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US Road Trip & Orlando 1 Aug - 30 Aug

Vik

TS Member
As some of you may know, myself & @pritchardavid have just spent the whole of August in the US of A, with 2 weeks traveling around and visiting a number of parks and sampling the delights they have to offer. Following this, we then spent the next two weeks in Orlando, arriving just in time for my 21st (or was that 40th?) birthday. :). So thought it would be a good idea to post a trip report on our experiences and give my views on the parks we visited.

In total, we drove close to 4000 miles (as well as another 1200 miles on 2 internal flights), visiting 14 states, 16 parks and around 122 coasters.

We visited the following parks on our road trip :
Carowinds, Dollywood, Kings island, Cedar Point, Six Flags New England, Six Flags Great Adventure, Hersheypark, King Dominion (quick stop off heading to Williamsburg to Ride I305) & Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
It was all very intense, and very little room for error. Any delays could of caused some issues, but thankfully all went fairly smoothly.

We had originally planned to visit Coney Island on 1st August after arriving in New York, but long wait in immigration, waiting for hotel shuttle buses, tiredness, 6am flight next morning and being 90 mins journey each way on Subway/Bus put paid to that sadly.

Anyway, after a very early start on Sunday 2nd August, we flew to Charlotte Douglass in North Carolina, picked up our hire car for the month and then set off on the short journey to Carowinds and to sample Fury 325.

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We arrived just in time for opening at 10am and park close was 10pm, and sorted out our Cedar Fair annual passes sorted and our Fastpasses before starting our coaster riding. Over the course of the day we went on Fury 325 about 16 times (or thereabouts), pretty much whoring it in the last hour of park opening.

I absolutely loved 325. Very fast, quite intense, but not quite enough to knock you unconscious (See I305 later :eek: ), and quite a bit of airtime towards the end of the ride. Watching a plane pass over directly in front as it was on approach to Charlotte Airport as we crested the top of the lift, it felt like you could reach out and touch it. :)

As for the other rides. Well Thunder Road, the racing woody had closed for good just the week before, so we missed it :(, and the other woody, Hurler, was closed all day. But at least we still had Woodtsock Express, which for a small wooden coaster aimed at children wasn't all that bad. Good fun anyway :).

Then there's the Vekoma Flying Coaster, Knighthawk which was so horrifically bad we had to have a second go later in the day just to remind ourselves how bad it was. Intimidator was OK, but now dwarfed by 325. Vortex, the standup coaster I didn't find a dull as Drayton's, but don't let that fool you in to thinking it's actually good, it isn't :D. Afterburn, B&M Inverted coaster was better than I was expecting, quite an intense and fast first drop and a couple of bits caught me by surprise by being thrown around a bit. A good solid old school B&M :)

The park itself was nothing special. generic amusement park, which was fairly difficult to navigate. There was a lack of directional signage, something which seemed quite synonymous with the parks we visited in the US, as well as lack of queue time information. Operations were average at best, though Intimidator on 3 trains had one loading in the station and 2 in the brake run, so running 3 was completely pointless.

However, they do a power hour the last couple of hours or so, where they really do hammer the trains out, with over enthusiastic managers getting very excited and never shutting up whilst donning the mic. During this they could get the train in the station on Intimidator out just as train 2 had hit the brakes and train 3 was still out and about.

After park close, we were stopping at a hotel just across the road from the entrance, and after a long day with little sleep it was very welcome indeed not to have to go far at all. :)


Now on to day 2 (Mon 3), and a fairly restful day as we set off on the journey to Pigeons Forge for Dollywood on the Tuesday, taking in The Smoky Mountains en-route, as well as taking a small detour so we could sample part of the Blue Ridge Highway.
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Just a mile up the road from our hotel was the Smoky Mountains Alpine Coaster, which we just had to do :). Cost $15. Took an age to get up to the top. Was a bit concerned there was a large group with young children not far in front of us, but thankfully they left a large gap after letting them go and the two other people who were ahead of us so of course straight down full pelt, no brakes. Not done many Alpine Coasters, but thought this was quite good but didn't feel as long as I was expecting. Looking forward to sampling the one by EP next Summer for a good comparison :).

Evening meals (and alcoholic beverages) were to be had in the Smoky Mountains Microbrewery, which whilst being just across the road from our hotel was a nightmare to get to having to cross a massive, and very busy highway where there was never any time where all sets of lights were on red enabling us to cross safely.:eek: . Still, lovely food, staff, and of course, some very nice locally brewed beer to sample (in large glasses)
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That's all for now, next up is Dollywood, Kings Island & Cedar Point
 
Hmm!!, Anyway, back to the task in hand and time for part 2. :)

Tuesday 4 August

Next Stop Dollywood. This park, despite the lack of 'Killer' rides (though that may change next year?), was one of the ones I was most looking forward to on this trip and it didn't disappoint. It is an absolute delight. What it lacks in rides it more than makes up for in charm.

Deciding that the $15 car parking was a little excessive, we opted instead to drive the short distance to the Trolley Bus centre and park for free, and taking advantage of the frequent Trolley Bus service to the park that cost $0.50 per person each way. A big saving I must say. :)
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I could of spent a whole day just taking photographs at this park such was it's charm & beauty, after all the theming and attention to detail is fantastic, and on par with Disney & Universal, so there's plenty of snaps o be had. But alas there were rides to be ridden. :p Again, as with all the parks we visited on the road trip part, bar Hershey, we had fast track. Thunderhead, their current Woody was an obvious port of call early on, and though the initial ride was just 'Good', once it warmed up later on it was pretty insane. Certainly on par with Wodan. As with Wodan, it suffers from being just a little to short, but it does pack a punch. Can be a little bit rough in places too. Could of got well in to double figures ride count wise, but due to needing to leave about an hour before ride close, we had to settle for just missing out on those extra couple of rides :eek:.
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Wild Eagle, B&M Wing Rider is probably one of the best, if not the best of its type I have ridden, and also a Wing Rider that doesn't have some depressing apocalyptic theme :p.

In Mystery Mine, we managed to find a Euro Fighter that was rougher than SAW. Yup, it was pretty rough, but I guess it can be excused somewhat what with the impressive Theming ;)
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It felt we did Dollywood a bit of a disservice having only one day on park. To experience it properly I think you really need two days. And maybe also a couple of days around the Smoky Mountains. Pigeons Forge is a bit of an odd town. The main street, which has a 6 lane highway going through it looks a bit like a seaside town (A la Blackpool), with all the garish signs, amusement parks, Go Cart Tracks and general tat, but go off the main strip, and unlike Blackpool, where you find more Blackpool, instead you will come across the old town and feel like you are in a completely different world.

Needless to say, Dollywood is a delight :)

Moving on, we had a 4 hour drive to our next way point which was Georgetown, near Lexington in Kentucky. Which was to be our overnight base before the short 90 minute journey next morning to Kings Island. The drive started off well, but as it darkened and we headed deeper in to the depths of nothingness, the Thunder Storm hit and this made driving a bit awkward to say the least. Especially as the juggernauts still insist on flying past you at 80mph with their accompanying spray. And the less said about the 30 minute wait for a coffee in McDonalds the better. :mad:. Finally arrived at our hotel some 5 hours later feeling I'd been through a spin wash a dozen times over.

Wed 5th Aug
Kings Island

Well, nothing else was probably surpass Dollywood in terms of Theming, Location, Beauty on this trip, and Kings Island certainly didn't disappoint in proving me wrong in that respect. :D But, hey, its got 14 coasters, and that's what we are there for :). The main street is pleasant thought with the lovely fountains :)
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In terms of main coaster, Banshee, yet another B&M inverted coaster, has quite a good layout, and it's darn long too. I didn't find it overly intense though, unlike some of the old school B&Ms, but a good solid coaster.

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Then there was Bat, an Arrow suspended coaster, which was kind of hidden out of the way with at least a 5 minute walk to get there from the nearest place of civilisation. Pretty standard stuff, and still think Vampire is better, though thss does have the original style trains, which I hadn't experienced before.

In terms of some Wood Fix :eek:, there is of course The Beast. I didn't really think it was anything special, however it is certainly different, and seems to go on for ever. There's just to many flat point where it ambles along for it to be considered anything other than average. The other woody, Racer, is again generically standard and never really gets going to any degree. All good fun all the same.

Diamond Back was a reasonably good B&M Hyper and afforded a few re-rides. :). Then there's Firehawk, another one of them Vekoma Flying coasters. Nighthawk at Carowinds should of put us off for life after the fi dead cert after second time, but no, it had to be done. It couldn't be any worse could it? I will leave you all to your own conclusions on that one, but needless to say, I still have nightmares about it :p

Flight of Fear next door to this, which as indoor coaster, was a nice little surprise with a unexpected LIM Launch. Also you have lap bars on a coaster that dares to invert. :eek: Whatever next :p

Overall Kings Island is your average American Amusement Park I guess. Offering tall coasters, long coasters, bigger the better mentality, but it's all decidedly average offering with little you may wish to ride repeatedly until the end of days, maybe with the exception of Banshee and possibly Diamond Back.

Next stop is Cedar Point, which will take some writing up so I will leave it there for now and continue next week when I am back from a long weekend at Europa Park :)
 
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