West Mifflin, Pennsylvania – Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Me and my dad’s years were practically defined by the roller coaster trips we would take together. This tradition started in 2001 when we went to Ohio and I got my first taste of the Beast after nightfall, and then entrenched itself in 2002 when we did a lengthy road trip out west to Los Angeles. For the next five years after that we did some really good parks and had some great times but none of our road trips could quite live up to the scale of ’02 (mostly for financial reasons). But in 2008 the planets somehow managed to align and we were able to plan a ten-day, eleven-park tour (which would actually become thirteen parks), hitting nearly every major park in Pennsylvania and some in New Jersey.
The tour started with an early noon departure from Lansing, Michigan on Thursday, June 5th, arriving at Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in time for the start of the 5:00pm evening ticket. Part of this was strategic since we didn’t want to get up too early the first day and the cost of two evening tickets nearly equaled the price of a one-day pass (allowing time for nearby Idlewild the next morning), but it was also for personal reasons. Kennywood in the evening I think is just absolute magic. There’s so much electricity flowing through the park, both in the form of the thousands of electric and neon lights illuminating the midways, and just in the energy of the crowds. Kennywood was busy but the lines were rarely worse than fifteen minutes; half the joy of an evening at Kennywood is just the people-watching, and it nearly seemed as though, being a local community park, everyone knew everyone else’s name. There are few other places in the world where you can find that, and once you enter the gates and emerge from the sub-parkway tunnel, seemingly dropped in the middle of a park amid shaded pavilions, gazebos and groves of trees, it’s impossible to bring any residual postmodern cynicism and revel in the beauty of the place, and of being here, alive to witness it.
Well, that might be a bit optimistic. The first ride of the trip, the indoor Old Mill boat ride dating back to 1902, had unfortunately been redone with a rather dispiriting day-glo neon cartoon theme renamed Garfield’s Nightmare. Originally the Old Mill, this attraction has a long history of swapping themes to keep it fresh, and I hope they delay little longer in giving it another makeover (whether back to the default Old Mill or something else new), as the pseudo-psychedelic imagery of the over-familiarized sarcastic cartoon cat gorging himself feels a little bit like sacrilege in a ride with this much heritage.
Further down the midway is the Jack Rabbit, the park’s classic 1920-built John Miller terrain wooden coaster. I love the Jack Rabbit. It’s almost a tragedy that the Thunderbolt and Phantom’s Revenge are on opposite sides of the park because otherwise I could spend all day on this coaster declaring my undying affection for it. Okay, so it’s not a very big ride, in fact the layout is downright simple with only four drop along the entire course (five if you count the double dip as two). Cushy sofa-like seats on the restraint-less trains that must have luxury shock-absorbers installed because they glide along the steel-laminated wooden rails even more gently than an Intamin plug-and-play, but still with all the same quirky character of a ride its age. The progression with ever-increasing speed and dips interspersed between bookending
turnarounds is simple but flawless, and the double dip in the last row (where we managed to ride on our first cycle; it’s first-come, first serve) is of the most exhilarating you can find on a wooden coaster. At night the neon and tracer lights illuminate the front half, while the back half in the valley becomes entrenched in pure darkness. Pure heaven.
Further along the central lagoon in the old part of the park is another classic John Allen creation, the Racer. We started off settling for only one ride due to a somewhat slow line but would be back at the end of the night. I wish they could run four trains on this thing, but I guess with skid brakes that’s more of a liability (speaking of which, it was slightly cool/scary to watch the sparks fly off the bottom of the train when they entered the brakes). I think the main reason it doesn’t get as much attention is it doesn’t use the terrain as well as the other two wooden coaster and is comparatively forceless, but it would be wrong to say it’s totally lacking in either regard. There is some play with the terrain that allows the final leg of the course (beneath the first turnaround and drop) to finish with larger drops and more speed than would normally have been anticipated, particularly the final drop through the superstructure.
There are also a lot of changes for the lead position considering the short track length, and it’s one of only three Möbius racing coasters left in the world. It took my dad and me several minutes to figure out “where the tracks crossed over”, only to eventually realize that the switch is achieved simply by having them turn opposite directions on departure and then meeting up under the station before the lift.
Continuing to follow the outer pond circle we next encountered the Log Jammer, an Arrow log flume that sports one of the rare uphill log flume sections the company built. I was quite surprised the first time I saw the uphill section on a ‘traditional’ log flume, especially because the water flowed uphill with the boats! There was enough momentum from the preceding drop to carry itself against gravity, apparently. I liked the cute posters on display throughout the queue challenging riders to conduct a ‘science experiment’ to discover how boats get the wettest; by weighting down the front of the boat (nose dive), back of the boat (water skimmer) or just making it as heavy as possible (largest displacement of water). I still haven’t figured out
exactly what the correct answer is.
The Aero 360 was next, a Zamperla inverting double pendulum flat ride with the arms covered by the black and yellow Kennywood arrows. We had a lot of fun on this one, partly because you get great hangtime over the flip, and because they seat you face-to-face with other riders so you get to watch their reactions as you go upside down. The people across from us were quite animated, you’d almost think they’ve never been on a looping ride before (which I suppose is possible they haven’t).
Ghostwood Estates was the big news of 2008, replacing the former Gold Rusher dark ride
with a new trackless interactive dark ride shooter system. The ride was clearly quite a hit, and I’ll admit, needed for Kennywood if not only for the increased capacity. There’s even a preshow included to explain the backstory, and to allow people near the end of the group to slip around the room to be first out the exit door once it opens. The story goes something like Lord Kenneth Ghostwood needs us to help clear his home of many unwanted ghouls who have taken residence, but perhaps he has another sinister motive as well. Maybe I need to take second ride to catch some missed details because once on the ride I noticed almost no variation between scenes
and nothing that suggested any sort of progressive storytelling element, it was just one generic haunted mansion scene after another with my attention ripped away from the scares and atmosphere by the little blinking red lights I was supposed to be aiming at. The trackless ride system was also mostly wasted since the vehicles follow a very
clear pathway through the estates (demarked by the black streaks left by the tire rubber), only at one point using it to do a small ‘dead-end’ and reversal gag which is given away by the vehicle ahead of us. Part of me preferred the retro-classic goofy fun of the Gold Rusher, although maybe
that was because the two middle-aged women my dad and I rode with both managed to beat my score…
We went on to do more of the western side of the park before returning to the original lagoon area to close out the night with more of the Racer and Jack Rabbit in the dark to close out the night. The shimmering lights dazzle the eye and I wish it could go on forever, but sadly we were required to leave by the 10:00pm closure time. Not to worry, we would back tomorrow.
Nice to see the kind words for Jack Rabbit: “Pure Heaven,” my thoughts exactly. On my first visit to KW as a teenager my head was filled with so much Tbolt hype that I was a bit let down. JR came out as my favorite.
Looking back I think a lot of that had to do with that fact that my gestalt for “old woodie” was Big Dipper at GL and the Miller quality here is similar.
Even though I now respect Tbolts uniqueness (and now value lateral G’s) I still have kind of a gut dismissal. I think it’s because people in Pittsburg are so proud of it, and for me, that comes with emotions about hating The Steelers.