Date:8/11/2023-8/13/2023
Destination: Kansas City, Missouri
Goal: Worlds of Fun
Distance: 595 Miles
Means of Travel: Driving
Potential Credits: 8
Ah, the Cedar Fair Platinum Pass. One of the most powerful passes in the industry, getting guests into parks all over North America, is being discontinued after 2023. I've had platinum since 2015 and it's gotten me into Cedar Fair parks from Silicon Valley to the Carolinas, and everywhere in between, but there's one Cedar Fair park that I have not yet been to: Worlds of Fun.
This Kansas City, Missouri theme park takes after Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days for inspiration. From what I'd heard, though, it wasn't super well themed and it was more of a themed amusement park akin to Kings Island or Carowinds rather than something like Dollywood or SeaWorld. Regardless, I'd never been there for a few reasons. At almost a 9 hour drive, it's not exactly "two cornfields and a left" from Ohio, and Silver Dollar City is about the same distance so between the two one option is clearly more enticing. Furthermore, Worlds of Fun's lineup never really had anything to draw me in, with a fairly standard coaster collection on paper that not much got added to. But with the addition of Zambezi Zinger, I finally had an excuse! I've had a lot of adventure this year, from Adventure Port to Lost Island, so I said fuck it, let's go on a little rumble in the jungle with Prowler and Zinger and Mamba. Little did I know what other terrifying creatures I would encounter...
Drew, a high school friend of mine that's basically become a brother over the years, was the choice to tag along, as he was supposed to go to Hershey with me but sadly had family obligations come up the week of Media Day. And while I doubt this was as exciting on paper to him, it was a cheap trip with our platinum passes and dining plans for a coaster he was fairly excited for!
Day 0- Demogorgons 'n' Ritas
Drew was planning to crash on my couch that night so he showed up around 7:30, we cracked open a few Brewskies and watched Stranger Things (he's never seen it before, he's on season 3 early on) with some margaritas and leftover Mexican from my parents' before calling it an early night. Because it was an early morning the next day! Little did we know we were basically heading into the upside-down...
Day 1- Teens Act Like Some Animals In The Jungle Where We Play
I woke up around 6:15, fifteen minutes later than planned. Drew and I dragged our asses onto the road, admittedly pretty hungry, and headed to I-70 Westbound, which would service almost all of our drive. We snagged Taco Bell somewhere in Indiana before continuing to Illinois, where we stopped for gas in Effingham.
I don't know what this guy in Effingham was there for (okay, it was probably the big fucking weed dispensary clearly visible from the highway, it's becoming every bit the icon as the huge ass cross at this point) but he had some stylized penises on his car.
Somewhere west of St. Louis we stopped for Hardee's because it's all that was around and I got one of those Frisco burgers.
Usually, Missouri is where the drive gets interesting, as you go Southwest from St. Louis to Silver Dollar City you get Route 66 and the Ozarks to keep things interesting. This way? Lol hope you like corn. 70 through Missouri looks just like Iowa, pretty much nothing but corn and that's what I expected. We needed another gas stop and ended up at one of those random country road gas stations in the middle of the farmland with nothing around. We started seeing signs for Kansas City before we knew it, in before the locals were even getting off work!
This is what you want to see driving in front of you on the highway. Yeah, I've seen 9-1-1, we drove around it. Not driving behind a truck with big scary radioactive warning labels on it. Come on, in the era of Barbenheimer at least put like a pink convertible tailgating it!
Fuck this guy if he actually took this through the city.
Worlds of Fun, we have arrived! I love how this park sort of comes at you over the hill, and the entrance being on a frontage (little road that runs parallel to the highways but with businesses on it, I've noticed them out west a lot in my travels) is so Missouri, I love it.
The walk up to this park is a bit hidden, hard to find, and I honestly felt like I was walking backstage somewhere I was not supposed to be. We had to ask someone where to go to actually get into the park.
Cool artwork on the fences though. They have like the emotional Disney music playing alongside these drawings of globes and compasses and shit. Really liked this art! Really fits my whole adventure aesthetic.
And the entrance is...kind of boring. The turnstiles and related buildings are nice and have the GateKeeper/Fury vibe to them, but you walk through and it's a Dorney-styled concrete stage to walk around. Mamba in the background is nice, but the entrance is still very anticlimactic in my opinion.
First thing we noticed is that this is actually a nicely themed park once you're through the entrance! I was expecting a "concrete and rides" Valleyfair or Dorney-styled park (despite it being a theme park) and when we walked through a little Viking village into the jungle and saw this, it looked like Busch Gardens! Theming-wise, this is the underrated Cedar Fair property.
However, I also noticed the bad guest conduct I've been hearing about almost off the bat, in the form of pole dancing on a midway game. This park is full of unsupervised teenagers being little shits, despite being one of the ground zeroes for the chaperone policy. Come on, Canada's Wonderland ejected a group for shoving each other around in line and hitting my camera bag while doing it, it's absolutely understandable to ask them to call their chaperones because they're sprinting through the park about to hit someone.
Zambezi Zinger had a short line, so we were opportunistic and took that considering it's a new ride.
Not gonna lie, the theming on this new GCI wooden coaster is actually nice! They built like a little mud hut station with Africa travel posters in it and it actually gets across the theme quite nicely.
Almost to the station! Nothing can go wrong now, right?
...right? (I've used this same fucking joke in at least 3 other trip reports to set up a funny story, you know shit's about to hit the fan if I say nothing is gonna go wrong with a question mark.)
Drew and I elect to take front seat on our first ride, as based on the POV Zambezi appears to be a pacing-based ride experience, blazing through element after element with no reprieve in between faster than you can blink an eye.
This weird creepy guy with one of those button lanyards comes up behind us, notices my Yukon Striker shirt (which is fine), and starts talking to us. I mention we're from Ohio, and this weirdo starts going on and on and on about how Kings Island is the best park in the chain and how Beast is the best coaster ever and blah blah blah. I don't get Beast fanboys, look at you being a special snowflake liking non-alcoholic Voyage, and things I'd rather do than talk to this guy included battery acid ball waxing and Hallmark Christmas Movie marathons. He DID NOT SHUT UP, he kept going on and on, maybe I was a little rude but all I could find to do was respond with like "K" and "whatever" and other neutral responses. I didn't want to be rude, at the same time I didn't want to make assumptions, but at the same time boundaries are boundaries and I needed to lay them down, be it direct and impolite or veiled and slightly dishonest. And to this day, I'm not sure if this was the right course of action or just straight up telling the guy not to talk to us. Fortunately, Drew and I makes two, and we got on a separate train without this guy, I hope he had a good day elsewhere from us.
Alright...Zambezi Zinger time! Restraints on a big dude do touch your thighs but it's not a staple by any means.
The round lift hill is a little odd, it's cool and different, but doesn't add much to the ride. The drop definitely has more bark than bite, it looks steep and cool but it's a big puppy dog. From there it's a couple of nice GCI curves that play with speed to size ratio before climbing up into kind of the ride's signature element: that turn around the spiral lift. It switches to titan track, the wooden coaster clatter turns to more a gentle metal on metal grind, you zip around the impressive, photogenic lift, then dive back down. The second half of the ride the pacing picks up and there's a tunnel that seems to get shorter and shorter as you pass around (this is a theme you'll see later with Worlds of Fun), which you exit and turn around. The final three turns are the most intense parts of the ride, they're incredibly whippy and aggressive and you expect brakes after each one but it just slams you to the opposite side again!
Finally, you hit the brakes. And to be perfectly honest, I liked the ride, but I didn't like the seemingly criminal lack of airtime around the layout. I'm not an Intamin douchebag, there's more to a coaster than being Skyrush or El Toro and breaking the riders' kneecaps, but even just poppy floater is a big part of an ideal ride experience to me, and it felt like it was lacking for what was otherwise an awesome, aggressive layout. Fun ride, but a bit of a letdown, especially after driving as long as we did. Very whippy, very snappy, super cool-looking coaster, it would be a straight A coaster if it didn't get an F in airtime failing the high jump in gym.
Zambezi Zinger's gift shop is beautiful and looks like something you might find at Disney's Animal Kingdom or KD's Jungle X-Pedition. I wish Kings Island had gotten one of these as part of Adventure Port. Ride merch, stuffed jungle animals, and plastic toys fitting the theme are kind of the main exports here.
We got food next at the nearest air conditioned place, which sadly turned out to be one of those Cedar Fair diners atop the hill near Mamba, and Sand Dune Diner was fucking DISGUSTING!!! I thought I had pictures, turns out I don't, but the Africa theming just takes you to a generic Cedar Fair diner outside of Mamba, and this corner of the park feels the most "Dorney" of the property. And the restaurant was so gross! Nothing had been cleaned, the A/C barely worked, and there were flies bothering us as we ate. This is quite possibly the worst Cedar Fair dining experience I've ever had, do not ever eat there, Worlds of Fun needs to completely bulldoze it and put a better restaurant in its place.
We got a bad Mamba jamma over here! Mamba, a Morgan hyper, is the tallest coaster in the park, but I was expecting a Six Flags Magic Mountain situation where the tallest coaster isn't necessarily a standout in the lineup. Morgan hypers never really did it for me, I had a somewhat fun ride on Steel Force in '21 and Wild Thing is short with a few moments of floater but they always felt like lame Magnum knockoffs to me. Mamba is not a lame Magnum knockoff, and there's argument that it may even be just as good. It's full of mild ejector, not like Skyrush or RMC but you'll certainly leave your seat, and with just a simple bar like that, you really feel it. It hits every airtime moment in the layout, and towards the end they just get stronger and stronger. It feels overspeed and totally out of control in some spots, and the helix, while I usually don't like these, has a nice set of headchoppers with the supports, it's eerily similar to Zambezi Zinger's tunnel there's no way it wasn't by design. The green mamba was also my favorite snake when I was a kid, I even had a little remote control one, so that earned it brownie points.
Jeff Pike explained at Coasterstock 2017 that Morgan hypers usually have one long straight spot due to metallurgical properties, rides have a tendency to shift while being installed so they'd build most of the coaster and see what gap develops before just filling in the hole, hence why Steel Force has that long bit before the helix. Mamba's got more than a few of these drawn out spots, but it just adds to the experience because you get time to breathe before more insanity hits. I was hooked, I never got the hype for this coaster given how nobody likes its two sisters, but I get the hype for Mamba. Fantastic ride, my current favorite in the park.
Such a good ride though! I was not expecting it to be this good!
Drew got motion sickness and puked on Mamba so I decided to go hit the boomerang, seeing as he was okay missing that one if it came to it. Rode in the front with a lady from South Dakota that worked in TV and she was really cool, we talked about my content creation for RMC Connection and the like. This ride ain't half bad! I've been spoiled with good boomerangs the past few weeks, both this one and Canada's Wonderland's are pretty damn good.
Drew was still recovering from his little protein spill, so I elected to power lap Zambezi Zinger in the back two more times. And it's a little bit better back here, you get some falling airtime but not much, but it was starting to sink in my now that Worlds of Fun ops are far from the best. You can't line up for the row you want, if it's not open you get what's left, no station grouper to tell you this or sign or anything, they just yell at you to get back in line over the mic. Furthermore, Worlds of Fun has this weird rule where they don't open the gates for oncoming riders until most of the riders from the previous train are off the platform, and I get eliminating chaos, but when there's bins involved it slows things down even more. Nothing against the employees themselves, they're good ride ops, the issue lies with the process they're following.
I did Zinger in the back twice and realized there are two trains: a good train and a bad train. The bad train has somewhat tighter restraints in the back car and felt noticeably slower but the good train hauls some okay ass!
But hey, we like Zambezi Zinger now!
(Side note: The locals were NOT having Drew's Bengals jersey in Patrick Mahomes territory and we got heckled about it more than once, always by teenagers looking to be cool and annoying.)
Drew and I continued around the park looking for more coaster credits to nab when we ran into Cosmic Coaster, which appears to be a Wacky Worm model. You need a kid to ride, I do not have kids, I do not plan to have kids, so I guess this is a coaster I cannot ride. Oh well, it is a Wacky Worm.
I was NOT excited for our next coaster. Drew still wanted to wait out a bit, telling me I could solo the infamous Timberwolf. I'd heard bad things about this coaster, nice knowing you! Don't forget to feed Gary! No seriously, sometimes you forget to feed him.
And it's...not bad actually. It definitely feels like a wooden coaster of its era, but I got a few good pops of air including one really good one at the top of the double up. It isn't unbearably rough by any means, I had an okay time on it, I still support RMCing it not because I'm offended by the ride experience but because nobody rides it. I don't see any financial sense maintaining a coaster that people care this little about, and no amount of "heritage" can justify it.
Oh yeah. And if you RMC this and give Wild West a facelift this could be the Steel Vengeance and Frontiertown of the Great Plains.
Their Asia area actually isn't bad! Little dated and stuff needs maintained, maybe turn it into specifically China with an update, but I love what they did with it there's even bamboo planted.
Drew got me a cool photo to show my tai chi class.
Spinning Dragons was next on the way around, a ride I know has a notoriously long line usually. Drew was feeling better so after I got in line he joined me and I went back to see him. Ride ops were still pretty slow, but I did notice them loading the cars to maximize unbalance and generate more spin, which I haven't noticed seen a park do before, so that was cool. I love these Gerstlauer spinning coasters, they're so easy to get off balance and they spin like crazy, and the facing inward aspect makes them a total riot with whoever you're with.
Great ride, never waiting for it again.
They had this hot air balloon setup for photos and Drew and I decided to recreate one of the most iconic Avatar memes because we're a couple of idiots.
One more ride on Mamba for me! Not getting out of car 1 bench 3, that's always the best place to ride on these types of hypers! Drew sat out because it makes him puke.
Incident number two! Drew's glasses are missing! He split to go look for them, it was impossible to get the attention of the ride ops here because their crew is so understaffed and everyone is so overworked. Turns out they had fallen out of my bag and were in the bin, he walked through with me just looking to get into the station and out of the sun.
The park was starting to clear out, and it gets pretty at night!
We continued around to Africa once more, trying to save Prowler for night. And it wasn't totally pitch black but we did get a pretty dark sunset ride on it...
OH MY FUCKING GOD this is so much better than Mystic Timbers! I expected Mystic Timbers 1.0 and that only set me up for a bigger surprise because it's way more aggressive and way more intense. Prowler fits the hilly terrain of the park like a glove, the trees have grown in around it much better, and it packs a much bigger punch. You get thrown from your seat way harder on Prowler, and at night you can barely see where you're going. Fantastic coaster and the unquestioned King of the Jungle that is Worlds of Fun!
We had planned another Zambezi ride to close out the night, Drew sat out so I got a front seat ride and I think it might be better up here. At night you're charging into complete darkness, maybe a few lightning bugs since it's nighttime in the summer, getting thrown around so violently. Sorry, Kings Island, but this eats Mystic Timbers. Like, it's Mystic Timbers if it were designed with Renegade or Gold Striker level violence to it.
Zambezi Zinger at night, in pitch black darkness! Let's do it!
This was our last ride on Zambezi Zinger of the trip and I'm glad it was this one. We got the good train, in the back, fully warmed up. The first half was nice and night ridey, there's lights on the first few elements, but then once you get to the back it's pitch black. Like, Beast at night dark. But you're actually doing stuff and getting thrown around side to side, those last few curves kept coming out of nowhere and surprising the hell out of me. This is a fantastic night ride, I loved it.
Good night, Worlds of Fun!
It was HOT, I started to feel bad for judging Beast Nerd for being sweaty because both of us were plenty gross by now, we just wanted to get to the hotel and take showers and put on clothes that weren't disgusting.
lol
The hotel wasn't terribly nice, I went with the cheapest one I could find because we needed to budget badly, but it was like two minutes from the park just around the frontage, which was a nice surprise because I thought it was like half an hour for some reason. I took a nice cold shower, changed into some clean pajamas, and got ready to just chillax when I hear a crash from the bathroom. Drew was taking down a towel I had hung over the shower curtain rod and knocked the light out of its frame! The plastic was cracked, affecting the snap fit it should have had, but Repair it Jarrett managed to slide it back in temporarily. Classy, Motel 6.
I saw what looked to be leftover beer that someone left out for whoever wanted it, I picked it up to see if the bottles were full, and one of them exploded on me. I learned my lesson about the suspicious beer in the corner of the motel next to the trash can.
We hit the hay, ready for an early morning O-C at Worlds of Fun the following day.
Day 2- It Gets Worse Here Everyday
Both of us were up at a good hour, we were good noodles and slept well. We were out the door, got Taco Bell breakfast to eat in the hotel, then headed to the park.
Getting into the hotel after dark is an unusual experience because you wake up and see how it all looks in the light. Turns out we're next to a gas station that somehow took a good pummeling, my guess from a truck that didn't fit or something. I need to know this story.
Good morning, worlds of Fun!
Patriot was the coaster we elected to gate crash, being the last major one we were missing and all I needed to clean the park out of credits. Small trains and a tiny platform for a B&M invert, they really shoehorned this station into here.
And I like it! Patriot isn't a coaster you hear much about, but I think it's slightly underrated. It's a bit like a diet Afterburn meets Talon, which isn't a bad thing at all. Small, snappy, proudly overlooks the park gates, and simple. My only gripe is that it lacks a standout element, that high helix/inclined loop thing coming out of the Immelmann is nice, but not necessarily a signature to the coaster. But it's a beautiful coaster and I really like it.
Patriot marks the last B&M invert I need to ride to have all the US ones...bar Flight Deck which I didn't fit on but it's probably not making it another 5 years so Flight Deck doesn't matter. So here we go, my final rankings for US B&M inverts!
- Banshee
- Montu
- Afterburn
- Alpengeist
- Great Bear
- Batman SFGAm
- Patriot
- Great White
- Talon
- Silver Bullet
- Batman SFMM (ridden backwards)
- Batman SFOG
- Batman SFSL
- Batman SFOT
- Goliath
- Raptor
- Batman SFGAdv
Missed: Flight Deck, Hungarian Horntail, Chinese Fireball
Patriot aside, Drew and I continued around, past Spinning Dragons which had a horrendous wait at this point, and snagged Timberwolf for him, this time in the second to back (gotta avoid the wheel seat!) to maybe get some bite out of the ride. I think the middle might be marginally better, which is unusual on a coaster, but I think that standout airtime moment was a bit more sustained there.
I wanted to ride Mamba again and made sure to put a very appropriate Seviper in the Pokemon Go gym for the coaster, also threw a Dodrio in the Stork in the Nile gym.
It didn't disappoint!
We did the train next, which is nice and almost feels like Dollywood's going out into the woods through the little country town, you also get a nice view of Prowler. You're held up and "robbed" like the Silver Dollar City one with a goofy little show full of pop culture references that goes on and on forever.
But I only needed an instant to capture the best timed photo I've ever taken.
We wanted lunch next and decided on the Mexican place over in Wild West would be our choice, next to the train. They turned the steam table into a rain gutter regatta with the beans just floating there.
The food here is good and the portion sizes are huge, definitely hit it up if you're hungry. I got a stacked ass burrito with chicken and tomatillo salsa, they even gave me chips and a little salsa cup for free with my dining plan.
Becky and I took our daughter Dillysalleigh to Worlds of Fun after karate class and had a horrible experience! When we take the kids out to Mexican normally they give them margaritas but this place, a MEXICAN place, somehow did not have margaritas, and now we're "kicked out of Worlds of Fun" on some garbage of "your daughter is out of control we can't have her ninja kicking our employees." We will take our business to SIX FLAGS ST LOUIS where that kind of thing isn't an issue!!!
They were playing the track from Red Dead Redemption 2 where you get super drunk in a saloon and wake up pissing in an alley and walk in on people doing the nasty and kill someone in a bar fight and throw them to the pigs, so that was funny to hear in a family park just as generic Western music and they had no idea what it was from.
Drew and I were feeling a little Prowler, so that's what we did next and it's just as aggressive during the day as it is at night.
We did a little shopping and it was hot, so on the way back to the car I wanted to grab one of the Zambezi Zinger beers the park had. And to be perfectly honest, I think it tasted so good in the moment because the heat index was 98, not because it's a good beer. It's orangey, as the bartender said, and that made it nice and refreshing, but it really wasn't that different from just generic Bud Light Orange. I did keep the can for my coaster room though, it lives next to my Giga Coaster Lager can.
And while I was drinking it...I got my first shiny in Pokemon Go! Shiny Sableye was just chilling at the bar so I took this little guy home. Shit EVs but he'll look cool in gyms!
After getting back from the car, we did Cyclone Sam's per Facebook recommendation. I'd seen them opening the door for some dark Himalaya looking thing leaving Timberwolf but I knew almost nothing about it, not even knowing the park had it until I was out here. Jeepers, my childhood FEC had a dark Himalaya with a disco ball called Yak Attack, so these rides have always had a special place in my heart. And Cyclone Sam's has the same energy, but way more insane! The theming has like a bad blacklight putt-putt Wizard of Oz vibe combined with storm sounds and a pretty vicious cycle. I've ridden these wipeout rides when I was a kid at pop up carnivals, but I didn't realize they try to dump you out sideways and slam you into the ground! Best flat ride in Missouri here don't @ me.
Going around to more flat rides, I wanted to ride Zulu, seeing as our home park just got a Zamperla Endeavor and I wanted to do a classic Enterprise side by side to compare them. And as much as I love Sol Spin, I think this is better, albeit they're different experiences. This is all about the insanity of being in a box with no restraint, Zamperla's product more emphasizes the inverting aspect of the ride, with open-air seats and restraints.
Squawk! The Amazing Bird Show coming up, so we decided to go drop in on that. We're waiting around in this theater and then this guy and lady walk out with these parrots and just kind of set them up on these perches like they're putting a cookie jar on a shelf and walk away, knowing they'll behave.
(this little jerk destroyed this palm tree from the set literally the entire duration of the show)
It's a cute show, and the lady is super sweet so this was a fun way to spend half an hour out of the sun.
Animal acts are kind of a favorite of mine in terms of theme park quality entertainment, it's mindless, easy to do, it's adorable, and I'd much rather spend that time waiting for and watching a show for this than theater majors singing the same shit you hear on the radio.
Wanting food, we then headed to Cotton Blossom as we had planned to do earlier that day, and while the Kansas City BBQ and house made sauces are absolutely amazing and you all need to get them, I didn't get photos because I was distracted by two of Worlds of Fun's most beloved locals: a family of adorable skunks! Usually skunks at parks are treated as a pest species, but the Worlds of Fun ones aren't afraid of people at all. The woman cleaning tables said they're her pets and they didn't spray anyone in the crowd gathering to see this cuteness. They're like the little stray cat that hangs around the cool restaurant in town that everyone likes, and a very welcome animal to encounter on this little coaster safari we've been on.
Sun is going down, time for night rides!
We wanted to do the rapids next, something I normally skip, but this seemed to be a pretty popular one, even selling a t-shirt, so Fury of the Nile it was. Can't walk around wet all day when the park closes in 3 hours and you're already dripping with sweat because it's too damn hot!
...it went down. Like, we get super close to the front and it decides to be an Intamin again, and there's no communication as to whether maintenance is gonna come or if we need to get out of line or not. So we chillaxed, people got to the front, I was practicing my tai chi on the little dots where you group up to kill time. But they didn't fix it in the twenty minutes we gave them and there was no sign of life from it, so Drew went to go get Boomerang for himself.
They radioed maintenance that the rapids weren't working but maintenance refused to accept that. They were in de Nile.
I was going to do Mamba, but the line was a few switchbacks deep and the ride crew seemed to not have any intention to process that queue in a timely fashion, so I just went over to Drew and did Boomerang at night, hoping we could do both Prowler at night and Fury of the Nile should it reopen. Needless to say, you could imagine our anticipation when we started seeing people head up the Fury of the Nile queue, app showing it's open again. WELL, Worlds of Fun ops strike again, Drew and I are the last party of two outside of the station, they've loaded everyone into rows, two stupid teenagers distract the ride op expecting to get let up the Fast Lane line with no wristbands, claiming their dad had them, and in her dealing with these asshats, one row on this train was left unloaded. We spoke up and offered to get in that row, but nope! They sent it empty and we had to wait another cycle (and not a quick Cedar Point cycle, we're talking a full length Worlds of Fun cycle!) to get on this damn thing. Fortunately we liked it, it rides great at night, minimal banging around, and it was time to go make a splash!
The Fury of the Nile queue wasn't bad at all and we got on within five minutes of getting in line. This was my first experience with rapids at night and I gotta admit, splashing around back in the woods in darkness like this does add to it. However, Fury of the Nile does feel dated and lacking in that the theme isn't all along the ride (there's a tunnel similar to the one I put on Kings Republic's Whitewater Ruins with water traps and some hieroglyphs and columns near the end) and the fact that this was dryer than Canada's Wonderland's. That being said, I did still really enjoy it because while it isn't that wet (at least not for everyone, I was very lucky on this ride), it sure as hell is dynamic! This one slams you around quite a bit, you'll get a few good spins worked up here and there, crashing into those spinning barrel things in the channel, it's enjoyable more in the way I'd enjoy a flat ride or even a wild mouse coaster than a rapids. So points for uniqueness, this would be a great attraction to invest in and turn into something truly special.
I'ma have to ride WhiteWater Canyon at night before the season ends...
One more ride left before day's end! Well two, we got one and then went back for another because everyone was at Zambezi Zinger and Prowler is certified at the bottom of the toybox right now. Prowler at night was planned to be the last coaster of the trip. And we get up to the station and see a couple of coaster enthusiasts had the same idea, and I notice one of them has Kings Island: A Ride Through Time on his shirt. I told him it's an awesome book and this smartass just tells me, "I know, I wrote it!" Evan Ponstingle of Kings Island book fame is in the Prowler station! When he was just 15 he wrote a great book detailing Kings Island's entire history, and while it's sold in the gift shops of the park, he has no desire to become an offer. So we took this photo, I tell him how it got me through the tail end of COVID, reading it with hot chocolate and fuzzy slippers as the sound of April showers hitting my window and Alexa piping jazz music filled the air. And him and his zoomer buddies, not quite past the "Bill and Ted" years but getting there, are all "DUDE THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!!!" So that was a wholesome way to kick off last ride of the trip.
Prowler at night was amazing. Absolutely amazing. We rode in the very back, we got full brunt of the airtime, towards the end those last curves whip you so hard you can't tell where in the dark you're going, absolutely fantastic coaster and it gave me flashbacks to ending the Great Lakes 2017 with back to back night rerides on Renegade. As much as I love Kings Island and Mystic Timbers, I'm sorry but this is the better coaster.
That was that. Look at that photo, I'm sweaty, I'm gross, probably sunburned, that was really bad for my nasty greasy skin, it's time to go home and stand under an ice cold shower head in the nastyass Motel 6 bathroom. It's park close anyway so we head out like normal people when we see people lining up for their fireworks at the front plaza.
We keep going, but they start it once we're near security on the way out, and everyone stops to watch. Not only did we stick around and watch this beautiful, beautiful night show play out, but we were picking our chins up off the ground because it is VERY well done. The drones make the show, and there was no wind so they could be out in all their glory. I had a bit of an emotional response to this, not gonna lie.
I know nobody actually looks at those fireworks videos you shoot as an emotional reaction to the fireworks, but I'm gonna put them here anyway.
Drew and I swung by the sketchy Phillips 66 as some scrawny hairy dude with no shirt and one of those yellow safety vests left, I got some more beer and a thing of Ho-Hos (best Hostess snack cake, shove your goddamn Twinkies up your fucking ass they suck balls) and we had a brief evening before hitting the sack, it was a long day tomorrow.
Day 3- Wake Up To The Bright Lights But It Makes Your Car Alarm Scream
BOOOOMMMM!!!!!
I was very rudely woken up at 7 am by the bright flash of a lightning bolt, the sound of it striking something directly outside my window, and the obnoxious Honk! Honk! Honk! of a car alarm. So I'm wondering what fucking piece of shit asshole has the audacity to just let his car alarm off at this hour of the morning...then I hit my keys in paranoia and it turns out I was that fucking piece of shit. Well we're up, my car alarm woke both of us, so we use the early rise to get an early start on the long 8.5 hour drive home. Drew had been missing his keys and we found them in the chaos cleaning up the hotel room, then I have him check out of the room, realize my keys are missing...they were in my camera bag and I'm an idiot.
First stop was to drive around Kansas City, just to say I've seen it, and also to clip through Kansas to get the state credit. The city isn't that...charismatic I'd say. Like it's nice, but it doesn't look like any other Midwestern city.
Colorado has officially lost its spot as "Jarrett's most bullshit state credit." Flying back from Vegas in 2014 I had a 1 hour connection in DEN so I counted Colorado as a credit on my map. To be able to mark one of these off on the map, my personal rule is I have to have been on the ground in that state, flying over doesn't count. So what do we do to get Kansas? Drive down the highway, pass the "Welcome to Kansas" sign, get off, turn around, and get back on. I never actually stepped in Kansas, I drove my car there, it counts, but I was physically in Kansas for less than five minutes. But I'm still counting it as it still fits my rules!
We saw on the way in Missouri has Whataburger in Eastern Kansas City so I bullied Drew into trying it. I got two, one for immediately and one maybe to eat later on the road. It's so good, I got the sweet spicy burger with fries and their wonderful spicy ketchup and just a plain ol' American cheeseburger.
Touching back on the Red Dead Redemption II theme, I saw one of this Historic Site markers about half an hour out of the city and knew we had to do it! Drew is curious as to where I'm taking us assholes, and to be honest, I'm not sure it's even there, considering this was incredibly rural and looked nothing like it did in the game. But at the end of the drive, we arrived in the historic town square of Blackwater, Missouri, of Red Dead Redemption II and Blackwater Massacre fame. This real Wild West town inspired the city of the same name in the video game, though unlike Blackwater, West Elizabeth, this Blackwater gives off more farming/livestock energy, which makes sense considering its proximity to Kansas City. Feels more like Valentine in the games than Blackwater but I understand why Rockstar did what they did with it.
We headed out for real now, and it PISSED down rain. Like, we got Missouri'd and got sent down the frontage just like my Christmas trip to Silver Dollar City in 2015, when Missouri had declared a state of emergency and miles of highway were flooded. It's called the Show Me State because if it drizzles, it floods the highways and makes people wreck and they need to be shown an alternate route. This drove up our ETA like nobody's business, good thing we started early!
Froakie Community Day was this day, my favorite Pokemon is Greninja (those of you not into Pokemon, he's a French ninja frog and he's badass) so to hell if I'm missing this, so I swung by a shitty rest area on the Missouri-Illinois border in the timeframe and we just played Frogger and got Froakies, four of mine were even shiny! This guy has shit IVs but he'll look badass in gyms, I have a non-shiny that's 2 stars that I keep on me to use for actual gameplay.
Speaking of Pokemon, Drew just played Pokemon Legends: Arceus on my Switch on the way back, and finally, when we're heading home and it's the most boring part of the drive, FINALLY nothing happens on this crazy ass trip we've just put ourselves through for coming up on 72 hours now. We got in around 10 pm, no sweat, Drew headed home, and I took my crap upstairs and was so relieved to sleep in my own bed with my own shower again!
Last Cedar Fair park down, Platinum Pass has been used at all of them, minus waterparks and Gilroy, and it feels like a huge accomplishment if I'm being honest. Worlds of Fun is a great mid-sized park, Drew described it as "Busch Gardens's Wario," a nice park with some good theming and a solid lineup, but the operations and "chaperone policy" completely kills any magic this could have beyond a Dorney/Valleyfair. But it's okay! We brought plenty of our magic of our own to this little coastin' safari and I'm glad we did it. This was a road trip comedy brought to life if I've seen one and while I think it's my last trip for a while, I'm glad this is the note it ended on.
One day the adventure will continue. And I'm so glad this is where I hit pause.
