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Canada&USA;LaR/SFNE/SFGE/Quassy/Compounce/Coney/Knoebels/Cedar Point/Waldameer/Niagara/CanWonderland

davidm

Strata Poster
OK, might take a while this, but...

---

So when it turned out that Cedar Point were going to have a rather lovely looking new roller coaster for the 2018 season, there was only
really one option for this year's road trip wasn't there? Unusually for me I booked some flights last year and even started booking hotels
and park tickets well before Christmas such was my goonthusiasm (unusual only because I tend to leave it a lot later for trip-planning, you
know just in case something else turns up.)

Quickly realised that Tom&Dave would be roughly in the same area of the world at roughly the same time, so timed the trip to coincide with
them at Cedar Point, then the US-goons decided that that would also be a good day for a US-Live - it was all coming together nicely then!

My plan was to fly in/out of Toronto and do a "big loop" around the North-East, hitting up some places I'd never been to (yay, I like that)
and a couple of worthy revisits.

And it looked like this (but didn't quite end up that way)



Park Reports;

1.Wild Water & Wheels
2.La Ronde
3.Six Flags New England and again
4.Great Escape (A Six Flags Theme Park)
5.Quassy/Lake Compounce
6.Rye Playland/Coney Island
7.Knoebels
8.Conneaut/Cedar Point (1)
9.Cedar Point (2-LIVE DAY!)
10.Cedar Point (3)
11.Waldameer
12.Fantasy Island/Marineland
13.Canada's Wonderland and again
 
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davidm

Strata Poster
Friday 1st June

The flights I'd booked were from a (relatively) low-cost carrier (Air Transat), hadn't really booked them because they were low-cost (they
were a bit cheaper than the "brand" alternatives) but because they were direct flights from Manchester to Toronto and the lack of that annoying
having-to-change-planes-and-hang-around-in-a-random-airport-faff appealed to me greatly - the flight was even timed to get me into Toronto
at lunchtime - so I had concocted a little tour of downtown Toronto craft beer bars to entertain me in the afternoon/evening and to get me into
holiday mood/timezone. :)

However it didn't quite work out that way, as when I rocked up at Manchester airport at goon-o'clock in the morning to get the flight, they
informed me that the plane is already 5 hours late. :(

So I had then to hang around Manchester airport for several hours (couldn't even get drunk as I needed to drive after the flight, whenever
that was going to happen) rather than some random stop-over airport (had I got a non-direct flight) - my direct-flights plan not working
out that well then. :(

My flight at the top of the charts - grrrrrr.



Great then.

Manchester airport was even trolling me with a big "come to lovely Toronto" advertising display. Thanks for that.



Eventually plane turns up (delay was some faff with the aircon on the inward flight, looking at twitter there were tons of people complaining
about being stuck on that plane for several hours on the tarmac while they tried to fix the aircon before they gave up or something like
that) - flight itself was fine (for a budget carrier). I had paid a bit extra for quick boarding, better food, checked luggage and most
importantly seat-choice (no way was I going to get a middle seat and being a solo traveller I would have been prime target for that on a
full flight - which it was).

Landed 4:30 pm instead of 11:15am



Its not all bad news though - since the flight was so much delayed, super EU-flight-delay compensation kicks in and in theory I should be
able to claim €600 off the airline, which almost pays for the flight itself. Result I guess, but at the time I'd rather have been in a
Toronto bar I think.

Car faff took a while, but got allocated a Prius which I think was an upgrade - was pleasantly surprised by it once I got used to it - nice
to drive and the electric/gas engine business worked really well.



But because of the time now, I hit the Friday evening rush hour delays and what should have been a 30 minute drive to the hotel took another
hour - my day was just getting better and better...

So got to the hotel at 8pm, which was 1am "my time". Knackered as I'd been up since early hours to get my "early flight". Pah.

But sod it, I'm going for a f***ing beer now if it kills me...

My beer-crawl was obviously not going to happen, so I picked a likely looking (huge) bar in the city and headed in.



HUGE beer list, couldn't cope with it all, got the barman to give me a few samples and plumped for one of them



Bar was fab - huge beer-delivery system rather fascinated me as well;



That's the beer pipes all around the ceiling - crickey!



Was contemplating another nearby bar after that, but decided I liked that bar (Craft Beer Market) enough to have another beer there instead
and opted for a flight of local brews just to give the illusion of trying out a lot of local ales.



I was barely awake after all that, had made it to around 10:30 local time which was good enough for me, and so headed hotel-wards for
some well-needed sleep.



Pausing only to get a selfie with the real CN Tower - ****-you Manchester airport adverts. :)



(more later, will try to get at least one roller coaster in the next instalment...)
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Urgh, what a burdenous start to the trip! Sounds reasonably well recovered though. Will be keeping an eye on this report for any tips. ;) Definitely like the look of that beer place.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Saturday 2nd June

Despite having flown into Toronto, the plan was to get moving ASAP. Found a local breakfast place (since my silly overpriced "boutique" hotel
didn't have such a thing) and stocked up on energy for the drive...



I was driving to Ottawa, that's a bit of trek, but not as much of a trek as it was to Montreal which was really the destination but I'd been
advised that Ottawa was a bit nicer than Montreal so figured that that was a reasonable beer stop en-route.

However on the way from Toronto to Ottawa (well, if you go the way that I went), there is a little detour (to be fair it was a bit more of
a detour than it had looked on the map) at the town of Peterborough (lol at the original place names here) is the rather odd place Wild Water & Wheels.



I'd checked the opening times, said 12 noon - I turned up a little bit after that but the place looked all shut up. There were cars in the
dirt car park, but the gates were all chained up. Odd. Could see some people messing about on the go-kart track so wandered towards that
fence and after a few minutes starting forlornly at the chained up gate, some old geezer wandered out of the office and up to the fence to
see what I wanted.

"Its a training day" he said, somewhat frostily.

"I just want to ride the coaster" I said, somewhat goon-ily.

He twigged my accent was not local, and warmed up - "oh you're from England" he said - "I'm originally from Kidderminster" - we bonded at that
and he decided that the kids he was training that day could get some training on the coaster as well as the go-karts and unchained the gate.

Bought my ticket ($10 for 3 rides) and he rounded up some older kids to train the younger kids in the operational subtleties (there were not
many) of the rather strange coaster Pipeline Express.



Drop to the left, lift hill to the right, you don't get to ride the lift hill its just for the cars, so stairs have to be taken.

Your carriage awaits - a little plastic sled thing with a seatbelt (the locking and unlocking of which seemed the most complicated part of
the extensive training that the local youth were being given)



And you are just pushed off the drop and off around the circuit...



Was OK to be fair, even some airtime on it - just about. Very backyard roller coaster though.

You just do a square circuit of the crazy golf - it zooms along reasonably quickly and you friction-brake at the bottom of the lift hill
where trainee-youth #2 undoes your seat belt and you get to use the stairs while the sled gets the lift hill treatment.



The trainees switched around after my second go - something that surprised me as I expected the chap to come down the stairs, but of course
he didn't as the quickest way from the top to the bottom was to ride the thing wasn't it - OBVIOUSLY! :)

Damn, that caught me by surprise so no action pics then! :(

But after my last ride I was almost prepared and managed a quick action shot (the only one I got) of the trainer-op leaving her post...



Strange place then, there was the "coaster", mini golf, go-karts and some water play things (all dry tho' no water). Must be surviving somehow
as the place has been there for years. Can't really recommend it as a destination, but if you happen to be driving from Toronto to Ottawa (or
vice versa) could do worse things than waste an hour getting there (10 mins to ride the coaster, 50 mins detour/faff). Providing its not a
"training day" that is.



Few more hours in the car, get to Ottawa. Hotel is up near the Parliament building so head out for a wander and a looksee.



Was heading in the general direction of ByWard Market, which seemed to be the place to go.



Was not too impressed with the market area though - kinda like if you went to London and thought Covent Garden was the place to go. Found a pub
that brewed its own beer though, beer was OK.





And another pub with cheap food and reasonable beer (pub was bit scabby though)



And then wandered around the city for a little bit, was a bit quiet (this was a Saturday night!)



Definitely some scenic bits out by the river though



Testing the new travel-camera's zoom a bit



So wasn't too impressed with what little I'd seen of Ottawa then. But nice enough to kill a couple of wandering hours of an evening at least.
And another capital-city cred I guess.

Some real roller coasters tomorrow though (eventually!)
 

Snoo

The Legend
That coaster though. That's pretty silly and off the beaten path. <3

And I've heard that of Ottawa from my Canadian friends.. mostly a dull and boring city.
 

Antinos

Slut for Spinners
Man...at least you got some beer after all that hectic travel! That bar looks like a pretty neat watering hole. Also, I'm terribly sorry you had to suffer in that god-awful Prius. :p
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Can't really recommend it as a destination, but if you happen to be driving from Toronto to Ottawa (or
vice versa) could do worse things than waste an hour getting there (10 mins to ride the coaster, 50 mins detour/faff). Providing its not a
"training day" that is.
Exactly my plan in a few weeks - hopefully I don't get a training day too! Looks pretty fab though, precisely why I'm going. I think I'm going to stop in to Ottowa on the way to Montreal, and just do a couple of hours sightseeing there, before continuing on.
 

Matt N

CF Legend
That little cred looks kinda weird, but I love it! Hopefully some more substantial creds will come in the later installments!
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Sunday 3rd June

Plan today was get to La Ronde then get the hell out of the country.

Wasn't a long drive from Ottawa to Montreal, so didn't rush and stopped for the traditional roadtrip McDonalds on the way. Route planner reckoned
it was ~2 hour drive, but Google was telling me there were loads of roadwork-related road closures near the end of the trip (which my phone
based GPS thingy would not be aware of) so I was expecting a bit of diversion a few miles from the park.

True to prediction, it seems that they were reconfiguring some pretty major freeway roads in the city, so there was some traffic-faff while I
diverted off and back on again to the required route.

Only then it got a bit silly.

Once back on the right route, it suddenly appeared that I could not take any of the turnings that I wanted to ; roads were all blocked off by
police cars with lights all flashing. Odd. I ended up in outskirts of the the city centre, desperately trying to turn left so I could get onto
the big bridge that you need to get onto but road after road was no-entry. How annoying.

After a while (and my satnav freaking out at me) I figured it wasn't happening (I could even see the pigging park a few hundred yards away) and
I needed to find another way to the park - the problem being that the park is on an island in the middle of the river and so there is literally
only 2 ways to get there (East or West on the bridge) and I couldn't get on the one side at all. :(

Parked up, looked at a map and diverted North for a bit, across the river through a big tunnel and back down the other side sorted!

Or so I thought.

Travelling back down the other side of the river, I could see the bridge and the junction I needed to take, but.... it too was blocked off.

For ****s sake Montreal you are not making this easy. I wondered whether the junction was blocked off for the same reason all the roads had been
(I figured that there just must have been something going on in the city centre that day that they didn't want cars around for) but I could see
traffic on the bridge - clearly not traffic that had come down the road I was on.

So I carried on South for a few miles, turned around and headed back North where I could exit the road to get onto the bridge. YAY!!!!

That all had put me in a pretty crappy mood, taken about an hour of detours to get there. Stupid bloody city / park.

(Turned out that there was some city based cycle race/event on that day, hence the road closures. Had I stopped to ask a cop they might have
helped me out I guess - did occur to me I could have parked up and got public transport to the park but I didn't expect the last road
closure to get in the way as much as it did. SPOILER - thats not the end of the day's road-closure issues either!)

Anyway, park is on an island in the middle of the river - sounds lovely, is not really.



Its all a bit grubby outside the park - dirty dusty car park, no trams to get you to the gate so wander under the bridge.

Get into the park, have a look at the season-pass processing Q - huge, so I'll do that later and off looking for the coasters I go.

Yay a Boomerang to start...



Only its not running 'pour des raisons techniques' ; SPITE#1.



Next door to the bad boomer was one of my guilty pleasure rides - a Vekoma corkscrew just like Alton's olde-thing ; Super Manège which
had a negligible Q (saw it a lot longer later in the day).



Obviously was not great, but brought back lots of memories for me - ahhhh.

(its the wrong colour though, should be yellow)



Carrying on around the park, next up was the big woody Monstre which is actually 2 different tracks - hurrah for the +2.



Bit hard to take pics of from the park though - it kinda looms over a lot of it but you don't get to see the train in action much.



Only a station wait for each side, that means its either awful and no-one wants to ride it or its still a bit early in the day and the locals
haven't turned up? Ride was OK though on both sides - big lumbering old woody, shakes you about a bit as it rattles around the course, pretty
fast in places but not at all graceful. They don't dispatch the two sides at the same time either so the racing/duelling element is lost too.


Not awful, not great then. Prime RMC territory though (if I thought that anyone would spend any money on the park that is!)



I hadn't wandered through much of the park by then, but what I had seen was a bit rubbish I thought. Just general upkeep issues / tired and
old looking midway things.



Didn't ride the monorail because Qs.



I couldn't hold back any longer and headed to the back of the park for perhaps the only reason to come here, the B&M hyper Goliath.



Even this had a short Q - but then I guess its pretty high capacity and they were running 3 trains.



Anyway this was good, very good. Very B&M hyper at least. Its not greatly different than say Carowinds' one, doesn't have the helixes like
Georgia's - just good old out and back airtime machine. I liked.



Sitting rather picturesquely on the lake nearby was a non-credit for me (since I'd ridden it at Astroworld (RIP) many years ago) - the nasty
SLC Ednör - L'Attaque. I've Q'd longer for worse SLCs that I already had so rode it anyway. I recall riding it twice when it was in
Houston, the first ride being really good so I re-rode it and the second ride being awful - this ride was just what you'd expect from an old
SLC, brace yourself and you'll get through it relatively un-scared.



It is quite pretty though.





Last coaster up this bit of the park was next - annoyingly you can't walk around the lake, you can only walk around 3/4 of it so you get to a
dead end where you have to double-back on yourself ; stupid park. This was an indoor coaster Dragon - an Intamin, not that that was any
great sign of quality. Standard family coaster in the dark - bit of a Q too, ugh.



So doubling-back and walking through the middle bit of the park, which got no better - lots of people milling around lots of mediocre midway
attractions - came across their wild mouse with a huge Q so left that for later and their spiteful kiddie cred;



Denied;







Back at the front of the park is another B&M though



Vampire - a Batman clone. Great rides these in their day, still serving up a big heap of forces as well - great stuff, but no novelty
of course.






Final cred is the mouse I skipped earlier, Toboggan Nordique

I Q'd for this for FAR TOO LONG. When I get to board the ride-op point out the single rider queue to me - thanks for that.



its a mouse, non-spinning at least.

The park is really crummy though. Lots of "abandoned" areas, disused buildings, crappy upkeep.



There is part of a scrapped log flume just sitting in the lake;



at least the logs were re-purposed;



I mean come on, when you can't even keep the signs on your in-park McDonalds up to scratch...



So things I liked about La Ronde;

The big bridge looming over it all;



The (relatively) cheap Six Flags season pass that got me into a few other parks.

The B&Ms

2 woodies checked off.

Things I didn't like about La Ronde ; everything else.

Glad I've been (+8), hope never to have to go back though.

--

Getting out of Montreal proved almost as vexing as getting in. Got back on the highway, heading for the USA, needed to change onto another
major highway to do that, but true to Montreal-form, that junction was closed off too. For ****s sake.

Stupid diversion through 30mins of residential streets gets me on the right highway and a while later (after some discussion with the US border
guards about exactly what sort of person drives around looking for roller coasters) I get into Trump's America and find my hotel for the night.

No convenient drinking establishments though tonight, just a local fast-food place (did not want to do any more driving to find somewhere
more interesting just in case I encountered more roadworks!)



Oh, and checking the internet that night, the park I had planned for the next day (Canobie Lake Park) had put up a notice saying they were not
going to open because of the incoming storm. Oh just great.
 
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Matt N

CF Legend
Oh dear. Seems like La Ronde might just be as bad as Taylor Bybee makes it out to be in his review.

Out of interest, did you visit Canada's Wonderland on your trip?

Great reports so far! Really enjoying them!
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Out of interest, did you visit Canada's Wonderland on your trip?
Yes - you could probably tell that from the map in the first post - but you will have to wait for that for a while.

Re:La Ronde - it wasn't really awful, just pretty poor park all round (apart from a couple of big coasters). I hope @Rachel posts a trip report from there as she seemed to have had a lovely day there just a few days after me. (sarcasm intended).
 

Rachel

Coaster MILF
I may get round to it, or it may just be a comment in the least favourite parks thread (if there's one).
Long story short though - worst park ever!
p.s. great report so far :D
 

Will

Strata Poster
I liked La Ronde - I'm starting to think I must have been really lucky with my visit!
I know my standards are going to be lower as I've only done three North American parks, so I don't have as much to compare it to, but I've been to worse in Europe.

OK, so the atmosphere was perhaps a little lacking or unfriendly in the evening, the ride operations could have been better (especially Monstre), the horror walkthrough was merde, two coasters were closed and Vampire (my only Batman at the time) was probably the only coaster worth writing home about, but I spent quite a lot of time there while we were in Montreal three years ago. I think it gets a lot more hate than it deserves.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
I'm so uncertain about my visit. It's got a B&M hyper, but sounds like a pretty drab park. It'll be interesting to see how I feel in a few weeks time. Thanks for doing this report, having such a recent trip report is always great. :p

Got a basic question - how did you get on collecting the season pass and paying (or not) for the parking?
 
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