6-11-04 - 7-2-04 North east and Orlando.

Recently I just got back from a 3 and a half week vacation, with only stops at augment parks. The first part was with a certain website (I know most webmasters think its advertising when you mention another site, so if you want to know what group it was, send me an e-mail), who organized this trek all over the east coast. The trip started off in Pennsylvania, where the 13 of us meet to climb into a fifteen passenger van. Needless to say, the van was a little to small when you include ten days worth of luggage for thirteen people. The next part of my trip was to Orlando with my family. This was a way more relaxing experience, but I was only able to visit Walt Disney World, and Universal Studios.

Well for the rest of this trip report, I will break things down for each park and just give the highlights...

Six Flags America- Superman: Ride of Steel was a good ride, and with a two train operation, the line never got over 10 min. My only slight complaint with the ride is the ankle restrains, that seemed to smack into your shins a lot. Wild One was another highlight at this park. It was fast, smooth, full of air, and an awesome helix at the end. The most surprising thing at this park was that the Typhoon Sea Coaster was open.

Six Flags Great Adventure- Nitro is awesome, with some freaky feeling restraints. The park is HUGE, and it was a pleasant park to be in.

Quasy- Small little park, where I got my first roll back... on a chain lift coaster. It happened on the Little Dipper and the ride operator let a few to many people onto the train, so we rolled back down the lift.

Lake Compounce- A very nice park, and its in a very small class with them offering free pop. This park was empty, with re-rides on any ride you wanted, except Bolder Dash an hour before the park closed. Speaking of Bolder Dash, it’s a nice ride, that really speeds up as the day goes on. We even were given the last ride of the night on it by the park staff. The one thing that I never knew about at this park is the chair lift. It is insane and every one who visits this park must go on it, its well worth the 45 min ride.

Six Flags New England- I can't say enough about this park. One of the park managers were at the front gate waiting for us, so she could our group of thirteen, eighteen q-bots for free (these would enable us late in the day to get on just about one out of every four trains during the last two hours of operation of Superman). Then while getting some early day rides in on Superman (still awesome and my number one coaster even with the new restraints), the manager of park operations came up to us and asked us a few questions. One was what the park could get to make it better and an other was if we were going to visit the water park today. I responded to the first question by saying that they should get "dragster" style train for Superman. His response to that was that you can't build a train in a month and they just wanted to get Superman up and running as fast and safely as possible. As a group we answered that we were going to go to the water park, but we were a little disappointed that Tornado was down for the day. Then with out us asking, he got on his walkie and arranged for us an hour of ERT on it. I was in shock, and incredibly grateful of the park right then (still am right now). We really enjoyed our surprise ERT, as Tornado was a great slide. Back to coasters now, we finished off the night with about fifteen rides each on Superman over two hours, including the last ride of the night. In all I really enjoyed the park and the staff went way beyond what they had to: Thanks you Six Flags New England!

Great Escape- Comet was ok, but it was a big disappointment. Even with the Comet, the park was the biggest crap hole that I've ever seen. Rude staff and even more rude guests, poorly run rides and they had this strange desire to close rides down for the day, even when people were waiting for the ride. This is by far the worst park that I have ever been to.

Dorney Park- Very clean, tons of rides, but minus the water rides, nothing spectacular. Everything seemed to be running slow, it could have just been the day though. The only outstanding coaster in the park was Laser. The G's on it were like none other, very fun ride.

Hershey Park- This was day one of Conclave, with and hour of ERT on Storm Runner. The thing was, like most rocket coasters, it was having some trouble running, so we didn't get any ERT. But the did escort us to the front of the line and gave us two rides with out getting off when it did open, very nice of the park staff. Lightning Racers were very fun, but they were missing some hand-slapping. Wildcat on the other hand was just awesome. Fast, mostly smooth, strong laterals and plenty of air time. Also the two GCIs at night looked absolutely beautiful, with the tracer lights following the entire lengths of the circuits.

Knoebels- This park was just awesome! I loved the atmosphere at the whole park and it was very enjoyable to just be in the park. it also had some outstanding rides like none other. The Haunted House was great, and a ton of fun. The bumper cars....well they were like running your car into a brick wall. The Flyers were awesome, just watch out for trees...even the really tall trees. Twister was Ok, but it wasn't all that great, especially at $2.00 per ride. Then there is The Phoenix. The air on this ride is like none other. There was standing air on every hill. Then we all met up for some "glow stick" rides on it during the night. These rides were by far the best night rides on any wooden coaster, and not to mention the park wasn't busy at all so there was no one but our group in the station waiting to ride. We were ridding every other train. But sadly the night came to an end...or so we thought. The operator announced that the train we were on was going to be the last ride of the night. We were sad, but hey, we rode that thing like ten times that night. Anyways, we finished up that ride and started cheering, screaming, clapping and in general just showing our approval of the ride. Well as we pull into the station, the op says "goodby" and we were off for a second ride in a row, only this time all of the lights were off. We went nuts, with the noise in the tunnel being one of the loudest things I've ever heard. In the dark with all of the lights off was by far the best thing at the park. We repeated our show of approval as we come back into the station, and as we pull up the rest of our group was in the station waiting for us. It turns out that the talked their way on for another ride. So we were off agin for our third strait ride! This ride was even louder and better than the first two. It also earned us another trip around. It was un-believable, four rides, three in the dark, three for free, and all in the third row. Knoebels is one park that I will be going to agin that is for sure.

Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom- Not much to say here, except Dinosaur. This ride could barely make it 5 min before it would break down. This caused us to be on the ride when it when down. As the ride is almost completely dark, and Disney cares for its guests, they turned on the lights. Needless to say it gave me a view of the ride that I have never seen before. The dinos on this ride are huge, and most are full size, not just the head. The T-Rex like dino at one point was about 70 ft long and 30 ft tall, that thing was massive.

Walt Disney World's magic Kingdom- not much here either, except E-Ride nights. DO THEM. I have never seen the Kingdom so empty. The longest wait all night was five minutes for Splash Mountain. Also it was neat to see the park at 2:00 A.M.

Universal Studios- Mummy is one of the greatest rides in the world. Its so fun and it has some air time and some lateral g's. Not to mention the animatronics were the best ones that I have ever seen. The only thing is, like most people have been saying, is that it needs a better story.

So in all it was very fun three weeks, with many new, world class coasters. I will just like to thank Six Flags New England, Hershey, and Knobels for being so very kind to such a small group of coaster nerds: Thanks again to all of you! *** Edited 7/5/2004 12:22:40 AM UTC by Mark Burleson***

Is Comet at GE really that bad? I'd heard really good things about it.

It wasn't a bad ride. It was more or less that it had so many hills, all looking like they should give standing air, then little to no air at all. Also, I hated that park like none other and was a little upset that I wasted a day going there when half of the rides were closed, and the other guests were so very rude. Maybe at night after running a full day then it would be better.

Comet is really good actually. I think Mark's wording was a bit confusing.

The rest of the park was complete crap. Just terrible park atmosphere, annoying guests, rude staff,etc.

Mark you forgot to mention the newbie crew on Comet. The one that leaned against the E-stop and had to call maintenance because they had no idea what they did to the ride.

4 ops checking restraints, and yet it still took forever to dispatch trains.