Funtown Splashtown + Around the World/U.S. In 18 Holes: My Bloated Coaster Con XXXVI Road Trip Report - Part IX

All good things must come to an end. Today is the last official day of Coaster Con. Jeff, Steve, and Dan all must depart to their respective corners of the country, and soon Christian and I will be making our gradual trip back down to the South.

Funtown Splashtown is the northern-most park on our tour, but it was the first of several very HOT on the trip!

New at Splashtown this year is this sexy Octopus Racer/Drop Out combo slide from PROSlide! Here you can see a worker inspecting the transitions in between the tube pieces. I don't think I could do that job. I would die. 

Now I've seen it all: Funtown Splashtown was painting their park as we arrived for ERT. This handsome individual was kind enough to pose for a picture. :}

Helloooooo lap bar checker! ;}

Funtown Splashtown is full of handsome individuals, it seems!

Dan and Jeff are poised for their ride!

Excalibur, credit #42 of my Year of 100 New Coasters, is an on-par 90s CCI coaster. Not bad. Not great.

The ride's exit platform offers some of the only views of the ride from the pedestrian walkways. Luckily, that's what photo-walkback tours are for! :}

Wild Mouse time! Ron looks pensive about it. Probably because the ride uses NONE of its trim breaks!

Credit #43: That awkward moment when your woodie is "meh" and your wild mouse is above-par, and suddenly you're like "well, I enjoyed the mouse more." lol

*SPONTANEOUS ASIAN THEMING*

Like Canobie, Funtown Splashtown has an eclectic mix of themes that have no real rhyme or reason. 

Okay, this is neat. Enter: the ASTROSPHERE!

What we have here is a neon-yellow scrambler in a black-lit, inflatable dome.

The ride is choreographed to an original soundtrack & laser light show! AWESOME!

This flock of ACErs is eagerly awaiting their walk-back tour of Excalibur!

Hey, guys! Whacha looking at?

Oh! Well look at that! 

Ready.....Aim......FIRE!! 

The grounds upon which Excalibur sits are laden with fire-ant hills! Guess who wore sandals for the walk-back tour? lol

I spy some friends on this train! :} Leo and Jayson are werqin' that front seat!

Anyone up for a game of horseshoes?

LOOK! There is a CHIPMUNK among the surplus Excalibur lumber!

Oh, Excalibur. It's not that you aren't living up to your full potential.....I just don't think you had very much potential to begin with. lol

Great ride for kiddos, though! And it looks like that kiddo's mom hit her 200th coaster!

Also, Tom is looking rather pensive while Leonard just plays it cool.

It's quite a large ride for its mildness.

The tour guides basically let us get as close to the coaster as we wanted.  We have some daredevils in ACE who looked like they might loose a hand trying to take a picture!

Tom seems to be less pensive now.

Oh look! It's David rolling out of the pretty castle! :}

Here's a few more loyal subjects for your consideration. Knights of the Round Table, perhaps?

We all had these grandiose intentions of riding this without getting totally soaked (the sun hadn't yet made an appearance, so it wasn't exactly hot out yet). Somehow we lost our way & crammed 4 of us into a boat. We got wet. I don't know what we were expecting.

There were a LOT of Trabants on this trip. I love the rides, but I didn't actually ride any of them this time around. My FAVORITE-looking Trabants are, of course, the roulette wheel ones. I'm tickled by the thought of a family-ride themed to gambling.

The water park is now open!

At this point in the day, Dan, Jeff, Steve, and I said our goodbyes. However, Jeff will be reprising his role as himself in my next Trip Report! :D 

Since we had so much fun at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, Adam, Tina, Christian, Adam, and I decided to treat ourselves to some more water park time!

Splashtown has an excellent collection of slides. Having conquered my fear of the Banzai Pipelines at Six Flags, I was ready to take on some more dropout slides!

Splashtown's Dropout slide tower (called Mt. Olympus; not to be confused with the delightful Mt. Olympus Water & Theme park in the Wisconsin Dells) is much more forgiving than Banzai Pipelines. The layout of these slides lead to a lot less ankle skin-scraping and head-bumping. The Octopus Racer doesn't really "race", but the slides are fun!

Here are the park's oldest slides. A couple of tube slides & some old-school, home-made body slides!

The water-bucket-kiddie-slide-complex-type-thing, another usual suspect at the average water park.

Completing their collection of slides are a pair of PROSlide family tubes, one of which is a Tornado! I was the only one in the group who had ridden one before, so I was eager to show everyone how much fun they are! It was definitely the favorite of the day.

After a few hours of water park fun, Christian and I decided to make our departure & head for Lake George, NY! We'll be meeting up with Tina & the Adams at The Great Escape.

Before we left, Christian snagged his mouse credit, which led to this picture. Probably one of my favorites of the trip. :}

Lake George, NY, like Old Orchard Beach, is a delightfully kitschy vacation spot. The Great Escape, our park stop for tomorrow, is located in the next town over, Queensbury.

About 10 years ago, I watched a Travel Channel special on great mini-golf courses. I distinctly remembered it featuring an Around-the-World-themed course in Lake Gorge, so naturally Christian and I had to go. Much to our surprise, the place was open 'til midnight! We were able to squeeze in a couple of rounds after we finished our drive from ME!

I REALLY liked the golf course. Full of classic charm & very well maintained. I made a point of documenting each & every hole so that I could give an in-depth report! Enjoy! :}

This must be the place!

The onion-topped building in the middle of the golf course is where we purchase our balls!

Hole 1: Germany!* 


*foreshadowing

Hole 2: Great Britain, complete with Olympic embellishments!

Hole 3: Oi'erland!

Hole 4: Norway! This is exactly how I remember Norway looking. :}

Hole 5: Spain! Putt your ball down the center lane of the Spanish guitar to get a guaranteed hole-in-one!

Hole 6: Canada! Marvel at the splendor of Paul Bunyan's spread legs, through which your ball must pass! 

Hole 7: Japan! Actually, this isn't even part of the actual hole. It's just decoration.

Here's the hole for Japan!

Just LOOK at where my ball stopped. I resorted to using my putter as a pool cue.

More general Japanese embellishment.

Hole 8: Peru! Features a highly-detailed scale replica of the Andes Mountains!

Hole 9: The USSR! (This place opened in 1963 so...yeah). I think they nailed the country's architecture with that ugly, non-descript grey partition. 

STOP! Camel time! Again!

This gorgeous, glittery thing didn't seem to tie into any particular hole. If I had to guess, I'd say it would be related in some way to Thailand.

Hole 10: France! Complete with a snooty French asshole who tries to stop your ball.

Christian was forced to divert his ball down a mountainous turnpike.

The French asshole intercepted my ball and started stepping on it repeatedly.

Betcha can't guess where hole 11 is! It seems only natural that Holland* would be included, since both miniature golf culture & Holland share a close association with windmills.

*additional foreshadowing 

XTREME HOLE 12 POV!!

Hole 13: Mexico, featuring a particularly-flamboyant sombrero! 

Hole 14: China, featuring an authentic rickshaw!

Leave it to the Australian hole to have the most difficult gimmick by far. 

Hole 16: Disneyland Switzerland!

Hole 17: Egypt! Sadly, no sphinx. Christian pretending to be a cat will have to suffice.

Can you guess where hole 18 is?

That's right! Italy!

Out of all the possible directions they could have gone for Italy (the Colosseum, Venice, Da Vinci, etc.), they took a decidedly less-glorous approach and went with Mt. Vesuvius of Pompeii.

That concludes our tour of the World. Feeling homesick? Lets take a closer look at the U.S.A. now!

Hole 1: Massachusetts! You may notice that the U.S.A. corse is a bit more elaborate than the World course. It would seem that they had a little extra $ to work with the 2nd time around!

Hole 2: Florida! (Kind of disappointed. I would have loved to see a princess castle that comes dangerously-close to violating certain copyright laws)

Hole 3: Colorado! Everyone who was at this past Preservation Conference would agree that this is exactly how it looks. 

Hole 4: Georgia! Cannons aren't exactly the first thing that come to mind when I think of Georgia, but a large peach was probably out of the question because Florida already had the orange.

Hole 5: A Texas-sized hole indeed!

Hole 6: South Dakota! (or maybe it was North Dakota. I can't remember. Does it matter?)

I was surprised this hole wasn't Mt. Rushmore themed, but then I could have been thinking of the incorrect Dakota. (but I still feel like a Mt. Rushmore hole would have suited this place perfectly in any case)

Hole 7: Maine! Home to genetically-enhanced goliath lobsters!

My ball got stuck again! This time in the barn door of hole 8: Wisconsin! (also, no cheese?!)

Hole 9: Nevada! Home to America's favorite grown-up playland. The hole for this one was very clever; hit the ball into the roulette wheel, and which ever hole it falls through indicates how many strokes.

Hole 10: Michigan! I'm not exactly sure what this windmill has to do with Michigan. I think the golf course just wanted an excuse to put in another windmill.

Hole 11: Pennsylvania! The hole itself was pretty nondescript, as the iconic Liberty Bell sits outside the field of play.

Okay, a reminder that this place is 50 years old: the New Jersey hole is none other than the Palisades Park carousel! 

Hole 13: Arizona! I think they were going for the Grand Canyon, but it looks more like the Great Wall of China.

Hole 14: Alaska! Featuring a polar bear trapped in a block of ice.

Hole 15: Kentucky! Christian was so proud. :}

Hole 16: a Hawaii/California hybrid! (not making this up). The hole itself is Hawaii, but you must cross the Golden Gate Bridge to get from one side to the other!

I like that Vermont's hole is a church, because in Vermont two people of the same gender can go to a church and get married. :}

Hole 18 might just be the most elaborate miniature golf hole I've ever seen.

You start by taking the stairs down to the NY Subway.

From there you put your ball down the tracks towards an actual subway car.

One the other side, we see the view from inside a subway car!

And where does the subway take you? To the Statue of Liberty, of course! 

Not to be outdone by the over-sized Lady Liberty floor lamp, the Empire State Building has King Kong perched at its pinnacle, gripping a Barbie doll as biplanes fly overhead.

It was midnight after our World & U.S.A. tours were complete, and we were starving. Luckily we found a pizzeria that stays open 'til 4AM for all the drunk people!

And it was some of the BEST pizza I've ever had!!

Whew! What a long day! Tomorrow we continue our Lake George adventure with The Great Escape!