5/1/03 Celebration City Official Grand Opening Day
Associated parks:
None
Celebration City is the new Theme Park that takes the place of the old Branson USA Park and Mutton Hollow. It is themed after the 20th Century. This Park has 3 themed areas, Celebration Street, Route 66, and The Boardwalk. The Celebration Street is located at the front of the park, it consists of Shops and the Carousel. IT is located at the front of the park. The Route 66 Section of the park is home to most of the rides, all the coasters, the Jukebox Arcade, The kiddy section, The Go Carts, Shops, and a Route 66 themed miniature golf course. The Route 66 section is located to the west of Celebration Street (To the left as you come pass the carousel). The Boardwalk section of the park consists of Shops, the Celebration Hall Theater, The Celebrate Laser Show Amphitheater, The games section, The Shoot 'D Chutes water ride, and a few other rides. The Boardwalk section is located just to the North and east of Celebration Street (Straight pass the Carousel). On other note I noticed that most of the employees have bowling shirts as a part of their uniforms.
At 1:00 I arrived to wait for the gate to open at 3:00 PM. Once the gates came open I went right to the Ozark Wildcat. Once I arrived the ride had some mechanical problems but it didn't take long to fix. The ride opened up and I got right in the front seat for the first Official Opening day ride of the Wildcat (CC had a soft opening last Saturday).
Well, that first ride took about 10 minutes because the mechanical problems was not quite fixed yet and the lift stopped (Boy, talk about the excitement of getting up that lift hill). Once the lift started back up we got to enjoy the ride. Ozark Wildcat is a pretty fast paced and smooth wooden roller coaster with fast curves and plenty of Airtime, because of all of this the ride is pretty disorienting. It looks like I may have a new favorite Woodie. After I got off of Wildcat I went on it once again in the back seat. The back seat still had some air time but doesn't seem as fast as the front so I like the front end of the train better on this ride.
After I was done with the Wildcat, I went over to the Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt was still in testing and they said it was gonna open later that day. The Thunderbolt is a Windstorm coaster and they had received brand new trains for it so it can run smoother.
After going by the closed Thunderbolt, I went over to the new Obiter ride. The Obiter ride is a magic carpet ride. It was quite fun and the ride was fast, you felt like your gonna fly off or hit your head on the seat in front of you.
After I was done at the Obiter I went to Slick's Used Cars (Bumper Cars). These cars aren't as fast as most of the bumper car rides I've been on, however they had a good long run time for the ride. The track is in an oval shape so you had to go one way. A recommendation about this ride if you don't want to become an announced number target, Don't bump your car into the wall in front of the ride op. If you do he'll tell everybody to bump into you.
After I done the bumper cars I went to the otherside of the park and rode the Fire Ball, the Fire Ball is a KMG Afterburner and is like and Inverted Frisbee. It was quite an intense ride as it was when it was running for Branson USA.
After I got done with that ride, I went to the Shoot 'D Chute (formally known as the Fall Creek Plunge). Shoot 'D Chute is a portable Water Flume ride with 2 drops that can get you wet each time. During my ride, I got wet after the 2nd drop by speeding into the curve. I thought I was gonna fly off the flume ride right there.
After I was done with the flume ride, I took a look at the laser show theater and went right over to the Accelorator (yes that how its spelt). The Accelorator is an S&S Double Shot Tower ride. There not much more I can say about this other than Double Shots are real fun to ride on.
After I was done with my first set of rides, I got hungry and I decided to eat at Mickey's Pizza. The prices for the pizza was pretty fair and the drink price was good. I did get a 10% discount for having a season pass. The only problem I had was that they don't refill the SDC Mugs so I had to buy a new mug. But on the bright side it was a nice light up mug for only $5, The pizza was pretty good and the crust on the pizza is really big, tasty, and was crunchy. The toppings were nice hot and fresh. It looks like the food here follows in the tradition of SDC. BTW Mickey's Pizza is themed with sports stuff all over the place.
Because I have ate I was gonna skip some rides for a little while so I decided to check out the shops and see what they got inside of them. The shops here seems to have lots of stuff transferred from some of the shops at SDC, but they had their own things too and some unique items that are relics of the 20th Century.
After I was done with the shops I checked on how the Jack Rabbit was coming along for construction. It looks like there still quite a bit of track to be laid and the Rolling Stock hasn't arrived yet. This coaster is claimed to be just around 50 feet high, but looking at it up close it looks to be like about 70 feet tall. This coaster is manufactured by Miler Coaster.
After I done this I went on riding the rides again and the Tilt a Whirl, I also took brakes in between including a stop in the Arcade to play on the DDRX machine. The Dance Dance Revolution Extreme machine is designed to be played in Japan only so most of the words were in Japanese, It even say on the machine for use in Japan only. I went one a played but I'm not very good at DDR so I kinda made a fool of myself, Ohwell! Other things I did on those brakes was just hung out around the jumping fountain in front of Wildcat.
At 9 PM, after I got off of Wildcat, I went to check on the status of the Thunderbolt. They told me it was gonna open at 9:30 PM, so I decided to wait it out. However I wasn't wait for long because the ride open up at 9:10 PM, which was earlier than expected so I got onboard the first public ride the Thunderbolt had in 2 years. The ride was a lot smoother than it was when it had the old trains. Windstorm Coasters has some neat curves on it and plenty of head choppers almost where they're clearance issues. You would need to hold on tight otherwise you will bump into the side of the car on some of those hills.
That was about it on my day at CC, Overall the Wildcat was a totally awesome coaster and certainly a good move for SDC. It is nice to go to Branson, MO, because you can visit 2 very nice themeparks and ride on 2 of the wildest coasters around (WIldFire and Ozark Wildcat).
My Ride Rankings of the CC rides are:
Ozark Wildcat: 9.5/10
Thunderbolt: 6/10
Jack Rabbit: Did not ride due to it still being built.
Accelorator: 7/10
Obiter: 8/10
FireBall: 8/10
Slick's Used Cars 6.5/10
Tilt a Whirl 6/10
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Chris Knight
Be sure to download my latest NL Wooden Looping Coaster creation Dream Blast. Updated for NL 1.3!
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After 4 1/2 years I'm a "single" rider again!
XBox Live Gamer tag: Coasterpunk
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Do you bleed Blue?
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All who think Mean Streak needs a match taken to it say I.
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