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The first night we hung out in downtown Tempe right next to ASU campus. I believe it was on Mill street right off of University. They have a lot of clubs and shops. We went to a little place called The Big Bang that is a dueling pianos bar/club. I love to listen to live music and these guys and gal were awesome. How anyone can automatically play and sing any song that is requested is beyond me!? I highly recommend hanging out down there for a night if your in town.
Saturday we spent all day at the Air Show and ran into some old friends from pilot training. Also had a good time talking to all the kids and hearing all the great war stories from the good ol’ days. I also met the president of the Southern California Viper Club. She and her husband owned two Vipers! Very nice lady and extremely nice cars!
After the show, I convinced the guys to come check out Castles-n-Coasters since it was still too early for them to head out and hit the night scene. The park was easy to find and only about 15-20 minutes from our hotel. What can I say…they packed this place into a tight spot. Basically you have a freeway and right off the freeway is a nice mall. There is a road that circles the mall and leaves a tiny space between the road and the freeway and they decided to build an amusement park in it.
First plus…no parking fee. We parked right next to the park and later found they have another lot just across the way that they use for more parking. Maybe someday they will build a parking garage in the lot right next to the park and expand into there other parking lot or vice versa. Enough with my speculation I was here to ride two coasters so we bought the four ride pass for $14.00 between two of us and the other two guys did the same thing. So we all had two rides and they have two coasters. I wanted to ride Desert Storm last but that was the first one we ran into and the other 3 guys wanted to ride it first.
Castles-n-Coasters has an interesting pass system. For every ride you put your pass into a screener and it allows the turnstile to move. It is a very slow process. If you buy a certain number of rides it subtracts it on your pass or you could get the ride all day pass and well you get the point.
Desert Storm: Extremely unique coaster because it is built up so high on supports to stay above all the rides and people. You can walk just about anywhere under this ride. Plus it goes over the log flume and go-kart track. The loops are intense and the second one is almost half loop half corkscrew. This ride is quick but packs a nice bunch. For a park this small I was impressed with this coaster. The only major problem was the one ride op running the whole ride which means extremely low capacity with only one train.
Patriot: My friend Tony said he would ride Patriot with me while the other two guys used their last ride to go on the drop tower. I found out that Tony loves coasters and today he came up to me at work and asked me if there were any parks we could hit this weekend. Can’t wait to show him PKI and the Point. Anyway we took a trip on the Patriot. They give you two for one rides since it is short. It is a nice little coaster that you get to slap the palm tree leaves when you go by. It also has some unique pictures on the lift hill.
Castles-n-Coasters is a cute little park with one good coaster and a nice family coaster. It has a nice arcade and it looked like some nice miniature golf courses. Nothing was really way exceptional, but all in all it was fun and that is what it is all about. Hopefully Phoenix will get that large park they are hoping for. I definitely think they could support a large park plus they could keep it open all year round.
Well, thanks for reading! See you all at the stunt track real soon.
Doug *** Edited 3/24/2005 5:43:02 AM UTC by S&SFAN***
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