We pull into Old Town's free prcking lot and enter the entertainment district. Old Town is a tourist district that involves shops, restaurants, bars and atractions set up to look like an old time downtown, USA.
The cross streets have various amusements like a mechanical bull and the Worlds Largest High Striker. A haunted house, arcade, lazer tag, and indoor bumper cars figure amongst the tennants, and their are amusement midways at either end, One end is anchored by the kiddie rides as well as a Zamperla Windstorm Coaster (that I already have the credit on), along with some games. The end nearest 192 is much more interesting with a Chance Inverter, Larson Fireball, Zamperla Turbo Force, Funtime Sling Shota large go kart track, giant wheel, scrmbler and more in this area.
We note that if we purchase a wristband before 6pm it would be $12 as opposed to the usual $15. We look around and decide against the wristband. We also inquire if members of the American Coaster Enthusiasts still get some free rides on the coaster. Nope, that offer has been taken off the table as well.
I peer into the bumper car arena, which claims to have extreme bumper cars, ans it looks just like ordinary dodgems that are indoors. The dodgems are not included in the wristband. We do confirm that they will operate the Turbo Force or Spring Shot if we ask,
We decide instead to go next door. Next door to Old Town sits the World's Tallest Skycoaster, at 302'6". The skycoaster sits majesically over a lake, but we bypass that for now, walking past the clubhouse out to the drag racing venue, The ride is G-Fprce which is a S&S drag racing simulator. In short, you get into a replica of a stock car (yes through the window), get harnessed in with a real raceing harness, then you have to watch the chistmass tree and hit the gas as soon as the light comes on, but not before. A scoreboard notes race time, response time, and if the erson false started. The ride claims to be ablt go go 0-100+mph in just 2 seconds, All in all it looked interesting but at $30 ($20 for the reride), it sounded just a bit too expensive, so we passed it up.
Between the G-Force and the clubhouse, the have a Moser Spring Ride, and an intersting ride that involves a bike shaped ride tub where you are secured by shoulder bars, then with fast enough pedaling can flip all the way over. Both of those smalle rides go for $3. Looking back on it, I now wish I would have tried the bike riding one.
We went to the Skycoaster club house, Look around, and eventually ask if they will run the Skycoaster. Yes they will but triple flyers only due to the wind. Paul goes to a private room to deliberate his decision. It was known that Paul does not like drop rides. Paul rejoins us and indicates his answer is no. We leave the clubhouse, and Jerry and realize that we will have to put on our pursuasvie hats. I note the clubhouse sells beer out of a fridge labeled "Liquid Courage"
We take another walk up and down the main street of Old Town. Jerry and I go from low pressure to applying some good old fashined peer pressure. We walk through the Happy Das Arcade, which quite frankly is not that happy any more. A good deal of floor space is given to slot machines, which do not retun money, only prize redemption tokens. The arcade has only one pinball machine and it was out of order, as were several other machines, including a dollar bill operated animation of an execution scene. How does THAT belong in Happy Days?
Eventually we apply the maximum amount of peer pressure allowed by law, and before Paul knows what hits him, he has a Skycoaster ticket and we are heading out to the harness shack.
We are admitted to the harness shack, and they have the hanesse set out, and Jerry and I already have our feet through the loops and are pulling the leg loops up our legs before the attendant comes to instruct us. We get a "Y'all have done this before I see?" More times than we care to admit to, which let her focus her spiel on Paul, the novice.
We get harnessed, and we decide that Jerry will pull the ripcord. We go out along a bridge to the loading area. We board the lift and are taken up to the fligh cables. We get all hooked together, then hooked up to the flight cables, and everything is going well until the time where the lift usually starts to lower and you fall forward, effectively hung, but the lift is low enough that you don't come in contacgt with anything. Now its true we were very unstable in our balance during loading, so I don't know what happend, but the next thing we know we are doing the usual fall forwards when WHAM we hit the hard floor of the lift face first. I had put out my hands to stop the fall, so I didn't skin anything up, but man my hnads stung from that impact for some time after the ride,
The crew is understandably startled as well, checks that we are okay, and if we wish to continue. We do wish to continue, It was a fun team buildng exersice as they asked us to stand back up, while still tied together as well as tied to gthe flight cables, AND can't reach the railing of the lift to get a good grip to stand,
We resume the loading process, and the next time the lift lowers we fall forward again, but this time we are hung instead of smacking into the lift floor again. We then take the 300'+ climb. The mic man tells us not to look down, but instead to look straight ahead and wave and look happy, your on an amusement ride, darn it. He also says things like "You guys are only a fourth of the way there" "Only halfway there" Man, this is tall.
We get to the top, and after the countdown, Jerry pulls the cord, and Paul goes into the shock of his first every sKycoaster freefall, while Jerry and I are enjoying our mini skydive. By about the second swing Paul is smiling and having fun.. They let us swing for quite some time, then we are brouh to a stop.
The lift comes back up, and we get unhooked and change places with the oncoming riders. I think the best part of getting to watch the next flyers get harnessed is seeing their reaction when they take that little fall forward on the lift. We start to exit out to the hanress shleter when we realize that at least Paul and I are still tied together. I look down at the harness and unclip the links between the two harnesses. I only mention this becuase last time I did this particular SKycoaster, which was back in 2000, thehy left Jerry and I clipped together when we tried to exit. Except that in 2000 they left a mission critical piece of equipment attached to our suits and had to come running after us to retireve it.
We emove the harnesses, then watch but d not buy the DVD of our experience before heading back to Old Town.
We return to Old Town and it seems that Paul wants to try the Sling Shot now. The signs for Sling Shot inducate that it launches you 360' I remind Paul that what goes up 360' mjust come down 360'.
Paul and I ride the Sling Shot. Unlike other shots I have done there is no capsule or roll cage around the chairs on this one, just a very open exposed pair of seats, each seat has a shoulder bar and a crotch strap. That was a tight fit for me. I think i am now done with Sling Shots, just becuase there is nothig to the ride. I mean the anticipation is nice, especially after the tile the pod back so you are looking sriraigh up, but then you launch like a rocket, and it is so smooth its unreal. No strong negative G's, no rough jerky halt a the top. It is just one very very smooth ride, I did lke when we flipped to face upside down just in time for one of the drops.
Our last stop at Old Town is the Genera Store, a nostalgia store of sorts. Their gimmick is cheap drinks. Pepsi is only 50 cents a bottle, and beer is only $2.50 a bottle. Those are stadium bottles, 16-ouncers.
Paul notes that some of eh nostalgia they sell are expired license plates. "Who says we have to pay 50 for license plates" We have a round of beverages, and note that they serve our beer bottles in their own plain brown bags. We ask if we are allowed to drink the beer outside as we walk through Old Town. They neither confirm nor deny that we can.
We drink our beers, and by the time we finish Jerry decided to go give teh G-Force drag racer a try, but alas that ride had already closed for the night, and the dust covers were on the cars.