While Coney Island is careening toward the future, Knoebels in Elysburg, PA is paying delightful homage to the past: they're building a Flying Turns, an old-fashioned bobsled-like roller coaster. How cool is that?
Another reason to head back up to Pennsylvania for a visit.
When I was a kid, there was nothing better than a trip to the Fun Forest at Seattle Center. My parents would take me there during the summer, and those of us on the elementary school safety patrol got to go there for a day every spring as a reward for our service.
I remember the Fun Forest very fondly. When I was a child, it seemed like there were hundreds of rides. There were old-timey cars that you could drive around a track through a pretty little forested area, a "Snoopy and the Red Baron" ride with airplanes that could be raised or lowered with the pull of a lever, a Yo Yo, and a beautiful blue Octopus ride with brightly colored cars that spun wildly. There was the Rainbow Chaser, which was the first "kiddie coaster" I ever rode, and the Galaxi, which was my first "big" coaster. I can also remember a Huss Enterprise, a couple of Ferris Wheels (one big and one small), a Zipper, a Matterhorn, and even a skyway.
I took today off from work (I'm trying to use up my remaining vacation days) and spent some time puttering around the house, making calls to secure items for a silent auction, and playing with the kitties. I had to run an errand after lunch and once that was finished I decided I was overdue for another visit to Dorney Park. I haven't been there since June. Having a season pass is nice because there is no pressure to stay and ride everything ten times in order to feel like you've gotten your money's worth. Once you visit the park three times, the season pass has more than paid for itself, plus you get free parking in a lot that's much closer to the entrance.
So I went for an hour and took a spin on Thunderhawk and Steel Force, both of which were running great today. I have noticed that the experience riding my "home coasters" tends to vary a little bit. It can depend on recent maintenance that's been performed or even the quantity and weight of people who happen to be riding at the same time as me. Some days Thunderhawk is sluggish, for instance. Today it was almost as if they had gotten rid of the brake trims altogether, because we flew along that track faster than I remember. I sat in my favorite seat (the third from the front) and caught lots of air at the top of every hill.
Steel Force was a party today, too. I sat in the second car, which is closer to the front than I've ever ridden before. (I considered waiting for the front seat but decided I wanted to "get my ride on" more than I wanted to stand around in the heat waiting for the front.) Sitting nearer to the front was a totally new experience. As you go over the first hill, the front cars seem to hang for a few seconds before taking that terrific plunge to the bottom. It makes sense -- they have to pull the cars behind them over the top. As we went over, I started to scream and then I realized we weren't falling yet, so I stopped. I've ridden in the very back before and that is also a wild experience -- you're chugging along toward the top of the lift hill when all of a sudden you are whipped over the top and on your way down before you can say "boo."
I have become a better roller coaster rider in the last few months. As I've given my husband his "exhaling lessons" I've relearned the importance of breath when you're on a coaster. I've also learned the importance of relaxing your body as you ride. If you sit rigid in your seat, the forces (particularly the positive Gs, which are the ones I have the most trouble with) seem to hit you harder. It's better not to fight them. The pressures of Steel Force's double helix turnaround hardly phase me anymore.
I might have stayed longer (I still haven't been on Dorney's newest coaster, Hydra) but it was bloody hot today (my little weatherbug in my browser says it is currently 93 out.) After an hour of walking around the park, I felt like I was going to collapse. I did get a double scoop of Hershey's Cotton Candy ice cream before leaving, though... a perfect ending to two perfect roller coaster rides.
My husband and I changed our anniversary weekend plans last week and ended up in Hollidaysburg, PA instead of NYC (we felt like being somewhere more... quiet.) Hollidaysburg is a few minutes away from Altoona, PA, and Lakemont Park, which is an otherwise-unremarkable amusement park save for the fact that it is home to the oldest roller coaster in the world, Leap the Dips (built in 1902.) Sadly, Leap the Dips was shut down for maintenance while we were there, so we didn't get to ride it. (I was bummed... it is one of only two side-friction coasters left in the world. Imagine sitting in a great big roller skate with no restraints and riding a long a chute-like track, with nothing holding you to said track but wooden "guides" along the sides.)
We did take a spin on the Skyliner, though, which is pictured above. It was built in the 60s and has a very unique design -- it's a double out-and-back with a dog-leg. In plain English, that basically means the coaster is L-shaped with a bunch of hills. If you enlarge the picture, you will see the words "Go Curve!" painted on the side of the cars. The stadium for the minor-league Altoona Curve is right next to the Skyliner, so when a game is going on, the Skyliner's train rolls right past the left-field wall and the team gets a message of encouragement as it passes.
My husband, who is normally terrified by anything scarier than a Wild Mouse, worked up the courage to ride the Skyliner with me. The glorious stomach-dropping feeling most of us get on roller coasters is painful for him, and we recently figured out why: he holds his breath on the descents. So this time as we rode, I coached him at the crest of every hill. "Exhale, honey, EXHALE!" I am sure the other people riding with us thought I was nuts. Hubby joked afterward that between my coaching and his measured breathing, he felt like he was giving birth. Most people -- myself included -- scream or laugh when they go down roller coaster hills, but my husband remains stoically mute. At least he's figured out that you have to breathe, so that's a step in the right direction. I bet he'll be lining up for Steel Force before too long!
I was five years old, maybe six. At the very least, I was tall enough to meet the “you must be this tall to ride” requirement posted at the entrance of the roller coaster. It was a summer evening in Seattle, and after countless rides on the Ferris wheel, carousel, and other kiddy rides, my father was finally going to take me on the Galaxi. The Galaxi was a small-ish, red steel roller coaster with a simple figure eight design containing several banked spiral turns and two drops that seemed big at the time but now probably wouldn’t impress me that much. All the same, though, it was a “real” roller coaster, and I was going to ride it.
The sun was setting as my father and I boarded the ride and the lap bar clicked and clanked into place. The Galaxi’s lights had just been turned on and I remember being enchanted by the glittering white lights that stood out in star-like relief against the ever-darkening sky. Our car rolled out of the station, down a gentle slope and around a curve to begin its ascent up the lift hill. My dad put his arm around my shoulders and said something like “Here we go!” I leaned back in my seat and watched as the top of the hill got closer and closer and listened to the clack-clack-clack of the chain as it pulled us to the apex with excruciating slowness. Even now, I can’t hear that sound without thinking of my father.
We reached the top and began a leisurely turn around to where the first drop was. I remarked about how high up we were and what a neat view it was, and as we drew closer to the drop, I gripped the lap bar more and more tightly. My little-kid hands were too small to wrap around its circumference, but I held on as best I could. It seemed like our little car lingered for a moment right before the drop, because my clearest memory is looking down into that gaping maw of red steel and thinking for a split second that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. Too late for that.
Our descent was much faster than I had expected or imagined, for I had absolutely no frame of reference. No matter how many trips I made down a playground slide or how many turns I took on a tire swing, nothing could have prepared me for that horrifying and yet joyful experience of flying faster than my stomach and giving myself over completely to gravity. And to think, I almost failed high school physics.
The first drop knocked the wind out of me, but I was ready for the second. I let out a gleeful shriek as we plunged almost to the pavement before rushing back up to race through the turns, our car banked at almost 90 degrees. I don’t remember my father making a sound the whole time, although he was probably too busy trying to hold his dinner down. The rest of the ride is a blur to me now, but on every subsequent trip to the Fun Forest, I had to ride the Galaxi at least once.
That ride -- on a coaster with a top speed of just 35 miles per hour and a height of only 45 feet – spawned in me a lifelong obsession with roller coasters, amusement parks, boardwalks, and carnivals. I’ve lost count of the number of roller coasters I’ve ridden in the nearly 25 years that have passed since that first evening. I don’t keep track of them like the true “coaster enthusiasts” do, and I go to amusement parks and carnivals as much for the atmosphere as for the rides. To be perfectly honest, some of the newer roller coasters with linear induction motors that take you from zero to 100 in two seconds make me nervous enough about brain aneurysms and spinal fluid leaks that I refuse to ride them. I really don’t care all that much about G-forces or “air time” until I’m actually flying through a turn or careening down a hill, and then I can’t get enough.
Even though I don’t log my roller coaster rides or pay that much attention to a given coaster’s “stats,” there are a few of them that have left distinct impressions on my memory, like friends or lovers that you just can’t forget. The Galaxi is certainly one, considering it was my first. The Cyclone at Coney Island is another example – a septuagenarian behemoth of steel and wood with nine hills that left me shaking when I disembarked. The Cyclone is the only roller coaster I’ve ridden that made me genuinely fear for my life. There was something about the way it creaked and bounced that made me think it might just rear up and fling us all over the boardwalk and into the Atlantic. Once the shakes subsided though, I was left with a feeling of having conquered something, and I still feel that way, even in this age of “extreme coasters” that are constantly growing bigger and faster.
A ride on a newer coaster isn’t always a bad thing, though. I had my first inverted coaster experience last September, at Dorney Park in my recently-adopted home town of Allentown, Pennsylvania. (By inverted, I mean a roller coaster where the track is above your head and your feet dangle into space as you ride.) Talon, built in 2001, is the longest inverted roller coaster in the northeast according to the Dorney Park web site. I was impressed with what a smooth ride it was – we soared through two loops, a corkscrew, and a zero-gravity roll with nary a jolt. In spite of the intense speeds and the other screaming passengers, I remember feeling a sense of zen-like peace as I rode. At one point, I think I even closed my eyes and relaxed my grip on the shoulder restraints. Talon is equipped with one of those cameras that snaps riders’ photos during a particularly scary portion of the ride, and said photos are then sold for ridiculous prices in a little booth just outside the ride’s exit. I paused to find my picture, and sure enough, the expression on my face was one of serenity and joy. Somehow, though, I don’t think Dorney Park would have a lot of success with Talon if they marketed it as a quick and easy way to find one’s center and achieve temporary nirvana. That must be why they went with the slogan, “The Grip of Fear.”
For my 29th birthday, my husband took me to Knoebels, a family-owned park near Elysburg, PA. They have a great old "woodie" there called the Phoenix, and it was fabulous. My husband doesn't care for roller coasters much -- he'll ride a Wild Mouse but that's about it. So I got him settled on a comfortable bench in a shady spot and then I went for a spin on the Phoenix. What a ride! The first drop is nothing compared to the Cyclone, but I have never in my life ridden a roller coaster that gives as much airtime as this baby does. I know I said earlier that I don't really care about that stuff, but I couldn't help but notice it this time -- especially when I actually STOOD UP (unintentionally!) in my seat as we went over one hill toward the end of the ride. Damn.
My current favorite roller coaster is Steel Force, and it too lives at Dorney Park, staring at Talon from the opposite corner of the park and towering over all of the other rides. Steel Force is a hyper-coaster, which means a roller coaster that stands more than 200 feet in height. It does not go upside-down, and the track is laid out in a deceptively uncomplicated out-and-back design. The most startling and glorious thing about Steel Force is its sheer size. The first hill is so high that I was sure I wouldn’t be able to breathe up there. There’s even a blinking red light at the top to warn low-flying aircraft. I had to be talked into riding Steel Force the first time, and I begged the friend I was riding with to hold my hand as we pulled out of the station. The ride up the lift hill was interminable, and I started to wish I’d brought a magazine or my mp3 player to pass the time – anything to distract myself from what would happen when we reached the top.
I admit I closed my eyes for the first drop, and this time it wasn’t a meditative move. I was so scared that I ducked down, screwed my eyes shut, braced one arm against the “dashboard” of our little car and frantically clutched the lap bar with my other hand. I screamed bloody murder as the train dove toward the ground in a fraction of the time it had taken to get to the top, but as we roared to the crest of the second hill I started to laugh. The second hill wasn’t quite as high as the first, and as we zoomed up and down and into the double-helix which served as a turnaround, I let go of the lap bar and raised my arms above my head, something I never do on roller coasters. There was a series of three or four “bunny hills” we traversed on the way back to the station, and the quickly shifting G forces caused me to float up out of my seat at the top of each one. When we pulled back into the station, my friend and I noticed simultaneously that there was no line, so without so much as conferring with one another we charged down the exit stairs and right back to the entrance for a second go. This time, I managed to keep my eyes open.
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