3rd Stop: Six Flags Great Adventure, New Jeresy

A multi-faceted visit.

For the previous two stops, we stayed at forgettable cheese-box hotels, due to lack of any reasonable alternatives.  For Six Flags Great Adventure, we had the opportunity to stay someplace fun: the Inn at Laurita Winery in New Egypt, New Jersey.

This is a lovely B&B, and our host Janis Bonavito made us feel right at home, starting with a freshly-made picnic lunch and a suggestion to visit a nearby historical "mill village" called Walnford.  We had our lunch there, featuring Ms. "Don't take my picture, I'm eating:"









The old mill village was quite interesting. Its heyday was the mid-1800's, at which time about 50 people lived and worked there. Patricia found a friend in the mill house.

She was to find more "kitties" the next day.

That evening, we enjoyed pizza and wine at sunset at the local Laurita winery, just down the road from the Inn.

Now it's Saturday, and what are we here for? Roller Coasters!

Batman was a very twisty track. Maybe too twisty. A bit too rough in Gordon's opinion.

We enjoyed Nitro (three times). Superman was fun. This is a ride where you are strapped in and rotated so your body is parallel with the (overhead) track, so you really get a sensation of flying as you whizz around the track.



There is an inversion element that is fantastic.  Just after that is the photo cam, where it caught us having lots of fun as it shot us against the sky.

A surprise to us was a Safari through a wild animal park. We didn't even know they had the animal park there! We found some new friends on the hour-long ride.

More "kitties" (lion cubs!) for P:

But the best was still to come. We had read reviews that called "El Toro" not only the best wooden roller coaster in the country but the best 'coaster of any kind in the country.

The verdict?   IT WAS FANTASTIC!  A perfect combination of a killer drop, speed, many, many radical "airtime" moments, and incredible G-turns. Such a delight we rode it three times.  I think our expressions say it all:

Yet another great roller coaster day.  We will come back to Six Flags Great Adventure again someday!

2nd Stop: Cedar Point, Sandusky, OH

This is the one we have been waiting for!

Cedar Point has been rated the best amusement park in the world for 15 years straight! This is 'coaster Mecca. And... we're here!

A beautiful, clear day. Just right for screaming our asses off, like Patricia in this shot taken on Magnum XL-200 (which turned out to be Gordon's favorite ride).

(Look at the guy above her and to the right. Think this ride's intense?) Loved it so much, we did it again!

The rides here are simply incredible. Many consider Millennium Force to be the best steel roller coaster anywhere, with its 300 foot drop and 93 MPH speed. (We did that one twice, too.)

Not fast enough for you? How about Top Thrill Dragster, which accelerates you from 0 to 120 MPH in 3.7 seconds and hurls you straight up a 420 foot tower, which you crest and then free-fall 420 feet down and back to the station. That all happens in 17 seconds. Think about that. Zero to 120, up 420 feet, screaming back down, in SEVENTEEN SECONDS!

This ride is so extreme that we were delayed about 15 minutes because of an incident in a train before us where one of the riders crapped himself and they had to clean up the car.  No, we are not kidding!






Photo below shows us at the point of initial acceleration on the left and the end of the ride on the right. (The ride blew P's hoodie right off her head.)

Patrica found a friend in the petting zoo...

Another favorite was Maverick, which has a 95 degree drop (that's past vertical) and a memorable  electromagnetic shot through a tunnel toward then end. 

This park really impressed us. It was clean as a whistle, the staff was great, the attendees were nice folks, and the rides were dazzling. Too many more to clog up the blog. 

We will certainly come back to Cedar Point. 

1st Stop: Six Flags Great America, Gurney, IL

Finally, we're off!

Launching out of Santa Barbara Airport, Monday, May 26.

Four Corners area, beautiful weather enroute...

Only to land in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the midst of very challenging convection...

... Just in time to get the airplane in a hangar before the sky unloaded!

And Tuesday, we arrive at Six Flags Great America!

We won't be posting every shot of every 'coaster, but we had our favorites.  Among them, Superman (note P's straight-up hair), Batman, and X-Flight. 

And just as we were getting ready to leave the park, another downpour!

P's smile sums up the day...

Next stop - Sandusky Ohio ('coaster Mecca).

May 12 - Six Flags Magic Mountain

"Warm-up" stop: Home Turf. Six Flags Magic Mountain

In order to get our feet wet for our trip, our first stop was our "local" park: Magic Mountain.  A beautiful day, except just slightly windy. Unfortunately, just windy enough to keep one of our favorite 'coasters, X-2, closed for the day.  No big deal; they have so many more great rides!

Very small crowd on this Monday. We got in early with our gold passes.

We started out on an old favorite: Colossus. This great wooden roller coaster opened in 1978. (Gordon was there 2 days after it opened.) To keep up interest, they are running the ride with the cars facing BACKWARDS!  This makes an already jarring ride even more surprising.

We tried their new ride, Full Throttle. Massive acceleration (linear motor), good hang at the top of the loop, and a surprise in the tunnel.

"Batman" is another ride they were running with the chairs backwards. P and I felt it would have been better if they weren't.

Right after that, we tried "Green Lantern." This is a truly unique ride, with a car that translates vertically on a track while the seat assemblies rotate. Very odd feelings, but a rough ride. Gordon actually bruised his calf on this one. (But it goes in the category of "Any ride that can hurt you is a good ride.")

Did you know that Magic Mountain has geese wandering around? We didn't!

We rode several other attractions (Goliath, Apocalypse, Tatsu), with the gold medal going to Tatsu.

A wonderful kick-off day!

Logistics

Planning a trip comprised of seven parks in fourteen days is somewhat daunting. For each park, arrangements must be made for the airport facilities, rental car, hotel, dining, and of course the amusement park itself.

Since we'll only have one full day at each park, we've reserved "FlashPass" (and similar) passes at each park. These passes allow you to skip the long lines that are common on the most popular attractions. Although a bit costly, they are well worth it for an itinerary like ours.

All of the flight planning has been done beforehand. Here are the eleven legs of our overall flight plan:

We've scheduled a full "travel day" between each park, and we have a one-day "breather" in the middle where we'll visit our friends Barry and Maura Lerman in North Carolina.

The tools available to organize a trip like this make it so much easier than it would have been 25 years ago.  (Was there life before the internet?)  All of the advance admission passes, hotel, car, and even dining reservations were easily made on the web. All of the details and documents have been stored in EverNote, accessible instantly from our iPads and iPhones.

To minimize fumbling, we've stored the location of each and every "destination" (e.g. hotel, airport FBO, restaurant, amusement park, and other attraction) as a "saved" location in Google Maps.

It's all lined up. We're READY!!

Rolling and Coasting Across the USA

For as long as Patricia and I have been together (18 years), we have talked about doing a flying tour of the USA's best amusement parks and enjoying the "best of the best" roller coasters therein. Now, finally, in the Spring of 2014, after much planning and plotting, we're ready to go!

Our itinerary is comprised of eight parks:

• Six Flags Magic Mountain (California) 
• Six Flags Great America (Illinois)
• Cedar Point (Ohio)
• Six Flags Great Adventure (New Jersey)
• King's Dominion (Virginia)
• Carowinds (North Carolina)
• Universal's Islands of Adventure (Florida)
• Six Flags over Texas (Texas)

Here's a map of our route:

This trip would be next to impossible without the freedom engendered by our airplane, N322PL.

As our launch day of Monday, May 26, 2014 approaches, we're super excited and ready to "roll and coast" across this great country!