When Phillip and I first began planning this trip, we originally had the idea of an evening followed by a full day at Six Flags New England, and then a full day for Lake Compounce. As we experienced a slow day in the morning at Six Flags, we realized we could probably shift the visit to Lake Compounce to that evening, and have an extra day to go somewhere else. And so we did. With an extra day to see more, we looked into where we could possibly head to find some more coasters to ride, and found that New York City was only a few hours away from our hotel in Hartford, so we made the new plan to head for Coney Island! This also turned into an opportunity to make our way to a few other coaster stops I had on my list that were of the more shameless credit variety, so before rolling over to Coney, we made a stop at Adventurers, which had a Wacky Worm style coaster they called TL*3 Coaster (no idea where the name comes from). Unfortunately though, we found out that the parks rides wouldn't open until a bit later, so we decided we would come back after Coney. My friend Alex saw that we were heading to Coney Island online, and he was in New York at the time as a performer in a touring show, so he came to join us for lunch and a few rides. Since it was lunchtime as we pulled into Coney, we chose to go with one of the most famous eateries, and the site of the International Hot Dog Eating Contest, Nathan's. This was far from a healthy meal, getting both a Hot Dog and Fries covered with cheese and bacon, but hey, sometimes you've gotta go nuts in Coney Island! They sure did when they tested out different ride ideas in the past. Both Alex and Phillip aren't as big on getting shameless coaster credits as I am, so we skipped out on the smaller or cloned coasters at both Luna Park and Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, instead focusing on the must-do rides between the parks, including a ride on the famous Coney Island Cyclone (which actually rode pretty well on this visit as I believe they had just done some retracking on it), and a spin on the famous Wonder Wheel as well in a car that would swing, followed by good old hokey-spooky fun with Spook-a-rama. Since it had been about six years from my previous visit, there was a new coaster added since my last visit in the form of Thunderbolt, a new model of coaster from Zamperla. This was an interesting ride as it had some decent airtime in the first drop and a few of its hills, but it did had some odd movements with a bit of jerkiness to it that didn't do my already sore ribs from yesterday any favors. I would be curious to give this another go when not in pain to see if that might have effected the experience on it. After we finished our lap on Thunderbolt, Alex had to head back for his production, and Phillip and I continued our day with a ride back to Adventurers for another attempt at getting on TL*3. This time there were far more people in the park, and it was a little bit of a culture shock for me as it appeared that the park was hosting a special event for the local Othodox Jewish population. It wasn't so much that there were Orthodox Jewish people there as New York is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and I have seen Orthodox Jewish People before in every day life and while traveling. I was more taken back by how many of them were in the park at the time as I haven't been around such a large gathering of them before, and I felt a little bit out of place since I wasn't dressed anything like them. For a moment I was worried that we were actually crashing a private event, but then found out it was just a special event that brought them there, and the park was open to the public as well. It was nice to see them out and enjoying a day with some rides with their families. It was also nice to be able to check another shameless coaster credit off of my list as well! With the three parks in Brooklyn under out belts, we made our way over to Long Island hoping to make a stop at Adventureland, but we ran into some bad news as the park was closed due to the weather, so it would have to wait for another day. But we did spot the college my friend Martin Lewison teaches at across the street from the park, Farmingdale State College. If you have read many articles about the theme park industry, you may have read a quote or two from him as he's a professor in Business Management who specializes in the amusement park industry and is often quoted in various articles about the industry. He even had an article written about him and his travels, plus he and his wife Cheryl were part of a mini documentary on Great Big Story, which you can see in the video below. After we continued from the shuttered Adventureland, we went further into Long Island for one last coaster stop, and that was Boomers Family Fun Center in the town of Medford. Here they had a Zamperla Family Gravity Coaster known simply as Roller Coaster. It was another shameless credit to add to the list. Once we finished our stop here, that would be the end of the coaster riding for this trip, and the next morning would be the end of Phillip's time on the adventure as he would be heading back to work more flights as he had been recently hired as a Flight Attendant for Republic Airway before this trip. But that wasn't the end of this journey as I still had another day to explore, which involved a return to Boston for the day. |
See More of 2017 Northeast Trip
1: Charlestown Navy Yard / 2: Bunker Hill & Cheers / 3: Funworld Game Center & Topsfield Fair / 4: An Evening in Salem / 5: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library / 6: Edaville Family Theme Park / 7: Six Flags New England / 8: Lake Compounce / 9: Finding Coasters on the Islands of Coney & Long / 10: Taking in More Boston History / 11: Bruins Hockey at the TD Garden / 12: The Last of the Northeast Trip |
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