Magic Springs lies about 50 miles from the state capital Little Rock, it originally opened in the 70s but closed in 1995 when the owners ran out of cash. Five years later the park re-opened under new ownership and has been thriving ever since.
We arrived nice and early for a morning ERS on a couple of their rides. The car park didn't appear to have a section for coaches but being the first in we took dibs on the available spaces.
A nice welcome from the park, in fact there were plenty of greeting signs for us including the large freeway side one on the way in.
Within the same site is Crystal Falls the water park, which I didn't make too much use of other than using as a short cut to get from one side of the park to the other.
Had I not been overly tyred I might have given it a go!
That is the X-Coaster a launched single loop track that shares the record with a small park in Germany for having the highest inversion. That record for years stood with the crazy loop on Viper at Magic Mountain, up until these appeared. We were quite looking forward to riding this however a few days before we arrived one of the components on the lift system failed and the replacement wouldn't arrive until we'd left. C'est la vie.
Instead the park offered us an ERS on Arkansas Twister, a really nice out-and-back wooden coaster. It used to reside in Florida before being relocated in 1992.
One of the reasons that the park has begun to thrive is due to this music venue that was built about 5 years ago. Employing the mantra "if you build it they will come" seems to have paid off for the park. The first act to play here was apparently Shaggy he of the classic "Mr Boombastic", although if you asked him who was first he'd probably respond "It wasn't me".
Teacups are given a car theme. I wouldn't want to be the traffic cop in the centre. Perhaps better to bring in one of Mexican policewomen.
I prefer parks that have shade, which this one did. Much better than the ones in Texas where getting respite proved difficult.
Twist n Shout is the parks mouse coaster hat I'm going to remember for one bit where I was launched into the lap bar so hard I thought I'd snapped my thigh bone.
Really really powerful ejector airtime, but I was alright once I'd got out of the car.
Diamond Mine coaster is a little kiddy ride. Whilst a more pleasant ride than Twist n Shout it wasn't as memorable.
The park's carousel.
The park's splash ride and in the background Gauntlet, the SLC that we were also given in the morning to ride for an hour. Yes, it's an SLC and who would want to ride that more than once......hmm?
Gauntlet was originally due to go to a park in New Orleans but when the sale fell through this park snapped it up. SLCs have such a bad reputation but I actually find them alright, which I proved here by being able to ride this 10 times consecutively, something that most people in the group found a little nuts. So to help you all out here's my guide to riding SLCs.1) Keep your head back. This is paramount for these rides where, not having much space it's easy to get bashed against it. If you keep your head pushed back then you take away the lateral motion that can hurt.
2) The handlebars for these rides are attached to the over the shoulder restraint in a V formation and you're expected to hold onto them by bringing your hands up to them from below and holding from underneath as if you were lifting weights. Don't do this, instead bring your hands over the top of the handlebar as if you were riding a bike. Doing this drops the shoulders so giving a little freedom within the restraint. I call this the "Harley Grip"
3) Rev the handlebars like a motorbike whilst the ride is running. Although it makes you look pretty stupid it actually focuses you onto doing something other than worrying about your head taking a pasting, and you'll come off the ride smiling for acting like a twat rather than in pain because you let the ride beat you up.
4) Ride it more than once. This is the hardest step to overcome especially if you got hurt on the first run. The human body quickly learns and adapts and you'll find you'll have the layout learnt pretty quickly making subsequent rides easier.
Who smokes with their feet? People with no arms of course, but you don't have to worry about them as they're harmless.
Watson Falls is a small ornamental water feature built in honour of Bob Watson, one of the park's employees. He must have done something pretty good to have been given such an honour.
Big Bad John is a large mine coaster built in honour of John Jones, one of the park's employees. I don't think he did anything good to have got the moniker "Big Bad" (actually I made that all up). In the UK we had adverts for a bleach that used the slogan "Big Bad Dom" based on the country song by Jimmy Dean from which this ride takes its name.
The ride, whilst being hard to photo because it goes away from the accessible areas, wasn't too bad.
Is this guy riding the rocket or humping it?
A list of the bands due to play at the park. Morris Day and The Time was the surprise act as I hadn't realised they were still around. Famous for being Prince's backing band I had heard some of their tracks being played in several parks previously visited as well as here.For the same reason it was a surprise to see Spin Doctors too. I bet they're still singing that "Two Princes", name me another.
On leaving the park we made our way out of Arkansas into Missouri to Celebration City.
Not sure what happened here, carnage en route.
Celebration City is located in Branson Missouri and is paired with Silver Dollar City that we would be visiting tomorrow. SDC is the daytime park and this is the evening park and you can travel between the two on some amphibious vehicles. But as we were doing them the other way around we wouldn't get to ride them.
No confusion over concealed and unconcealed here, although its not clear if a water pistol is considered a firearm.
One of those giant spinning marbles that people always try to spin so fast in the hope it'll dismount and crush young children.
Lots of coverage again meant that I was liking this park early on. The theming didn't look too bad either.
Liking the 50's vibe spoiled only by there being a perimeter wall between this and the car park that prevents you actually driving in.
In fact the 50s theming was around the park, not just at the diner.
That's Thunderbolt, a weird and slightly noisy coaster.
Unlike every other park on the trip so far that relied on a local workforce, this one had a lot of foreign students working. The Thunderbolt ride had 2 chinese girls running it under the tutorage of a senior manager. They were ever so polite, which led me to believe they hadn't been in the US for long.
Jack Rabbit looks like someone decided to build their own coaster out of Meccano.
and as such lacks the sensibilities found in most. It's a little insane, which makes it fun.
Guys waiting for their insurance paperwork to be complete before giving the OK to ride.
The park claims to have the Ultimate Dog Show and include a dog catching a frisbee. I would challenge this as that's what all dogs do. Many years ago I visited a park in Germany who's animal show was so bad that their couldn't catch a frisbee and they even had audience members throw them only to watch it bounce of his face. That to me is the ultimate show.
Onto the Ozark Wildcat, the park's wooden coaster a ride I'd known nothing about.
It certainly looked impressive, I'm just wondering how it rode, and I wasn't disappointed.
A nice twisty track with some great pops of airtime, the best bit being a triple jump section towards the end. It looked like the ERS was going to be great!
A strange robot punching game where you drive around and thrown uppercuts at the opponents head to score points.
One of those Mistral rides and with trees around we did of course do our damnest to hit them. Like the disk-o at Zuma having things come close to the ride makes it more interesting.
The park has a magic shop, which is a little bit different. It was closed though but then when I looked back it was open and a rabbit was coming out of the entrance.
Bow down before the Creepy Cymbal Monkey
At the end of the night the park put on a music and light spectacular not too dissimilar to the one at Fiesta Texas. However one part of this that I did like was the projection of You've Been Framed clips up on the rock wall. Being a fan of schadenfreude I love those shows and I'd have quite happily watched an extended version of that.Finally with the public clearing out we were allowed to ride the Wildcat for an hour. I didn't take any photos as I was too busy riding, when my stomach let me that is. The ride as expected was great but the ride ops, clearly unfamiliar with ERSs killed the atmosphere and caused some upset within some of the group.
Celebration city was an OK park, not too big and with a couple of good/unique rides.
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