My Pacific Northwest Trip: Part 3 of 3; Silverwood

After a day of driving acroos Oregon and Washington, I pulled into a Shilo Inn in Couer d' Alene and my family spent the night. After sleeping in a while (the park opens at 11) we drove up US 95 to the park. You get a nice view of Timber Terror on the approach. So nice that I completely missed the parking lot on the other side of the highway and tried pulling in at the park entrance (handicapped parking.) After a long delay trying to cross the street again due to traffic, we paid our $2 for parking and crossed US 95 through a tunnel. When we got to the enterance there was a huge line of people to get into the park. We joined the line and as soon as they started to let people in the line moved swiftly. After passing through the gates, my sister and I migrated to Coaster Alley where I would spend most of my day.

COASTERS:

Timber Terror [+5] 4 rides I was looking forward to riding my first CCI built for airtime (before I had ridden only the Outlaw & Underground.) It's single train was equipped with single position lap bars and for all four rides I rode in the last car. This was one impressive ride. The negative Gs on the first drop were excellent. The rest of the ride was packed with floater air, headchoppers, and some nice lateral Gs. Not the biggest ride I've ridden by far but impresive enough to become the best.

Tremors [+3.5] 2 rides From what I had heard it sounded like it was an established fact that this was the better of the two CCIs here. Tremors was a decent ride but didn't impress me like Timber Terror did. The air was okay but nothing special. The subtle earthquake themed objects and tunnels were nice but didn't improve the ride much in my eye. A good ride but it still doesn't hold a candle to it's neighbor.

Corkscrew [0] 3 rides The world's first modern looping coaster has held up fairly well over the past decades but it's short length gives it a low ranking. Enjoyable none the less.

On the day I visited I think there was some large group at the park because I kept hearing "lunch at 2:30" and seeing matching shirts. So until about 45 minutes before we left, lines for Tremors/Timber Terror were 40 minutes with one train operation. In the 45 minutes until we left the line lengths shrunk to one half of what they were. The lines for food were outrageous as well. It just wasn't what I expected out of a Tuesday in the middle of the Rockies after seeing how empty Playland was on a Saturday. Oh, well. The park was fun anyway and I have a new number one coaster. I can't complain that much.

I don't want to end on a sour note because that really isn't what I want to express most about the park so I'll type some random complements that don't flow together to end this review....

Silverwood had a nice small park feel to it. Corkscrew was a walk on. The oldies music in line for Tremors was a plus. It was clean. No rides were down for repair. Tremors and Timber Terror looked really cool together, like one huge mega-coaster. Cheap soda. quick ride-ops. bright future. fin.

I have to agree with you there. I prefer Timber Terror to Tremors, although I give Tremors the upper hand on intensity. I haven't ridden them since August 2000, though, so perhaps I would change my mind by now. I know my daughter prefers Tremors because it was her first real coaster. She still feels as though she conquered Goliath (the person, not the crappy coaster in SoCal) that day.
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