Richard Bannister

Our second trip to the United States this year was originally supposed to start out somewhere in New Mexico, but this plan was modified at booking time thanks to the wonders of flight schedules. There is only one flight a day from Newark to Albuquerque, and this departs almost eight hours after the transatlantic arrivals from Dublin and Manchester. No self respecting coaster enthusiasts would ever allow themselves such a long layover with no new credits.

There are quite a few parks within easy driving range of Newark, but not many are open so early in the season. Sesame Place Philadelphia seemed the best of the possible choices, as our Anheuser-Busch season passes would allow us in free of charge; even we probably wouldn't have paid full price admission to a children's park for one credit. Much to our surprise, Vapor Trail (#1159) turned out to be surprisingly good, with some surprisingly forceful helices. The end result is pretty close to ideal for its target audience, and indeed older people who find themselves desperately trying to blot out the Sesame Street music!

We had plenty of spare time on the road back to Newark, so we elected to swing past Six Flags Great Adventure to try to ride the new Dark Knight coaster. This proved to be a fools errand, as a staff member advised us the wait time was estimated at two and a half hours. The reason was the usual one; flash pass users. The very idea of selling paid line jumping tickets for use on an inherently low capacity attraction which also happens to be brand new frankly sickens me. Some things never change.