15 Days, attempted to visit 12 parks

So, my cousin and I decided around Christmas 2015 that we wanted to try a large amusement park tour of some sort this year. In the interest of keeping this post short, I'll mainly just give the highlights.

Here's our list of places to try to make it to:

1. Holiday World
2. Cedar Point
3. Kennywood (skipped due to rain)
4. Hershey Park
5. Knobels (skipped due to time constraint)
6. Dorney
7. Six Flags Great Adventure, New Jersey
8. Kings Dominion
9. Busch Gardens Williamsburg (rained all day, skipped)
10. Carowinds
11. Dollywood (skipped for a relaxation day)
12. Kings Island

So, we set off back on June 20th in the morning to Holiday World. Got there late Monday and rode the Coasters only that day. Thunderbird was our favorite and ran great. We liked it better than Gatekeeper. Voyage was fast, had great banked turns, but had jarring bumps here and there and the mid-course brakes kill its pacing. The legend rode great due to its recent partial re-tracking. Raven was very rough, we only rode it once and called it a day.

Day 2, Back to holiday world for the entire day. The waterpark was great. Mammoth had a 30 minute line all day, but we rode it a few times. Its fun, but the real fun is over at Wildebeest. That water slide/coaster is amazing. You actually get airtime over a few of the hills and the line was consistently 5-10min long. The other slides and lazy river were good. We rode the coasters again until almost park close later in the day.

Day 3+4, Off to cedar point. I already had my platinum pass, but my cousin had to process his. We arrived pretty late in the afternoon. I've done many trip reports on CP before, so there's not much new to mention. Crowds were busier than earlier in the year. Dragster was down for a good chunk of the time we were there. Valravn also had a pretty large amount of downtown while we were there. We had planned on leaving early on the 2nd day to get over to Kenny Wood for a few hours, but it turned into a partial ran day so we had to skip it.

5th day, the rain system that made us skip Kenny Wood had moved off to the west. We got to Hershey around 11am. The crowds piling in were pretty heavy. We took one of the trams into the park, which was very easy. We rode Skyrush first. It's one heck of a coaster, I really enjoyed it. SooperDooperLooper was OK and much smoother than I would have expected. Great Bear was a good invert, although it seemed short. Storm Runner was also good and smooth, but short. Fahrenheit was awesome with that vertical lift. Wildcat was OK for a Woodie, but rough in places. We also enjoyed Lightning Racer. Hands down though, we both agreed that we really liked Laff Trakk. Maybe its because it was such a change of pace from the normal coaster, but we enjoyed it quite a bit. We rode a few flats and poked around in the Hershey Store, but didn't take the tour. Rain was incoming, so we left.

6th day. Driving was becoming a chore and my cousin was already starting to get....impatient, so we unfortunately skipped Knobels and spent the whole day at Dorney Park. With this being a Saturday, the waterpark was packed, so we skipped it. We barely got into the main parking lot and we got there about 1 hour after park open. Steel force is the smooth version of Magnum XL, no doubt about it.Thunderhawk was good right up until this super snappy final turn. Hydra was OK and had a barrel roll/corkscrew inversion as soon as you left the station before the lift hill. Talon was good. Stinger, the Vekoma boomerang was surprisingly fun and intense. neither of us had ridden one of those boomerangs before. Maybe CP can sneak one of these in the park somewhere. I rode Demon drop during my first visit to CP in 2007, so we rode it here. Still fun, loud and bumpy. It would look very out of place at the front of the park though if it were still at CP.

Day 7. I have been excited to go to Six Flags Great Adventure for quite some time. It was Sunday and we arrived right after the park opened. It ended up being busy, very busy. We foolishly didn't try to ride their new S&S free spin coaster, The Joker, right when we went into the park. We never did ride it, it had a 2.5 hour wait all day. Anyway, we went right to El Toro. This is my favorite wood coaster now. Its just incredible in the back row and very smooth for a 'true' wood coaster. We marathoned it until the crowds started to trickle in to that park of the park. We saw Zumanjaro running once we finally left El Toro, so we went there. My cousin almost had a panic attack and made the ride op let him off once we got seated and strapped in. This is the king of drop rides. The drop feels like its never going to stop. It rocked. Kingda Ka was testing, so we got in line for it. It had a quick breakdown while we waited but we got our 1 ride on it before noon. It has a launch that isn't smooth like Dragster, it surges and relents and surges and relents. It felt more violent to be blunt. It goes over the top hat much faster than Dragster. The hill and the end gives a short pop of air. Overall we still prefer dragster. Bizarro was good and smooth for a floorless coaster. Green Lantern was a hardcore headbanger. We were slightly mad that we even waited for it after we got off of it. Nitro had very good airtime for a B&M coaster. We enjoyed it quite a bit but the line was huge, so we only rode it once.

Day 8. We had a busy day at six flags, so we slept late and took off to Kings Dominion. Its a smaller park, so i figured we wouldn't need a full day to enjoy the place. I was right. The park was almost a ghost town. Most stuff was a 5-10 minute wait at best. I305 is as intense as ever. I reviewed it previously here.After multiple rides, I'm going to have to say its not really enjoyable to ride over and over due to the extreme forces. Its awesome, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't marathon it though. Flight of fear was the real surprise. Its an absolute blast for an indoor launched coaster. Its also air conditioned. Volcano was pretty neat and I fit the seats just fine, unlike Wicked Twister. Delirium is inferior than Maxair. Rebel Yell was a hoot, we rode it a few times. Grizzly was grizzly, we didn't care for it much. The drop tower was nice, from a distance it looks like it crashes into the ground since it doesn't break until so low on the tower. I had to provoke and persuade my cousin all day to get him to ride it. We rode some other flats too. All in all a great day here since the crowds were small.They have a Bobsled coaster here too, I think it was called Avalanche. Its a unique ride. we liked it.

Day 9-The washout. We were suppose to go to Busch Gardens Williamsburg, but it rained all day until sundown. We used this day to do laundry and recover from all the walking and riding.

Day 10, Carowinds. We had a decent drive from Williamsburg to Charlotte due to road construction. We got there before dinner time. I've been there before but only rode a few things due to time constraints. We rode most every coaster. My MF vs Fury325 opinion is split now. Previously I thought MF was the better coaster, but now...I'm leaning towards Fury. The daytime rides when the track is warm and it really hauls through the course are something else. Boo Blasters was a neat concept and new to both of us. They have the kinks worked out of the Plants VS Zombies now and it seemed to be working well. Nighthawk was, to me, much better than the B&M flying coasters. Intimidator has too many trim brakes along the track, its really slow around the last part of the course.

Day 11, Carolina Harbor & Carowinds after dinner. The expanded waterpark was well worth the visit. We spent most of the day there. I don't recall specific slide names, but they were all fine. There are 2 very tall body slides, you'll know them when you see them. They're lightning fast by the time you hit the bottom. The crowds were OK because it was partly cloudy all day. We rode more things in the main park later after we got tired of the water. The windseeker here is very slow, I noticed it only has one set of dampeners compared to the 2 sets that the CP model has. Afterburn is yet another good inverted coaster. We noticed the drop tower had a MASSIVE amount of wasps hanging around up at the top of the tower. That was exciting. Hurler was OK. Neither of us wanted to ride it again though.

Day 12, We decided to skip Dollywood due to lightning rod being 'closed' or in technical rehearsals. We spent the day and evening in Greenville SC with a good friend. We rested and checked out a waterfall. It was a nice relaxation day leading up to our final part of the trip.

Day 13, We took off early to head to Kings Island. The forecast was looking iffy, but I had faith we wouldn't end up with another rain day. We lucked out, it only sprinkled once or twice. We enjoyed the day here. The Bat is a very good suspended coaster, but short. Banshee is silky smooth, and has lots of elements with smooth transitions, but I still prefer Raptor. Banshee just lacks the intensity of Raptor. Diamondback was surprising. We sat in the back and the splashdown managed to get me wet. The ride overall was good and seemed long. The Beast at night! They closed it for the fireworks and it took a good 25 minutes for them to inspect it and reopen it afterwards, but it was 100% worth the wait. We agreed that our night ride on beast was to best ride of our whole trip. Even above El Toro. Its just okay in the daytime. I'd rank it #2 on my wood coaster list during the day, #1 at night. There's Something about that trek through the woods at night that's hard to explain. It started raining shortly after we got back to our hotel.

Day 14, I checked the weather in morning to see if we could squeak out early entry before we left to head back up to Sandusky. I'm glad we didn't delay our plans, Sunday, July 3rd looked to be a washout in the Cincinnati area due to a large weather system going across the country. The weather forecast looked just good enough for CP that we pulled the trigger on doing the Sunrise thrills tour for the 4th of July. We got up to the Sandusky area later in the afternoon. We had a lazy day at the park since we were going to be up so early on the 4th of July.

Day 15, the 4th of July. We arrived at 630am to guest services. We ended up with a group of 10 once everyone arrived. The tour was cool, but I honestly don't know that it is worth the cost. We enjoyed it though, don't get me wrong. The tour went all the way up to 11am and ended at Maverick, where we got led into the station and got to hop right on. When we got back, our tour guide was being grilled by the CP Police. Evidently someone reported that there were random guests roaming the Maverick infield taking pictures. They were unaware of what the Sunrise thrills tour was evidently. Everything was cool though, they laughed it off and all was good. We got Funpix for the day as part of the tour. It worked fine, not problems to report. The crowds were less intense than I would have figured. We had a decent day, but were pretty tired. we took a breather or two at hotel breakers throughout the day. We had lunch at the pavilion for the cookout. It was pretty good by CP food standards. The wind decided to blow into the park during the fireworks show. We got one heck of a noise and smoke show. It was a good show, The crowd trying to leave after the fireworks was comical. We hopped on Windseeker and you could see the brake lights way into Sandusky. We went back to Breakers around 11pm and called it a night and good end to the trip.

Some fun dragster facts from our morning tour-A 25 cent control panel light bulb burning out can and has shut dragster down. Also, dragster has a turbo mode than can make it run at 140MPH. It also has these lights at the tower base called space cannons that no longer operate because they were distracting airplane pilots.

Some observations: Cedar point seems to be falling behind many of the other cedar fair parks in a number of small ways. Most of the other parks have these water bottle filler fountains which are wonderful. The other parks all seemed slightly cleaner. The meal plans at the other parks have much better choices and the food choices at the other parks are more 'diverse' overall. The food was better at ALL of the other parks, especially Carowinds' Harmony Hall. Cedar Point is still my favorite park, however, there are many other awesome coasters out there, some at non-cedar fair parks, that are better or equal to anything at cedar point. I think its the overall atmosphere and enthusiasm of most of the employees that make the difference.

Also, we discovered along the way that we got Coaster fatigue. So our side trips and relaxation days were very much appreciated. I suggest if you try to attempt one of these large multi-park trips that you plan some side trips along the way.

Thanks for making through this monster post. Feel free to ask questions, I didn't elaborate too deeply on many things to keep this shorter than it would have been if I got detailed.