A Fun Fall Day at the Park: 10-18-15

[Voicetek]

My wife and I finally made it out to the park yesterday to take advantage of the lovely fall weather and the Halloween decorations.  Since we renewed our passes already, we wanted to make use of our free Fastlane Plus vouchers.

 

We arrived at the park at around 3 and headed through the gates and to the Fastlane booth to get our wristbands.  After being redirected to another location to pick up our bands, we finally had them strapped to our wrist and ready to go!  After making a quick pitstop at the restrooms, we decided to do a loop around the park and basically hit most attractions that we could.

 

First ride up was Boo Blasters.  This was the first time we've ever had anything like a Fastlane, so it felt a little weird bypassing the main line.  It almost felt a little like cheating and I had to keep reminding myself that we were allowed to do this lol.  So we basically walked right in and were on the ride within a minute or two.  The ride, like always, was just ok.  The first gun I used didn't work, so I had to grab one of the other guns.  It felt like was picking and choosing when it wanted to work.  And a big surprise, the tourist being chased was not working again.  I think I've seen him working maybe once this season.  The piece of music that they're using in the background is redundant.  It just replays over and over.  It's not even an original piece, so that's even more annoying.  I lost track of how many times I heard it during the ride.

 

Next up, Diamondback!  This is one of our favorite coasters in the park.  I'm all about the drops and Diamondback doesn't disappoint there!  As we walked into the queue, we noticed that the actual line was only about twice as long as the Fastlane line.  Even though the Fastlane line got us on a little quicker, it wasn't much of a difference here.  The crowds were very light and there were really no long waits on anything.  The ride was amazing as usual and we caught some great airtime.  Also, I'm really liking the seat belts.  It makes me feel more secure when I'm riding.

 

After Diamondback we made our way over the to The Beast.  Now this was probably one of the longest lines I saw that day.  This was one ride were having Fastlane really paid off.  We pretty much walked right up to the loading station and it was about a 2 cycle wait for us.  Not bad at all!  I love this ride in the fall time.  Speeding through the woods, seeing the trees with the leaves changing colors, and the cool, crisp air hitting your face - this is such a great experience!  This is just one coaster that can't easily be topped!

 

Next, we made our way over to Stunt Track.  Now this isn't one of our favorite rides, but this is one we usually tend to skip on a normal visit because we just don't care to wait for it and the line is usually long.  Since we had Fastlane though, we decided to take a ride.  This ride is ok.  I especially like the launch in the beginning and the effects are pretty cool when they're working.  I don't think they had all the effects running during this ride, but it was still fun.

 

We decided next to head over to Coney Mall and take our ride on Adventure Express.  This was a rather interesting thing, the line for Fastlane was actual longer than the normal line.  Not significantly longer, but it had a few more people than the regular line did.  I think we could've walked through the regular line and gotten on just as fast.  Oh well, since our Fastlane bands were free, we weren't really losing anything!  A great ride on Adventure Express as always, except there was absolutely no sound in the final tunnel.  The figures were moving, but there was no sound.  Not sure why.  This ride really needs some love.  Hopefully someday soon!

 

Since we were now pretty close to Action Zone, we decided it would be a great time to head over to Banshee.  This has also become a must do coaster for us when we visit.  This ride didn't have any wait at all in either of the lines.  Both the regular line and Fastlane line were both walk ons.  We walked right up to the loading station and picked our row.  It was only a 1 cycle wait.  Banshee is amazing, just sayin'.

 

By this time it was about 4:30 and we were pretty tired.  Fastlane really wears you out since you're pretty much jumping from ride to ride with little to no wait.  You don't really have time to just stand still and rest; something we hadn't thought about before.  We were also a little hungry, so we decided that we'd look for a quick snack. Since we were planning on leaving the park around 6 and going to grab dinner elsewhere, we really didn't want a meal.  Now we were on a mission to find a snack at a reasonable price.  Since we were in Action Zone, I suggested that maybe we split a chicken fingers meal.  We checked the price, almost $16 for 3 chicken fingers, fries, and a drink.  No thanks.  We checked some other places and again were pretty frustrated with the prices.  Unless you have a meal plan, you're going to have to shell out quite a bit on a meal or even just a snack.  We finally ended up at the Sweet Spot and thought maybe we'd just grab a candy bar or something.  $4 for a king size candy bar.  We have trouble spending so much money on something when we know it's that over-priced.  So we kept looking around. $8 for this, $10 for that...it was a little harder than we thought, but we were pretty hungry.  Finally, we caved and shelled out over $4 for small bag of bite sized Snickers bars.  This was easy to split and would hold us over for the next hour or so.

 

Once we finished our snack, we decided to hop on Diamondback one more time.  As we walked over to get on, we noticed that the train was stuck on the lift hill.  Not really sure what was going on or how long it had been up there, but there were a couple of employees climbing the stairs to talk to the people in the train.  We didn't really want to hang around and wait, so we ended up taking a ride on the train.  I don't think we'd actually ridden the train yet this season, but we always enjoy the ride when we do get to ride it.  As we were riding the train, we noticed that Diamondback was running again, but with empty trains.  I figured they were just testing it to make sure everything was good.

 

After the train ride, we went back over to Diamondback to see if it was running again and it was.  We got back in the Fastlane line and this time it was pretty much a walk on.  Another great ride with great air time!  It was a great ride to end the day with too!  When we got off it was around 6 and we decided to head on out.

 

So this was our first experience with Fastlane and it was definitely a good one!  We rode pretty much everything we wanted to with little to no wait.  Since crowds were so light, that meant the walkways were pretty clear too.  The weather was fantastic and we could just walk around the park at our leisure. We were there for a total of around 3 hours and we accomplished quite a bit.  Not sure if we'll be back one last time this season or not, but if we don't make it back, this made for a great last trip of the season!

[IndyGuy4KI]

Sounds like you had a great time in the park!

[Thrill_Biscuit]

I agree that fall colors make The Beast one of the greatest coasters in the world, with Diamondback not far behind! Great report!