Day 4

We'd called Day 4 "The Longest Day" with a lot of time spent on the road driving through West Virginia, Kentucky and into Ohio. When we were working on the trip we really wanted to visit Camden Park which is out on it's own in the middle of nowhere. The most sensible way to include it in a trip is what we'd done, use it to bridge the East with the mid. In an attempt to break the long drives up we'd included 2 state capitol buildings in Charleston and Frankfort. In the week's leading up to the trip we found out about a new rollercoaster appearing in Lexington which would have been a perfect stop however whilst on the drive there I called them and they confirmed the two rollercoasters weren't quite ready yet, which is something to keep an eye on as we're under the impression they only have the one.

Three parks planned today: Camden Park in Camden, Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville and Coney Island in Cincinatti. All of these were new to us all, so again we'd remain as a group throughout the day.

First stop was the West Virginian State Capitol building, and one of the better looking ones probably due to the very gold roof.

We got to Camden just after it opened. It's how we planned the trip, wake up early and plan the drive to reach the first park as it opens its doors hopefully beating the crowds. We didn't get much crowds today, the benefit in visiting a small park I guess.

The park is like jumping back in time with a great selection of older rides.

It's also becoming quite popular as it'll be featured in Fallout '76, the latest game of that franchise.

The signature ride here is Big Dipper a pretty OK wooden coaster, that the rest of the group found more enjoyable than I did. So much so they literally got stuck in it and had to be sent through a few more times until the car stopped in the station correctly.

The new coaster is another of those SBF Visa spinners. This isn't in fitting with the rest of the rides in the park but has been located on the edge of the park so as not to be too distracting from the overall feel of the place.

It comes with a rather specific set of ride rules and we successfully got to ride it only after cutting off one hand and one foot each.

The Hawnted House is a ghost train, and just that. However last year a case was made for it being a rollercoaster and it got added to the various websites. I'm not sure that's a right call but it is an excellent ghost train with a track that runs for longer than you'd think when looking at it.

The second wooden coaster is a small children's friendly ride called The Lil' Dipper. I actually preferred this one to it's bigger brother. It was just a bit more fun. 

Curious as to what a "Pronto Pup" was I ordered one. It's just a corn dog smothered in mustard.

How could we refuse a ride on the old whip. It's still a fun ride although ones made these days are usually themed for kids around the movie Cars. 

Never play a game that is open to interpretation in deciding if you've won or not.

Camden Park ended up being a brief stop but we all enjoyed our time there. It's a lovely little nod to rides of old and I hope the park's future is preserved. The Fallout interest should help bring more people to the area which will only help.

Our second State Capitol of the day was in Frankfort, a town that seems to pop out of nowhere. Another nice building but not as grand as the one in the morning. 

Storms-a-coming. This did not bode well. 

As we arrived at Kentucky Kingdom it became apparent the storm was going to ruin our fun. The rides were already closing and people were ironically leaving the waterpark. We spoke to the staff who said the storm might pass and to wait it out. 

So we did, and it got worse until the park were left with no option but to close for the day. This was a little frustrating but the group are cool and we worked on an alternative plan that would see us headed up to Kings Island, which was also closing rides but open much later. 

As we exited KK we had a funny conversation with a guy in the car park ticket booth who just barked at us "we're closed" when we asked if we could get a refund on the parking. "We're closed OK, We're closed" became our little anthem on the drive up to Ohio.

The drive to Coney Island went well and we were met by a huge crowd who had come, not to see us, but to witness a firework show that was scheduled to take place that night. 

There is a single coaster here, a weird Zyklon type thing but with a ball and socket articulation between the two trains - not something I've seen before. It rode pretty well and the guys running it were doing an exceptional job moving people through it.

A couple of us grabbed the chance of a pizza slice whilst here. 

We didn't stick around for the firework show, instead we brought forward our trip to Kings Island, which we were due to visit tomorrow. We'd decided we'd do this tonight and use tomorrow morning to reattempt Kentucky Kingdom.

The park starts out like Kings Dominion with the same entrance and observation tower. The ride selection is very different though and their new attraction Mystic Timbers was being promoted heavily as we entered. Since my last visit here in 2010 there were 4 new rides for me to visit.

First up was Banshee which is the largest inverted coaster in the world. I really liked this although a case could be made for it being too big. It's not overly intense like you get with the smaller punchy rides of this type, instead everything is extrapolated to a big degree with more time between elements resulting in a ride that can easily be ridden over and over again but with no buzz to make you really want to.

Now, do we believe this assortment of phones? Nah...

Our second new coaster was Diamondback, a huge coaster from Swiss makers B&M. This was a lot of fun too but suffers from the same problems as Banshee, it's just too big. I guess I was wanting something a bit more intense today.

and Mystic Timbers gave me it. Our first step-change in ride experiences of the trip, and given my trip started with Intimidator 305 it needed to be something significant. This is a wooden coaster that opened last year and is great for two reasons: firstly it stays very low to the ground keeping its speed throughout giving us a wild ride. Secondly it has a rather unique brake run set in a shed in which 3 different monster experiences occur at random; an idea that must have come from Verbolten at Busch but cranked up a notch or two. I think we stayed riding this for a good amount of time, but it wasn't the best ride experience of the day.

Following Mystic, Christof and I went to ride The Beast, the old wooden coaster that sits at the back of the park and has one of the longest tracks running out into the trees. When we rode it the sun was just going down and the overall ride was incredible with high speeds and huge sweeping turns peppered with fireflies. But it was as we crested the second lift hill that everything fell into the place, a beautiful red sky and the entire park laid out before us. If I could have gotten my phone out at that point I'd have happily been thrown out of the park to have got the photo. It was my "wow" moment of the trip, not quite "awesome" but up there. 

We finished our night watching the park firework show whilst Tal mopped up the last of his rides for tonight. Not being able to escape The Greatest Showman after seeing it on the flight, the soundtrack featured heavily during the show. 

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW!!

The sign at the exit, and yes, it probably was. A very long day, especially for the drivers, but negated by some great parks and an excellent selection of rides. 

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