Dragon Mountain

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Lake Compounce-So Fresh and So Clean Clean

The entrance is well themed and possibly the best landscaped ride entrance - let alone coaster entrance - out there. As others have stated, you enter the Dragon's mouth to enter the queue. The design is incredibly effective. The queue is very dark and is on a noticeable incline downward "toward the belly". The station emerges rather suddenly and your eyes take a moment to adjust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the lifft - which is built on an earthen hill as opposed to a superstructure. The ride is very disorienting but I recall it being rather smooth and enjoyable. The abrupt end of the theming and skeletal remnants of the project is bizarre and, to my knowledge, totally original to this coaster. One can only imagine the features the theming team had in store when considering what they did acomplish. I think this coaster is totally unique and better than most steels out there.

I was there on a warm day in early summer and it was packed. The park is laid out nicely to accommodate large crowds with wide pathways. The landscape is absolutely luscious and wonderfully mature. The rides that do exist are integrated into the landscape in a way that conveys great and painstaking planning. Where other "theme parks" are magical, this one is mystical because of the questions it generates - and the total lack of answers.

*** This post was edited by BrooklynRider on 1/27/2003. ***

Umm, are you sure you were at the right park, BrooklynRider??

No offense... but somehow, the last paragraph fell apart as if it was kind of sugaring up the park.
Now, I'm not against it in any way. I live right near it, and my last visit was back in 2000. Little has changed before or after anyone else visited it since I was there... so here is the low-down:

It's a huge park that has little in terms of landscaping. It has acres upon acres of unused land. There is soo much of a gap between Dragon Mountain & the aquatic shows, it'll take you at LEAST 15 minutes of walk-time to get from one end to the other. Inbetween Dragon Mountain (near the rear of the park), and the aquatic shows (near the front of the park), you'll encounter lots of unused land. There's 2 ways around. One way has the rides which are very sparce & spread out (making them look very isolated... but in a good way). The other way is just a lotta walking with a deer park & few other attractions on your way there. There's very few actual snack or restaurants there, with the exception of the main one located towards the front.

This year marks the first year of significantly marked improvements including the triple 300' S&S towers on a 150' hill (making that 450 feet above the park!), a teacup ride, & more aquatic exhibits... which will help take up some space... but it's anyone's guess where exactly it'll all be placed.

The point is... the park still has a long ways of improvements go. It's got a gem of a coaster that needs to be re-themed to the original specs... it's got a lot of unused land that really could at least be beautified instead of left "natural". It'll be 2007 until the final phase of a REALLY changed Marineland challenges the best of the marine-life themed parks...