returns to the station.
Usually, rides of this sort have operators run it endlessly: as an enthusiast, I need only one lap to count it, but usually get 5-8. The first one is amusing. The second gets a "Hey, whoda guessed we'd actually had done this stupid shit?" feeling. The third the smile starts to recede. By lap 5, there's a sense of inner shame and a desire that it end already. I got it. I did it. That was fun to say I did. But I have better things to do even if each individual lap takes but 20-30 seconds to complete. Python Pit at Story Book Park ended after one lap, with the train blowing halfway through the station and needing to be pulled back by reversing the lift motor. I was spared the embarrassment as well as the possibility my camera bag might be soaked being left out in the rain. I also nearly managed to fall on the exit ramp, which somehow would be sadder than being left to ride the kiddie coaster for 5 more hideous laps. Mission accomplished: it was time to move on.
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For each people who have counted coasters, there are probably two who stopped. Most of those who stopped are the hobby's equivalent of lapsed Catholics; the people who believe in some sort of God and think the Pope is a good guy, but the idea of actually going to church every Sunday and putting money in the basket is something they no longer can connect with. They don't buy into the community aspect of it, they don't feel better about themselves from their communing with Christ on those terms, and they never feel the weight of their sins pass, no matter if they do the Hail Marys the priest prescribes in the confession booth or not. Religious fervor can be on their terms.
Why does the fervor leave? Enjoyment of roller coasters is replaced by many with enjoyment of the roller coaster community. The meritocracy of counting benefits those with many coasters, and thus it behooves one to ride many, many coasters. Most people new to the scene know about the big coasters and parks around them. Then they will go and seek out other big, gnarly rides wherever they can be found. Orlando and Los Angeles' metro areas are obviously popular places, but there are many, many other hubs of activity throughout the world when density of parks meets density of human beings. For all those bent on increasing their count, the balance of cost/benefit eventually begins to tilt. This is where one goes from the beginner/casual stage of enthusiasm into the intermediate/expert/"serious" zone.
What about the kiddie coasters at the big parks? What about the kiddie coasters at the small parks? What about kiddie coasters at indoor family entertainment centers? What about carnivals? Tracking carnival coasters is tough, especially when you don't count relocates - they move around all the time. A ride owned by one company can show up at an independent midway one week and be at a different company's midway the next. It might be put on a trailer in winter quarters and not seen for 10-15-25 years before being brought back out after some sand blasting and electrical work gets done. You might do every permanent coaster in your state - how about transportable ones? How about every permanent and transportable coaster in every neighboring state and province? States can be big. You ever see how long of a drive it is from Kemah to Amarillo? It's far. Real far. But even that can be cheaper financially to add 3-5-7 coasters to a track record when your alternative is getting on an airplane and flying internationally because you've been to every Cedar Fair or Six Flags park already.
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After making a quick phone call and making a switch on routing on my GPS, I wandered my way up to Blue Mountain, on the edge of the Georgian Bay. I've been to the region once before and went on the mountain coaster located at the local ski resort. However, that trip was in November, and by that time, Blue Mountain Go Karts has long since packed up for the season. This time, it was a Saturday in August, not one in the throes of winter. And while the rides are mentioned on their website, the woman who answered the phone assured me the coaster was available to ride. It's an Allan Herschell Company Little Dipper model coaster - RCDB notes it is of an older style for the ride with flatter curves. Rides like it are generally of a 1950s vintage, so who knows where it came from or how many owners had it before. It runs though, for sure- the skid brakes come in from the side and pinch the train through the station when its to be stopped using straight up wood as the friction material. The trains are original and still have the "AH" logo up front, and as far as sketchy Herschell coasters go, this is probably mid-pack in terms of fear that it would simply collapse under my weight. There's an urban legend in the hobby about it occurring to a train load of ACE members in 2008 at the now defunct Fun Spot in Indiana which was intentionally hushed up, but I can't confirm it.
This left me two hours of driving to my next destination with pretty tight windows to ensure that I'd be able to hit everything I wanted before I needed to be back in metro Toronto. I wound up eating a champion's lunch: bottled water, beef jerky, and an Oh Henry! bar. They're much more popular up north.
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Before the internet had dominance over all information ever, us fogies had to get books and magazines to know where to find amusement parks at. Tim O'Brien's Amusement Park Guides (5 editions were made) were a major source of info and included both amusement parks with and without coasters. I still reference them now when it comes to historical documentation, and even today there's stuff he mentioned few people seem to realize never went out of business. But the tome of tomes, the bible of coaster enthusiasm, that was Guide to Ride.
Guide to Ride was published in 1991, and following the philosophy I mentioned I came into the hobby with, it detailed every unique and large non-production model roller coaster in the country at the time. A supplement was published a couple of years later with new rides, but demand still existed for both to continue warrant them being printed (even when way out of date) well into the 1990s. The ACE Publications committee then worked hard on producing the final version of it, a hard bound bible of coaster riding known as Guide to Ride 2000. It, like the original, offered phone numbers, addresses, and basic directions to get to the parks as well as photos and descriptions of the rides, but expanded the reach of the original to include every and all known roller coasters in the US and Canada. It sold out an eternity ago. I honestly can't believe ACE hasn't just removed the listing from their publications page. Like, c'mon, there's no reprinting it. Does anyone even still have the proofs?
Ultimately there was never a need for another book like it. Duane Marden's Roller Coaster Database became the source for any and all info regarding coasters. He welcomed submissions from every corner of the globe too, unlike ACE. And the unlimited capacity of the net meant he could also catalog every historic ride too. There are over 8000 recorded entries on RCDB of coasters throughout the world and time itself. Each submission has been vetted by the site's main man, Duane himself. The expansion of knowledge about just how many coasters there were between RCDB and Guide to Ride 2000 versus what was available before was enormous. That knowledge also fed into the growth of the coaster enthusiast community via the internet and the desire of those new members to inflate their personal track record by any means possible.
New terms became en vogue among enthusiasts. "Credit runs," most often associated with the Jersey Shore and its enormous number of rides in a small geographical area, became common place. Rather than go to a park and ride the same coaster 10 times, there was increased cache in going to 10 parks and ride each coaster once regardless of what the coaster was. Credit runs would become ever more complex: single day turnarounds from flights, epic drives, oodles of kiddie coasters at arcades. The need to obtain this social cache expanded endlessly. When amusement parks would attempt to limit access to kiddie coasters by requiring adults to have a child with them to ride, coaster enthusiasts would beg parents for the opportunity to take their kids with them for the purpose of obtaining the nebulous credit. At coaster events, obtaining access to kiddie coasters (Rye's being most difficult) was often a major selling point for attendees. Barring that, those enthusiasts who had actually managed to produce offspring often watched as their kid rode the same ride 20 times in a row for the benefit of their fellow enthusiast.
This led to a pejorative term of endearment for enthusiasts who would partake in this behavior: "credit whores"(sometimes shortened to CreHo, one of many innovations from the late Matt "Mamoosh" Sullivan). Those willing to do whatever to get the credit; whether it was bribing ride operators, bribing their managers, begging, borrowing children, etc. ultimately wound up with the title. "Credit whoring" was totally ridiculous, but also generally a lot of fun. At least, it's generally a lot of fun at first. It also tends to be physically and mentally grinding to do for long periods of time. As one exists within the hobby long enough, their social connections build up regardless of their willingness to expend money and time on riding coasters, and the value of telling people they've been on 20 new coasters this month (none of which were objectively good) drops precipitously. If no one you know cares if you've been on every Vekoma Boomerang in existence, and you don't actually like Vekoma Boomerangs, why keep seeking them out?
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By 1:45 PM, I had arrived at my third and priciest stop of the day: Santa's Village, Bracebridge, Ontario. Opened in 1955, it is one of a great many storybook style parks (like the one I'd been to earlier) but with an overarching Santa theme. Santa themes are prevalent throughout the industry because, well, he's a beloved character that the rights to cost $0. There are Santa's Villages in Illinois, New Hampshire, and California, not to mention the Santa's Workshops parks in New York and Colorado, and Santa's Land (bigger than a Village) in the mountains of North Carolina. When Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana references that they're the first theme park in the world, they do so on the claim of having opened as Santa Claus Land in 1946 and expanding into "Holiday World" by adding the 4th of July to the mix in the 1980s. Santa is and will always be big business for the little guy.
This park in particular has a few different sections; there's Sportsland, which has go karts and zip lines, as well as a campground. Story Book Park had a campground too, I guess making it so both had "on property" accommodations for whatever that's worth. Santa's Village though is a much higher level overall operation than the Owen Sound park, and that's reflected in the existence of a brand new ride. Peppermint Penguin Spinning Coaster is a pretty ridiculous name, but they've built a huge Penguin statue out in front of it, and it is a factory fresh roller coaster from SBF. Fifty-three SBF spinning coasters have been sold the theme parks and many more to carnivals since the model was introduced in 2014, so they're probably not the most expensive rides to procure, but I'm almost certain they still price out to a higher level than a larger used Zyklon. The spinning is not extreme, and the layout doesn't necessarily feature any kind of abrupt directional changes that would send cars twirling like tops. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and kids raced back into line after going on. Also: lots of kiddie coasters are embarrassing to ride, and these aren't. They feel...okay. Their lift hills are tire driven however, and that means that rain is their enemy. As I was loaded into my car, misting rain started to fall. The operators looked at their manager, who shrugged. We went around and did our two laps. That's all I needed.
The park had more than just the coaster this time: Hey look, a powered coaster! I don't typically bother with these because, well, I don't count them, but Santa's Roller Coaster is an exception in that it is a customized Zamperla Dragon with an extended layout and good interaction with the trees lining the park's boundaries as well as a great sense of height due to the placement on the side of a hill. Rain started to come down much more prodigiously as we pulled into the station, and the longest wait in the park only wound up getting longer, as they were told it couldn't operate until it cleared. My time crunch meant that a trip on the Summer Sleigh, a jet boat tour of the Muskoka River, was a nonstarter, but I did get a trip on their surprisingly long train ride. The park features a lot of really nice tree growth and shaded space. I'd love something like a wood coaster here to really take it to a different level, but there seem to be some pretty serious space considerations, not to mention the distance that it has from any big towns (Barrie and its 185Kish residents is an hour south; Toronto is more than two hours away by car). One can dream, though. 45 minutes was sufficient, though I suppose with the boat ride that easily could have become nearly two hours.
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Lapsed "crehos" typically wind up on one side or the other of the hobby depending on how their friendships in it went. Those who's social circles didn't completely collapse under the weight of the inevitable adult drama and nonsense will likely stick around in a lesser, but more sustainable capacity. Those who saw more dramatic changes in their cohort will find new things to obsess unhealthily over, repeating the same cycle as before. But what about people who don't lapse? What about the people who keep at it year after year after year?
The attraction to enter coaster enthusiasm is self evident: roller coasters. When socialization and friendships supplant the coasters rather than complement them, the obsession is no longer about theme parks and instead is about the people around theme parks. Those that don't leave then are people for whom the interpersonal relationships are good - great even! But they didn't come to the dance to posture in the corner for their friends. They came to the dance for the dancing. None of them are under the illusion that the Wacky Worms and Python Pits mean anything great, but they're an effective excuse to travel the world and go places sometimes few global tourists see. If you really, really love going to amusement and theme parks, its a great reason to go to new and different places than just the same 2 big corporate names most commonly associated with theme park going.
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In 2015, Neb's Funworld finally opened the Sparetime Express. Another Python Pit from a Maryland Jeepers location, they had acquired it years earlier and started construction on it in 2009. I checked into Neb's around 4:30 with a bogey time of 30 minutes to get in, piss, ride the thing, and bounce so that I could make my 6PM "date" with the Airbnb guy and check in out in Brampton on time. Neb's is a bowling alley with some sort of indoor extension which this is a part of that is the size of some hockey rinks. The coaster sits on a metal floor elevated above their electric go kart track. It is surrounded by tall metal fencing resembling a steel cage. I handed my ticket to the operator and went inside after he unlocked the door. Unlike the seemingly identical ride at Story Book Park, this has newer style Miler trains with individual lap bars that are released by a pneumatic system of some sort. Otherwise, the action is the same, just in a vastly different environment.
As I headed out, I also noted they had a Moser Spring which was indoors with lighting effects. Who knew you could do such fantastic things with that in a bowling alley? I wound up arriving at 5:59 PM; yes, I'm patting myself on the back for telling the Airbnb host that I'd arrive within one minute of that 3 days prior. I can do those things. That evening I spent quality time in the Powerade Centre at a boxing match and later at a brewery in the High Park - Swansea neighborhood of Toronto. You probably don't care about those things. If you do, and you were hoping for more, I'm sorry. This is a theme park blog.
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What all coaster enthusiasts like, whether casual or hardcore, are big roller coasters. Really big ones. But this too leads to some separation: many enthusiasts will commit first and foremost to big rides, whereas others want their big rides with something else. Jeff Putz of Coasterbuzz, often a "big rides first" guy, created the annual April Fool's Day gag of Charmland updates, a theme park with no coasters but lots of trees. Amusingly, Jeff had never considered that Charmland was actually a real place: Charmland is basically every city, state, county, and national park. People don't hate Grant Park for not having coasters, they like it. They actually really like it. They like Central Park in New York City too, and even now that Brooklyn is generally accepted as a "safe-for-whitey" zone again, they still like it more than Coney Island. People actually like to just be able to relax too, which is generally why the parks that serious enthusiasts wind up pumping up are parks that have big rides and a chill factor too: Dollywood, Knoebel's, Silver Dollar City, Lagoon, Knott's, and Kennywood, just to name a few.
Even Cedar Point with its mass of coasters has a swimming beach, a marina, jet ski rentals, fishing charters, parasailing, a petting zoo, pony rides, a museum (Town Hall), static exhibits like the Mill, glass blowing classes, and one of the largest classic arcades in the world, just to name a some of the things not necessarily associated with it being home to some of the most famous and enormous rides on earth. Kings Dominion doesn't have many of these, and even though it has a 300 foot coaster, it doesn't get the same play from super fans. Sorry, KD.
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I don't have a lot of skills or sell-able talents, but dependability and sturdiness are two of them. Yeah, I was out until past 1AM, but screw it, there's rides to go on. First up: Canada's Wonderland. I've gone there many times before, so I know how things work. Early entry started at 9AM as it does on every Sunday, and this week I could choose from Behemoth and 3 other rides that weren't Behemoth to ride. Behemoth is a hypercoaster - 200+ feet tall - from the good folks at B&M. It's maybe not the best of its kind, but it is a really good ride with stout throughput that kept the wait to no more than a single train. I didn't get there at 9AM because, seriously, it's a miracle I didn't have a hangover of any kind, but I did get my fill of rides in. By the time 10AM hit and the park opened to the public, I dawdled too much. Should have gone straight to Wonder Mountain Guardian (their dark ride coaster hybrid from 2015), but instead just slowly paced to Leviathan and found a big ol' line waiting. Leviathan is good, but it's a ride I've been on before, and I was looking for fresh and new. There wasn't even a line to exit when I got back to the gate, so I kinda forced my way through going the "wrong way".
35 minutes later I was on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto paying $15 CAD for parking and jumping on a water taxi to Toronto Island. The island is basically Toronto's Central Park, except it's an island. So it's more like Detroit's Belle Isle, except most people reading this have no clue what that means. Well, unlike both, it also has a metro airport that's mighty convenient for those taking intra-canadian flights, as you can walk from the city center into the terminal. But I'm not there for that, I'm there for the amusement park. And its been a rough year for Centreville Amusement Park.
It isn't that the crowds don't accept it or like it, it's that funky things are happening with our world. Lake Huron's levels were so high this year the park was flooded out until the month of August. Clean up has taken place and while most attractions are open, the park's zoo, train, and mini golf probably won't see the bell in 2017. Water taxi revenue is down this summer 90-95%, but at least weekends like this one show there's plenty of demand. I might have been lucky with timing when it came to the water taxis, but when I got back on shore, there was a line hundreds deep to get on. The ferries, which hold literally thousands, were looking at hour line queues. Hey, they need it here.
Since I'd last been to the island, Centreville obtained a replacement for their Zamperla Dragon in the form of - what else? - a Miler kiddie coaster. Unlike the Python Pits I had hit the day prior, this was a larger 15 ft tall model with an extended layout. It has the individual lap bars like Sparetime Express, and I guess it is moderately better, but being on a concrete slab makes it about the least interesting ride in the park. And yeah, the park has some interesting rides. There's a great windmill themed Eli Wheel, multiple car rides, a train that's impressively long when it runs, really solid kiddie attractions, a decent log flume, and much more.
I bought a bunch of tickets, so I was doing "a bunch more". That "bunch more" included the sky ride, which is a replacement of their previously existing chair lift attraction and actually brand spankin' new. It's about a 15 minute scenic ride that takes you over a boat channel on the island between the marina and beach area as well as the petting zoo. Then there's a great old school dark ride called the Haunted Barrel Works. It's still a bit of a hidden gen in dark ride circles, as even though its in a big city, it's in an out of the way location for most park enthusiasts rushing through. The stunts were all in working order and have been placed behind plexiglass rather than mesh to prevent vandalism. And finally, the Dentzel carousel. This is the final year it will run here - the flooding was such a huge loss to the company running the rides that the carousel had to be sold off in order to cover costs. Luckily, they demanded it be sold as a whole machine, and Carmel, Indiana has taken it in with the intent of making it the centerpiece of an urban renewal project. It's a lovely machine that moves at a solid rate of speed and has excellently carved/painted pieces. It's a real shame for Canada to lose this, especially at a community park like Centreville. I did feel much better seeing the crowds coming, however. Torontonians love this place, and for good reason. Huge green spaces, restaurants, cafes, food stands, rides, beaches, and amazing views of the city.
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In summary, coaster enthusiasts, like any big umbrella group, aren't a monolithic subculture. Some obsess over riding everything, some only love that which is familiar. Some are restrained by geography, and some will ignore the warnings of the US State Department. Some love wood coasters, others steel. Some purely want to be thrilled, and others can't enjoy those thrills without the hope of quality time in a rocking chair afterward. What do they all agree on? That they love rides, and above all, they like the one type of ride that is the centerpiece and main drawing card in the past, present, and of the future for the amusement and theme park industry: the roller coaster.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Parkscope Report: Atlantis Bahamas Review (Pt. 2)
In part 1 of this longer-than-intended Atlantis Bahamas review, I went over the history of the complex and how it is that there is a gigantic resort with buildings representing over 5 decades of development slammed together a short drive from Nassau. Now the stuff people will probably find more valuable: an review of that stuff.
First, arriving at Atlantis. The cheapest method to visit the Atlantis Resort and do the water park is to go via cruise ship for the day. There are loads of 3-4 night cruises from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Port Canaveral that make the stop, as well as longer cruises from the likes of Mobile, New Orleans, Jacksonville, New York City, and Baltimore. Nassau is one of the most visited cruise ports, and this is in spite of the fact that it is consistently rated as one of cruiser's least favorites. The draw of mass tourism in a comparatively poor nation like The Bahamas has made the city of Nassau one of the busiest, most polluted, and most crime ridden. Many areas of the city are basically off limits to tourists unless they want to invite petty crime or a mugging. It is very much the ugly side of this kind of economy and contrasts dramatically from the other islands in the chain. For groups larger than a couple, it may be economical to consider booking a room at the Quality Suites Paradise Island, which includes Atlantis entry for up to 4, and usually is significantly cheaper than individual day passes. Tourists can arrive via water taxi (follow the signs) for $4 USD each way or take a real taxi which can run from $5/person for a van load to $30 for the vehicle if you don't want to wait.
You can, of course, stay in Atlantis. Nightly rates include water park entry and can be expected to range anywhere between the low 200s for the older towers from the 60s to the 400s for the newest towers closest to the water park and casino. Airfare to Nassau is rarely cheap, and food at the resort is extremely expensive. Most guests effectively buy full board plans to defray costs while still eating well: an alternative is to leave the grounds and head to the Paradise Island Marina for cheaper eats or even head back to Nassau. If you do choose the meal plans, prepare for lines. We saw some massive breakfast queues on a Sunday morning with many people planning to leave and few outlets available. It seemed a little unwieldy.
If you are visiting for the day, you'll need to pick up your wristband a short walk from where the taxi will drop you off, outside, near the main entrance. Hotel guests will make the pickup at Aquaventure itself. Don't screw this up like us, or you'll need to walk 15 minutes back through the hotel lobby and casino to get back to the guest service desk to go back to Aquaventure and grab a chair. It worked out though, since while the pool opened at 10AM, the water slides were activated until 11. Hours seem to basically be 10-5 every day of the year, so you can plan around that (and probably the late start).
The water park doesn't have a clear individual gate, but basically allows for entry from anywhere in the surrounding area of the resort. Odds are exceptionally good though that you'll enter around the area of the shark tank that makes up one end of of the Mayan Temple's space. There are several pools (6 to be precise, 2 belong to particular guests only) that are part of the water park complex, two slide structures, and around a good chunk of these lie the River Rapids attraction. There are a couple of restaurants and bars here, and the beach is a short walk away.
I'm going to break from the description of the rides to discuss price, because having described the scope, I need to tell you that the usual "booked through the cruise line" price is around $180/person to go here. If you go on your own, the park's ticketing utilizes dynamic pricing, but is pretty much guaranteed to be somewhere between 110-135 USD per adult. That's a lot of money for a water park that has two slide complexes, a water play area, and something that sounds suspiciously like a lazy river. On our visit, the weather was not exactly cooperating: temperatures never left the mid 70s, and there were significant gusts around 30 mph. Water here is not really heated, so there wasn't a huge desire to spend too much time deeply immersed. There's also a "no glasses on body slides" policy which didn't do me any additional favors, so they basically got crossed out. So let's break those down, shall we?
The first slide complex built here was the Mayan Temple, which takes its shape after the Mesoamerican step pyramids found throughout Central America. There are some small children's slides which come off the side of the pyramid, but primary interest will be towards the trio of the Leap of Faith, Challenger, and Serpent slides. Challenger and Leap of Faith are fairly typical speed slides - Challenger has two tandem racing slides with timing at the bottom, Leap of Faith is a single chute. Leap of Faith is more the traditional "thrilling" high angle, straight, all one drop slide. However the slow down area is through a plexiglass chute in the middle of the shark tank. Challenger just dumps into a standard pool. Having recalled the experience of Aquatica Orlando's clear tube body slides, my wife and I thought it might not be the best use of time in such frigid conditions.
What would be a better use is the Serpent slide. This is a fairly standard inner tube slide which can utilize single or double tubes. After passing through some dark tunnels in the center of the pyramid, you dump into what is a bit like a lazy river, again, inside the shark tank. Because you much more slowly travel through here, you get a real chance to appreciate the sharks and the fact that you're basically riding along side them. One downer can be that other riders splashing down create waves in this kinda tight enclosed tunnel. Oh, and its a tight, enclosed, boxy space, which if you're highly claustrophobic might not be the best thing. But you also had to take a tube slide to get here. Just sayin'.
At Power Tower, the newer complex, the Abyss body slides are fairly short and lead to an inner sanctum within the mythical structure built by Atlanteans past. Again: it was cold. We skipped them. There are also the the "Drop" and "Falls" water coasters built on the second level of the tower: these were just straight up closed, presumably because there were few guests actually trying to go on slides. That left us with just one to do: The Surge. This is atop the Power Tower, and our willingness to ride got the lifeguard at the top to say, "This is torture, man!" Surge starts with a huge double down drop, followed by a water jet assisted uphill climb. There's some more standard water slide fare until you splash down in what could best be described as a tributary to the River Rapids.
Ah, yes. The star of the show, the River Rapids. Marketed as a mile long winding attraction, I'm a little skeptical of how that number was developed, but I cant prove it any different. There's two key components to it - the first few sections take place in a high walled channel which has tubes pushed through by a wave machine. This is pretty similar to the "action river" at Cedar Point, but with significantly more theming. After turning to a more sedate river for a short span, tube encounter a conveyor belt which takes them up to a faster river. This speeds up significantly, eventually leading to a series of concrete flume more similar to late 70s/early 80s water slide design than anything you'd expect at a park that looks like this. The Surge ultimately feeds into this attraction through its own set of concrete chutes, making the overall attraction there about 3-4 minutes in length. It's appreciable.
I checked out the food vendors and ultimately settled on just trying to get by with dining and picked up a couple of massive pretzels. These aren't the Bavarian or Superpretzels generally present at theme parks in the US, and might even be made in house. For $4.50, the price was entirely reasonable for a theme park. There's pizza, hot dogs, burgers, and other fairly standard fare here. No sit down restaurants. Bars are probably fine but not cheap. Nothing here at Atlantis is. But that's also kinda why you came here instead of anywhere else in Nassau, isn't it? We didn't spend that much time lounging in chairs simply because the conditions were sub-par for a nice nap. Way, way too windy. Still, Atlantis leaves plenty of things to explore.
The Dig is available for those who don't want to pay for the water park - a pass good to see it can be purchased at the same location as we picked up our wristbands, but is probably in the $40 range per person. Honestly: not a good deal. As a bonus for us having spent a ton of money already, we were fond of it. The Dig is an Aquarium, albeit an outrageously ornate and themed one as though you were walking through scientific experiments run by the ancient Atlaneans. There are some pretty fabulous tanks to see, and the overall appearance is dramatically different than the Merlin built Sea Life Aquariums I've gotten used to visiting in the United States. Aquaventure passes also allow for entry to Atlantis' beaches. Not wanting to be sandblasted, we chose against this, but there's actually a variety of activities here, including what seems to be a man made snorkeling lagoon.
Inside the resort itself, the main lobby features massive mosaics in the domed ceiling depicting the creation and destruction of Atlantis and some enormous Chihuly glass sculptures. Everything about Atlantis is big and impressive. It very much feels like something from the halcyon late 90s period in Vegas, but not updated to become a generic, cold Cirque Du Soilel/crap comedian-centric space. There are the Vegas-esque signature restaurants (Nobu, Bahamian Club, etc),and a Hakkasan nightclub, but the space around them feels much more in line with the overriding theme of the resort rather than smashed into it.
All this bears the question: Is Atlantis Aquaventure in the Bahamas worth the money? From the standpoint of the average individual or family, I find the value assessment questionable to get to "it's worth it." Assuming the best case scenario: $110 for admission, taking the water taxi both ways for the tune of $4 each way, a snack/drink totaling $10 a person - you're at $130. For a family of four, that's $720 US. That's a lot of money for a water park. Attraction to attraction, Atlantis doesn't have nearly as many slides as does, for example, Wet N' Wild Emerald Pointe. Of course, Atlantis offers a greatly different experience from more traditional water parks. There's a nice aquarium. There's the option to go use its beaches. It has fine dining inside the resort. There's gambling, even including a real sports book (the closest to the East Coast). But those can also be accessed for free or less money than the Aquaventure pass.
Those who read this review are more than likely part of some aspect of theme park fandom. From that perspective, the answer is a bit different. More than likely, you're already used to outlays of significant sums of money for entertainment and fun. Atlantis, while pricey and more money than almost anything in Orlando, is not really stratospherically higher in cost. And it is definitely well themed and "immersive". Atlantis is at least as well themed as either Disney water park, but featuring much more ambitious slides. There's no narrative payoff and no long origin story to read to the kids. If you feel that you need that in order to be invested in gigantic stuff to explore and project your own imagination to, then yes, I suppose that Atlantis might not be for you, and the premise of a snowstorm 22 years ago leading to the creation of Blizzard Beach may be functionally the only thing you can do. For everyone else, especially those who see themselves as being serious theme park fans, a visit to Atlantis should be a "must-do," hovering in rarefied air.
First, arriving at Atlantis. The cheapest method to visit the Atlantis Resort and do the water park is to go via cruise ship for the day. There are loads of 3-4 night cruises from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Port Canaveral that make the stop, as well as longer cruises from the likes of Mobile, New Orleans, Jacksonville, New York City, and Baltimore. Nassau is one of the most visited cruise ports, and this is in spite of the fact that it is consistently rated as one of cruiser's least favorites. The draw of mass tourism in a comparatively poor nation like The Bahamas has made the city of Nassau one of the busiest, most polluted, and most crime ridden. Many areas of the city are basically off limits to tourists unless they want to invite petty crime or a mugging. It is very much the ugly side of this kind of economy and contrasts dramatically from the other islands in the chain. For groups larger than a couple, it may be economical to consider booking a room at the Quality Suites Paradise Island, which includes Atlantis entry for up to 4, and usually is significantly cheaper than individual day passes. Tourists can arrive via water taxi (follow the signs) for $4 USD each way or take a real taxi which can run from $5/person for a van load to $30 for the vehicle if you don't want to wait.
You can, of course, stay in Atlantis. Nightly rates include water park entry and can be expected to range anywhere between the low 200s for the older towers from the 60s to the 400s for the newest towers closest to the water park and casino. Airfare to Nassau is rarely cheap, and food at the resort is extremely expensive. Most guests effectively buy full board plans to defray costs while still eating well: an alternative is to leave the grounds and head to the Paradise Island Marina for cheaper eats or even head back to Nassau. If you do choose the meal plans, prepare for lines. We saw some massive breakfast queues on a Sunday morning with many people planning to leave and few outlets available. It seemed a little unwieldy.
If you are visiting for the day, you'll need to pick up your wristband a short walk from where the taxi will drop you off, outside, near the main entrance. Hotel guests will make the pickup at Aquaventure itself. Don't screw this up like us, or you'll need to walk 15 minutes back through the hotel lobby and casino to get back to the guest service desk to go back to Aquaventure and grab a chair. It worked out though, since while the pool opened at 10AM, the water slides were activated until 11. Hours seem to basically be 10-5 every day of the year, so you can plan around that (and probably the late start).
The water park doesn't have a clear individual gate, but basically allows for entry from anywhere in the surrounding area of the resort. Odds are exceptionally good though that you'll enter around the area of the shark tank that makes up one end of of the Mayan Temple's space. There are several pools (6 to be precise, 2 belong to particular guests only) that are part of the water park complex, two slide structures, and around a good chunk of these lie the River Rapids attraction. There are a couple of restaurants and bars here, and the beach is a short walk away.
I'm going to break from the description of the rides to discuss price, because having described the scope, I need to tell you that the usual "booked through the cruise line" price is around $180/person to go here. If you go on your own, the park's ticketing utilizes dynamic pricing, but is pretty much guaranteed to be somewhere between 110-135 USD per adult. That's a lot of money for a water park that has two slide complexes, a water play area, and something that sounds suspiciously like a lazy river. On our visit, the weather was not exactly cooperating: temperatures never left the mid 70s, and there were significant gusts around 30 mph. Water here is not really heated, so there wasn't a huge desire to spend too much time deeply immersed. There's also a "no glasses on body slides" policy which didn't do me any additional favors, so they basically got crossed out. So let's break those down, shall we?
The first slide complex built here was the Mayan Temple, which takes its shape after the Mesoamerican step pyramids found throughout Central America. There are some small children's slides which come off the side of the pyramid, but primary interest will be towards the trio of the Leap of Faith, Challenger, and Serpent slides. Challenger and Leap of Faith are fairly typical speed slides - Challenger has two tandem racing slides with timing at the bottom, Leap of Faith is a single chute. Leap of Faith is more the traditional "thrilling" high angle, straight, all one drop slide. However the slow down area is through a plexiglass chute in the middle of the shark tank. Challenger just dumps into a standard pool. Having recalled the experience of Aquatica Orlando's clear tube body slides, my wife and I thought it might not be the best use of time in such frigid conditions.
What would be a better use is the Serpent slide. This is a fairly standard inner tube slide which can utilize single or double tubes. After passing through some dark tunnels in the center of the pyramid, you dump into what is a bit like a lazy river, again, inside the shark tank. Because you much more slowly travel through here, you get a real chance to appreciate the sharks and the fact that you're basically riding along side them. One downer can be that other riders splashing down create waves in this kinda tight enclosed tunnel. Oh, and its a tight, enclosed, boxy space, which if you're highly claustrophobic might not be the best thing. But you also had to take a tube slide to get here. Just sayin'.
At Power Tower, the newer complex, the Abyss body slides are fairly short and lead to an inner sanctum within the mythical structure built by Atlanteans past. Again: it was cold. We skipped them. There are also the the "Drop" and "Falls" water coasters built on the second level of the tower: these were just straight up closed, presumably because there were few guests actually trying to go on slides. That left us with just one to do: The Surge. This is atop the Power Tower, and our willingness to ride got the lifeguard at the top to say, "This is torture, man!" Surge starts with a huge double down drop, followed by a water jet assisted uphill climb. There's some more standard water slide fare until you splash down in what could best be described as a tributary to the River Rapids.
Ah, yes. The star of the show, the River Rapids. Marketed as a mile long winding attraction, I'm a little skeptical of how that number was developed, but I cant prove it any different. There's two key components to it - the first few sections take place in a high walled channel which has tubes pushed through by a wave machine. This is pretty similar to the "action river" at Cedar Point, but with significantly more theming. After turning to a more sedate river for a short span, tube encounter a conveyor belt which takes them up to a faster river. This speeds up significantly, eventually leading to a series of concrete flume more similar to late 70s/early 80s water slide design than anything you'd expect at a park that looks like this. The Surge ultimately feeds into this attraction through its own set of concrete chutes, making the overall attraction there about 3-4 minutes in length. It's appreciable.
I checked out the food vendors and ultimately settled on just trying to get by with dining and picked up a couple of massive pretzels. These aren't the Bavarian or Superpretzels generally present at theme parks in the US, and might even be made in house. For $4.50, the price was entirely reasonable for a theme park. There's pizza, hot dogs, burgers, and other fairly standard fare here. No sit down restaurants. Bars are probably fine but not cheap. Nothing here at Atlantis is. But that's also kinda why you came here instead of anywhere else in Nassau, isn't it? We didn't spend that much time lounging in chairs simply because the conditions were sub-par for a nice nap. Way, way too windy. Still, Atlantis leaves plenty of things to explore.
The Dig is available for those who don't want to pay for the water park - a pass good to see it can be purchased at the same location as we picked up our wristbands, but is probably in the $40 range per person. Honestly: not a good deal. As a bonus for us having spent a ton of money already, we were fond of it. The Dig is an Aquarium, albeit an outrageously ornate and themed one as though you were walking through scientific experiments run by the ancient Atlaneans. There are some pretty fabulous tanks to see, and the overall appearance is dramatically different than the Merlin built Sea Life Aquariums I've gotten used to visiting in the United States. Aquaventure passes also allow for entry to Atlantis' beaches. Not wanting to be sandblasted, we chose against this, but there's actually a variety of activities here, including what seems to be a man made snorkeling lagoon.
Inside the resort itself, the main lobby features massive mosaics in the domed ceiling depicting the creation and destruction of Atlantis and some enormous Chihuly glass sculptures. Everything about Atlantis is big and impressive. It very much feels like something from the halcyon late 90s period in Vegas, but not updated to become a generic, cold Cirque Du Soilel/crap comedian-centric space. There are the Vegas-esque signature restaurants (Nobu, Bahamian Club, etc),and a Hakkasan nightclub, but the space around them feels much more in line with the overriding theme of the resort rather than smashed into it.
All this bears the question: Is Atlantis Aquaventure in the Bahamas worth the money? From the standpoint of the average individual or family, I find the value assessment questionable to get to "it's worth it." Assuming the best case scenario: $110 for admission, taking the water taxi both ways for the tune of $4 each way, a snack/drink totaling $10 a person - you're at $130. For a family of four, that's $720 US. That's a lot of money for a water park. Attraction to attraction, Atlantis doesn't have nearly as many slides as does, for example, Wet N' Wild Emerald Pointe. Of course, Atlantis offers a greatly different experience from more traditional water parks. There's a nice aquarium. There's the option to go use its beaches. It has fine dining inside the resort. There's gambling, even including a real sports book (the closest to the East Coast). But those can also be accessed for free or less money than the Aquaventure pass.
Those who read this review are more than likely part of some aspect of theme park fandom. From that perspective, the answer is a bit different. More than likely, you're already used to outlays of significant sums of money for entertainment and fun. Atlantis, while pricey and more money than almost anything in Orlando, is not really stratospherically higher in cost. And it is definitely well themed and "immersive". Atlantis is at least as well themed as either Disney water park, but featuring much more ambitious slides. There's no narrative payoff and no long origin story to read to the kids. If you feel that you need that in order to be invested in gigantic stuff to explore and project your own imagination to, then yes, I suppose that Atlantis might not be for you, and the premise of a snowstorm 22 years ago leading to the creation of Blizzard Beach may be functionally the only thing you can do. For everyone else, especially those who see themselves as being serious theme park fans, a visit to Atlantis should be a "must-do," hovering in rarefied air.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
5.18- Flimsy Buns
Joe, Nick, and Sean talk Shanghai Roaring Rapids, Disney Springs, new Disneyland hotel, Skull Island TM previews, #DareToChance, and we close out with Sean and Nick's trip reports!
Email us at parkscopeblog at gmail dot com or follow us at Parkscope, ParkscopeJoe, CaptMichael87, ParkscopeNick, and/or Lane.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
5.14- Free Universal TShirts
Joe, Mike, Nick, and Ann vow revenge of their heist partner after he steals all the gold from a caper in Venice. Tokyo Disneyland Resort additions, Kong updates, Volcano Bay construction, HHN26 houses, Paddlefish, and then a huge trip report from Mike and Ann!
Email us at parkscopeblog at gmail dot com or follow us at Parkscope, ParkscopeJoe, CaptMichael87, ParkscopeNick, and/or Lane.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
The "Not Another Trip Report!" Part 1: Epcot has Left the Library. Epcot has been Saved.
This
is Walt Disney World. You are with Sigourney Weaver, aboard the website
Parkscope. Something has gone wrong. One by one the readers have vanished. And
somewhere in this website, a terrifying TRIP REPORT waits to claim its next
victim!
WARNING!
REMAIN IN YOUR VEHICLE! THE AREA YOU ARE ENTERING IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!
What
follows is a moderately detailed and wholly spontaneous trip report of my
recent adventures hacking away at Brazilian tour groups. Many, many of these
topics might become entire columns in the future, since they have increasingly
piqued my interest the more I think about them. We’ll see if you agree.
Oh,
and I have an EASTER EGG surprise for you. Hidden somewhere in this column is
the FULL DRINK MENU for Pleasure Island, specifically Comedy Warehouse. Yes,
all the PI specialty drinks are somewhere below. This is not a joke! It’s here.
And, according to my research, it’s the ONLY KNOWN PICTURE of the Comedy
Warehouse drink menu on the entire internet! See, now you might read it!
Got
that Egg White delight Spinach Cabbage McMuffin handy? Grabbed that Danish in
the shape of Mount Rushmore? Then let’s get started!
Epcot ‘15
So...They can think of THIS but somehow NOT tie it into Veggie Veggie Fruit Fruit? Who's asleep at the switch?!
Spaceship Earth
and my other lovelies: Upon entering the most experimental of
prototypes, I had to partake in one of my most sacred of rituals: immediately
doing what every other clueless tourist with a map glued to their face would do
and head straight for the giant space dome that everyone else is running to regardless
of sanity or common sense. I have to do SSE first. I just have to. It’s like
the people who always go to a certain hot dog stand immediately upon entering
the ballpark. I have to pay my respects to John Hench and Ray Bradbury, even
though they would never in their right mind ask me to thank the Phoenicians. And,
to pay even more respect to Messrs. Hench and Bradbury, I listened to the thing
in German. I just can’t stand the new(er) spiel. I mean, do we really have to
pander to the lowest common denominator? I can’t believe (and I mean this
sarcastically, because you know this is true) that there was some meeting,
somewhere, among Disney “creative” executives who looked at the data that said
“young kids don’t like Epcot as much as Fantasyland” and pronounced the
ultimate solution to be having Judi Dench act like Dora the Explorer. It’s just
insulting to my ears, to my American heritage, to my sci-fi background, and to
practically everyone who ever lived in ancient Mesopotamia. I still can’t get
over that. Lord almighty. So, German it is. Usually it’s Japanese, because
Japanese voice work is so much better than American voice work, but I needed a
good laugh. See, Germany is good for something!
Before
we go on, let me just say that SSE, Universe of Energy, American Adventure and
Living with the Land are probably the only fully pleasant experiences I can
even have at Epcot any more, mostly thanks to Fastpass+ (more on that later). I
can’t help thinking that there has to be someone else who thinks it’s possible
for Disney to produce a new UOE show using
the exact same cast as the 1996 version. Wouldn’t that be weird and kinda
geeky all at the same time? Is there a Kickstarter for this? Can there be a Kickstarter for this?!
Come on internet, I don’t ask for much.
The producer's going crazy because Einstein fell asleep again. Someone poke him with a MagicBand.
World Showcase: I found my
normal tour around World Showcase to be more unpleasant than usual because as
time goes on, we old WDW stallions are starting to realize a tidal wave that
has just hit our treehouse and flooded our dreams: that World Showcase, themed
stratificationarium extraordinaire, vestige of Ryman and Redmond and Goff and
McKim, has inexorably turned into little more than a walk-around themed bar
district. Yes, for some reason, the same hoity-toity executives who felt that
Pleasure Island was a walk on the just-a-little-too wild side also felt what
the Mexico Pavilion really needed was a Margarita stand and a Tequila bar. No
more attractions, no more restaurants (unless they provided uber-expensive Illuminations
packages, natch). Just more booze. Is anyone running this ship? Does the left
hand realize that the right hand just all but challenged the Orange County
department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to a duel? What is going on these
days?
On a related note, who wants to start a bet on how long it takes Disney to call this "Rainforest Theming?"
France: On a more
satisfying note, the French Pavilion still provides one of the most untouched
remnants of EPCOT Center left in this world. Sure, Perry the Platypus likes to
swing from the chimneys and the Patisserie now serves sandwich and pastry items
that can be found in many, many other locations on property, but by golly
walking into Impressions de France is like walking into a time machine back to
1982. I think it has to be the only remaining untouched attraction from
10/1/82. For that, it gets my click. And a toast. With all the alcohol I stumbled
over to walk there.
American
Adventure:
I sat in the dark auditorium for 40 minutes with a look of pure joy. I just
kept thinking how we will never see anything like AA ever again. A 40 minute
multi-presentational animatronic show? Unbelievable. I sat with a smirk on my
face, since it’s obvious given Disney’s recent history that the park executives
have absolutely no idea it’s still there. Attractions Director: “The American
what? It’s where? I didn’t know we had an America Pavilion. I never go past the
Japanese sake bar.”
Mission: Sinise: I might be
the only one in the world who thinks that if Guests didn’t know the darn thing
spun, they wouldn’t psych themselves out and get sick. Can someone do a study
on this? Can we have a control group from Brazil pretend to be led into the
Orange queue but instead be snuck into the Green queue? How many less people
would get sick if Moe from Global Guts didn’t tell them to leave if they’re
afraid of spinning, after informing them that Mark from Israel is in the lead
with 550 points heading into the Crag level? Has anyone with any authority
thought this out loud? “Hey, you know how we don’t tell Guests on Star Tours
they’re moving and shaking inside a box on stilts…?” Hypersleep deactivated.
Tron Track: This is the
second trip I’ve taken to WDW since Test Track received the Tron makeover, and
there’s a little buzzing in my head I can’t seem to shake. I walked past the
new queue, the dreadfully boring preshow/waiting/prison area where we’re put in
an airlock until all the other kids are done doodling their non-existent car,
then was shuffled onto a ride that I was told was different than Test Track but
ended up just being Test Track that got up on the wrong side of the bed. Oh,
now I remember what that buzzing in my head was saying. I can hear it now, it’s
real quiet: WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS??!! Seriously, I can’t even fathom why
Disney spent so much money to quite possibly make one of their star E-Tickets
less interesting than what it was before. Didn’t we used to have a rough road
section? And a climate chamber? And a truck that was hiding because it wasn’t
covered in bright neon? I’m racking my brain to think of another instance where
Disney spent money with the sole purpose of making an attraction less exciting
(except obviously not for Tom “tile murals are exciting” Fitzgerald). Not to
add characters, not to make it PC, not to add pointless distractions, but to
literally make it less interesting? I mean, this is a unicorn attraction here.
How many times has this happened? And more importantly, why was there no real
effort placed on this renovation? Covering things in neon, pretty though it is,
does not an attraction make. What makes it even more insulting is the fact they
didn’t even take the concept to its conclusion! WHERE ARE THE PRETTY NEON
LIGHTS ON THE EXTERIOR LOOP??!! There was nothing! Not one little sliver. Think
of how cool that could have been. Had it been done right, it could have made
the entire effort worthwhile. What a travesty.
Disney’s Hollywood
Pixar Marvel Star Wars Muppet Lucas Studios (Esquire)
Fastpass- : Before we
continue, I have to quickly mention the Marx Brothers movie that Fastpass+ has
become (or Fastpass-minus, preferably). I’ve heard arguments from both sides of
the aisle about the pros and cons of this system, and I’m guessing from what
I’ve heard that the internet community is largely divided on this issue, but
after hearing all the arguments I cannot for the life of me find any reason to
think why Fastpass+ is an improvement, or at least that it doesn’t cause more
harm than good. For every argument I’ve heard in it’s favor, I can think of two
or three ways it would create a negative experience for other Guests who don’t
collect Vacation Club Points like Sonic the Hedgehog collects gold rings. I
simply can’t wrap my mind around why this is a net gain in terms of overall
Guest satisfaction (and I mean all
Guests, not just the ones who plan every day of their vacation six months in
advance). And this is even after Disney lifted the ludicrous rule that you
could only get Fastpasses for one individual park each day (I mean really, who
plans this stuff?) This is obviously a topic for a potential future article
(God help us all) since there is far too much to talk about here. I only
mention it because it very negatively affected one afternoon of mine with very
little effort (it really infects everyone’s vacation like a disease and bothers
you even when you’re trying not to pay attention like the people who talk in
the movie theater). And I’m not even counting the fact that I saw 45 minute
lines (caused by Fastpass+) for SSE, GMR, Living with the Land, Mansion, and
Buzz on weekdays during the offseason
(that really honks me off). I went to Studios on a whim one afternoon. I guess
I must have been spoiled because I had gone to MK the day before and I was able
to get a FP for practically anything (except a new kid’s coaster that seems to
be all the rage these days). So I went to the FP+ terminal and saw wow, Coaster
and GMR had times available that afternoon (I wasn’t going to wait in a 45
minute line for GMR). Awesome. I clicked on Coaster, then tried to click on GMR,
but the icon had gone dark (I was able to get Space, Thunder, and Splash the
previous day). I called over a FP+ attendant, we’ll call him Sven. As you can
probably guess, hilarity ensued. Cue Benny Hill music.
Sven:
How can I help you?
Me:
Hi Sven. Awesome name. I’m trying to click on Tower, it was there a second ago
but now it’s dark. Did it sell out in the half second it took me to blink?
Sven:
Oh, you already have a FP for Coaster.
Me:
Indeed.
Sven:
You can’t have a FP for Coaster and GMR at the same time.
Me:
I don’t get it.
Sven:
See, there’s two columns here. You can only pick one attraction from the left
column and two attractions from the right column.
Me:
Is this some sort of theme park communism we’re witnessing?
Sven:
(laughs) No, this is just Disney’s way of evening out the crowds.
Me:
(ignoring the fact that the last time GMR had a 45 minute line was in 1991) So they
put the big attractions on the left? So less FPs are given out?
Sven:
Right.
Me:
I can’t help but notice the Great Movie Ride is in the left column.
Sven:
Yeah.
Me:
And Beauty and the Beast.
Sven:
Right.
Me:
Can you tell me, seriously, if anyone
has chosen these two in the left column instead of Coaster or Toy Story Mania?
Sven:
I can’t remember.
Me:
Oh believe me, I would remember if I were in your position. I see Tower and
Star Tours are on the right…is there a suspicious waning of popularity for these
two that we don’t know about?
Sven:
I dunno.
Me:
As long as you have to make a life or death choice between Toy Story Mania and
Robert Osborne Presents?
Sven:
I’m just the guy who does the thing.
Me:
And what a thing it is you does. That’s fine…I guess I’ll just grab one for
Tower and Star Tours.
Sven:
Tower’s out, and Star Tours is for 7:15.
Me:
Fine. Nevermind. I’ll just take the one for Coaster. (Fumbling at the
controls). It’s not working.
Sven:
You can’t do that.
Me:
Do what?
Sven:
You can’t just take a FP for Coaster. You have to pick two more.
Me:
Come again? I have to do what now?
Sven:
You have to take two more, or you don’t get any.
Me:
The hell? This is progress?
Sven:
Do you want the Star Tours one?
Me.
No. Just give me the next two available.
Sven:
Enjoy your 3:15 showing of Voyage of the Little Mermaid!
Me:
(Death Stare)
Sven:
Next please!
That
in itself would be bad enough, but of course it couldn’t end there. The Little
Mermaid FP was for a return time between 3:15 and 3:25. I went over to
MuppetVision, which took slightly longer than I had anticipated, and made it to
the show around 3:25. I went to the original FP return area, but it was no
longer there, so I looked around for either a sign or an attendant (not there).
Finally, after waiting at the entrance for a CM to show up, I saw one coming
out of what looked like the return lane. I went up to him and showed him my
pass. “I’m sorry,” he said not so sincerely, “we’re closed.” “The show’s 101?”
I asked him. “No,” he said, “You were supposed to get here at 3:25, and it’s
3:26, so you need to wait in Standby.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “If you wait
in Standby, there’s no guarantee you’ll get in this show.” “No man, I’m good.
Have a nice day.” My nice gesture was not returned, as the Cast Member was
probably looking for babies to steal candy from or small dogs to kick. So for
those keeping score at home, our amazing Fastpass+ system has developed the
following wave of negative effects:
1.
Fastpass+ bloats GMR line to 45 minutes, past
the line of bearability
2.
Fastpass+ forces life or death choice between
Coaster and GMR, looks like no GMR for Jeff today (single tear emoji)
3.
Hey, instead, you want to go on an attraction
you have absolutely no earthly interest in?
4.
Jeff goes on MuppetVision, since it’s the only
attraction at the time that has a short wait, and still misses FP time for
Mermaid, even though it was not something he wanted to do in the first place
And
can you imagine being a father of four girls who made his Fastpasses five
hundred months in advance and shows up one minute late to Voyage of the Little
Mermaid and is told under no uncertain terms to get lost by the teenage minimum
wage attendant who just wants to get Vista Laid that night? Having been a
greeter before (though not the kind who hates people), I’m telling you, there
would have been real violence. This is Disney’s idea of a good time?
The Great
Osborne Ride: Wow, Robert Osborne really is full of himself isn’t he?
“Welcome to Robert Osborne presents Robert Osborne’s Great Movie Ride Starring
Robert Osborne (and Sigourney Weaver).” And the not one but two blatant plugs for TCM in the final
scene. Was Disney this desperate to have TCM’s sponsorship that they would bow
to such pandering? I mean, talk about tasteless. Do we even need tour guides
anymore? Why can’t we just replace them with animatronic Robert Osbornes? He’s
castrated the spiel as it is. How sad.
Free Hat: FREE HAT FREE
HAT FREE HAT FREE HAT…I can’t believe this is real! It’s like finally seeing
the demise of the Pepto Bismol castle, except 13 years too late! I can see the
framed architecture again! I can see the meticulously sculpted park icon! I
can’t see a giant middle finger to all of us who don’t want to remember Paul
Pressler! It’s like Michael Jordan finally getting rid of his Hitler moustache!
FREE HAT FREE HAT FREE HAT!!
If the hapless mom in the middle had was wearing a fanny pack, you'd think it was 1989
And Now for
Something Completely Different: There seems to be a new(er) safety procedure on
the parking lot trams that forces Cast members to make a last call for
boarding, announce that there’s no more boarding, then play the 90-second safety spiel announcement, and leave only
after it’s done. The dirty looks they get by people who are told not to board
but see the tram just sit there, perfectly still, for another 2 minutes or more
is priceless. It’s why I get up in the morning. Can’t you just cut the boarding
after the safety spiel? Seriously, people. The lawyers are out of control.
Frozen, or
God’s Punishment for Male Cast Members: I treat Frozen like the annoying dog
that your neighbor takes for a walk past your house every day. The rest of the
neighbors just love that dog. I mean,
how can you not like that dog. It’s
the cutest freaking dog in the whole
freaking world. Just leave me in peace. You do what you want Frozen, just
don’t poop on my lawn. There’s a good dog.
MuppetVision: As a West
Coaster, I really miss MuppetVision. It’s always been a real highlight for me.
I miss it even more now that the Muppets have a TV show that quite possibly has
caused several of my friends’ eyes to bleed. As a species, the human race
simply cannot afford to eliminate a piece of Jim Henson when his legacy is
being defecated on in such a fashion. I think this is the first sign of the
apocalypse. Although, I’m glad to see the guy who closed the Country Bear Playhouse
at Disneyland a few months before the release of the Country Bears movie has
found another job at DCA, closing MuppetVision right before the Muppets debuted
a show in primetime. Keep gettin’ dem
checks, hilariously incompetent Disney synergy guy. (And isn’t it time we
eliminate the completely pointless Muppets Most Wanted tag from the preshow? Is
it so painfully obvious Disney couldn’t screw up the Muppets more if they
tried?)
Disney’s Animal
Kingdom, or as it’s known now, “Disney’s Crane Kingdom,” because yikes
Avatar Cranes: The cranes be
everywhere! But are we actually sure
this time they’re building the Avatar Promised Land? Is there actual progress
being made? Can we clone Al Lutz so his duplicate can brave the horrendous
swamps of Florida to bring us weekly updates on the so-called progress? I think
there have been something like three Harry Potter expansions that have been
announced and built since construction began. Civilizations have grown and
died. There have been 17 new Doctor Who’s. I might be off a little there. But
it sure seems like it.
Wait Your Turn
Safaris:
I’m going to take this opportunity to comment not on the perfectly serviceable
jeep ride through Harambe to see the concrete and fiberglass Baobab Tree, but
to quickly note a trend that has been an annoyance since the Darth Paul years
of 1999-2002: the fact that Disney tends to pull vehicles for the night way too
early, to the detriment of Guests still in the park. To be sure, pulling
vehicles at the end of the night is an appropriate time and cost-saving
measure, too convenient to be ignored. Starting about 15 minutes before park
close, pulling these very-expensive-to-maintain vehicles out of the operation
saves time for nightly maintenance crews and money on potential long-term wear
and tear. When I was a Cast Member at the Temple of the Luxuriant (Forbidden)
Eye, we sometimes pulled vehicles as early as 30 minutes prior to park close on
slow nights. But also of note, our Leads were very aware of the effect it would
have on our wait times. Pulling some vehicles at IJA (as long as both load
stations were operational) had little effect on our wait time (five minutes at
most), because our now depleted jeeps would simply coast into Unload instead of
stopping behind another unloading jeep. The extra wait would be minimal, and
would be partially offset by the fact that Guests did not have to wait to
Unload. Unfortunately, I encountered some areas at WDW that took no such
consideration, the most egregious being at Safaris and Thunder. In these
instances, jeeps/trains were pulled more
than an hour prior to closing, causing inexcuseably bloated wait times. At
Thunder, a downsized 3 train operation caused what should have been a walk-on experience
with a maximum 5 train operation during a relatively slow night into a
20-minute wait, with the line now past the Fastpass merge point. It was sad to
see so many Guests forced to wait to this extent where there should be no wait
at all. And again, on Safaris, my party and I waited in a painfully slow line
that started past the stroller parking area. Even the Fastpass line had backed
up past Warden Wilson’s happy pappy Harambe Channel (keep in mind, this was
around 3:30 on a 5 pm close). As the line slogged to the merge point, one of
the Fastpass Guests asked the merge CM why things were taking so long (he
actually asked specifically if it was an animal delay). She said no, that they
had been “taking vehicles off” so there would be delays and backups, as well as
interminable waits in between jeeps. Isn’t that nice. During my time in
Attractions, we were taught that a short wait for Guests should be considered
part of the “Courtesy Key” (Safety/Courtesy/Show/Efficiency), and that
contributions to Efficiency (removing vehicles, ERing Cast Members) should only
be made if the Guest Experience was not affected too detrimentally. I’m just so
puzzled that WDW would make such operational decisions so early before park
close. They seem to have a mentality that a 20-minute wait is acceptable,
regardless of the time or the park conditions. This is certainly another topic
for another time, but if Disney wants to shake the impression that it’s
uber-busy 24/7/365, shouldn’t they actually allow the slow times to be slow?
During times of reduced park hours, Stay Time decreases, which means Guests
have less time to spend money on food and merch. Don’t the Disney
Scrooge-athons in the MBA department want Guests to spend more money? Guests
can’t spend money if they’re waiting in line. It’s just one of those things that
make you scratch your head.
And
hey, did someone say SHOPPING?! That cues us up for …
Disney Springs,
or, “Oh, the Humanity!”
The Sunglass
Shacks:
Okay, to be fair, there is still an enormous amount of construction going on,
and the gridlock and overall pandemonium I experienced at this once-peaceful
corner of WDW could easily be explained away by the fact that the full
expansion has not yet opened. But that still doesn’t explain why I’m not
impressed with the ongoing effort. Bill and Ted said it best: “Why have
Pleasure Island when you could have a sunglass shack?” I guess I miss the days
when Disney wanted Downtown Disney to be different, a change of pace from the
rest of the property, a place where they put things that did not fit anywhere
else, in the name of variety. Pleasure Island, DisneyQuest, House of Blues, the
old Marketplace, Cap n’ Jack’s, Virgin Megastore, Cirque du Soleil, these are
things that could encourage a separate visit to see DTD when you could be
spending your time at the theme parks you’re spending $100/day for. But now
it’s just…shopping. And a very limited variety of “things that aren’t
shopping.” Even the so-called “new adventures,” namely the Splitsville bowling
and the NBA Experience and the hangar where they serve Raiders of the Lost
Meatballs, are little more than watered-down and far more expensive versions of
what came before. Does the hangar really replace the Adventurer’s Club? Does
NBA really replace Disneyquest? And the prices are an obscenity for the quality
you get in return. They replaced what used to be a varied experience with one
big outlet mall. Disney’s Sunglass Shack outlets? Since my primary MO while
visiting WDW is not shopping, there’s now nothing for me here. I used to enjoy
going to Disneyquest/PI/wherever and shopping before or after, but Disney
doesn’t want me there unless I’m willing to buy an entire kitchen set including
the kitchen sink. So I won’t be.
Random Tangent: Why does the
WDW property still have so many one-lane roads? Having lived in LA for a few
years, where there is exactly infinity-zero room for construction or expansion
of anything of any kind, I tear my hair out every time I have to drive on one
of these one-lane jobs through the swamp. They have NOTHING BUT ROOM. And
Guests CONSTANTLY COMPLAIN ABOUT OVERCROWDING. AND BUSSES THAT TAKE TOO LONG TO
REACH THEIR DESTINATION. THIS IS THE EASIEST FIX IN THE WORLD. WHERE DID MY
HAIR GO??!!
The Magic+
Kingdom
The Swiss: Has anyone
else performed an act of Good Samaritanism while in line for an attraction?
Have you done things like close a switchback queue that’s no longer necessary
(or opened one when crowds are overflowing)? If so, we’re friends.
Automatically. You don’t have a choice. There’s no escape. I walked by the
Treehouse and saw there was literally no one exploring inside, lo and behold
some funny person had switched the Treehouse wait time to 60 minutes. I changed
it back to the only wait time Treehouse has ever had (0). When I returned from
watching Tropical Serenade, the Treehouse was full. It’s amazing how weird yet
predictable tourists can be. There are now, I’m sure, religious texts that
sermonize about my generosity. All hail Doom.
Wherefore Art
Thou, Little Orange Bird?: I nearly had a panic attack when I saw that
Aloha Isle had moved into the Sunshine Pavilion. I was quickly told that the
Orange Bird had moved his Citrus Swirl over to the former Aloha Isle location.
I can easily think of two reasons this could have happened (since theming and
WDW history suggests the Sunshine Tree Terrace remain at the Sunshine
Pavilion): 1. Some number cruncher saw they could sell 2% more Dole Whips if
they moved to a location with one more register, or 2. Someone wanted to
duplicate Disneyland’s highly successful Dole Whip setup. It’s sort of a downer
either way. Profits before Show, yet again. I do share Foxxy’s view on this
point that WDW has its own history, and making changes to be “more like
Disneyland” is contradictory and silly. Read her full column here rather than
listen to me blabber on, since I agree with practically every word: http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2012/02/on-integrity.html
Enchntd Tki Rm
nd Cntry Br Jmbre: Really Disney? You thought the one thing Magic
Kingdom needed was to cut 2 minutes from Tiki and Bear Band? Someone actually
thought this up? And it’s pretty funny how some of the changes are just plain
nonsensical…Wendell and Gomer’s protracted appearances coming first to mind, or
perhaps the fact that the Bodiless Three now have exactly zero lines in between
intro and exit. There certainly was no creative direction here. It’s easy to
see what happened, it happens with movie making all the time. The director is
given a set time limit, and is told on no uncertain terms to cut to that length
of time. So they cut one verse of Big Al, one verse of Ole Slew Foot, etc.
until the show’s pacing is completely shot. But hey, at least Iago and Olaf
aren’t somehow involved, right? (Down girl!)
Hopefully-One-Day-Will-Be-Extinct-Gen
Mansion:
When did the Haunted Mansion move into Toontown? Did I miss the memo? Someone
tell the magical Disney map people that we found Toontown, it’s been hiding
with 999 ghosts for some reason.
Is this Fantasyland now? Does Syfy Channel play real sci-fi shows? I don't know what to think anymore!
Packages will
be sent through Next-Gen Queues: The new(er) Space version is just
frustrating. It’s nice that Disney is spending some money and everything, but
here it seems they were changing things just to change them. Really guys,
little green alien is our new color scheme? And why does every screen now have
to be SO FANTASTICALLY BRIGHT? Could people not see the departure board in the
first room before? Because the new freaking bright lights wrecks the go-away
effect of the wall paint. And why is there a giant unthemed hallway on the way to
Alpha that looks like the backstock area of a garage sale? Is this where the
money ran out? My head hurts.
In the Tiki
Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Bar: After my forays at MK I did sneak into Trader
Sam’s to see how it compared with the West Coast version. And seriously,
doesn’t Disney learn from it’s mistakes? There was little to no seating inside
the main area. I thought this was supposed to be the bigger, better version?
Where’s that WDW spirit? Sheesh, they get constant complaints at DL that the
bar fills to capacity too quickly. Don’t they listen? Unbelievable.
On
the bright side, Hall of Presidents, Carousel of Progress, and the Peoplemover
are still truckin’, and though COP looks and sounds awful, thank god it’s still
there. That’s another area that I think Disney brass have simply no idea is
still in existence. One can only hope.
A Final Word:
Epcot has Left the Library. Epcot has
been Saved
I’ve heard so
much negativity about Epcot from fans for the past, well…who are we kidding, 15
or so years. Disney replaces classic attractions with Pixar, or Six Flags
thrill rides, or anything else. It’s really very obvious that Disney
management, as it exists today, has little or no interest in Epcot (other than
through alcohol sales). They couldn’t care less about Epcot’s mission or point
of being. It’s plainly obvious. And that’s sad. But what’s strangely hopeful
about this situation is…there has been very little damage done to Epcot’s core
infrastructure. Disney’s apathy towards Epcot has caused a strange sort of
sleepy sickness that makes them ignore making Epcot that much worse. In the
Eisner days, they weren’t shy about spending the money to tear entire
attractions down and replace them. Nowadays, they’re too lazy to spend the
money. So everything we’ve come to despise about Disney’s attitude towards
attractions and creative thinking, has actually been what has saved and
preserved Epcot.
It reminds me of
what happened with Fastpass. Old school Disney fans hate Fastpass for several
reasons, probably the most egregious being the overcrowding of walkways, the
creation of a lower-class theme park stratification, and the blatant intention
of Fastpass to get Guests spending more money in the restaurants and shops.
Yet, one good thing that came out of the Fastpass initiative was the very real
possibility that it saved several smaller attractions from extinction. Because
Guests are now walking around, they don’t just visit shops and restaurants, but
they have time to go to smaller attractions they normally wouldn’t have time to
visit during a regular operating day. I’m convinced Fastpass is the reason why
we still have a Tiki Room in Anaheim and a Carousel of Progress in Orlando.
These attractions just fell through the cracks of the system and were able to
avoid extinction.
I see the same
kind of “falling through the cracks” happening with Epcot. The core is still
there. With the exception of Horizons, no 1982/83 pavilion has been fully
bulldozed or replaced. Spaceship Earth is still there. Journey into YOUR
Imagination has kept the first 2/3rds of Dreamfinder’s ride track. Only very
small changes were made to Universe of Energy or the Living Seas. All we have
to do is take down some window shades and Innoventions looks more like
Communicore again. Underneath all the frou-frou and pin stands and DVC stalls
is EarthStation and Communicore. Just like with American Adventure, I think
Disney just doesn’t want to spend the money or effort to change things at
Epcot. Which, considering how much worse it could be (EPCOT BECOMES NEW DISNEY
SPRINGS/DVC EXPANSION!!!) is not an entirely hopeless thought. All it will take
is one smart person to say, “Hey, maybe people really like Epcot!” and flick
the switch back on. But for now, EPCOT Center is quietly waiting in the dark,
like a surprise birthday guest…like one day’s it’s going to pop out of your
birthday cake (that’s an interesting visual). Shhhhhh! Don’t tell Disney it’s
still there!
"Johnson, what is that?"
"I dunno sir, possibly a leftover from the Eagle Pines course?"
"I don't have time for this. I have admission prices to increase."
And now, the
moment you’ve all been waiting for (and the real reason you’re probably still
reading this). During my trip, I paid a visit to my former house and said hi to
my wonderful former roommate, Tim. Tim is a GSM at MK and owns his own DJ
company, and therefore has an unhealthy obsession with Pleasure Island. So much
so that he purchased the real Comedy Warehouse drink menu from Property Control
and plastered it on my former bedroom wall (I’m actually not making this up).
So this is the moment you’ve been waiting for … I now present to you, my
friends, dear readers … THE COMEDY WAREHOUSE/PLEASURE ISLAND SPECIALTY DRINK
MENU!!!
******CUES
HALLELUJAH CHORUS***************
IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL
Okay, so it’s
not hidden at all. Now we can make Rage in a Cage and Jessica’s Secret to our
heart’s content! According to my research, this is the ONLY picture of the
Comedy Warehouse drink menu available anywhere! You’re welcome, internet! And you’re welcome for the extra clicks, Parkscope administrators!
Send your unending praise to Jeff @ParkScopeJeff on Twitter, or complain about him at parkscopeblog at gmail dot com. Kungaloosh!
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