CoasterGallery.com 2015 Updates
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December 4, 2015 - Today is the release of a new park and an update of new coasters at another park that I have visited since 2000.
Austin's Park N Pizza, which is
technically in Pflugerville, Texas, but is close to Austin, is a
small Family Entertainment Center with a couple of outdoor rides and the
Fiesta Express kiddie coaster. I also
added some new pictures from Six Flags New England.
The bad news is that Goliath was closed for a major part of
this year, so I still haven't seen their Giant Inverted Boomerang run either in Agawam or at its
previous Six Flags park, but at least I had to chance to take some pictures of
Goliath. The good news is that
Wicked Cyclone was operating... and I loved it!
Rocky Mountain Construction did a wonderful job converting the wood
Cyclone into the steel
Wicked Cyclone,
and I had a great time riding it. In addition to the two new coasters, there are some updated shots of the other coasters, including
a huge panorama of the
fantastic ride that started as Superman - Ride of Steel, was converted to
Bizarro for a few years, and is now switching to
Superman the Ride in 2016.
November 3, 2015 - Since my last update, I have added three new parks and updated one other park. Check out some of the new additions
as I work hard to clear out my backlog...
Dreamland
amusement park in Margate, England is the first of a dozen parks I will be adding from the United Kingdom.
Dreamland
has been dormant and nearly vacant for almost a decade, but after a tremendous amout of work and money, it reopened this summer.
In addition to pictures of the coasters that opened in 2015, I also have some behind-the-scenes shots from the project that is rebuilding the historic 1920
Scenic Railway
coaster. It was damaged in a fire in 2008, but it finally reopened
just a few days ago! And while the redone version has some modern safety systems, it is one of just seven roller coasters that still require a brakeman
to ride in the train! And while you are
visiting the Dreamland Margate pages, be sure to check out the
POV coaster videos I shot on some of the coasters!
As I try to cover parks throughout the world, I am adding a few new parks in North America. The
Galveston Island Historic Pier has a history that
dates back to 1940, but it opened in its current form as an amusement park in 2012. It is home to
Iron Shark, a very compact Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter coaster.
The ride literally sits on a pier out over the Gulf of Mexico.
There are a lot of roller coasters in Orlando, Florida, but there is only one wood coaster... and now I have pictures of it!
Fun Spot America opened in 1997, but it got its first three coasters
when it did a large expansion in 2013.
White Lightning was built by Great Coasters International, and
it is a fantastic ride with Millennium Flyer trains providing
tremendous amounts of airtime.
After a long absence, I finally got back to Dollywood this summer. Since my last visit, they added
FireChaser Express,
Mystery Mine,
Sideshow Spin, and
Wild Eagle. I love that mix of rides: A family coaster with
forward and backward launches as well as an explosion of smoke and flames, a coaster that is partially an indoor dark ride and
partially an outdoor looping thrill ride, a kiddie coaster, and a Wing Coaster.
I recently had the chance to ride the two major woodies that
Rocky Mountain Construction
changed into steel coasters, so check back in a few days for pictures
of Wicked Cyclone at Six Flags New England and
Iron Rattler at Six Flags Fiesta Texas! Or join the
CoasterGallery.com Facebook page to see them even sooner!
August 24, 2015 - As the coaster season winds down, I look back and I am amazed at how many coasters I have ridden and photographed in the past two years. I recently
rode my 800th roller coaster! My backlog is now over two dozen amusement parks from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. I will try
to add the pictures and videos as fast as I can, but you can help me decide which ones get posted first. Go to the CoasterGallery.com
Facebook Page and vote to see which park is released first!
Let me clean up a little of my backlog by adding three new American amusement parks to the home page today: Martin's Fantasy Island in New York, Palace Playland in Maine, and the historic Seabreeze in New York.
If you look carefully at the list of parks on the home page, you will see what parks I will be adding in the next few weeks... but those are just the tip of the
iceberg. This list will expand greatly in the next few months!
April 18, 2015 - Since I last updated this page, three more parks have been added to the Gallery, and we will soon add our 200th park!
The first location is Oregon's Enchanted Forest,
a delightful family park that is home to the
Big Timber Log Ride
water coaster and the unusual
Ice Mountain Bobsled.
There is both
on-ride POV video and
off-ride video of
Ice Mountain Bobsled
that started as an alpine slide but was later changed to a coaster. The second stop is
Funtown Splashtown U.S.A.
in Maine, a small amusement park that is home to the
Excalibur
and the
Wild Mouse. The third park
is New Hampshire's
Story Land. Even though the park is geared
towards kids, they have two nice coasters, the
O.D. Hopkins
Polar Coaster, and the brand new
Roar-O-Saurus, the fantastic little ride from the
Gravity Group that features a cool
Timberliner
train.
February 16, 2015 - This is the time of year when I catch up on my picture and video backlog. I recently finished adding
three parks to the Gallery. I thought about trickling them out one at a time, but I decided just to unleash the whole
mess of pictures and videos on you all at once. Today's release is a mix of a large park in Oklahoma, a medium-sized park Germany, and a small park in Maine.
How's that for diversity?
Oklahoma City's Frontier City is home one of the last
Arrow Shuttles, a
Schwarzkopf looper, a
Vekoma Suspended Family Coaster, a relocated
Herschell kiddie coaster, and a
historic National Amusement Devices woodie
that was saved from destruction and relocated to Oklahoma.
Freizeit-Land Geiselwind is a pretty park in
Southern Germany that is home to a Vekoma Boomerang,
a Maurer Wild Mouse, and a
Zierer spinning coaster whose cars spin even when going up the
lift hill! The park is also home to the Nautic-Jet jumping boat ride whose cars literally leap off the track and fly through the air. I normally don't post
pictures or videos of non-coasters, but
this flying boat ride is so special that I felt that I needed to show it here. (I
also added a POV video of Wasserbob,
a similar ride at Schloß Beck Freizeitpark.)
And just to show you that no park is too small to be included in CoasterGallery.com, I also added shots and
POV on-ride video of the
Wacky Mouse at
York's Wild Kingdom in Maine.
February 4, 2015 - Want to see the only coaster in Nebraska? Now you can! The
Big Ohhhh! Coaster at Omaha Nebraska's Fun-Plex is the
latest addition to CoasterGallery.com.
January 27, 2015 - This week Beech Bend amusement park in Bowling Green, Kentucky comes to the Gallery.
Be sure to check out the amazing pictures of the Kentucky Rumbler I took while I climbed through the structure on a behind-the-scenes tour.
There are some dangerous roller coaster pictures like this one that I would
not suggest you try to take yourself!
January 18, 2015 - City Park is a large recreational facility in Pueblo, Colorado. In addition to a zoo, tennis courts, pool, and
the Pueblo City Golf Course, this 157-acre park is home to the City Park Carousel and the Roller Coaster.
You may have noticed that the last few updates include some roller coaster videos. Please
take the time to subscribe to my YouTube Channel to see all of the amusement park
movies I am posting.
January 7, 2015 - Our newest park is from Niagara Falls. Marineland is a huge park that is dominated by marine life including beluga whales,
sea lions, dolphins, and walruses. There are a few rides at Marineland Canada, including the Dragon Mountain coaster, the ride that was the
world's tallest coaster from 1983 to 1989. Built on a man-made mountain, the ride has two tunnels and a few turns inside a volcano facade. There were
ambitious plans at first, including a waterfall, scenery, and special effects around the coaster, but none of those items were ever constructed. The end result is a large coaster
that rambles around the mountain but stays very close to ground level. It has many straight, flat sections of track. So you can see the entire ride, I have
included a Dragon Mountain on-ride POV video in HD.
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