I’m back on the roller coaster kick.

The biggest complaint I have about having to have back surgery two summers in a row is that there is absolutely no chance that Wendy and I will be able to get a day to ourselves to go ride roller coasters this year. Between the expense of surgery, the wages I'm losing right now, and the fact that roller coasters aren't great for healing backs, it's just out of the question.

Wendy and I are both roller coaster fiends, although there are really only two parks that are close enough here in Virginia to be practical for us to visit. One is Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, the other is King's Dominion outside of Richmond.

Both parks have some great roller coasters.

My all-time favorite roller coaster is the Alpengeist at Busch Gardens. Here it is.

Alpengeist pretty much has it all, as far as coasters are concerned. It starts with a 170' drop and includes an immelmann inverted loop, a cobra roll, a 106' tall inversion, a zero-g's heartline roll, and top speeds of 67 MPH. It's about as much fun as a human being can have.

Here's that cobra roll:

Below is another look at the cobra roll, on the left. As you can see, it gets pretty close to another of Busch Garden's great coasters, the Loch Ness Monster.

For a coaster that's almost 30 years old, Loch Ness is no slouch, with a 114" drop, a 60 MPH top speed, and two interlocking loops:

I suppose the big draw at Busch Gardens is Apollo's Chariot, the park's latest monster. Apollo has a 210 foot drop, and it's been eclipsed by several of the newest coasters in the country, but when you're up top of the first hill, believe me, you're well aware of all 210 of those feet:

The ride the kids enjoy the most is the Big Bad Wolf. As of our last visit to Busch Gardens, it was the only roller coaster that all three of our kids were big enough to ride. The Big Bad Wolf is basically a kiddy ride; with only an 80' drop and a top speed of not quite 50 MPH. But since it is a suspended coaster, and since that drop is over the James River, I have to admit that the coaster gets the most out of those 80 feet:

The other Virginia amusement park, King's Dominion, has a few decent coasters, too. King's dominion is more of an "amusement park" than a "theme park." That is to say, Busch Gardens has more shows and adult attractions, and King's Dominion has a ton of rides of all shapes and sizes.

One of their coasters, the Shockwave, was the first stand-up looping roller coaster I ever saw. It looks pretty intimidating:

But then, once you ride it, it's a real disappointment. It just has no scare-factor, no real thrills. And, it's over almost as soon as it began.

I am a little superstitious about the Shockwave, though, because about a week after the first time I rode it, a guy got killed on it. That took the fun out of that coaster for me, and I never rode it again.

The smoothest, most mellow coaster I've ever been on is the Anaconda at King's Dominion. This coaster begins with a 144' drop and features a ton of sidewinder loops and corkscrew rolls, but the whole time you're on it, all you can do is smile. I guess it does look a bit daunting...

...but trust me, the Anaconda induces a ton of grins and no screams at all. That's not a slam on the coaster, I really enjoy it... it's a good way to cool off and take a break while you're at King's Dominion.

For my money, the best coaster at King's Dominion is the Flight of Fear. It's stats make the FoF sound a bit tame: It's cobra rolls, corkscrews and loops might sound a bit restrained by the ride's top speed of 54 miles an hour and it's highest drop of only 74 feet. The thing that makes FoF so much fun is that it's an indoor roller coaster, inside of a big, dark aircraft hanger-like building... so you can't tell where you're going, what's going to happen next... or even when the ride is over. The ride has a UFO theme, and when you get on the train, you're launched into a black hole:

And, when I say launched, I mean launched. The ride launches you from zero to 50 MPH in it's first three seconds. It launches you into a dark room and right into a loop. You're literally upside down about four seconds after the ride starts. BOOM! Just like that. By the time the ride is over, your equilibrium is so screwed up that you don't know if you're upside down, rightside up, or backside front. There's one cool part about halfway through that always tricks me... the ride slows down and there's a bit of daylight ahead, so it looks like you're headed for the exit. You have a second or two to start thinking about how much fun the ride was and then BOOM! You're hurling straight down again. It turns out that the ride isn't over at all, and that you were actually at the top of a hill. Wow. The Flight of Fear really delivers.

There is one roller coaster at King's Dominion... and only one... that I'm scared to ride. This is where I draw the line. This is where my own personal wuss-factor takes over. The ride I'm scared to ride is the Volcano. Here it is:

This coaster simulates blasting the riders out of the top of a volcano. Thus the name. Duh. Here's another picture of it... I like this one better, because you can see the "aircraft hanger" from the Flight of Fear in the background:

I'd ride Volcano... I'd ride it in a heartbeat... but here's the problem. I'm terrified of heights. Scared to death of heights. Absolutely scared into paralysis by heights. The reason I like roller coasters is that, while they take you up high, they then immediately drop you back down to earth again. Quickly. That's the whole idea. Now, look at those pictures of Volcano. As you can probably tell, the point of Volcano is that it, instead, launches you up high really quickly and then keeps you up there for a long time, going around and around in circles at the top of that synthetic volcano. No thanks. If you're going to take this fat ol' redneck that high up in the air, you better be bringing me back down again p.d.q.

My first rollercoaster experience ever was terrifying, and I honestly think that it both instilled in me my fear of heights and planted the seeds of my love of roller coasters. In the Roanoke area... in a smaller town outside or Roanoke called Salem... there used to be a theme park called Lakeside. It's been gone for years and years; there's a shopping center where it used to be these days. Lakeside featured a wooden roller coaster called the Shooting Star. I was both drawn to it and terrified of it as a kid. Finally I got up the guts to ride it with a friend of mine. I'll never forget it... on the way up the hill, I clamped down on my friend's arm and said "Just don't talk to me until this is over." I'll never forget the view as we rounded the top of the hill and came to the drop. I was able to find a picture on the internet of the Shooting Star's drop, and here it is:

Just looking at that picture gives me the shivers. All seventy-some feet of the Shooting Star's first drop scares me more than the 210' drop of Apollo's Chariot. I'll never shake that feeling. And, to this day, I won't ride wooden roller coasters. When we hit the bottom of the hill and my neck snapped back, I thought I'd been killed. My neck and the back of my head hurt for a month. My friend had a bruise on his arm from my deathgrip.

It scared me so badly that I wouldn't ride roller coasters again until I was in my early 20's and my friend "The Governor" goaded me into riding the Loch Ness Monster with him. He basically did the old "don't be such a baby" thing, and I'll seriously always be in his debt for that. I had no idea what I'd been missing. Roller coasters rule!!

All this roller coaster reminiscence was triggered by Cube, who recently wrote about the experience of riding SheikRa at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay. SheikRa looks pretty substantial:

Wow. I'd love to ride it.

Maybe.

Just as long as it ain't made out of wood, the drop is over pretty quickly, and the seats are arranged in such a way as to prevent me from bruising anyone's arm.

But not this summer. This summer, I suppose all my roller coaster riding will be of the virtual kind.

Labels: Personal, Roller Coasters