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A late visit to Canobie
My kid is home from the summer but has a summer job that often gives her weekend hours and time off when I'm at work, so any time off we can all have together is precious. Today she didn't have to go in super early and had reduced hours, so it made sense to do something after work, and we made our first visit of the year to our home amusement park, Canobie Lake Park, which reminded us how nice a place it is.
Not everything about it is perfect. It being a fairly hot day, we spent the first part of the afternoon at Canobie's waterpark, Castaway Island, which despite being doubled in size a few years ago is still too small for the demand and inevitably slammed on a day like this.
This was the first time I successfully rode all the way around Castaway Island's small "tidal river" attraction, sort of a wave pool/lazy river hybrid, which I think I am just too physically large a person to comfortably enjoy, at least on a day when it's that crowded. At least they did have some tubes that were big enough for me to float on (unlike some previous visits), but these tubes were in short supply and I kept having to pull my limbs in to keep from hurting somebody. We wanted to try the big tube waterslides at the center of this attraction, but things just seemed to be moving so slowly and chaotically that it was unclear if we'd even be able to get a tube to ride on. I think they need more staff here and more rules.
We got wet from the various water-dumping apparatuses around their slide play structure instead, then went to ride the log flume and get wet some more. Some interesting discussions ensued of the relative scariness of roller-coaster drops, which are more intense but have you wearing some kind of restraint, versus a flume like Canobie's where you have none. For some reason, when I was a kid, I was terrified of roller coasters but I found flume drops like this (bigger ones, actually!) no big deal. But for my peeps it's the opposite. Here's Canobie Coaster's off-ride footage:
The highlight of the day, though, after some relaxing family rides, was getting them on Canobie's vintage cheeseball horror dark ride, The Mine of Lost Souls. I'd ridden this years ago with my brother-in-law but it was my wife and kid's first time. I didn't spoil them for the utterly WTF plot twist that happens toward the end. Here's Haunts and Amusements' excellent ride-through (content note: video does contain flashing lights):
Not sure I'd call it terrifying but it's certainly confusing.
My kid wasn't up to riding Yankee Cannonball today but I did want to get in a ride on a big coaster, so as it was getting dark I got in a ride on Untamed, Canobie's Gerstlauer Eurofighter 320+ looping coaster, with its beyond-vertical drop into three inversions. I have an unreasonable home-park love for this little coaster and unlike Yankee Cannonball, I can always get on Untamed in just a few minutes with the single-rider line, so it's a great one to just knock off in any available snippet of time. As I was getting off, the whole midway was lighting up and it was a nice thing to see. This video by Front Seat POVs was taken during the day, but it gives you the basic idea:
We wound up the day with a twilight drive on the vintage Arrow car ride, the Canobie 500. A fun time all around.
Not everything about it is perfect. It being a fairly hot day, we spent the first part of the afternoon at Canobie's waterpark, Castaway Island, which despite being doubled in size a few years ago is still too small for the demand and inevitably slammed on a day like this.
This was the first time I successfully rode all the way around Castaway Island's small "tidal river" attraction, sort of a wave pool/lazy river hybrid, which I think I am just too physically large a person to comfortably enjoy, at least on a day when it's that crowded. At least they did have some tubes that were big enough for me to float on (unlike some previous visits), but these tubes were in short supply and I kept having to pull my limbs in to keep from hurting somebody. We wanted to try the big tube waterslides at the center of this attraction, but things just seemed to be moving so slowly and chaotically that it was unclear if we'd even be able to get a tube to ride on. I think they need more staff here and more rules.
We got wet from the various water-dumping apparatuses around their slide play structure instead, then went to ride the log flume and get wet some more. Some interesting discussions ensued of the relative scariness of roller-coaster drops, which are more intense but have you wearing some kind of restraint, versus a flume like Canobie's where you have none. For some reason, when I was a kid, I was terrified of roller coasters but I found flume drops like this (bigger ones, actually!) no big deal. But for my peeps it's the opposite. Here's Canobie Coaster's off-ride footage:
The highlight of the day, though, after some relaxing family rides, was getting them on Canobie's vintage cheeseball horror dark ride, The Mine of Lost Souls. I'd ridden this years ago with my brother-in-law but it was my wife and kid's first time. I didn't spoil them for the utterly WTF plot twist that happens toward the end. Here's Haunts and Amusements' excellent ride-through (content note: video does contain flashing lights):
Not sure I'd call it terrifying but it's certainly confusing.
My kid wasn't up to riding Yankee Cannonball today but I did want to get in a ride on a big coaster, so as it was getting dark I got in a ride on Untamed, Canobie's Gerstlauer Eurofighter 320+ looping coaster, with its beyond-vertical drop into three inversions. I have an unreasonable home-park love for this little coaster and unlike Yankee Cannonball, I can always get on Untamed in just a few minutes with the single-rider line, so it's a great one to just knock off in any available snippet of time. As I was getting off, the whole midway was lighting up and it was a nice thing to see. This video by Front Seat POVs was taken during the day, but it gives you the basic idea:
We wound up the day with a twilight drive on the vintage Arrow car ride, the Canobie 500. A fun time all around.
no subject
Food
I would go so far as to say that Canobie is far and away the regional winner for everything other than big-ticket rides and waterpark attractions. They've got the best food, the best shows, the best games, the best landscaping and maybe even theming (well, the kiddie-oriented Story Land and Santa's Village probably beat them on theming). They're even really strong on kiddie rides and spinny flat rides. That helps make up for the severe limits the neighborhood puts on big thrill rides, and the inadequate size of the waterpark. The latter is the thing they can probably fix--they've got that empty plot of land where the Canobie Corkscrew used to be just waiting for another expansion of Castaway Island. But they haven't done it yet.