Date: 6/19/2020-6/21/2020Destination: Branson, Missouri, USA
Goal: Silver Dollar City, Runaway Mountain Coaster
Distance: 10 Hours
Means of Travel: Rental Car
Potential Credits: 2
Flashback to National Roller Coaster Day of 2017, a pivotal day in 2010's amusement industry when a whopping five new coasters for 2018 were announced, including notorious Steel Vengeance. Aside from RMC's magnus opum, also to be unveiled that day were Twisted Timbers, Railblazer, Hangtime, and outside the Cedar Fair chain, Time Traveler. Time Traveler I remember being the only one to really let anyone down, with everyone having seen potential for a big bad Mack launcher like the American Helix, but instead we got what looked like some gimmicky spinner, wasting that awesome plot of real estate for a GP magnet that could have instead been home to one of the best coasters in the country. But it opened up next year and everyone seemed to really love it, so riding it was an idea I warmed up to. And then when I rode Copperhead Strike last May, I knew I would be in for something special, having acquired a whole new level of respect for Mack Rides.
My buddy Drew and I planned to start our 2020 seasons with this great American road trip back in March, traveling along the path of the old Route 66 to this beautiful park for his first ride on Outlaw Run, and both of our first rides on Time Traveler. However, this trip sadly had to be pushed back three months due to COVID-19. As we sat in quarantine, the trip sat in limbo, wondering when Silver Dollar City would ever open back up...and it did! The night it was announced the park would be open again, Drew and I scrambled to book hotels, get tickets, and reserve our visit date. Our bro trip was on!
Day 1
I was supposed to work that Friday but in a spur of quick thinking, I got half the day off using vacation time so we could get on the road early. Our destination that night was Rolla, Missouri, an hour from St. Louis and the perfect place to stop on the way to the park after most of the drive was out of the way. So I got off work at noon, snagged the rental car, snagged Drew, and we headed on the road!
We knew it was going to be one of those trips when we went to the Popeye's in Drew's town and got the worst service ever. We get to the drive thru and mention we've got two orders, sometimes that's doable sometimes it's not. But then we rudely get "Y'all can come in then." So we go in, we order, and there's hand sanitizer so I clean my hands before I eat. And then the girl from the kitchen barks at me "stop pumping that that shit smells like ass!" Drew even went as far as to tip just because he was afraid they would spit in our food.
So we got our Popeye's and headed out on the road. Indiana was pretty much all traffic but it cleared up as we got further and further from civilization, crossing into Illinois. With the riots going on we had made it a point to not stop in or around St. Louis for any reason. We got gas before we got near the city limits, when I experienced the culture shock going from Ohio to southern Illinois during COVID-19. The fairly controlled and safe environment I had been quarantined in for a quarter of the year had gone out the window. No social distance markers on the floor of the travel stop, Drew and I were the only two masks in the store, and we even got a few dirty looks for it. It's like the virus didn't exist to them. So we got what we needed done and got back in the car, with the goal being to go straight through to Rolla, not putting our feet on the ground until we hit our destination. So we navigated the maze that is the St. Louis highway system and our Route 66 road trip began! Driving through the rolling hills of Missouri at dusk alongside the historic Mother Road was an incredible road trip experience, and we even made our goal of making it to Rolla by nightfall. However, things took a much darker turn once we got there...
Rolla, a former Route 66 town that almost stereotypically feels like the generic road trip stop for the night, was picked because we thought it was far enough from St. Louis to not be affected by the tense political situation we're dealing with in these uncertain times. Boy were we wrong! Turns out it was way too close to Ferguson to feel safe. It looked like COVID-19 quarantine all over again, most businesses were closed, several had barricaded their doors and barred their windows. We counted four cop cars around the highway ramps, and they were probably the most bold cops I've seen. Two people got stopped while we pulled into a parking lot to look for fast food and a cop was even ballsy enough to roll his window down and yell at us to put our lights on when there was still a bit of light out. I don't know if there was actually any rioting that happened in Rolla, but it looked like they were getting ready for it to happen. Drew and I decided to go to Wendy's and get like forty nuggets to take to the hotel room and just pig out over chickie nuggies and beer. Didn't like their spicy nuggets at all but their regular ones were good as always. The hotel staff was super nice but the parking lot was definitely sketchy. We then hit the hay, prepared to get an early start the next day.
Day 2
We were up at the crack of dawn for Outlaw Run. That's always been one of my favorite feelings on a road trip, that "no rest for the wicked" feeling when you wake up stupid early on a weekend and have the road to yourself to just shred the drive without having to maneuver around idiots the whole way. We swung by Hardee's and got breakfast so I could accidentally squirt salsa all over my RMC shirt and continued the drive. Before we knew it, we were there just in the nick of time for opening!
We showed up, parked, and headed to the gates...and then I realized I still had salsa on my shirt. So I changed into my Twisted Cyclone shirt and we headed back...then I forgot my camera. So we had to run back and get that before making it to the temperature check tent. We stood in line on little blue stickers spaced six feet apart and headed in where a man in a cowboy costume with his bandana tied around his face as a mask quickly scanned our foreheads with his gun and sent us through. They verified we had masks on, asked us a few questions, and we headed in! We were at Silver Dollar City three months later than planned!
It was the park's 60th anniversary, imagine having a big diamond anniversary celebration in 2020 of all years!
Our first stop was a run back to the ostracized corner of the park where the magnus opum of the trip lie: Outlaw Run. I had traveled here to ride this in 2015 but didn't actually get on it until 2016, as the initial trip was a winter trip where it was too cold to run. Fortunately I did finally get to ride Outlaw Run as my first RMC and while it's been joined by twelve others in my coaster count, it's ranked as a mid-tier one, and a special one in that it's the only topper track coaster to run steel wheels, producing a really edgy ride with minimal rolling resistance. I was stoked to ride it again, and even moreso to get Drew on it. So we get there, first riders of the day, and sit down right in the front where we belong. I grab the restraint and begin to buckle in...and somehow I don't fit! I knew there might be some quarantine fifteen in there but when I saw that the belt was tight on Drew, who isn't chonky by any means, I knew something was up. So I walk of shamed it and let him ride, as the ride op told me to come back and try the better seats. So after Drew's ride we went back around and took a seat in the middle of the train, and it was still a bit tight but much more manageable than the restraint in the front. My theory has to do with belt cutting, the maintenance practice of taking a belt with a frayed end and just snipping the frayed part off instead of replacing it, usually shortening the length. The ride op that helped me said he'd been bugging maintenance to put new belts on it, but regardless, I fit and I would get to ride!
Outlaw Run was just as amazing as I remember, a bit slow for a morning ride before she warmed up, but the big change for me was riding it in the middle of the summer. The past two times I had ridden it were back in March of 2016 before all the leaves had grown in, so seeing the lush green Ozarks towering over Table Rock Lake was breathtaking before that gnarly 81 degree drop back down to earth. Fantastic ride just as I remember...but unfortunately for Drew his mask was aggravating his motion sickness! He got off, staggered over to the trashcan, pulled his mask off, and blew chunks into the garbage!
Looking for something more mild to let Drew recover, we went over to Fire In The Hole. I like this ride more than Blazing Fury because it incorporates actual history from the area, but I was disappointed to see that almost all of the animatronics were off, reducing them to creepy statues.
Nerd Alert: Silver Dollar City had this really cool vintage steam-powered lathe. Considering how I was educated to use a modern lathe and we have one at my job, it was super cool seeing them turn baseball bats and table legs and stuff on this dinosaur.
Up next was the money coaster, the main prize I came here to add to my credit count...
I knew I needed to drag my fat ass up a hill again from that Outlaw Run scare so I had no problem hoofing it back up to the park's main plaza and hanging back towards Grand Expo for Time Traveler. After my perception of this ride went from a gimmicky one-trick pony to a must ride, it was finally time to get on!
I. Hate. People. So we get in line, noticing it looks a little...normal for a global pandemic, with a bunch of people just crammed into the queue on each others' asses. Drew and I got in line, maintaining six feet from the person in front of us. And then the whitest couple ever gets in line and stands directly behind us, no six foot cushion at all. We stepped forward...and they stepped forward. And before we knew it, we had been crammed into this conga line with no social distancing at all! You would literally be safer being coughed on by Tom Hanks.
Social Distance aside, Time Traveler's queue is beautiful. It's a very different take on the steampunk aesthetic in that it's completely clockpunk yet accompanied by bluegrass covers of pop songs, taking something that's very much Victorian and making it feel Americana.
Oh yeah, it's also not bad to look at. You get some breathtaking views of this gorgeous machine while you're waiting to ride.
OH MY HECK I LOVE IT!!!! Is it an all out, no punches pulled, balls to the wall all the time RMC? No. But it doesn't need to be, this is 100% the poster child for a ride that's great simply for how unique it is. You have possibly the sickest vertical drop on a coaster ever, great terrain action, not knowing which way you're going half the time, and believe it or not, airtime! There's airtime on Time Traveler in several spots, from strange little pops of ejector in places you don't expect them to more Copperhead Strike-style hangtime in the inversions. We got this sick backflip orientation going through the corkscrew, it was insane and unlike anything I've ever felt on a coaster before. Not to mention, it's kind of an odd layout in terms of how it ends almost immediately after the second launch. It's beautifully unpredictable and it can run with the big dogs because of it.
My stupid ass did not gift shop well on this trip. Time Traveler's shop is full of cool steampunk stuff so I bought a hat, a keychain, but for some reason my stupid ass didn't buy a shirt because I bought this really pretty snowglobe instead. Which I like the snowglobe, but why couldn't I just shell out cash for both? Also saw this really cool steampunk fish clock and wanted it but didn't want to spend $165 on it, something I regretted as soon as I got home because that's badass.
Bought this beautiful snowglobe, though. It sits in my living room.
Next up we hopped on Thunderation, my favorite Arrow mine train. They refused to send a train because of one man not masking up, but they gave him one and he put it on and we rode it. And it's a great ride, as I remember. Only one I've ridden all three times I've been here.
Deciding we were finished with spinning for my friend's sake, we headed over to Kettle Chips to get some of Silver Dollar City's famous potato chips. I was heartbroken to see they got rid of the buffalo chips but I got the taco ones instead which were almost as good.
Drew's carried the burden of being nicknamed "Ralph" by my family since a series of incidents vomiting all over Cedar Point back when he and I were in high school, so we decided to do Silver Dollar City's train, which I had never done before.
Gotta admit, this is the best place to shoot Outlaw Run. Shame we couldn't just stop and wait on a train.
The train robbery skit was so funny! Why can't more parks do this on their trains?
We also got a sneak peak at Mystic River Falls under construction! No riding this thing yet but it looks like a fun modification to a rapids ride that needed an update. Dollywood, your rapids suck, do this too!
Playtime was over so Drew and I went right back to creds, this time to Powder Keg. I had trouble fitting the test seat here so I was concerned but we got in line, which moved at a snail's pace. They were on one train with social distancing in place, that line fucking crawled. But we ended up making the station and I fit the seat no problem so that test seat is garbage. The ride was much better than I remembered! Lots of crazy airtime in places you don't expect it, launch is still batshit crazy, wonderful ride. Probably the best "weird" coaster out there, too.
Needing one last major coaster, we went to Wildfire to be treated to yet even more abysmal social distancing in a long line on one train running every other row. These idiots closing in on us is probably the closest I've been to saying something about this.
Ugh, why do I hate it as much as I do? Last time I rode this it was just kind of meh, forgettable. This time I actually waited in line and stuck around to photograph it, it's actually not bad to look at. Perched on its mountain overlooking the lake, nice rustic color scheme, it's a beautiful machine. But why does it suck at serving its purpose so much? The damn thing was literally grinding against the track. Not just a rattle, like some spots felt like the wheels were straight up hexagonal, a very deliberate, rhythmic clattering that felt like it was going to shake my brain into a mushy goop. It felt like a bomb going off in my skull, and that's not including the major headbanging I knew this ride had. Give it the Hulk treatment, please. This could be so good but it's just...not.
Since I had only ridden it once, I wanted to get another go on Outlaw Run, and man did it warm up since the morning! Fit just fine into the secret fatty row, tossed the hell out of me, wonderful experience. Love the steel wheels on this particular RMC, that's a truly unique sensation relentlessly clattering along that precision machined track steel-on-steel with such little rolling resistance to slow you down.
Being the sneaky little bastard I am, we then went to check out Mystic River Falls from the ground level. Not a lot to get through the fence with my phone, but it was coming along very nicely and looks like a fresh, new, beautiful ride.
The ride looked pretty much ready to go but there were very clear finishing touches going on, the fine details that go into making a ride special. The ride has a great color palette and has this really fun Mark Twain vibe to it. Hope those waters aren't shark infested!
Didn't eat here but we checked out Rivertown Smokehouse and it looks nice! Very clean, polished, simple feel to this new restaurant. Food looked good too.
Time Traveler was next, just to get a few more rides on it. The wait had shrunk to virtually nothing so we could ride it a few times. They were also on top of the sanitation game here, quickly spritzing a train down and taking up only the time of a single cycle. But they needed that sanitation because after our first ride, Drew's scrambling to get his mask off and I knew it was bad. I alert the ride op as we're returning to the station to get my buddy a bucket...too late! The second she heard he projectile vomited all over that beautiful train as the ride op watched in horror. As we walked off into the sunset, we softly heard behind us, "ladies and gentlemen, Time Traveler is currently suspending operation for cleanup." I couldn't help but give Drew the golf clap he had earned for actually shutting a ride down himself.
With Drew now on an empty stomach, having regurgitated any of its contents all over Time Traveler, we went for dinner at the skillet place to get jambalaya skillets! These were a little spicy but my god they were good!
This is around the time that Silver Dollar City's COVID-19 measures started to wear thin. Everyone had been walking around in a mask all day and some of them had either pulled them down around their chins or taken them off outright. Saw one guy get his ass chewed getting cinnamon rolls for not wearing one into the bakery but other than that, I started to feel less and less safe as the day went on.
We then walked around a bit, waiting for last ride on Time Traveler. First up was Flooded Mine, a park classic where I totally destroyed Drew's score. Then we went to Grand Expo so Drew could nab the kiddie credit. Then we headed downhill to Fireman's Landing and did Firefall.
Out of time, ugh! We popped a squat to wait on LROTNOTT, but then I watched in horror as the ride op chained the queue shut! I thought the park closed at 7:30, it closed at 7! I took the loss, accepting I had probably ridden it seven times that day, and we headed out to the hotel to get plastered and pass out from coaster hangover.
Coaster hangover, the feeling of utter exhaustion and minor prolonged dizziness from flipping around all day, is a familiar sensation that's usually felt from the end of your day at the park through the next morning. Coaster hangover is usually tiring and annoying but after months on lockdown, that feeling of getting your ass kicked by the adventure you just went on was amazing. Drew and I checked into a nice hotel not too far from the park that I got a great deal on. After a casual convo with the lady at the desk about Branson's COVID numbers skyrocketing, we packed it in for the night and munched on a cinnamon roll from the park, splitting a single one so we didn't get too thicc.
Day 3
The final day of the trip was a long one! We got up at the asscrack of dawn, planning to get on the road and make it home at a reasonable time, having a relaxed drive. That all got upended when we passed an alpine credit on the Branson strip and got tempted! It was a little one called Runaway that just went down a little hillside, nothing near the wild mountain contraptions of the Smokies, but still, a cred's a cred. But it wasn't open yet, so we elected to give it the extra hour and head up the hill to get photos of Table Rock Lake.
This, right here, is the difference between Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg and Branson. Every time I come here I always feel poor because I know there's a side to the Branson experience that's super ritzy. To me it's always been the beautifully simple Americana Route 66 road trip with a fun, quirky park at the end, but to so many others, there's timeshares and condos and taking the family boat to the lake during the day and seeing live country music every night out of the week. Next time I'm here I want to go on the lake somehow.
Imagine having the money to stay somewhere with this view.
The trip ended on a mindfuck. It was close to 11 am so we elected to go back to Runaway to get on before leaving town. So I put "Runaway Mountain Coaster" into Waze. Well we're a minute away, I have no idea where we are...there's two Runaway Mountain Coasters in Branson despite Coast-2-Coaster's report that there's only one! And this one is massive compared to the other...and had been open since 10. So accepting that we just wasted an hour photographing a lake through telephone poles, we hopped on this thing. Customer service was pretty good, no masks but social distancing was at least used. Oh my god, this is my new #1 mountain coaster! I actually got scared and braked for a split second going into this helix, you can feel the lats trying to flip the sleigh off the tracks, you feel the upstop on the inner side of it keep it from rolling off, this is the most extreme alpine coaster out there and I highly recommend working it into your Branson trip if it's feasible.
Next up, we realized it was 12:30 our time and we hadn't even left Missouri. So prepped for a long ass drive home, we got on the road and I did that Jarrett thing where I get really competitive about our ETA. Jack-In-The-Box was our stop for food and we stopped for gas at some seedy crowded gas station outside St. Louis with nobody wearing masks. The remainder of the drive was brutal, there was rain, anything after the Illinois-Missouri state line is boring, we rolled in at like 10:30 Eastern and I had to drop the rental car off and got stranded at the airport and needed my sister to rescue me.
What a great trip! After months upon months under quarantine, our stir crazy asses needed to get out of town and go get some new experiences under our belts! The biggest thing I remember about this trip is that this report will likely read like a period piece in a few years. This experience was a snapshot at a specific important time in American history under COVID-19. So many things, be it the riot precautions in Rolla, wearing masks to parks, stuff that seems so foreign and alien to us when there isn't a pandemic, were a key feature of this trip that's going to produce some strange stories to tell years down the road.
Meanwhile, my buddy Ben and I had planned a trip to sister park Dollywood the following week...
