Spring Break 2010 PTR

[KI Kevin]

Sorry to get you all excited. I wrote it on word with photos from files and its all messed up. I'll upload them to photobucket and copy and paste.

EDIT: It's up! Sorry for the long delay, I had a particularly busy schoolweek and was at KI yesterday!

[KI Kevin]

Somehow students in mydisctrict got lucky this year. For spring break, we got a week off, plus the Thursday and Friday before.

April 1, 2010

LA Area and Knott’s BerryFarm:

After driving to Louisville the night before, we got on our flight early Thursday morning

Hooray for wing seats!

I tried to get a picture of SFKK, I could see it but unfortunately I couldn’t get the camera at a good angle on it. We landed in LA around 2 PM Pacific Time (we had a layover in Chicago).

Palm trees! We got the rental car and drove over to the closeby In-N-Out fast food restaurant. It’s a west-coast chain with excellent burgers.

We cruised by Venice Beachand Santa Monica. Not that we actually got in the water (IT WAS COLD!!!), but the waves were considerably larger than, say, Myrtle Beach.

That’s Pacific Park, an amusement park on a pier in Santa Monica. We were actually considering going, but we were sorta pressed for time.

It’s neat seeing such large companies’ headquarters, for example we also saw MTV and Electronic Arts.

We headed out for Knott’s. If I remember correctly we left around 6:15, and arrived outside the park around 7:15. People aren’t lying when they say traffic in LA is bad. However, in my opinion the parking lot isn’t exactly easy to find. Every logical lot for parking was blocked off by tire spikes. We drove the block around the park probably three times until finally going into the delivery entrance to ask the woman at the booth where the parking lot was. It’s across the street from the park, and you have to go under the road via a tunnel to get to the entrance. Anyway, really sorry, but it was dark by the time we got into the park (around 7:50!),so unfortunately the only pictures I was able to get were some dark ones of Ghostrider that really aren’t worth posting.

Like I’ve said, Xcelerator was closed still from that accident last year. It’s torture seeing it there and not being able to ride.

I had full intent on hitting Ghostrider first, so that’s what I did. The theming in this park is great. I like the Ghost Town area. Being in a crowded city, I was expecting to get only a few rides in the 2 hours allotted. Boy, was I wrong. I walked through the long queue for the ride to find a station wait. In all, I waited about 10minutes (turned out to be my longest wait of the day).

Ghostrider was weird. It wasn’t really rough, but there wasn’t anything at all on it that wowed me.However, it was my first coaster since November 1, 2009, and I was looking forward to other rides more, but it still wasn’t anything to rave about by any means. 6/10

Next up was Silver Bullet. After finding it, I literally walked on to the second row.

Whoa, this ride was good. Probably the smoothest coaster I’ve been on, bar Griffon. Easily the smoothest invert I’ve been on. It was plenty fast and intense. My favorite element was between the loop and cobra roll. It starts like a zero-G roll, but then turns you back the other way. The fact that you soar over a pond definitely helps. 9/10

After riding twice, I wanted to get to the other rides. I wanted to ride Boomerang (never ridden a sit-down one).

Ugh, you guys know how this one goes. It’s a headbanger, it’s rough, and really there’s no fun factor here. I dislike the Invertigos, but I think I’d rate it above Boomerangs. 4/10

Next up was Pony Express….hahaha. I had been looking forward to this, just for fun. If you don’t know what it is, it’s like the Zamperla motocoaster, but instead of motorcycle-shaped seats, you’re riding on pony-shaped seats.

It’s pretty lame, but sorta fun in a you-feel-like-a-little-kid-again way, if you know what I mean. The launch is less intense than BLSC’s, and it’s awfully short. 5/10

I was trying to get in as many credits as I could, so I went to Sierra Sidewinder.

I was a bit disappointed. The spinning feature was almost inexistent. I really want to ride one of the Intamins or a Gerstlauers but I’m sorry that was just boring. 5/10

Next was Jaguar, a very well themed family coaster. You enter a Mayan looking pyramid with statues and skulls

For a family coaster, it was pretty fun, about as good as Adventure Express. It's also pretty long. There are a good amount of moments where you can reach out and touch the trees, which was neat. Overall, I like it. 7/10.

For my last credit, I went to Montezooma's Revenge. I really like Greezed Lightnin', and they're about the same, but I lean towards MR because you go under Jaguar and you travel through rings. I sat in the back, as I always would on GL. IMO thats the best seat because I can truthfully say that's the only coaster that makes me feel like I will fall out. 8/10.

Overall, it was a good park. I won't say great for a few reasons: 1. The park is pretty badly laid out. I feel like they tried to cram most of the coasters in one area then 2 outside of that area. This results in longer stretches of walking. 2. The parking lot issue, I won't address that again. 3. Xcelerator was closed. 4. There wasn't too much variety as far as coasters go. What I think really rounds out many parks is a solid, sit-down, full circuit coaster, gravity coaster. Now this sounds specific, but lets see, go to my list here, and look at Favorite Parks. All of my top 6 parks besides Holiday World have that, some with multiple. Jaguar doesn't really fit this, I'm thinking major coasters here. Sure, it had a bit of charm, but not by any means even CLOSE to the other CF parks I've been to. 6/10.

Final ride count:

GhostRider: 1.

Silver Bullet:2.

Boomerang: 1.

Pony Express: 2.

Sierra Sidewinder: 1.

Jaguar: 1.

Montezooma's Revenge: 1.

Stay tuned for SFMM!