Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk 6/1/2026

[DoomPlague]

This is somehow my first trip to California in my life and instead of checking out the more popular socal parks, I'm in the SF bay area.

I only had a small idea of what to expect from Santa Cruz, and ended up enjoying the experience.

First things first: cost

We messed up by not buying discounted ride wristbands ahead of time. So buying them the day of the visit would have been about 75/each or 150 total. Instead, since many of the flat rides are just smaller versions of what I've been on before or will on this trip, I opted to start with with one of their prepaid cards which give "bonus points" that can be used on rides. IE $100 can get you $115 worth of rides. The bonus points can't be used on food or other items but fortunately they are automatically used before any paid points where applicable. This system worked out well for us. The wristbands aren't good for the walk through Fright Walk attraction and food. So for the price of two wristbands, we did all the rides we wanted, including 2 rides on GIant Dipper, the Fright Walk and covered one meal. Still more expensive than the other two parks on this trip but...it is a boardwalk park.

The rides:

Giant Dipper is wonderful. It's reasonably smooth for an old woodie and has a couple good pops of airtime. The pre-lift section is also a nice treat as is the more rare, rounded station. Our first ride, we just walked to the front row because the other guests just instinctively filled in the back of the train. So we got front and another ride near the back. Both were great.

The park also has 3 decent dark rides. One is the Cave Train Adventure. It has your usual bright colors with blacklight-effects. The characters are crude looking but there are a ton of them and many animate. There's also a decent sense of humor to the ride and its surprisingly long.

We also hit Ghost Blasters, which is, in fact, a boo blasters ride complete with Boocifer. No omnimover system but the guns work really well.

They also have a Haunted Castle dark ride, which is arguably higher quality than the others but at the same time more generic. It was decent but nothin that interesting.

We tried a couple flat rides, including an indoor Huss breakdance complete with lights and music.

We skipped the EF Miler kid coaster but did ride Undertow, a Maurer spinner. I continue to have bad luck with spinning coasters as this one had almost zero spin. 

We also rode their Arrow log flume, Loggers Revenge. Didn't get very wet and the layout is your typical one where it stays in the air the whole time until the drop.

WIth our remaining points, I rode Tornado by myself. I'm not sure I had seen one of these rides from Wisdom Rides. The cars swing as the ride spins but you can spin them like tea cups.

 

Crowds were pretty moderate. Enough people that you had to work to avoid bumping in to people but the lines weren't terrible. If the crowds were smaller, I would have wished we had wristbands but it actually worked out pretty well.

We ate at a fish&chips place on the arcade side of the boardwalk. It was decent quality food.

My overall impressions are pretty positive. They actually have a ton more rides there that we didn't ride, including a skyride that covers most of the boardwalk distance. It's impressive how they managed to cram in some things. One end of the park is basically two layers, where they put indoor rides underneath a higher part of the midway. And while its somewhat expensive overall, the park is well kept and maintained and I never felt like anyone was trying to rip me off. So don't overlook this boardwalk if you're ever in the bay area.