2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Californias Great America
Saturday June 26th
California's Great America
The United States and Public Transport are not generally associated with each other. Nevertheless, California's Great America is one of two parks on this trip that I planned to visit without having car transportation available to me.
With that in mind, I strolled out the door of my hotel in San Francisco and across the road to the BART station. Though there was a train in the station when I arrived on the platform, by the time I realised it was the one I was looking for it had left. I caught the next one, and began my journey. Being used to subway systems in other countries, I had no idea how far apart some of the BART stops are. There were at least five minutes between two of the stops on the line at which the train seemed to be going at full power. At any rate, I met up with Charles at the Bay Fair station and continued on to Fremont, where we switched to a local bus which took us to the park. More by luck than judgment, we managed to arrive exactly at park opening time, at 10:00am.
Not wasting any time, we headed straight over to the Invertigo (#281), one of three operating Vekoma Invertigo coasters at this time (the other two being Face/Off at King's Island, and Two-Face at Six Flags America). While this doesn't run as smoothly as the King's Island version does, it was still a very enjoyable ride. It could benefit from some slightly more enthusiastic staff, but the wait was less than ten minutes at this stage of the day anyway.
Demon (#282) was running better than somem of the other Arrow loopers I've ridden recently, particularly when you consider that it is twenty five years old this year. The same cannot be said for Grizzly (#283), which feels every one of it's eighteen years. Parts of the ride seem to be in much better shape than other sections; maybe some partial retracking has been done recently; in which case, I look forward to when the rest of the work is completed.
We made a quick stop in the arcade, during which Charles played some classic games while I played a round of DDR.
Psycho Mouse (#284) is only the second time I've encountered an Arrow mouse; I'd assumed it was a Mack model until I looked up the details in the bible. In hindsight the layout wasn't quite right for a Mack but I didn't see that at the time.
As unaccompanied adults are not allowed to ride the Rugrat's Runaway Reptar or the Taxi Jam, we headed over to Top Gun (#285). The smaller B&M inverted designs have a reputation for being fast and furious, and this one was no exception; it was easily the best ride in the park.
The only other coaster in the park, Vortex (#286), was the second standup coaster built by B&M. It is a very fast ride, too much so for the manouvres it makes, and pulls forces that were engineered out of the later standup designs such as the far superior Riddler's Revenge. One ride was definitely enough; if ever a ride deserves trim brakes (and trust me folks, you won't hear me say that often), this is it.
We stopped for a lunch break in the large food court area. After a vain search for healthy options, the best we could find was a bowl of rice, teriyaki chicken, and rubbe... vegetables. It was not at all bad as park food goes, but wouldn't be winning any Michelin stars!
After another arcade stop, we went back for a second spin on Top Gun, this time in the back seat.
Two back to back rides on Drop Zone, the Intamin-built free fall ride, cemented permanently (I hope) the fact that free fall rides no longer bother me. It has been a long and torture-filled journey but in this case it is mission accomplished. It has gotten to the stage that I now really like what used to scare the bejaysus out of me; tower rides are now my second favourite type of amusement ride.
We finished up our time in the park with a second go on Invertigo, a third go on Drop Zone, and a third go on Top Gun. Since we had an hour to kill before our return bus, I took one final ride on Drop Zone on my own.
The bus journey back to the BART was uneventful, and an hour later I was back in my San Francisco hotel. The data port in my room had stopped working, but when I went down to complain I was told that there was free wi-fi available in the lobby, which is a vast improvement on AOL dialup. Tomorrow the real business of this trip - attending the WWDC conference - begins. Hopefully I'll have as much fun as I've had for the last few days.