Welcome to Part III of My Bloated Coaster Con Trip Report. This marks the beginning of OFFICIAL ACE FESTIVITIES! Our first of 7-total host parks in & around Con is Quassy Amusement Park in CT, home to the sensational, 2-year-old Wooden Warrior!
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| ACE CONNECTI-CON POSSE: ASSEMBLE! |
Storytime: I drove my mom's minivan to Con this year because I knew I'd be chauffeuring several of my friends around. My mom's minivan has a button-operated power door on the right side. The car is 14 years old & the power door is fussy. Steven couldn't get the door to open, so I came around from the outside and tried to open it.
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| This happened. |
The sound of me wrenching the door handle off the minivan was like that of a fender bender. Easily one of the worst sounds ever. Everyone within 500ft of me looked over in a panic expecting to see some kind of accident. Instead, they just saw me. Standing next to my car. Holding a door handle in the air. Looking like a dumbass. lol
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| After securing the broken pieces of the door inside the little pouch behind the passenger seat, we went on with our regularly scheduled programming. |
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| Quassy is an adorable little park surrounded by mature trees. They have several cute flat rides. |
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| In this age of political-correctness, it's nice to see that a ride themed to American Indian war-rallying somehow still got the green light. |
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| Wooden Warrior gets the Adrian Lloyd seal of approval! |
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| How was your ride, boys?! |
Wooden Warrior is a dreamy little ride. It's 1,200ft of solid perfection. There're woodies out there that are 4x the size but not half the ride Wooden Warrior is. Credit #18 in my Year of 100 New Coasters is a triumph!
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| As you can see, the ride provides copious amounts of airtime and hair-time. |
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| Dan and John are all about Wooden Warrior! |
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| Hey look! It's Christian and Tracy! |
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| Nice face, Tracy. ;} |
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| "The rat I found in my pantry the other day was THIS BIG!" |
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| Jeff and Steve are back for more! |
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| The park's scale model of Wooden Warrior was on display for us at lunch. |
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| Polly Pocket and her friends are gettin' their ride on!! |
"...........what do you mean people don't know what Polly Pocket is anymore?
You know, the tiny little 1/2 inch plastic dolls?
They stopped making those WHEN?
Wait, they're made of 2 inch pieces of rubber now?
Oh God, why.........."
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| I found MICHAEL!!!! :D :D :D :D :D |
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| How many ACErs can we fit on the train before it breaks?? |
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| "Pretend not to look creepy!" |
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The park recently expanded their water park with festive water slides!
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| We were more interested in this slide, however. Here Tom demonstrates proper riding etiquette. |
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| Dan is very amused by the slide! |
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| Mat, however, is not. |
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| We had a great morning at Quassy! What a nice little park. |
Park #2 of the day: Lake Compounce! I'd heard a LOT of great things about this park, but I thought it was just o.k. The good outweighs the "meh", but overall there were a couple of disappointments. The park is beautiful, though, and BoulderDash delivered!
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| There's supposed to a park around here somewhere. |
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| Ahh, here it is! America's oldest amusement park, Lake Compounce! |
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| Boulder Dash!! Let's see if it lives up to the hype. |
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| Well?? How was it?! |
First ride impressions were good. Not spectacular, but good. The first two drops have NO air, which is bizarre for any wooden coaster, but that all has to do with the nature of Boulder Dash's layout. Things get better about a quarter of the way through, and then the last half is balls-out insane! Slow to start, but a solid performance. Definitely a good ride, but not the be-all-end-all wooden coaster it had been made out to be. Credit #20. Wham-o!
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| Here's where things start to get rocky: The quaint and un-assuming Wildcat. |
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| Apparently Wildcat had rumbled itself to pieces a few years back & had just re-opened following a year-long rehab. |
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| How was your ride, boys? |
Let me start by saying that whenever I ride a wooden coaster, I almost always take my first ride in the back seat. I do that because A) I usually prefer the back on a woodie, and B) I can judge all of my first impressions of wooden coasters under similar circumstances.
John and I went for our backseat ride without much of a thought. The others got their front-car ride first & gave it a thumbs up. John and I were looking forward to it. First drop & turn around are buttery smooth.
Two Words: RED HERRING.
What happened as we flew into the first bunny hop can only be described as going from zero to Son of Beast in about half a second. I felt like a television smashing face-first into the floor. When we rounded the next bend, all was quiet. John and I looked at each other with "oh sh*t" expressions and braced ourselves for the rest of our ride, which varied from bad to passable.
Credit #21. Yay...?
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| Wildcat made my brain hurt. I stumbled around for a little bit with drool dribbling down the side of my mouth like I'd just waltzed out of the asylum. |
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| As I was recovering, I marveled at this sign for a bit. It's much nicer looking than the park's actual carousel. |
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| We decided to take the park's Trolley over to the chairlift and rapids ride. |
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Dan: "You know, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, we're all doomed."
John: "No, not if you duck and cover your head like this!" |
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| Lake Compounce's authentic street trolly is totally cute. |
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| See? This ride is serving Mr. Roger's Neighborhood realness. |
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| The park's rapids ride is short and basically does nothing. Lame! |
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| It's the Scandinavia Crew! The posse that started it all. <3 |
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| Lake Compounce is home to a very nice water park & also a lake. |
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| Oh look. It's the ski lift. |
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| Riding this thing is a commitment. Twenty-five minute round trip! |
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| More water park love! Check out that KrakenRacer to the right! |
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| Mat, Tom, and Steve are scrutinizing the view. They're quite the ski lift critics! |
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| End of the line! Time to double back. |
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| Bird's Eye view of the snoozefest rapids ride. |
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| Look who it is! It's Michael & Co.! They're trying to take a good picture of Boulder Dash, which is next to impossible. |
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Seriously, between its mindblowingly-fast pace, limited exposure, and poor lighting, Boulder Dash is probably the most difficult coaster to photograph* that I've ever come across.
*with my puny, point-and-shoot digital camera.
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| Uh-oh. I don't like where this is going. |
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| Yep, it's everyone's favorite medieval torture device, the Boomerang! And Lake Compounce's (Zoomerang. Cute name, I think) is about a 7 on the Chris Brown scale. Oof! |
Credit #22. Moving right along...
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| Milling about beneath Zoomerang is possibly the cutest car ride ever. |
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| They also have one of these |
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| and one of these! |
My Ferris Wheel ride was interesting. They don't allow single riders, and the boys had all gone off to eat (I skipped the meal and the event ceremony this time because of time constraints), so I got paired up with a family to whom I pitched the ACE speil during our ride. They seem mildly enthused.
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| I got my Ferris Wheel pictures & that's all that matters. |
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| Rode this for kicks. It was fun, but it would have been more fun sharing the cabin with a cute boy. :} |
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| The park's log flume was nice. Old-school & secluded in the woods. |
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| ACE TAKEOVER OF THE KIDDIE COASTER! Our scheduled ERT was during park operating hours, so we let any kiddos who wanted to ride have ERT too! |
It's good to be a cre-ho. Credit #23! We also did the shooting dark ride at around this time, but it was crap. No pics for you!
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| Night rides on Boulder Dash and Wildcat both lead to improved opinions. I rode Wildcat in the front (which was MUCH better) and my subsequent Boulder Dash rides felt much more like the hype I was expecting. Twelve total night rides and 3 Advil (thank you, Leo)! It was a great night. Yeehaw!! |
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| Goodnight, Lake Compounce. It's been real. |
Ok, you guys. Tomorrow is the OFFICIAL START OF COASTER CON!! Join me for my first impressions of host-park Six Flags New England & see what the boys and I have to say about America's #1 ranked steel coaster on the Mitch Hawker Internet Coaster Poll, Bizarro!!!
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