Welcome,
all my fans and friends, to my official year in review! For my year in review, I’m
going to include all my favorite and least favorite rides, and experiences, of
the year. In short, I must thank everyone I know for making this a great year.
My family, my friends, even people I don’t know too well. You helped shaped
what 2017 was for me. 365 days of greatness. If you have any experiences from
this year you’d love to tell me, go ahead and post them below in the comments.
I’ll read them; it’s New Years! While 2017 was great, as I mentioned, I have
some big plans for 2018 that I’m dying to tell you, so look forward to that
sometime in early-to-mid January. I know I posted my first video in October last
year, but if you remember, I posted a few update videos. This time, I’m trying
to shorten that, and for that reason, our family still needs a bit of time to
finalize some plans. Anyways, let’s get started!
January
January
was a great kick-off month. Just a few days before New Year’s, I made a trip
down to Six Flags St. Louis for Holiday In The Park, and that kept me busy
giving you guys great videos for the park. Early on in January, during that
first week, we had already heard some news that Space World was closing, and
the rides were put up for sale, and it was already way back then that we found
out a park had bought Kanonen. I had a lot of fun covering that with Adam, or
better known as Rolly Coaster.
Soon
after, I attended my first ever No Coaster Con with ACE. What a great day that
was. I met up with a lot of friends, made a lot of new friends, and met my
first park CEOs. That day, I met Don Helbig from Kings Island, Tony Clark from
Cedar Point, Damien Nelson, Tess Clausen, Abbey Bobzin, and Allison Maliweg
from Six Flags Great America, Rob House and Michael Moore from Kentucky Kingdom
(who I sat at a table with), Pete Owens from Dollywood, Jeff Filicko and Jeffery
Siebert from Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Randy Witt and Brad Donati from Raging
Waves (a water park in Illinois). I know I seriously enjoyed myself, and I’m
more than excited to attend my second ever No Coaster Con just a little under
two weeks from now. I even plan to livestream each park representative during
the conference for you guys.
March
I’m
skipping February, because nothing more happened than school and new videos.
March was the first truly big month however, which should more than make up for
no February.
March
was the month where rumors and announcements seriously started to rise. The
rumor of Vertical Velocity being relocated, the announcement of Boomerang at
Knotts’ closure, I had fun covering it. However, while that was fun, it had
absolutely nothing on my Spring Break trip…
During
my Spring Break, our family spent 5 days vacationing in the Pigeon
Forge/Gatlinburg area. Wow… I had so much fun. I had some fun appreciating the
nature of the Smoky Mountains with my family, riding two of the alpine
coasters, seeing entertaining shows, and most of all, Dollywood. While there, I
was impressed with all they had to offer; from 7 surprising credits, including
the excellent Lightning Rod which truly blew me away and gave me three great
rides, some great theming, amazing operations, super satisfying food, and overall
a phenomenal time which made Dollywood my new favorite amusement park. Did Dollywood
maintain that honor throughout the year? Find out this week when I upload my
Top 10 Amusement Parks!
May
Once
again, I’m skipping over a month, just purely due to nothing interesting
happening aside from school and some new videos, mostly surrounding Dollywood.
May is where things got kicked up a notch.
Early-to-mid
May is when I took my first visit to Six Flags Great America, my home park, of
the year. This was a great time; I met up with a group of friends, and we got
on every roller coaster that day, albeit not filming all of them. Nonetheless,
it was great to get my first taste of all my favorites, such as Goliath,
American Eagle, Batman The Ride, and Viper. As I finished up school, everybody
started to announce their plans for the season, as I started them. Once I
finished school on the last Friday of the month, we began our next major trip
the next day.
On
that next day, we went to Kentucky Kingdom, a trip that took a strange turn of
events when we had arrived. After picking up the Lightning Run credit, a fun
ride for sure, the storms came in, preventing us from getting any more rides in
that day. Throughout the evening, we just walked around the park, saw the Sea
Lion Splash show, and got a surprising backstage Storm Chaser tour in the
station from some of the ops who saw my ACE shirt on. They even gave us free
tickets for the next day. So instead of driving straight to Holiday World, we
spent the first 45 minutes the park was open that day, picked up the other three
credits. Storm Chaser is insane and in my Top 5, Thunder Run is a decent wooden
coaster, and T3 was my first SLC (not something to be excited about). Then we
drove over to Holiday World, for an amazing time. Three incredible coasters,
one of which is my current #1, fantastic operations and hospitality, Plymouth
Rock Café (the Thanksgiving area alone is worth the price), and just a great
place to be. I’m excited that I have the possibility of attending Holiwood
Nights this June!
June
This
was my favorite month of the year. We did so much during this month, and it all
happened during our California trip. The first couple days were just driving
and views, but the third day, when we arrived in San Diego, I rode the historic
Giant Dipper which surprised me in a good way. After some fun days of
California culture, I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain. My, oh my... what a day.
To start, I got 15 credits that day. Most of them were fine, albeit Green
Lantern, which you will see low on my Top 10 Worst list which will be posted in
the coming weeks, but Tatsu was an absolute surprise, Twisted Colossus was my
100th credit, and X2 became and still is my favorite steel coaster.
Those three just absolutely blew me away. The park overall was great, so that
helped as well. After that, the next two days were spent at Disneyland and
Disney California Adventure. It was interesting to see what I thought of the
California version of Disneyland, after having visited Disney World two years
before, and I enjoyed the park, despite our touring plan randomly updating on us
making for a chaotic day. We rode each of the four coasters, and enjoyed them all
(yes, even Gadget’s Go Coaster). Disney California Adventure is the one I
preferred of the two. GOTG was my favorite ride at the resort, California
Screamin’ a super good Intamin coaster, Goofy’s Sky School, ehh, and the operations
are the best I’ve ever seen, with such a clean, fantastic atmosphere. And I’m
not even going to get started on how amazed I was by Cars Land. So that was the
big road trip of the year.
August
I’m
skipping July, since the most that happened was I got the Joker credit at GAm.
I didn’t really visit any other parks, and I took a bit of an uploading break.
On
August 5, I made my way to Monticello, Indiana and visited Indiana Beach for
the first time to attend the Hawg Wild ACE Event. It was great having morning
ERT; we got every credit before the park even opened, marathoned our favorites,
and knew which ones we wanted to re-ride. Plus, the chance to hang out with old
friends I’d not seen in a while was great, along with a chance to check out
everything else the park had to offer; their flat ride collection which had
some rides crazier than anything Six Flags could add, because none of them were
neutered, and a taco lunch. Oh my gosh; if anything is worth the admission
price to Indiana Beach besides the coasters, IT’S THE TACOS! THESE TACOS ARE ONE
OF THE ABSOLUTE BEST THEME PARK FOODS! So yeah. I’d highly recommend spending a
day here, albeit the not-so-good operations.
Conclusion
Beyond
Indiana Beach, the only visits I made were to Six Flags Great America. But that
doesn’t stop the fact that I had so many great times and made so many memories!
These times will stay with me until I take my final breath. 2017 will be known
to me as the year I hit 100 coasters, and took that next step in my coaster
enthusiasm.
Before
I say my final words, I’d like to note my favorite and least favorite experiences
this year. My favorites hands down go to my rides in the back two rows of
Voyage way back on Memorial Day Weekend Sunday. After a couple rides towards
the front and middle, I wanted to see how the back rows ran. I was treated so
the experiences that truly blew me away more than anything else in my life.
More than Maverick, Lightning Rod, and Storm Chaser. The airtime, speed, and
relentless intensity truly pushed the coaster straight up to my #1 spot in my
rankings, and if I go to Holiwood Nights, that night ERT might push everything
back a spot. I’d rank normal Voyage and Holiwood Nights Voyage separately.
Now
that we got the good out of the way, let’s finish up on my least favorite experience
of the year. Green Lantern: First Flight at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Say you’re
like me, first time at the park, move past it in the DC Universe area and enjoy
Batman, Riddler’s Revenge, or anything else in the park. Whatever you do, don’t
ride Green Lantern. It’s quite literally in a painful league of its own. It may
not have headbanging like T3 or original Ninja at SFOG, but the way it just
assaulted my whole body gives me absolutely nothing remotely positive to say
for the experience itself. Clearly, park officials have felt the same way, as
the ride has been SBNO since August. If it’s removed from the park website and
map, I’ll probably throw a party.
Now
that we’ve got that out of the way, I gotta personally thank each member of my
family for supporting my dreams as a coaster enthusiast. My mom, for planning
out each and every trip to all our family’s preferences, and for capturing all
those moments, my dad, for always being there with me to ride the good and the
bad and to help give me ideas for YouTube, and my sister, for just being there
and being interested in all my coaster chatter.
Thank
you everyone for this year; I’m excited for all the surprises 2018 brings, good
and bad.
