The DoD3

Trip Report: Six Flags Great Adventure 8/18/11

Posted by DoD3Brian on August 22, 2011 | 1 comment

I had been staying at my families ‘shore house’ down in Brick, NJ for the week of the 14th. On Tuesday my family and I went down to Wildwood for the day and the next night I headed to Seaside Heights for a bit (both of which will get the trip report treatment soon.) Thursday was being reserved Six Flags, at least the latter portion of the day was; I didn’t really want to get there before 4pm as I had heard that lines die down a bit after 5pm. There was a threat of storms, but I pressed on.

I arrived at Six Flags at around 5pm with a light rain falling which had stopped by the time I parked. My first order of business at the park was to ride Green Lantern as this was only my second visit to the park and the coaster was not yet open as of my first visit. The ride had three trains running and the line was one switchback long which probably wasn’t bad at all for the coaster. I, however, jumped into the single rider line (the only coaster in the park that has one) and waited about 10-12 minutes before nabbing a second row spot. I’m not complaining!

As for the ride itself, Green Lantern isn’t as bad as some people had made it out to be. It didn’t seem uncomfortable at all even with the standing configuration and bike seat style seating (can you even call it seating?) The ride WAS a little rough though, maybe about as rattly as Batman: the Ride or Hydra at Dorney Park, not nearly enough to ruin the ride however. I also seemed to get jostled around a bit more on this coaster than other B&Ms, probably due to the higher center of gravity; I found myself grasping for my glasses at a few points in fear of them flying off.

Bizarro’s loop

Next I walked over to Kingda Ka, saw a half full switchback, shrugged, went over to El Toro, again saw a half full switchback, shrugged, then finally walked over to Bizarro and saw a stairway wait. Now that’s what I’m talking about! The wait ended up being like 10 minutes for the back row, no thanks to a screw up by a ride op telling me and some other guy to not board the train (reserving the row for fast pass users I guess) only to see the row go potentially unused while the riders slipped into another row. A couple of kids behind us ended up taking the spots which I should have done myself once I saw what was up. The ride itself was fine as always, certainly one of the nicer loopers around.

I was going to board the Sky Ride next, which had opened sometime between me entering the park and my arrival at the entrance, but didn’t for some reason. I instead walked through the Lakefront area to see what was going on (not much) and watched Tornado for a second before I saw something strange…there were now no cars on the Sky Ride. I walked a little further and saw the ride ops putting cars into the storage area and then noticed this. Hmm, that’s some mammatus clouds poking down – a type of cloud typically seen in nasty storms. I walked down the path a bit more towards Nitro and eventually saw this. Oh boy.

Nasty clouds behind the Boardwalk and newly added Slingshot.

In light of the imminent storm I took a spin on Skull Mountain which had like no line at all. Upon exiting it was not more than a few minutes before they started to close down all rides that were not indoors. I decided to grab something to eat at the Character Cafe in hopes that the rides would open after the storm and allow for completely uninterrupted ride time. A chicken fingers platter and soda came out to $16 bucks…guess they made about $15 profit.

The storm must have passed to the north as I didn’t see any rain at all while eating. Afterwards I headed through the now ghost town of a park to El Toro which was closed (along with everything else) but had a small gathering of people in front of the entrance. I still had half a soda left so I leaned on a railing and watched the lightning from the storm as it moved away.

Carousel shot for a change

After waiting for a bit I happened to look west only to see another storm in the distance; okay, it could just be far away. After a waiting a bit more I again looked west and saw that said storm was now much closer. I then realized that the outdoor rides were not going to open again that night and decided to just head out. By the time I got to my car, the storm was basically set to slam into the park and was spitting out lightning bolts all over the place. In the end I outran the storm on I-195 and didn’t see a drop of rain from it.

Well…it was an interesting visit.

Finally here’s a video of some lightning from the SF parking lot, cause why not.

Trip Report: Warren County Farmers Fair 2011

Posted by DoD3Brian on August 7, 2011 | 2 comments

As the first week of August rolled around I decided on either going to the Middlesex County Fair or the Warren County Farmers’ Fair as both were happening the same week. On Thursday night I made the decision to head down to the Middlesex County Fair as I had been to the fair in Warren last year. Well as luck would have it, I hit a disgusting traffic jam caused by fair congestion; I mean, people walking on the sidewalk were moving faster, no joke. Being the short fused driver that I am and the fact that it was nearing 8:30pm and I was only halfway through the mess (with the fair closing at 10) I decided to just turn around. Needless to say I don’t think I’ll be heading to that one again.

I was still eager to put my new camera to the test so the next night I decided to check out the Warren County Farmers’ Fair which was a longer drive but at least with no traffic tie-ups or excessive back road travel. I arrived at about 8:15pm and quickly found a spot in the parking area (aka a field.) Admission was $6 and the fair had:

Fireball (Larson)
Hurricane
Pharaoh’s Fury
Spider
Scrambler
Scooter
Ferris Wheel
Mini Himalaya
Fun Slide
A myriad of kiddie rides
An incredible amount of greasy treats
Animals, vegetables, art, tractors
Vendors. Vendors everywhere.
Demolition derby

This was basically your classic county fair, bigger than the Morris County 4H Fair but smaller than the NJ State Fair. The rides were provided by Valley Amusements who don’t seem to have a website unfortunately. Fireball was the lone looping ride at the fair and ran on a one direction cycle with lengthy pauses upsidedown (like 15-20 seconds of hang time.) Hurricane, an older Hrubetz model, got some new green tube lights or something because it gave off this extremely vivid green glow, much brighter than the last time I saw it. It kind of looked like it had been irradiated by radioactive waste and was glowing as a result. The thing was attracting moths like crazy as well. Those poor ride ops must have had their cornea’s burnt by the lighting, it was just intense.

Spider looked very nice with a black paint scheme (really is there any Spider ride that isn’t black?) along with yellow turbo lights and green florescent tubes. It also had a white globe in the center with multi-colored lights. Scrambler was an Eli Bridge model with long, gaudy yellow light tubes on the sweeps and multi colored banners on the arms. Not exactly the most visually pleasing Scrambler ever but it works (hell, it’s better than ones with no lighting at all.) Pharaoh’s Fury seemed pretty stock looking with alternating red and blue lights on the supports and some lighting on the boat itself. The Ferris Wheel had some yellow light tubes, albeit not all lit, and the Scooters had a mostly pink lighting scheme.

The fair also had four animal stables with each housing different livestock such as horses, pigs, alpacas, and goats among other things. On the opposite side were more buildings and stables featuring antique tractors, vegetables and plants, artwork and vendors. The entire back portion of the fair surrounding the arena also had numerous vendors and foodstuffs. Speaking of the arena, they had a demolition derby that night which was a separate admission. The fair also doubles as a hot air balloon festival and featured hot air balloon rides in both tethered and non-tethered flavors along with a mass balloon launches at 6:30pm (which needless to say I missed.)

After making the rounds a few times I left the fair at close to 10pm. Nice fair with a lot of stuff to do and see, too bad I couldn’t make it down there earlier for the hot air balloons though!

Also, I took some video to test out the HD video function. Better use manual focus next time (which it has for video surprisingly!)

Trip Report: Morris County 4-H Fair 2011

Posted by DoD3Brian on July 31, 2011 | 1 comment

Zipper gonna zip

Thursday night, not much going on, so I decided to shoot over to the Morris County 4-H Fair in Chester, NJ since it was semi-close. Well, actually I underestimated the trek out to Chester, which ended up taking like 30 minutes. The fair is obviously a 4H festival featuring animals, art, and agriculture along with amusements. The rides were run by Dreamland Amusements and the fair featured:

Zipper
Starship 2000
Sizzler
Tornado (Wisdom)
Super Slide
a funhouse or two
a bunch of kiddie rides
lots of greasy treats
blue ribbons and awards

Not a whole lot of rides but then again this was a small affair. Dreamland actually has a pretty nice ride lineup including a Technical Park ‘Street Fighter’ renamed Dreamcatcher among other things.

There really wasn’t too much going on that night as it was an oppressive 90+ degrees out plus humidity (even at 8pm! The next day would see 100+ temps all around.) On the midway, Zipper was in near constant motion, really the only ride generating somewhat of a line. Sizzler also had a few riders while I was there. The Wisdom manufactured Tornado had like one pair of riders the entire 45 minutes or so I was there. It had a cool blue and yellow lighting scheme though. Starship 2000, well, I didn’t see that move once. Given the heat and humidity, the inside of that thing must have been stifling anyway.

I checked out the animals next, most of which were sleeping or lazing about with industrial fans blowing towards them. One tent mostly had livestock like pigs and goats or calves or something (yep, spoken like a true suburbanite.) The next tent had smaller animals like rabbits and roosters along with amphibians and snakes. Another tent had dog stuff but no dogs (fairgoers are allowed to bring their own dogs so the lack of fairgoers meant lack of dogs!) A horse ring was also set up but it was too dark at that point to take any usable photos, otherwise there’d be a horse to the right.

Another tent had a band playing jazz rock along with a sea of chairs. There were a few watching them but, considering the attendance that night, they mostly played to folding chairs and passers by. The last tent had art and agriculture stuff, more art stuff really. Like always I glanced over the pictures and drawings, some surprisingly nice and some just there out of pity. They also had model rockets on display along with this one massive model rocket that looked like it would require an ATF license to shoot off!

I left at around 9pm, a half hour before closing. Ok little fair, nice to visit a fair in the more open areas of NJ for a change though!

Trip Report: Mt Carmel Festival 2011

Posted by DoD3Brian on July 20, 2011 | Add a Comment

Feast of Mt. Carmel is a Christian feast held each year on July 16th. In some places festivals are held to celebrate this day; such is the case with the Berkeley Heights Mt Carmel Festival, a multi-day Italian festival that’s been going on for over 100 years now. This year’s festival started on July 13th and ended with the fireworks spectacular on the 16th. I headed over to the fair on two nights, once on the 14th to check out the actual fair and then again on the 16th for the fireworks, albeit not actually entering the fair. The fair had:

Quasar
Trabant
Hurricane
Round Up
Scrambler
Rock-O-Plane
Ferris Wheel
Swing Ride
a bunch of kiddie rides
several games
a handful of vendors
lots of greasy treats
beer garden and band

It’s a modest fair but not a bad ride line up. I beleive Ace Amusements provided most of the rides, at least it’s a good guess they did since the generator unit had ‘Ace Amusements’ emblazoned across it. The fair was basically just set up with the rides nearest to the road with the vendors, food and the beer garden towards the back. A sizable portion of the field behind the beer garden was cordoned off, reserved for the fireworks setup.

The ARM Quasar was a new addition this year; it’s like an Enterprise mixed with a Trabant if you’ve never been on. Well actually, I’ve never been on it because each time I’ve seen the ride, it commanded a $6.25 ticket price along with a no single rider policy. That means I’d likely have to shell out $12.50 to drag one of my friends on since no one I know would dish out that much to go on a ride the caliber of Quasar. Anyway, the ride was pretty nice looking with a cool backflash, multicolored turbo lights, and a green and yellow color scheme. It also ran pretty fast, although I think it was running faster the last time I saw it. Here’s a video of it that I took back in 2009.

Trabant was a straight from the 60s, no gimmick needed version with tube lighting, turbo light decorations, and a mostly yellow color scheme. I know I rag on this type of appearance in the white trash carny ride section but let’s face it, it’s pretty neat! Kind of like the appeal of an old car, it’s just cool in different way. The only downside of this look is that the tube lights give off an overpowering incandescence, blowing out its appearance in every long exposure photo I tried to take.

Just a quick rundown of the other rides; the Eyerly Rock-O-Plane they had has been virtually unchanged for years now. It really doesn’t look bad but Rock-O-Planes, with their skeleton/bolted together ladder-like appearance always look sort of rinky dink. Round Up was a Hrubetz model with multi colored turbos on the outside of the cages. Scrambler was an Eli Bridge version and had some tube lights on the arms and center. The Ferris Wheel, an Eli Bridge Hy-5, had pink tube lights which were kind of…eh. Other than that it looked pretty good. Finally Hurricane sat idle while a couple of guys, who were absolutely drenched with grease, worked under it.

I didn’t stay for too long, just doing a few laps of the carnival before buying a bag of zeppolies and leaving.

The Fireworks

July 16th is pretty much Berkeley Heights’ equivalent of the Fourth of July. People shoot off their own consumer fireworks all day along with Garden State Fireworks, providers of the Mt Carmel fireworks since the 1930s, shooting off rounds of salutes as early as 7AM (I was actually awakened by them at 8AM and I’m like 3.5 miles away!) The actual show started at 11pm and lasted roughly 45 minutes. The show isn’t like the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks (which coincidently have been done by Garden State Fireworks in the past) but is more like a firework clinic in which many exotic shells are launched. Here’s a pair of great videos (part 1, part 2) that YouTube user pjb123abc uploaded of the July 16th fireworks. Bookmarked below are some of the highlights:

Butt-puckering groundworks
Pattern shells
Willow barrage
Multi-Breaks
Big multi-break
30 shot (give or take a few) timed multi-salute shell (I don’t know how the hell…)
2+ minute finale (with like over 9000 salutes…)

Certainly one of the best fireworks shows I see each year; I’d never miss it!

Trip Report: 2011 State Fair Meadowlands

Posted by DoD3Brian on July 11, 2011 | 6 comments

25 years. That’s how long the State Fair Meadowlands has been around for now. Personally I started going to the ‘Meadowlands Fair’ around 1995 and have seen some of the wildest rides at it over the years such as Magnum, Evolution, Extasy, Top Spin, Tango, and many, many others. Unfortunately, since about 2004, the fair has steadily gone downhill in terms of ride selection and midway setup. This trend seemed to reach a nadir at last year’s fair which, honestly, wasn’t that great. However I’m glad to report that the 2011 edition of the State Fair Meadowlands has gotten their act together! The fair had:

Space Roller (KMG Top Scan)
Space Roller
Crazy Mouse
Avalanche (Pinfari ‘Zyklon’ coaster)
Vertigo
Rock n’ Roll
Fireball (KMG)
Ring of Fire
Zipper
Orbiter
Banzai
Giant Wheel
Sky Ride
Wave Swinger
Deep fried pickles...that's just disgusting!
Scooter
Cliff Hanger
Gravitron
Pharaoh’s Fury
Tornado (Wisdom)
Bumper Boats (upcharge)
A couple of dark rides
Several fun houses
An incredible amount of kiddie rides
Petting zoo
A bunch of shows
A myriad of greasy treats

A majority of the rides were provided by Amusements of America along with other independent operators bringing in rides. The fair was setup in three sections basically: the entrance and food area in the front, ride midway in the back, and a kiddie ride world jutting off to the side. The main midway, like last year, was set up in an oval configuration however it seemed better executed with less open space in the middle along with a more compact layout.

One of the new additions this year was an ARM manufactured Vertigo (yes I confused it with SkyFlyer originally.) This was definitely a great addition to the fair giving a 360 degree view of the fairground; it also spun at a pretty brisk speed so it’s not just good for the view, it’s pretty thrilling as well! Not sure if Amusements of America owns this piece as it’s not listed on their site.

A few rides returned to the fair after a year or more hiatus, namely Zipper, Wave Swinger and the Sky Ride. Zipper seemed like it had been updated with LED lights, something I’ve never seen on a Zipper until now. It looked really good with a white frame and multicolored cars and lights. Wave Swinger was looking all right but moved quite a bit slower than most other Wave Swinger rides. Sky Ride was, well, a sky ride. It’s nice to see it back though as it provides a great areal view of the fairgrounds as well as a mode of transportation from the back of the midway to the vendor areas.

Space Roller, a ride that is in fact indie operated, once again made an appearance with an updated backflash featuring Avatar among other things. The ride itself was maybe a minute and a half to two minutes long with half of the cycle going forwards while the other half was completed backwards; I think it was also run manually as some cycles differed slightly.

Crazy Mouse, a Reverchon spinning wild mouse, had a short line each time we (we as in two of my cousins and I) rode. The first time was just after the fair opened and featured cars that didn’t spin and an angry Latino ride op who moaned about certain riders not following the rules. I have to say, I never realized how much a Crazy Mouse hurts after being subjected to the spinning half of the ride sans the spinning. Luckily the second ride we took later on saw the cars spinning as intended.

We went on both dark rides, one called ‘Tomb of Doom, the other name I’m having trouble remembering. They actually weren’t all that bad for a traveling dark ride; at least I have to give them credit for having all of the sensor activated props working. They both had some pretty good artwork on their facades as well. Although one had copious amounts of faux cobwebs that dangled in front of the car which scared the hell out of me, not due to their intended effect but because of all the nasty sweat, hair grease and face oil they must have come in contact with previously. Yech!

Along with rides mentioned we also went on Rock N Roll, Avalanche, bumper cars (twice) and Orbiter. We also stopped to watch a couple of shows as well as grabbing some overpriced fair food; I think I paid 12 bucks for three chicken tenders, fries and a soda…better than passing out from hunger I guess…maybe. We left at around 11:45pm, 15 minutes before the fair closed up shop for the night. All in all this was one of the better State Fair Meadowlands in recent memory.

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