Coaster Community

For my 29th birthday I had decided earlier in the summer that I wanted to go to a theme park to celebrate. Originally I was going to go to Worlds of Fun. As the summer progressed and I started to get my fill of that park I decided it would be more fun to go to a new park. At that time I decided I wanted to make the trip up to Chicago and go to Six Flags Great America. After talking to a few folks on Coaster Community I decided it would be best to put off that trip until September. SFGAm has been busy all August, and most people report the park is ill-equipped to handle large crowds. Instead, I moved my Branson trip up a few weeks and I ended up going to Silver Dollar City on my birthday.

 

Valerie and I got in to Branson around 10 PM on the 21st. I had a hard time winding down, so I went to bed a little later than I had planned. I also woke up later than I had planned to on Friday as a result. We left the hotel around 11 AM, but we didn’t make it to the front gates until around Noon. Unfortunately the GPS program on my phone seemed to think Silver Dollar City was on the complete other side of Branson. Thankfully, GPS works with Google Maps on my phone and I was able to get us to the park using that.

 

Like most theme parks Silver Dollar City has an option for “preferred parking” that you pay extra for. However, unlike most theme parks they have free parking and trams that will take you to the front entrance. We opted for the free parking and the wait for the tram was only about 5 minutes. Once we got to the front gate I stopped to take a few pictures before heading on in to the park.

 

Once inside the park we went to the right through Midtown and down Valley Road. We stopped to see if the blacksmith was working on anything but it appeared he was between projects and was cleaning up. Down the road a little at Hazel’s Glass we watched a little bit of a glass blowing demonstration. The glass blower was younger than I have normally seen at the park, and he didn't seem all that outgoing. I’m not sure if it was his attitude, or lack of interaction with the crowd, but this wasn’t as neat as I remembered it being as a child.

 

We hit up Thunderation since it was next to the glass shop and this became my 60th coaster. I hadn’t really read much about it so I didn’t realize how much it uses the terrain. The coaster is built on the side of a hill so once you leave the station you immediately pick up speed as you head down the hill. It was a fun coaster even if it did have a few things I found odd. Since it is built on a hill the chain lift part of the ride occurs at the end. There are a few small drops afterwards but the bulk of the ride experience is over once you hit the lift hill. The other thing I found unique was that every other car faced backwards. I’m sure there are other Arrow Mine Trains that are setup this way, but this was the first time I have encountered it.

 

After riding Thunderation we continued down Valley Road to where the Culinary Craft School is being constructed. The outside looks completely down, and according to MidwestInfoGuide they are putting the finishing touches on the interior and should be ready to open on 9/11/08. We moved on to The Grand Exposition area of the park and made our way to the Grand Exposition Coaster. I was a little disappointed at first because it appeared that the coaster was not open. However, while I was standing there the employees did some test runs. After the test-runs were done the employees were looking over logs but still hadn’t opened up the line. I didn’t feel like waiting that much longer so I decided to ask when they expected to open the ride for the day, and lo and behold he said, “Now.”

 

The Grand Exposition Coaster was a pretty typical kiddie coaster. There is no big drop, not a huge amount of speed, and you go through the course twice. However, I have to say this was one of the more enjoyable ones because it had an interesting element that I hadn’t seen on a kiddie coaster before. In the middle of the ride there was a 360 degree helix. The helix adds a little bit of excitement to the ride that you usually don’t see on this type of coaster. Close to this coaster was a ride called Elephant March. This was similar to the Dumbo ride at the Disney parks, with the main differences being the themeing of the ride and that Elephant March was a walk-on whereas Dumbo never seems to have less than a 40 minute wait. It was a fun ride than anyone should be able to enjoy.

 

We decided we were done with the Grand Exposition area of the park an went back of Valley Road so we could ride the Flooded Mine. When I was a kid I always consider the Flooded Mine to be a Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off with a prisoner theme instead of pirates. I am not sure when this occurred, but since the last time I rode it about 15 years ago the park adding a shooting aspect to it similar to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. The little ones around us in other boats seemed to really enjoy this ride, and I enjoyed this new aspect of the ride as well since it had been so long since I had ridden it. However, there is a pretty decent story going on during this ride, but it gets lost when all you are trying to do is shoot targets. If you haven’t ever ridden this before I recommend riding it once without shooting anything so you can take in the story, and then ride it a second time for target practice. When we came back to the station we offered to ride it again since there was virtually no line. We opted to get off since we knew the next train ride would be leaving the station soon.

 

The train was similar what I remembered. Mid-way through the ride there is a brief stage show with a mock train robbery. It is one of the better train rides at any of the parks I have visited simply because there is a little entertainment thrown in with a tour of the park. However the announcer almost seemed to be trying too hard. His lines seemed a little forced. At one point during the robbery he flubbed his lines. He realized it immediately and received a little bit of ad-libbed ribbing from the other actors. Everyone seemed to enjoy this a lot and this mistake ended up making it an enjoyable ride.

 

With some of the tamer rides out of the way we left Midtown and entered Hugo’s Hill Street to ride Wildfire, with a brief stop at Christmas Hollow on the way. Wildfire had the two things I have come to expect out of a B&M coaster: smoothness with lots of inversions. While it isn’t considered a floorless coaster, the seats are raised up high enough that once you are in your seat you can’t touch the floor, giving you the same level of comfort as a floorless or inverted coaster. The front car is a fun ride, but unfortunately there is not a lot of air-time. I figured that there was a large chance that the back offers a different experience, and I decided to take a ride in the back before making up my mind about this coaster. My intuition proved to be correct and in the back the first drop has some great air-time. You also feel the positive g-forces a little more in the back when you go through the cobra roll which makes for a unique experience compared to the front.

 

Our next stop after Wildfire was Powder Keg: A Blast in the Wilderness. This is a launch coaster that propels you to 53 mph in 2.8 seconds. Even with the drag style red, yellow, green, go lights the launch took me by surprise for some reason, and this wasn’t my first launched coaster either. Because you have a lot of speed still at the top of the first hill you get a huge pop of air-time. The rest of the ride maintains the speed well while taking some very aggressive turns. Like Thunderation there is a chain lift towards the end to bring you back up the hill you have just rode down. However, on Powder Keg it actually serves a purpose. You get one more fun drop and a few more speedy turns before you head back to the station.

 

After Powder Keg we made our way to Fire in the Hole, the only coaster left in the park we hadn’t ridden. As a child I was terrified of this ride because the park deems it as a roller coaster in the dark. I wasn’t comfortable riding roller coasters until I was a teenager with the exception of kiddie coasters. Calling Fire in the Hole is somewhat of a misrepresentation though. It is really a themed dark ride with a few quick drops at the end with a quick splash of water. In Disney terms, it is more like Splash Mountain than it is Big Thunder Mountain. With that being said, I still would have been terrified of it if I had ever ridden it as a kid since there are so many dark turns and you expect the floor to drop out underneath you at any point. However, that is an effect that you probably only experience on the 1st ride.

 

After riding Fire in the Hole Valerie and I took a short break so I could jot some of the above down on my BlackBerry. It was 15 minutes away from park closing so I headed over to Wildfire to get one last ride in for the day while Valerie found a rocking chair to sit in while she waited for me since she wasn’t feeling very well. When I got back to the station after this ride I noticed that there were only 3 people that where going to board in my row. I asked the ride-op if I could ride one more time since there was an open seat. He responded that I had to go back to the front of the queue if I wanted to ride again, but unfortunately it was closed and this next group was going to get the last ride of the day. I will have to say this is one of the things I love about Worlds of Fun. I have never been told to go back to the front of the line if I wanted to re-ride in a car that no one was waiting in line for. It also made me wonder if this was a policy only for their coasters since I could have ridden the Flooded Mine as many times as I wanted. Either way, it wasn’t exactly the kind of interaction I had hoped for to end my day.

 

After my ride on Wildfire I went to find Valerie so we could exit the park. On our way out we stopped at the Hospitality House to buy souvenirs. I had also been instructed to buy one of those cork pop-guns for my younger brother. All of the ones that were out seemed to be broken, and one of the employees noticed that I was testing them to find one that worked. She was nice enough to get me one from the back stock that did work. This made my resentment toward the Wildfire ride-op melt away and I probably would have forgotten about it had I not already entered it in to my phone.

 

On Sunday 8/24/08 we had to check out of our hotel by 10:00 am but we didn’t need to get back home until 6:00 PM. Since we had a 3 day pass we decided to make one last trip to Silver Dollar city on our way out of town. We got in to the park after waiting for a tram a little before 11. We wanted to go on the Marvel Cave tour but the next tour wasn’t until 11:30 and we didn't feel like waiting. Instead, we took another ride on both Wildfire and Powder Keg. We had seen apple turnover for sale at the Apple Butter shop on our way to Wildfire so we stopped to browse and eat there. The turnover wasn’t as good as I remember them being and I have had better at my local grocery store. At the same time it was a nice mid-morning snack that helped keep both of us going until we got home that afternoon.

 

There were a few shops I wanted Valerie see that we hadn’t visited on Friday. I wanted Valerie to see the candle shop because I remember that being a fun place when I was a kid. We didn't buy anything but we both agreed there were some neat candles. We then went over to Brown’s Candy to see if we could see some candy being made. Unfortunately, I think the person who was working on the current batch was new because she ruined the candy and had to throw it out. Valerie wanted to buy some taffy, and I told her to wait and we could buy it at the front of the park and she might get to see them make it as well. On our way there we rode Flooded Mine one more time, but didn’t use the guns so we could take in the story. Once Valerie had a large bag of taffy in had we were both ready to hit the road and go home.

 

I know that a few times I compared Silver Dollar City’s rides to rides at Disney Parks. My reasoning behind that is that I hold Silver Dollar City to a similar standard. I would like to think that they try to hold themselves to that same level as well. It is one of the cleanest parks I have ever visited, and the employees are some of the best. One of the reasons I wanted to make this visit was out of a nostalgic need to re-live some of my childhood. At times I was a little disappointed with my experience for this reason. However, all of the new coasters I got to ride more than made up for it. Even though I love Worlds of Fun, and I enjoy Six Flags St. Louis every time I visit, Silver Dollar City is the best theme park in Missouri. Look for another post in a few days about the other theme park in Branson, Celebration City. Until then feel free to view the rest of the photos from my trip in my Gallery or on Facebook.

 

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and has been republished with permission.