Imagine visiting Discovery Kingdom, Magic Mountain, California’s Great America, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Disneyland. That would make for a pretty fun summer. For one of these roller coaster tourists that was just one week. That kind of theme park blitzkrieg is what Karol Gajda and The Coaster Guy recently experienced.
Friend of the blog, Kurt – The Coaster Guy, was chosen to take a tour of 5 Six Flags parks as part of a Discover Card and Six Flags promotion. Last month, him, his wife and their two kids hopped into a cool Ford Flex and hit the road. He visited Magic Mountain, Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Over Georgia, Great Adventure, and Great America. It was a good year to make a Six Flags tour as four of the five parks boasted new coasters for 2011. I’ve enjoyed Kurt’s coverage of Magic Mountain including his great post about Green Lantern First Flight’s media day. It’s still one of the most ridden stories over at Theme Park Hype. Read about his journey: Coaster to Coaster Tour
With the (unlikely) goal of riding every roller coaster in the United States, Karol Gajda launched Roller Coaster Tour to chronicle his adventure. He admits that
he’s not a roller coaster enthusiasts and that he hadn’t ridden a coaster in 4 or 5 years. He appears to be an adventurous guy and this was his next adventure. Sadly, his tour was called to an end about a month ago due to his expensive car troubles and his health. He had a pretty bad blacking out incident that affected his health even after he left the park.
Initially, I was envious of a guy who could take time off to literally conquer every park in the country. But after reading the beating he’s taken on some of these rides and remembering how I feel at the end of one of my little 2 day trips, I’m not quite as interested in a marathon coaster tour. That said, a week in Europe, Japan, or heck, Pennsylvania, would be welcomed. But anything more than that might be a real challenge. For example, it sounds like he took a horrible beating on Arrow hyper coaster, Desperado at Buffalo Bill’s Resort & Casino. See Karol’s roller coaster tour route with links to his trip reports.
If you’re interested in getting your coaster count up, Theme Park Review has tours to theme parks all over the World. For example, a “Road to Cedar Point” trip that just ended included Great Adventure plus Pennsylvania and Ohio’s parks. All together included 65 roller coasters. I could have benefited from the North East trip that included Canobie, La Ronde, Great Escape and return visit to Six Flags New England would have been nice. It’s been 6 years since I’ve ridden my top coaster!
I’ve never been on a TPR trip, but it might be the way to do a coaster tour as everything’s planned out for you and they usually include some ERT (exclusive right time), walk backs (tours of places most guests don’t get to see), and photo opportunities.
What’s Your Take?
Would you want to go on a roller coaster tour? Do you think your body would hold up? Leave a comment below.
August 15, 2011 at 07:14
I hope to do a loop from DC next spring. Including Kennywood, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Holiday World, maybe adding Dollywood, Carowinds, BGW, Kings Dominion. If I follow this route it will keep all segments under 4hrs. If I have to bail because I'm too sore i'll have as much as an 11 hr segment to get home so i'll be motivated to keep on the loop.
August 15, 2011 at 08:50
I've thought about doing a TPR trip though I haven't really dealt with that site too much and wouldn't know anybody. For the past three years I've grabbed whatever friends were willing to join and did mini coaster marathon's about a week long, the last one involving 8 parks across Ohio/western PA. My partner in crime seemed exhausted but I could have easily went for more after adding 43 coasters, good times!
August 15, 2011 at 08:56
This is what ive been dreaming of. This is my dream, to do a coaster tour! However, the parks i havent been to yet and would like to go to are very spread out from each other: Kings Island, Six Flags Over Georgia, Six Flags Over Texas, Holiday World, and Six Flags Magic Mountain. They are all in different states, and not close to each other. The closest ones are Kings Island and Holiday World, with a 3 hour drive. The others are more than 8 hours apart from each other, and magic mountain is like a day apart from the others. But what would be possible and what I would like to do is go from pa to ga and hit Kings Dominion(already been there but want to do 305 again), Carowinds, and Six Flags over Georgia in one trip. But that sounds still hard to do, and it would take a long time to get to ga.
August 15, 2011 at 09:22
I'm doing a Six Flags/Cedar Fair tour after I'm done with college. See you in 10 years Magic Mountain!
August 15, 2011 at 17:51
I did a Hershey Park, Dorney Park, SFGA triple tour last month. I would have added SFA but heard from too many people that it REALLY sucked. If my fiance had more vacation time, I would have added Kings Dominion and BGW to the trip as well, but I'll just save that for another trip.
August 15, 2011 at 20:39
This year my wife and I did Holiday World (Holliwood Nights) Kings Island, Cedar Point, Waldameer, Conneaut Lake. Stamina is an issue, especially when you have late night ERT then need to get up the next morning for another ERT or to start driving to the next park. The big parks are definitely tiring, especially when done back-to-back. We usually try to avoid that. Staying at the Breakers helped make Cedar Point a lot more enjoyable because we saved so much energy by avoiding trips back and forth from Sandusky to the main gate and then into the park. We also had Early Entry privileges. I did pick up some bumps and bruises along the way, but it was worth it.
August 16, 2011 at 01:26
Back in 2002, a nutty buddy (no, he's not an ice cream cone) and I did a 2 week, 16 park tour. Glad we did it while I still had that much energy on reserve. Rather than try to recount the entire tale, I'll let the magazine article speak for us. Besides, Dale is an even better writer than I am.
http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0902web/rollers.html
August 22, 2011 at 00:01
Just wondering if anyone linked to the JHU article above I posted and, if so, any thoughts to share?
August 13, 2012 at 17:15
In July 2002 our family did a roller coaster tour we went through one province, eights states, five amusement parks driving 3,833 km and the four of us did a total of 344 rides. It was a trip of a lifetime, every coaster enthusiast should do.