During my summer-holidays in the US, I also wanted to meet some friends in the „Watkins Woods amusement park". I didn't know very much about it. All I knew was they had a brand-new X-Car coaster from Maurer Söhne in their park. Since I've ridden two of those already, I was very looking forward to it. And they also have a nice Mega coaster called "Fusion", which was placed fourth on the last years steel coaster poll. So this had to be a kick-ass ride too. I was looking forward to 9 new coasters on my list too!

So I stood up very early this day and drove with Stefan and Filippo, two Austrian friends of mine, to the park. The park was very easy to find, many signs along the Interstate which guide you directly to the park. We were pretty surprised the parking lot was that empty, so we were all in a good mood. At 9am we met up with Brian and a crazy guy who names himself "Gee" in front of the park entrance. It's always very difficult to talk with these guys with my bad English.

 So after this introduction we went into the park. The entrance fee is pretty low, just about 25 dollars, which is about 19-20 euros. What caught my attention first was the fact that this was a traditional amusement park, and not a theme park.

The entrance area is pretty charming, with its little lake and the small swinger at the far end of the "main street". Brian told me a bit about the history of the park, because it's his home park and he lives about 30 minutes away.

We locked our backpacks and went to the first area, "The Faire". There were a lot of arcade games throughout this area. I was pleased to hear the Schwarzkopf shuttle loop in the back of the area. The theming of the coaster was pretty nice; it had a good racing atmosphere with the tribune and the traffic lights. We had a walk on to the ride and it was pretty cool. I've never ridden a shuttle loop before, and it ran very smooth. Schwarzkopf knew how to build awesome rides. I was delighted to hear that they had another Schwarzkopf in the park. We took a quick silly group-photo on the podium and went on.

We rode that little Zierer too, for the credit. I always like how dumb people look when you're having fun on such a kiddie coaster.

Our next stop was the Sally dark ride "The old mine". It was pretty fun shooting all these targets and the theming was pretty nice too. But it was damn short. I was hoping the only dark ride in the park being a bit longer, but sadly it was just a one-minute-ride. It was fun nonetheless. I hope the park will build some more rides like this in the near future. We decided to go on the rafting a bit later, because it was still a bit cloudy and cold at that time.

The next stop was finally the well-ranked Mega coaster "Fusion". The colours are awesome on this coaster. I was pretty anxious if this coaster will be better than Expedition GeForce in Germany. Only 5 minutes of waiting-time later we sat in the last 3 rows. Next to Gee there sat some ugly-looking girl who talked to him all the time, and we mucked him all day about that.

The ride itself was awesome. The ejecting airtime at the end of the ride was greatness and the feeling of hitting the next tree was cool too. Not as good as the GeForce, but still an awesome ride - my new number 3 on the steel coaster poll. (Right after Katun and the GeForce)

Then we headed to "Sacrifice", a S&S Sky swatter, the first one I've ever ridden. It was a very intense ride, but I think the ride looks a bit like a crane, which is a bit ugly imo. But the theming around it was simplistic but very well done. The operating booth was nicely embedded in some rocks.

On the way to the next coaster, called "Rustler", Brian did the "Climb the ladder" arcade game, and we were all impressed he really made it. He won a very funny-looking elephant, which he carried around the whole day. Rustler's station looked pretty nice. It was a big American barn, which I only know from movies. The ride itself was pretty nice. My first Arrow suspended and I didn't expect very much from it. I especially liked the whole "trick-track" layout of it. 

During the ride I noticed a "Topple tower" in the middle of one helix. I was pretty surprised they've build this ride this year too. I did know about the X-Car, but not about that one. So we took a quick ride and it was pretty fun. The near-misses with the coaster track are very exciting. You always get the impression to hit the track every minute. The ride looks similar to the one in Dollywood. The fountains were a bit low, but we were actually quite happy not to get wet anyways. I think the ride is a bit misplaced at a dead-end of the park. So I think that not many guests will notice this new ride. 

Our next ride was "Blaze", a very rough and short Arrow corkscrew coaster. I wasn't pretty impressed by the ride, because it was very bumpy and rough, you really feel the age of the coaster somehow. The path-interaction was pretty cool though.

The clouds mainly disappeared as we moved to "Venom", the second Schwarzkopf in the park. And it has no OTSRs! The coaster was very good. It just has one loop, but the twists and curves are much fun to ride.

It was around 1pm when we headed to the charming little Restaurant called "Ruby Tuesday". As we finished our meal and were about to head to the door, guess who came across to speak to Gee? Exactly, it was the ugly girl from our ride on Fusion. Gee was pretty nervous and embarrassed, as we were laughing behind the girls' back. She really asked for Gee's mobile number, but smart as he is, he told her the wrong number. Poor ugly girl.

However, we then went to the first water ride, to digest our fine meals. So we went to the "Cottonmouth Falls", my first Hopkins log flume. Before we went on the ride, Stefan and Filippo decided to buy some silly hats. I was surprised to see hats with Mickey Mouse ears in a non-Disney park. Stefan bought a "I'm with stupid"-cap and Filippo melted at the sight of the Jester-hat. What a waste of money.

The log flume was fun, nothing special but fun. It was not as wet as we wanted it to be, so we went to the next water ride, "Airboat chaser". Now that was more like it. We were completely soaked. Brian knew the ride, so he waited outside the ride holding our backpacks. The whole ride has a nice Florida-swamp feel. We had much fun as we dragged Gee on the soaking-zone and he screeched funnily.

The next ride we went on was the Disk-O Coaster called "Delirious". I've just ridden the normal Zamperla Disk-O, and I must say it's not very different to this one. Sometimes the restraints squeeze a bit too much in the back, but the ride was much fun.

Then we headed to the Vekoma Custom SLC "Siege". I must say this was a pretty cool ride. I've just ridden some standard SLCs, but this one was very cool. It was a bit rough, but the layout is very well thought out. It's nicely embedded in the area and has very cool colours. One of the better rides of the park I think.

Then we went on "Gauntlet", an Intamin Drop tower. Not the highest of its kind but still very intense. After we rode it, it suddenly broke down. So we were quite lucky. Hopefully it wasn't our fault the ride broke down.

The next stop was the classic wooden coaster "Big Dipper". It's over 80 years old now. Wow - I think I've never ridden such an old ride which is so good, very great Airtime on this one. I thought I'd fly out of the car every minute. What flew out of the car was Brian's Elephant. He really sat next to this damn elephant, as he insisted to do so. We laughed really hard as the stuffed animal flew out of the first hill.

Our next ride was the second S&S ride in the park, a screaming swing called "Soarin' Eagle". It's not as intense as the Sky swatter, but damn that thing was really fast! There are not many rides like this in Europe, so it's really nice to experience so many unusual rides in just one park.

After that we went into the Arcade, right next to the Big Dipper. We played some DDR, but I really suck at this game, I always act like a jerk on that thing. So we were all laughing really hard during that game. We spent nearly half an hour just playing it.

After that we went back to the Rafting ride, because it nearly was dusk. It wasn't as wet as the Spillwater though. Filippo's hat flew away as a water cannon shot some water from the side. That was so much fun, he really was sad because of his hat, although that hat was ugly as hell.

So we went on to our last ride of the day. And I was really looking forward to ride this thing, The X-Car coaster "Avalanche". We only waited 5-10 minutes to get a ride. We had a very nice sunset while we were going up that humpty-dumpty lifthill. It was such an awesome experience. The ride itself is very smooth and intense, especially the bunny-hop with it's intense curve. I was surprised by the second inversion; I've never ridden such a combination before. The queue line placement is great too. We made 4-5 rides and then the park closed. Avalanche is a great addition to the park, it's not as good as Fusion but still a very nice ride.

After some shopping we went to the park exit to finish this great day at the Watkins Woods Amusement park.

So we said goodbye to Gee and Brian and we drove back to our motel.

It's rumoured that the park will build an Intamin Accelerator in the near future, so I'm hoping I'll come back soon to this nice park!

Thanks to Gee and Brian for spending the day with us!