Myrtle Beach
First of all, a hearty thanks to those who responded so kindly to my first extensive trip report. I'd say the most fun I had was reading what you all had to say about it, but the truth is that the most fun I had was writing it in the first place. For those who felt I missed out on the joy of Kennywood and its classic rides, I believe you, and I hope to be back to prove you right. For those who demanded I take back my harsh words about Magnum, well, we can agree to disagree, and I beg your forgiveness. As I said, I know it's one of the world's finest, so I can only continue to assume that I am wrong.
But that's old news. Like I said, this is a story of perspective.
This is also a trip report. In fact, this is two trip reports in one. Before my epic 5-day trip, and before I had an inkling that I'd ever see Millennium Force outside the bounds of a tape-recorded edu-tainment special on cable television, I visited Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The fact that my mother lives there provides me the opportunity to swing by on occasion and take in several free rounds of golf on her local country club, complete with the intense aggravation, frustration and misery with which that privelege comes ready to bear. Turns out, for me, the only addiction stronger than the pleasure of riding coasters is the pain of playing golf. Avoid this at all costs, if possible. Golf is to be feared and hated.
But there I go getting away from the point of this trip report again. You're supposed to stop me when I do that!
At any rate, there I found myself in Myrtle Beach, and don't you know that with the endless buffet of lazy hours that a computer programming job affords one, one was able to surf the net and dig up information about the Best New Thing to hit Myrtle Beach this summer. This would be the "Hurricane" coaster. Get it? The coaster's named after a natural phenomenon which, almost every year, destroys hundreds of homes in the area and renders thousands of people without shelter or any semblance of the lives they've built for their families! Perhaps not the most tasteful choice of moniker, but they named the hockey team the same thing, so if it doesn't bother them, it doesn't bother me.
Regardless, I dragged my forgiving host and mother (who also happened to be the only one in the area I knew that had a Mustang convertible) to the Pavilion for a few hours of fun. And fun we had.
At five tickets/four dollars a pop, we hit the Hurricane about four times before we ran out of tickets and were down to the "half priced cotton candy" coupons. And you had better believe that I knew all the right words to say, too. This ride had speed! And airtime! And helixes! CCI! Steel-support! It was fast and wild and thrill-a-minute hold onto your lapbar fun! Yay! And look, when you're right at the top of the lift hill, and you look waaaay over to your right, about a mile away or so you can even see some other cute little wooden coaster all by its lonesome, far, far down Ocean Boulevard! Is this great or what?!
All the right words, no doubt. A real coaster Enthusiast (TM) would have been proud. But that cute little wooden coaster down the road just never got out of my head.
And a couple of days later, we made one more trip down, just to see what that little charmer of an old workhorse coaster had in store.
This was my perspective then. I had just been on the first representative of the new team to hit the block. Move over, you crusty, curmugeony old-timers, high-tech ass-kicker is the new sherriff, and there ain't room enough in this town for the two of us. And approaching Swamp Fox's platform, I saw the sign... "Eighth Best Wooden Coaster in America!"
I hated it already.
Nothing like pretentious, self-serving, arbitrarily derived accolades to set me on edge. I'll decide what's the eighth best coaster, thank you very much. Plus, obviously, this ride was pitiful. Half the height of Hurricane at best, it just went out, and back, and turned around, and stopped. I guess it must have been cute before the Real Coaster showed up. Now, as I suspected it would have been, the ride was deserted, left for the wistful few who decided to pay the thing its last respects before it rumbled its way into vestigial obsolesence.
So I rode it. It was fun, sure. Even my mom seemed to get a kick out of it. But from every hill and every turn, I could see the Hurricane way over there, rushing boldly through the nighttime air tinged with oceanic humidity, preening for all the vacationing world to see.
From then on, my mind was made up, and I could see the reviews writing themselves. The brash, rockin' upstart Hurricane, and the quaint, pitiable old Swamp Fox.
But this is a story of perspective.
There are two ways to drink wine: for the means, or for the end. Any old fool can grab themselves a bottle of Chateau Le FooFoo '68 and slug it down straight from the bottle on a Friday night to get properly tanked up before the Monster Truck Rally. But there's usually a reason that bottle cost the old fool $150. Some high-falutin' types in their fancy Armanis are in the next room, sipping that same wine from bowl glasses the size of basketballs, talking about oaky bouquets, and undertones of chocolate and ripe berries and a hint of coffee in the finish. So you see, sometimes there's more to be enjoyed in a wine than the buzz, as long as you have the experience and perspicacity to find it. The same can be said, it turns out, for coasters.
I then went on my big five day trip and grabbed myself some of that experience, and tried to hone a little of that perspicacity. No longer would I just be impressed by how new, or tall, or fast a coaster was. (Well, with one very notable exception, which will remain nameless heretofore in this report, except to say that it vaguely rhymes with "Aluminum Horse".) So it was with this new knowledge, this new perspective, that I headed back to Myrtle Beach for more golf (ugh), and to revisit these two coasters to see if maybe I missed something.
I did. And both of the ratings I gave to the rides changed fairly drastically, one for the worse, one for the much better. So without further rambling, borderline-incomprehensible metaphoric overture, here are my Hurricane/Swamp Fox reviews:
Hurricane (+2.5) -- Officially titled "Hurricane: Force 5", or "Hurricane: Category 5", or "Hurricane: Five-O" or something, this is no doubt the most impressive structure on the Myrtle Beach coast. You can see it from the left side of the airplane if you take off from the airport heading east. And the experience was almost as impressive the first time I rode it. But a funny thing, every time since then that I've ridden it, I've liked it less and less. There's nothing particularly "wrong" with it, you see, but here's my main problem. Half of the ride is helices. One at the far end for the turnaround, one before coming into the station. Now, I'm not a big fan of woodie helices to begin with. I find them nerve-wracking at best (Wild One, SFA) and tiresome most of the other time. So it's in Hurricane's helices that I find myself most often waiting for it to be over so we can get on with the ride. But there's just not that much left of the ride. The trip out is the highlight, with good air over the first three hills, and a couple more good hops coming back, but that's pretty much it, save for the helices. And these helices, while not as intense as the aforementioned Wild One, are made significantly more uncomfortable by the narrow lapbars on the Gerstlauer trains. (Christ, I just said "Gerstlauer trains". Now I'm officially a supergeek.) I want to raise my hands, but I just can't, because it'll hurt too much. So I just hang on and wait for it to end. The only other unfortunate thing about the Hurricane is that the big hill is facing the street, rather than the other way, which would face the beach. What a wonderful view that would have been. Great White, in Wildwood, while not a fabulous ride, is significantly enhanced by the view of the ocean as you crest the first few hills. Hurricane gets no such help. I suppose it was for space constriction reasons or somesuch, but it's still a shame. I know this review has been primarily complaints, but it's still a fun enough ride to make me want to go back on as soon as I get off. Just not as enthusiastically as I would have liked.
Swamp Fox (+4) -- What a difference a couple of weeks makes. This ride is smaller, older, slower, and shorter than Hurricane, by substantial margins. What I realized on my return trip, however, was that it also accomplishes a level of near-perfection which I had yet to experience on a small/mid-sized classic out-and-back like this. Oh, it's short alright. A few hills out, a few hills back, and you're done. But it is an absolute joy throughout the entire, all-too-brief trip. Air over every hill, with serious stand-you-up ejection from the back, particularly over the third hill entering the turnaround. This ride is fun incarnate. I defy any of you here to ride this and not get off the train smiling. It really deserves to be an ACE classic, and I'm sure removing the seat dividers wouldn't change the ride a bit, given the nearly non-existent laterals. But no matter, it's just a good thing that it exists at all. Given the quality of the ride itself, it's also a pleasure to point out that it is probably the most photogenic rollercoaster I've ever seen. Particularly at night, the ivory white of the structure, with its raspberry and Key lime highlights gracing the sides like a troupe of playful paintbrushes blew through the scene, along with the flags adorning the turnaround and the lighting over every single inch of track make for one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in a long time.
Swamp Fox ain't long, no, but it does almost everything you could ask for in a coaster of this size and stature, and does it right.
And as I left the park for the last time, I looked back at that sign outside the 'Fox, proudly proclaiming it the eighth best wooden coaster in America, and started to wonder if maybe they had a point.
This is a story of perspective.