johnjniehaus Posted September 26 Share Posted September 26 I have been very busy and haven't gotten time to write up a trip report on my travels to the bay area parks over Labor Day weekend. My partner and I decided to spend the holiday weekend in the bay area as we wanted to get to California Great America before it possibly closes in the near future. More on that later. 8/30: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was the first park in our list. We joined ACE Northern California for an informal meetup to celebrate the reopening of Flash Vertical Velocity. This was definitely my favorite impulse coaster and they were a great bunch of folks! Highly recommend you check out some of their future events! The Boomerang was closed this particular day and my partner rode Batman (s&s free spin) without me because I was dehydrated and not feeling well. I got all the other credits including Medusa which is arguably in my top 3 floorless coasters and Joker which was an ok RMC. Fun and a good fit in the park much like Storm Chaser at KY Kingdom. Definitely not SteVe or even Twisted Timbers. I did ride Kong (the SLC) and it was definitely one of the worst. It was relocated from opryland so that was the only significant thing about it. Superman (the original skyrocket 2) was running fantastic and didn't have the stupid comfort collars making it a much more enjoyable experience. Two hidden gems in the park are the flat rides Thrilla Gorilla and Monkey Business. Both are older zamperla flats and both kick butt. Definitely check them out. 8/31: In the morning we drove down to Gilroy Gardens for about 4 hours. The Morgan mine train coaster was pretty amazing. Definitely one of the better mine train coasters. We also loved the variety of vegetable and fruit themed flat rides. The train was cool considering it went through a conservatory area and provided transportation from the front to the back of the park. One ride that is not to be missed is the 1920/1950 auto car ride. This one has an electric rail but you still get it steer (much like Dollywood) the course is about 4 minutes long and has a tunnel on both tracks. Definitely one of my favorite car ride attractions. They also had a gorgeous Illions Supreme Carousel that we enjoyed very much. That afternoon we made our way to California's Great America. We had decided to buy fastlane because we knew we didn't have an entire day to spend at the park. We started with Berserker which is the Schwarzkopf Byrne kurve. It was fun but definitely one of the weaker Schwarzkopf rides I've experienced. We hit up railblazer which was definitely not as good as stunt pilot at Silverwood but still enjoyable. Next was demon which was running better than it's clone in Chicago. We rode the Drop Tower and the redwood rally rides before getting on Grizzly. We rode front row so we didn't notice any roughness but rather that the ride is just plain boring. Up next was Phyco Mouse which reminded me why it's a shame Arrow never built more of these. They have good laterals, smooth profiling, and a few airtime pops. Hope this ride finds a new home after the park closes. We then grabbed the skyride to the front of the park and got a ride on Rue le Dodge which is one of the better dogems style rides because it still has the old fast moving cars. Flight Deck is definitely the best of the older inverts. Such an underrated ride! Super forceful and I got a grey out for several seconds. We rode Mass Affect New Earth which was cool considering I never got to experience Days of Thunder at Kings Island. Next we tried to ride Centrifuge but it broke down and we were told it would remain closed the rest of the day. We grabbed the Woodstock Express credit and rode the kiddy breakdance (Peanuts Pirates) before moving back towards the front of the park for a ride on Orbit which was a stunning Schwarzkopf enterprise and the only one currently operating in North America. We snagged a ride on Patriot and then did a wonderful night ride on Gold Striker. We watched the fireworks as it was a special show for the holiday before heading out for the night. 9/1: On Labor Day we drove down to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk to spend about three hours at the park before our flight home. The Giant Dipper was running fantastic as were their other coasters, we enjoyed numerous flats including a rock o plane and their Looff Carousel with the brass rings and iconic clown. What surprised me about the boardwalk was their good dark rides. All 3 were fun and well executed in their own ways. The ghost blasters was better than any boo blaster ride I've ridden, the cave train had a Hanna Barbara feel to it, and then the haunted Castle ride did have some pretty grotesque animatronics and jump scares. All I'm all we enjoyed our short time at the boardwalk and definitely want to return in the future! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartCat7162 Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 What did you think about the zoo portion of SFDK? I feel like I don’t hear much about it and I think they have a pretty large collection of animals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnjniehaus Posted September 30 Author Share Posted September 30 20 hours ago, SmartCat7162 said: What did you think about the zoo portion of SFDK? I feel like I don’t hear much about it and I think they have a pretty large collection of animals. To be fair we did not thoroughly explore the zoo section as we had approximately 8 hours at the park. From what I saw of it, I did look decent. The snake displays in the que for sidewinder Safari were a nice touch 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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