Playland's Castaway Cover 8/2/07

This was my third trip to Playland this year and my first time riding anything. I figured on a Thursday, I'd have a chance of not waiting forever for the Double Shot. Again it had a full queue and was overflowing into the midway. And again, I saw each cycle going up with at least 2 empty seats every time thanks to the 3 seats on each side setup. We left and walked the boardwalk and went back to the park at around 10:30 p.m.

Crowds had died down but lines were still long. We went to the log flume which barely had a wait. Going up the lifthill, I didn't see any anti rollbacks which concerned me after the accident at Gillian's only 4 blocks away. I got soaked on both drops, much more than in past years, maybe that was because there were 3 people in the boat and have never been on the ride with more than 1 other person before.

I watched the new Moser ride they got last year that goes upside down and was surprised to see they didn't physically check the seatbelts to make sure they were secure and locked.

By this point the Double Shot had a 3 cycle wait so I decided to wait. This was my first time riding a Double Shot tower. I was also surprised that the ops stand very close to the ride while it is running and how the control panel is not behind a fence where the op stands like at Dominator at Dorney. Ops were walking around the ride area while the ride was moving and someone even handed the op running the ride her glasses inbetween the first and second launch. The ops also unbuckle the seatbelts before the ride is over when you are about 5 -7 feet above the ground. Yeah nothing will likely happen but I never saw that at any park before.

I really like the launched and the airtime you got at the top of the launch. It was way better than a Space Shot and I thought it was great how you get 2 launches but it really slows the line down. I still prefer Turbo Drops though.

While everyone else went to some other rides I went to the Flitzer. They added seatbelts after the Wild Wonder incident in Gillians but they are useless. The op buckled the seatbelt for me before I had a chance to and didn't pull it at all. The result was that the belt was down to my legs and wouldn't have kept me in the ride. I saw them load a kid who was about 12 and the ops didn't pull the belt either but the kid pulled the belt himself.

I skipped Python as it was very rough last year and I didn't feel like wasting 5 tickets on it. In addition, something about it didn't look right to me, almost as if I didn't feel safe riding it even though I'm sure nothing would have happened. Maybe it was just all the other things I saw.

Overall, it was an ok trip but I'm not really in any rush to return except for the Double Shot. *** Edited 8/6/2007 4:06:48 AM UTC by YoshiFan***