Day 9 - Dorney Park

This is a medium-sized park, situated in a fairly open area but also has a pronounced slope. Fine for walking from the front of the park to the back, but hard work when coming the other way especially in these temperatures that had been rising gradually during the course of the trip!

Our early morning 1 hour ERS was split between two splendid coasters, Steel Force and Talon. So half of the group headed off towards one, and the other half to the other. Unfortunately, due to the 15-minute walk between them as they were at opposite ends of the park, and the fact that the ride operators seemed to assume that the ERS had finished while we were swapping over and they let the general public onto the rides early, most of us only managed a handful of rides on one machine and one on the other. However, the park was not very busy generally and so we were able to make up for that later in the day.

[Talon - vertical loop] I tried Talon first. New this year, it's a B&M inverted coaster - at last, the first B&M of the trip! This looks dazzling in its bright colour scheme, and is one of the new breed of B&M's where the normally hollow box-spine had been filled in with sand or some other substance. This makes for such a quiet ride, it's quite eerie. The infamous B&M roar is no more! You could stand with your back to the track and, above the general background noise of the park, you would not know that a train had passed.
[Talon - Immelman] A small coaster, it consists of a swooping first drop, vertical loop, zero-G roll, Immelman, a dive into a bend followed by a corkscrew, then a high-G helix finale. It seemed to be running a bit slow - maybe because it's brand new and the fact it was first thing in the morning. There was even zero G in the zero-G roll, which is unusual as anyone who has ridden Nemesis will know! Another unusual feature for an inverted coaster was the airtime drop after the mid-course brakes. It was also unbelievably smooth, even by B&M standards. Absolutely no headbanging at all, your head remains fixed centrally between the over-the-shoulder restraints throughout all the twists, turns and inversions. Perhaps because of the smoothness, lack of noise, and perceived lack of speed, it seemed to need a bit more intensity, but still an excellent ride and one which will delight many people. The press were out in force again for our ERS, a newspaper somewhere in America contains my name and a quote!

I then walked over to Steel Force which is a Morgan hypercoaster. An almost identical ride to Wild Thing at Valleyfair on the 1999 trip, except that Wild Thing has a more convoluted helix at the far end. This ride also runs with the same smoothness and grace and the absolutely gorgeous floating airtime over every single hill. I had a surreal experience over one of the bunny hops at the end! I had a small bag around my shoulder containing my camera, and at one point the bag relocated itself from by my side and floated in front of my face for several seconds!

[Steel Force - 1st drop profile] [Steel Force - 1st drop close-up] [Steel Force - 2nd hill] [Steel Force - bunny hops] [Steel Force - 1st drop on-board]

Throughout the rest of the day, both Steel Force and Talon were practically walk-on, so I managed many trips on them. It's very unusual to find a B&M with no queue, so I had to make the most of it!

[The Laser] Also in the park is The Laser, a Schwarzkopf Doppel Looper. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of compact steel loopers, but this ones proves that Schwarzkopf is indeed a master. It's a brilliant ride, not exactly smooth, but not painful either. And the trademark high Gs make for a thrilling ride.


The Thunderhawk is a small woodie twister - not much to say about this, it was enjoyable, but I can't really say there was anything outstanding about it. Hercules deserves a mention, even if it's for the roughest woodie on the trip! A much bigger coaster than the Thunderhawk, it's actually braked to death. The first drop after the lift hill sees you heading straight for a lake, with a massive banked corner at the bottom. However, there are brakes all the way over the drop and they don't let go until the front of the train is nearly halfway down. So you trundle along instead of hurtling down, making for some weird hangtime at the top! But it was probably necessary as the ride was very rough and the train was mistracking around all the corners. This ride requires a lot of work doing to it, and then maybe the brakes can be removed and it can become a good ride once again.

[Wild Mouse] A Mack Wild Mouse completes the collection of coasters, and I must also mention the log flume which was quite short but its final drop was unusual in that it was very long and shallow, instead of a short steep drop usually found on log flumes. The park is also home to a wide variety of flat and spin rides.


[Skyscraper] I also had a go on the Skyscraper. I had seen pictures of this type of ride and had always wanted to try one. Adrian saw me eyeing it up and persuaded me to share a ride with him! It's essentially a large rotating propellor of about 180ft in diameter, and on either end is a podule containing two seats that can rotate. It's a low capacity, high thrill ride like Skycoasters, Bungees and Reverse Bungees, so you have to pay extra for it. You are secured in the seats with very tight straps, and then you are whisked up into the sky. The acceleration is enormous, it reaches full speed extremely quickly, and soon you are experiencing extremely high Gs both at the bottom and at the top where you are upside down. The first revolution and the last one when it's slowing down are actually quite scary, as there is not enough centrifugal force to keep the pod upside down at the top, and you start swinging wildly, sometimes you are hanging face first 180ft up in the air! I'm glad I did the ride, and the views were incredible, but the G was just a bit too unrelenting for me. I could feel my cheeks rippling!


Also visit the official Dorney Park web site (some good on-board movies).

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