2014 was not a year we intended to visit, but decided to take a last minute trip last week so we ended up in the city on 6/26/14. Since we did not have season passes this year we did the $30.00 Thursday through country mart. We arrived and parked close to stop 2 at about 9:30 and went to the ticket booth to exchange the vouchers for tickets. Kind of a cumbersome system when you could just get the ticket when you purchase it at CM. Through the gates and into the square. For me the whole Star Spangled Summer, excessive flags and bunting really takes away from the beauty of the square and gazebo area. Along with all the Wal mart temporary tents set up in that area it just really cheapens it up. Lots of kids activities that no one was participating in. I agree with some others. This is kids fest with a bunch of Red , White, and Blue thrown in. Not much of a festival. Fortunately the deeper you get into the park it seems like it gets less. The first stop was OR and it was a walk on about 10 AM. 2 trains, but dispatch was slow. Rode it 2 times then headed up to power down keg to find out it was down for awhile. So, we headed to wildfire and it was a walk on also. Made a round to the Pottery shop and then up the hill and through by HDH which was empty. The park was still slow and so we went back to PK and guess what , still down, so we hit the saloon show. It is a nice change from the old show with corny jokes, and the old Carrie Nation skit revived. The girl who played Carrie seemed to rush her lines but overall a improvement from Mean Murphy. After that hit Fire in the hole and had a corn dog. Gee $8.99 for a corn dog and fries.By this time it was about 2:00 so back up to powerless keg and guess what, It was running, so rode it once then back down to Outlaw run and it wasn't running. By this time the park was getting crowded and warmer so hit the lost river and FM and AP. Checked the app on my phone and saw that OR was running again so we rode it 1 more time. Did some shopping and we had planned on hitting the cave, but it was close to 5 and we were getting hungry. We did not want to dine on theme park food , so out the exit around 5. I tried to be more observant and below are some critical observations.
1. AP,FM, and FITH need some serious refurbs. They are really showing their age and in a bad way. So many elements missing and not working correctly. Please throw some money towards them or bring in the bulldozers and do it over.
2. The park could use a major cleaning. Buildings and queue areas have spider webs and rotten timbers everywhere. Especially Lost River buildings.
3.I do wish they would cover the slush machines and coke vending machines better. They look really out of place.
4. Looked into the new area for 2015 and it was nothing more than a construction site right now. But I sure hope it is more than what is rumored to be. Splash Harbor needs to come down soon or I think it will fall down.
It was a good $30.00 day, but it got me my fill for the year. If the 2015 rumors are true it won't be enough to bring me back in 2015 so hopefully something big is on the horizon.
