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Some fun at Lake Compounce
Aug. 7th, 2022 08:26 pmI still haven't been back to Canobie since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but last year we managed to get over to Six Flags New England, and yesterday we hit Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut, on tickets I got as a birthday present. This is a park I'd been to and enjoyed a couple of times before--our last visit was on the way home from a longer trip, and was cut short by an immense traffic jam that delayed our arrival for hours. That time, the most memorable moments of the visit were the Compounce Mountain sky ride, and riding the raft ride, Thunder Rapids, three times straight through resulting in extreme drenching. This time, the sky ride is sadly no longer around and Thunder Rapids is not operating for some reason. But we had a great time anyway.
I had several reasons to think it would be kind of a messed-up visit, but this did not happen. The weather predictions in the previous week seemed to be calling for either showers and thunderstorms, or punishing heat, but it was actually just partly cloudy and hot enough to make it fun to get wet. Pretty much ideal amusement-park weather, as long as you used some sunscreen and stayed hydrated, and I think the ominous predictions kept the crowds down.
Then when we arrived, it seemed like most of the major rides in the park were closed, including Boulder Dash, the colossal mountainside wooden coaster that is many visitors' main reason to visit Compounce. Actually, nearly all of those rides opened up a little later in the day. I'm wondering if some of the "everything was closed!" Yelp reviews I've seen were people fooled by a similar phenomenon.
My main must-rides were the new one (well, it's 6 years old, but my last visit was before that), Phobia Phear Coaster, and Boulder Dash. I also wanted to get rides on a couple that I'd never gotten around to riding: their classic Arrow flume Saw Mill Plunge, and their cheeseball shooting dark ride, Ghost Hunt. We all started off riding some gentle family rides together (the antique carousel, the bumper cars and the little "Zoomer's Gas and Go" cars), then the others went off to the waterpark and I went to tackle Phobia.
Here's CoasterForce's POV video of the ridiculously named Phobia Phear Coaster. It's a short but good ride, a popular off-the-shelf coaster model from Premier called a Sky Rocket II. Both of the Busch Gardens parks have similar rides--at this little park, it really stands out, a loop within a loop about 150 feet tall. The track is twisted so that the loops don't invert you--but there's also a roll inversion at the very top, the one place where you do go upside down.
It's a launch coaster with three magnetic LSM launches. You launch forward with enough energy to just go up a little way and fall back, then backward with almost but not quite enough energy to make the smaller non-inverting loop (I love the drama of this), then forward to go all the way over the top and around the track. The heartline roll slowly dangles you upside down over 150 feet of air (held in by nothing but a lap restraint), then you plunge and twist forcefully down into the non-inverting loop. You shoot through the station, make one last partial climb up the first rise, then settle back down into the station.
The twists in the track have some real whip to them, and if this coaster had hard over-the-shoulder restraints, it would be a painful headbanging machine. Fortunately it does not. Most installations in the US do have a soft "comfort collar" hated by coaster fans, which is presumably there to provide some psychological reassurance to guests, but this one doesn't, I suppose because psychological reassurance is the opposite of this ride's theme. I personally found it not unusually terrifying (from prior experience, I have faith in the ability of a secure lap bar to hold me in, which I guess is the main fear element here) but it was solid and forceful, a ride that did not mess around.
After getting off Phobia, I noticed that Boulder Dash was running. I took a break to compose myself and find a water-bottle-filling station (at the Johnny Rockets by the carousel), then headed for the park's signature ride.
This is East Coasters' fairly recent POV of Boulder Dash. I have to say, even with recent re-profiling work this ride was running rougher than I remembered it being, jackhammering actually pretty hard. That may have been a function of the seat I was sitting in, or maybe my tastes just became more delicate with age. But it is an absolutely overwhelming assault on the senses, still one of the wildest coasters I've ever ridden. There is not a lot of strong airtime--it's more powerful positive G-forces kicking you in the butt in the valleys, laterals on the screaming turnaround at the far end, combined with all that shaking and a scary sense of out-of-control speed as you hurtle through the woods and along the lake. I'm just not sure how many times I could take it. Maybe if I was still 25.
After getting my fill of the monster rides, I joined up with my folks again and we rode the lazy river at the waterpark and got a late lunch. My spouse wanted to do the park's big family raft waterslide, Mammoth Falls, which we'd never done before. That was a fun one; much of it is twists and turns in a dark tube and I was facing backwards through this, so it kind of reminded me of the backwards helix on Disney's Expedition Everest. Then we joined up with our daughter again and did the shooting dark ride, Ghost Hunt, immortalized by Airtime Cinema here:
All I can say is, the kid was the most skillful ghost-hunter of the family by a huge margin.
The classic Arrow flume, Saw Mill Plunge, was one of the rides that was initially closed. We only noticed that it was running right at the end of the day when we were about to leave, and the others didn't care to ride it, so I declined a solo ride. Maybe next time.
I had several reasons to think it would be kind of a messed-up visit, but this did not happen. The weather predictions in the previous week seemed to be calling for either showers and thunderstorms, or punishing heat, but it was actually just partly cloudy and hot enough to make it fun to get wet. Pretty much ideal amusement-park weather, as long as you used some sunscreen and stayed hydrated, and I think the ominous predictions kept the crowds down.
Then when we arrived, it seemed like most of the major rides in the park were closed, including Boulder Dash, the colossal mountainside wooden coaster that is many visitors' main reason to visit Compounce. Actually, nearly all of those rides opened up a little later in the day. I'm wondering if some of the "everything was closed!" Yelp reviews I've seen were people fooled by a similar phenomenon.
My main must-rides were the new one (well, it's 6 years old, but my last visit was before that), Phobia Phear Coaster, and Boulder Dash. I also wanted to get rides on a couple that I'd never gotten around to riding: their classic Arrow flume Saw Mill Plunge, and their cheeseball shooting dark ride, Ghost Hunt. We all started off riding some gentle family rides together (the antique carousel, the bumper cars and the little "Zoomer's Gas and Go" cars), then the others went off to the waterpark and I went to tackle Phobia.
Here's CoasterForce's POV video of the ridiculously named Phobia Phear Coaster. It's a short but good ride, a popular off-the-shelf coaster model from Premier called a Sky Rocket II. Both of the Busch Gardens parks have similar rides--at this little park, it really stands out, a loop within a loop about 150 feet tall. The track is twisted so that the loops don't invert you--but there's also a roll inversion at the very top, the one place where you do go upside down.
It's a launch coaster with three magnetic LSM launches. You launch forward with enough energy to just go up a little way and fall back, then backward with almost but not quite enough energy to make the smaller non-inverting loop (I love the drama of this), then forward to go all the way over the top and around the track. The heartline roll slowly dangles you upside down over 150 feet of air (held in by nothing but a lap restraint), then you plunge and twist forcefully down into the non-inverting loop. You shoot through the station, make one last partial climb up the first rise, then settle back down into the station.
The twists in the track have some real whip to them, and if this coaster had hard over-the-shoulder restraints, it would be a painful headbanging machine. Fortunately it does not. Most installations in the US do have a soft "comfort collar" hated by coaster fans, which is presumably there to provide some psychological reassurance to guests, but this one doesn't, I suppose because psychological reassurance is the opposite of this ride's theme. I personally found it not unusually terrifying (from prior experience, I have faith in the ability of a secure lap bar to hold me in, which I guess is the main fear element here) but it was solid and forceful, a ride that did not mess around.
After getting off Phobia, I noticed that Boulder Dash was running. I took a break to compose myself and find a water-bottle-filling station (at the Johnny Rockets by the carousel), then headed for the park's signature ride.
This is East Coasters' fairly recent POV of Boulder Dash. I have to say, even with recent re-profiling work this ride was running rougher than I remembered it being, jackhammering actually pretty hard. That may have been a function of the seat I was sitting in, or maybe my tastes just became more delicate with age. But it is an absolutely overwhelming assault on the senses, still one of the wildest coasters I've ever ridden. There is not a lot of strong airtime--it's more powerful positive G-forces kicking you in the butt in the valleys, laterals on the screaming turnaround at the far end, combined with all that shaking and a scary sense of out-of-control speed as you hurtle through the woods and along the lake. I'm just not sure how many times I could take it. Maybe if I was still 25.
After getting my fill of the monster rides, I joined up with my folks again and we rode the lazy river at the waterpark and got a late lunch. My spouse wanted to do the park's big family raft waterslide, Mammoth Falls, which we'd never done before. That was a fun one; much of it is twists and turns in a dark tube and I was facing backwards through this, so it kind of reminded me of the backwards helix on Disney's Expedition Everest. Then we joined up with our daughter again and did the shooting dark ride, Ghost Hunt, immortalized by Airtime Cinema here:
All I can say is, the kid was the most skillful ghost-hunter of the family by a huge margin.
The classic Arrow flume, Saw Mill Plunge, was one of the rides that was initially closed. We only noticed that it was running right at the end of the day when we were about to leave, and the others didn't care to ride it, so I declined a solo ride. Maybe next time.