SRM travel day? Why not Wyandot? (5/29)

My brother Matt and I make the trek down to the coaster shrine known as known as Holiday World. Our Stark Raven Mad warmup plans had us going to Indiana Beach on Thursday. The drive from Pittsburgh to Monticello happens to bring us through the Columbus area, so we decided that a quick stop at Wyandot Lake was in order.

Wyandot lake is part of the "Six Flags Family", meaning that the park is not branded a "Six Flags" park in the name, but IS a Six Flags property. Six Flags season passes are accepted for admission, and as it turns out Wyandot Lake season passes are accepted at Six Flags parks.

Matt had not yet gotten his Six Flags pass, but I had. Included with the Six Flags Worlds of Adventure pass is a coupon book, which contains a coupon to "bring a friend for $12". We were planning on just using this, and then Matt would get a WoA pass when we got a chance.

When we spotted that Wyandot does have a season pass, for $60, we asked if it was good at the Six Flags parks. It is. The girl at the gate pointed out that if we bought a regular ticket, Matt could then upgrade himself to a season pass for $35. $12 admission + $35 upgrade == $47 season pass. Bingo.

The same girl who sold us the pass voucher than walked us over to the pass processing center, to our amusement. Incidentally, we think the Wyandot Lake pass looks nicer than the Six Flags "Tazz" one this year :)

So, passes in hand, we finally proceed inside.

First stop, Sea Dragon (10 laps) -- This is a very fun little junior woodie. I believe this is basically the same layout as PKI's Beastie and PKD's Scooby Doo, but it seemed to have a bit more pep to it. There were even hints of ejector air in seat 1.2. Fun, and it's a credit, but obviously we'd be getting to much better wood as the week progressed. :)

The park was quite empty, and most of the people who were there were over in the "water park" section, so we were able to just stay on and ride. After a little while, we decided it was time to check out the flatrides. Wyandot has a decent selection of flats, of which we decided to ride three.

The first, "Monsoon", was of a design I've never managed to ride before. I'm not sure what the technical name for this is (Rideman?), but basically take a cage that you can rotate, and suspend it from a larger spinning center. We were the only two riders, so we got on opposite ends to balance it (which probably didn't matter, but what the hey...). Fun, but I didn't spin my cage too quickly as I didn't want to find out the hard way if it could only take so much ;)

The second flatride we rode on was the "Black Squid", a spider. This time the op intentionally balanced the two of us in opposite arms.

Finally, we got to the Tilt-a-Whirl. The ride sports a recent paintjob, and looks pretty good. We got a very nice spinny car, as well.

At this point we'd been in the park a bit over 2 hours, and decided to hit the road to get to Monticello. On the way out I poked my head in a gift shop to see what was there. The merchandise was a mix of generic stuff (name keychains and the like), some standard generic "Six Flags" stuff (superhero mugs), and a small sprinkling of "Wyandot Lake" items (I selected a $1 refrigerator magnet to hide my fridge door even further ;)

Then we were off to drive to Monticello, which proved to be an adventure in its own right ("scattered thunderstorms" resulted in us twice driving through downpours so heavy I couldn't see in front of my car, so I pulled over and put on my hazard lights to wait it out. Just before the second downpour we even saw a few funnel clouds off in the distance, which caused our hearts to skip a few beats as we were NOWHERE near shelter. Later, after hearing the news of the storms back home, we would speculate if this was the same stormfront, something I'm still not clear on. Once we crossed into Indiana the weather cleared up, and the rest of the drive proved uneventful.)

Next up, the little slice of Heaven known as Indiana Beach...

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--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page

Good Stuff! I SF should add a new woodie and some flats to this nice little park.

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X-Flight World's Only flying coaster!
Batwing World's only flying coaster!
S:UF World's only flying coaster! Don't you love SF ?

Greg, that "Monsoon" ride is a King Amusements "Frolic Ride." They are now extremely rare. For the uninitiated, it's basically the same general idea as the Wisdom Tornado that every carnival in the country now has at least two of. Except that the Tornado has four seats per tub; Frolic has only two; Tornado has a center that lifts and tilts; Frolic only goes round and round.

An extremely simple ride, but it can yank the guts out of the strongest stomached kid in the park!

The Tilt-A-Whirl was repainted for this season; it came down from Geauga Lake for the 2000 season. Pity we had to give up the Rock-O-Plane to get it!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Living within 20 minutes of Wyandot Lake...

I've never noticed Sea Dragon having *ejector* air, I've felt some airtime, but not ejector air, and I've sat in every seat, including 1-2.

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Good Times!! Good Times!!
-Patrick

Well, I did say "hints of" :) There was a slight feeling of being pushed just as the front car crested the little hills, hence "ejector".

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--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page

Dakota (Nolan) Amusements had a Frolic Ride at a small carnival off Innis Road in Columbus a couple of weeks ago. Only the second Frolic I've seen. Wyandot's is in much better condition though.Wyandot really needs to add a few more flat rides. What's really frustrating is that I'm sure Six Flags has dozens of unused rides in storage somewhere. Why not send a few to Wyandot?

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everything's better with a banjo

Thanks for the TR Greg. We were asked about Wyandot on "the trip" but had no knowledge and time was obviously short.

Dave, where did the Rock-O-Plane end up....I loved the Roll-O-Plane, liked the Loop-O-Plane, and need to get the last of the three.....

....bill, lovin' the low-tech rides.....

*** This post was edited by rollergator on 6/12/2002. ***