Dave Althoff, Jr.
2020-07-11 21:11:38 UTC
Trip Report: Zoombezi Bay
Powell, Ohio - 06/28/2020
=========================
"Wyandot Lake is almost all gone now"
It's been hot and humid for weeks. And the only roller coaster I have
ridden is the ancient Allan Herschell Little Dipper at Sluggers & Putters.
In this part of the world, we're at the end of June and the nearby
amusement parks haven't even opened yet...and from the sound of it, when
they do, I'm not going to want to visit. So what next?
Well, Zoombezi Bay is open.
I got online and spent way too much for a timed-entry ticket for Zoombezi
Bay. Initially it wasn't clear whether the ticket would actually include
admission to the Columbus Zoo or not, as all Zoombezi Bay customers are
being let into the park through the Season Pass entrance gate behind the
wave pool. As it turns out, our ticket does still include Zoo admission,
although we wouldn't be using that on this occasion.
We parked in what I believe to be one of the worst designed large parking
lots I have ever encountered, and took a short hike to a roped off section
of the lot just outside the park gate. There, we stopped at a security
table to have our bags looked at, then proceeded through the gate and into
the park. It's a kind of an odd entrance, as it puts you in the middle of
the park and behind the wave pool, but we could make it work. We found a
few chaise lounges to park our towels and gear, and headed for the water.
One of the first things I noticed was that the wave pool was operating a
disappointingly mild program. It's bad enough that the old Wyandot Lake
Wild Tide was converted to a picnic grove; that was an impressive pool in
that it was about 9' deep at the back wall, and the machinery could produce
waves in excess of 6' high. They don't build them like that anymore,
probably for very good reason. This pool only gets to be about 6' deep, and
today, presumably to facilitate social distancing, the waves were quite
limited; I think I could probably generate more interesting wave action by
jumping up and down on a large beach ball.
Zoombezi Bay has, or rather, had, two lazy rivers. One is the original
Canoochee Creek from Wyandot Lake, which runs under and around the back of
the roller coaster and surrounds a bar. For Zoombezi Bay this was
rechristened Crocktail Creek and reserved for customers aged 21 and older.
The other is much larger and much longer, and runs in a deep ditch that
runs through the middle of the park. It's really nice, especially since it
has four access points so that it is actually useful as a form of
transportation around the park. Except that because of You Know What, and
to facilitate social distancing, two of the access points are closed, and
each rider must now take and stay with a tube. Unlike certain parks I can
name there is no obligation to stay on or in the tube, but you've got to
have one; that's how they keep track of the number of people in the
attraction. Meanwhile, Crocktail Creek is closed entirely. Actually that
doesn't quite capture the spirit of the situation. Crocktail Creek is
undergoing a massive remodel which will replace all of the operational
hardware, reroute part of it, and integrate a swim-up bar. It should be
pretty nice when it's finished, but for the moment it is a heavy
construction area.
There is a big tower with four tube slides on it. Two of those slides are
open, and feature cyclone bowls; two are partially enclosed; and there are
a couple of body slides attached to another part of the tower. I traded my
spectacles for corrective swim goggles (Tyr corrective goggles, purchased
last year on Amazon, make it a lot easier to enjoy a waterpark) and we
grabbed tubes and climbed the tower, keeping at least six steps between our
group and any others. That's easy to do when you're hauling a six-foot-long
inflatable raft up the stairs. In the waterpark this social distancing
thing is pretty easy, and between the sunshine and the chlorinated water
the surfaces should be pretty safe. The slides themselves feature a long
curving drop into the cyclone bowl, and in my case three full trips around
the bowl before dropping down a more conventional slide to the catch pool.
For a second ride, we went back up and traded partners. This time we went
down the partially enclosed slide. As we started down the first fully
enclosed section, I noted the pinholes along the seam line which are a nice
nod to Wyandot Lake's old Jet Stream slides. Then an open section, then an
enclosed one, then another open section, then into a tube...and all hell
broke loose. As we entered the third and final enclosed section, we
apparently turned a little sideways. I felt the raft slide out from under
me, and I whacked into the side of the tube with my forehead. The raft
inverted and slid down the tunnel without me; I slid down basically on my
face, and I could tell that April was somewhere behind me. I dropped
ungracefully out of the pipe, made my way to the exit stairs and tried to
figure out if I was bleeding. April popped out of the ride and tried to
figure out where her sunglasses went. I was okay, but with a lump on my
forehead and a bad headache. I stopped back at the wave pool and grabbed my
glasses on the way back to First Aid.
The First Aid facility is in the building that Six Flags built after the
gift shop, administration building and bumper car building were destroyed
in a spectacular after-hours conflagration. Coming down here gave me an
opportunity to wander past the Croctail Creek construction and down the old
midway. I got myself checked out for signs of concussion (no), filled out a
form, and was given an ice pack. That's also when I finally looked at my
goggles. When the medic asked what color the slide was, I was able to point
to the Gelcoat scrapings on my goggles and say, "That color." Apparently I
did some damage to the slide on my way down. Still, had I not been wearing
those goggles, I probably would have sustained more damage, possibly even
broken my nose. So it worked out. I looked around a bit, and returned to
the wave pool.
The others in the group wanted to ride a couple more slides, which they
did. Attractions include the obligatory ProSlide Tornado, another enclosed
slide that features music playing on the way down, and a pair of water
coaster type attractions, one with a long drop and a trip up a large wall
for an action similar to the Tornado.
Finally, closer to closing time than I would have liked, we adjourned the
waterpark through its normal entrance. This leads out to what I gather is
now Adventure Cove, formerly Jungle Jack's Landing (they say Jack Hanna is
retiring at the end of this year as Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo.
I thought that title meant he was already retired!). This is where the Zoo
keeps its collection of carnival rides, and the classic Sea Dragon wood
roller coaster. Since we had less than an hour, we bought a couple of ride
tickets instead of a wristband.
The Sea Dragon is now the oldest operating wood coaster in Ohio, and tied
with the Little Dipper at Sluggers & Putters as the second oldest coaster
in the state. It's a standard PTC junior coaster, and is the earliest
surviving John Allen/PTC coaster. The Columbus Zoo has abandoned the
loading and unloading platforms on the ride, and now loads and unloads from
the back of the platform (the unloading area). They have also added a
kick-board to lock the brake handle for the unload brake in place. Oh, did
I fail to mention that this ride still has the big wooden brake levers?
Yeah, it does.
Even though the five of us were all in the same group, we were not
permitted to fill the train. Even weirder, they were loading only rows 1,
3, and 5, meaning I couldn't back up one more seat and ride in the back.
Odd. Very odd. Anyway, the ride is in good condition, and has a fair amount
of new wood on it. This is what the Scooby Doo-type coasters are supposed
to feel like. Resplendent in its gleaming white structure and bright red
handrails, the ride looks good, rides good, and appears to be in good
hands. It's the largest, longest, steepest, fastest, biggest, baddest
roller coaster in all of Delaware County, and it's only 36 feet tall. When
we exited, the operator wiped down the seats we had occupied.
The only "classic" ride we rode was Mission Macaw, the Larson Flying
Scooter that has been in storage for the last year or two. It's been
painted an ugly green color, and oddly enough the seat belts have been
replaced, in a move of spectacularly poor timing. This was the one Larson
Flying Scooter that had been equipped with normal push-button seat belts;
for this season it has the buckles with the covered release button that
requires a tool to open (I still think that violates ASTM F2291-20:6.3.8.1
and F2291-20"6.3.8.3, but Safe-Strap disagrees with me on that point). The
ride was running beautifully, and relocating it to be away from the odd
breeze that blows over the roof of the stingray pavilion has improved the
ride quite a bit. I was able to quickly gain control over my vehicle, and
set it into aerobatics. I held back a little when the operator
said..um...something over his PA, but the Zoo has apparently not instructed
their ride operators to remove their masks before making announcements, so
I have no idea what he said. I probably could have had that bird doing
corkscrews the way it was running. For what it's worth, the only NOTAM I
have seen on this ride (courtesy of the FAA [Footnote 1], of course) was
that backwards flying and rotation beyond 90 degrees is prohibited. I don't
know if that's still the rule or not.
We also took a ride on the Hafema log flume ride. It's actually slightly
taller than the roller coaster, but not really quite as much fun. Ever
since Arrow got out of the flume business, it's like nobody really knows
how to do it right. This one is mostly in concrete, mostly floating around
in its own reservoir. But it does so very slowly. Ever build a flume ride
in Roller Coaster Tycoon, where the boats can speed up nicely on a drop,
but grind to a near stop at the bottom? That's what this ride does. And the
splash at the bottoms of the drops isn't a satisfying splash, or even a
drenching. Instead, you get a little bit of a splash, followed by water
dumping in over the nose and sides of the boat, kind of like Pilgrim's
Plunge or Shoot the Rapids. The only time I ever had an experience like
that on an Arrow flume was the time we...jammed...five overweight adults
into the Log Jammer at Kennywood and literally sank the boat, rolling
around the course with water pouring in over the sides of the boat. It's
not a bad ride, but everything about it feels heavy, slow, and generally
uninspired. Didn't anybody inherit Karl Bacon's notes after he retired? I
think, especially with a lot of the old Arrow flumes reaching the end of
their service life, there ought to be a market for something like that old
ride...but this Hafema flume isn't exactly what I have in mind.
By the time we got off, the Zoo was closed for the evening. We made our way
out the main gate and located our vehicles and went to a nearby Culver's
for dinner. Now what am I going to do next weekend?
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Flyer Addicts Anonymous (flyeraddicts.com)
--DCAjr
/X\ _ *** Respect rides. They do not respect you. ***
/XXX\ /X\ /X\_ _ /X\__ _ _ _____
/XXXXX\ /XXX\ /XXXX\_ /X\ /XXXXX\ /X\ /X\ /XXXXX
_/XXXXXXX\__/XXXXX\/XXXXXXXX\_/XXX\_/XXXXXXX\__/XXX\_/XXX\_/\_/XXXXXX
NEW! When emailing this account, include the 'canonical magic word' in
the body of your message for a quicker response.
Powell, Ohio - 06/28/2020
=========================
"Wyandot Lake is almost all gone now"
It's been hot and humid for weeks. And the only roller coaster I have
ridden is the ancient Allan Herschell Little Dipper at Sluggers & Putters.
In this part of the world, we're at the end of June and the nearby
amusement parks haven't even opened yet...and from the sound of it, when
they do, I'm not going to want to visit. So what next?
Well, Zoombezi Bay is open.
I got online and spent way too much for a timed-entry ticket for Zoombezi
Bay. Initially it wasn't clear whether the ticket would actually include
admission to the Columbus Zoo or not, as all Zoombezi Bay customers are
being let into the park through the Season Pass entrance gate behind the
wave pool. As it turns out, our ticket does still include Zoo admission,
although we wouldn't be using that on this occasion.
We parked in what I believe to be one of the worst designed large parking
lots I have ever encountered, and took a short hike to a roped off section
of the lot just outside the park gate. There, we stopped at a security
table to have our bags looked at, then proceeded through the gate and into
the park. It's a kind of an odd entrance, as it puts you in the middle of
the park and behind the wave pool, but we could make it work. We found a
few chaise lounges to park our towels and gear, and headed for the water.
One of the first things I noticed was that the wave pool was operating a
disappointingly mild program. It's bad enough that the old Wyandot Lake
Wild Tide was converted to a picnic grove; that was an impressive pool in
that it was about 9' deep at the back wall, and the machinery could produce
waves in excess of 6' high. They don't build them like that anymore,
probably for very good reason. This pool only gets to be about 6' deep, and
today, presumably to facilitate social distancing, the waves were quite
limited; I think I could probably generate more interesting wave action by
jumping up and down on a large beach ball.
Zoombezi Bay has, or rather, had, two lazy rivers. One is the original
Canoochee Creek from Wyandot Lake, which runs under and around the back of
the roller coaster and surrounds a bar. For Zoombezi Bay this was
rechristened Crocktail Creek and reserved for customers aged 21 and older.
The other is much larger and much longer, and runs in a deep ditch that
runs through the middle of the park. It's really nice, especially since it
has four access points so that it is actually useful as a form of
transportation around the park. Except that because of You Know What, and
to facilitate social distancing, two of the access points are closed, and
each rider must now take and stay with a tube. Unlike certain parks I can
name there is no obligation to stay on or in the tube, but you've got to
have one; that's how they keep track of the number of people in the
attraction. Meanwhile, Crocktail Creek is closed entirely. Actually that
doesn't quite capture the spirit of the situation. Crocktail Creek is
undergoing a massive remodel which will replace all of the operational
hardware, reroute part of it, and integrate a swim-up bar. It should be
pretty nice when it's finished, but for the moment it is a heavy
construction area.
There is a big tower with four tube slides on it. Two of those slides are
open, and feature cyclone bowls; two are partially enclosed; and there are
a couple of body slides attached to another part of the tower. I traded my
spectacles for corrective swim goggles (Tyr corrective goggles, purchased
last year on Amazon, make it a lot easier to enjoy a waterpark) and we
grabbed tubes and climbed the tower, keeping at least six steps between our
group and any others. That's easy to do when you're hauling a six-foot-long
inflatable raft up the stairs. In the waterpark this social distancing
thing is pretty easy, and between the sunshine and the chlorinated water
the surfaces should be pretty safe. The slides themselves feature a long
curving drop into the cyclone bowl, and in my case three full trips around
the bowl before dropping down a more conventional slide to the catch pool.
For a second ride, we went back up and traded partners. This time we went
down the partially enclosed slide. As we started down the first fully
enclosed section, I noted the pinholes along the seam line which are a nice
nod to Wyandot Lake's old Jet Stream slides. Then an open section, then an
enclosed one, then another open section, then into a tube...and all hell
broke loose. As we entered the third and final enclosed section, we
apparently turned a little sideways. I felt the raft slide out from under
me, and I whacked into the side of the tube with my forehead. The raft
inverted and slid down the tunnel without me; I slid down basically on my
face, and I could tell that April was somewhere behind me. I dropped
ungracefully out of the pipe, made my way to the exit stairs and tried to
figure out if I was bleeding. April popped out of the ride and tried to
figure out where her sunglasses went. I was okay, but with a lump on my
forehead and a bad headache. I stopped back at the wave pool and grabbed my
glasses on the way back to First Aid.
The First Aid facility is in the building that Six Flags built after the
gift shop, administration building and bumper car building were destroyed
in a spectacular after-hours conflagration. Coming down here gave me an
opportunity to wander past the Croctail Creek construction and down the old
midway. I got myself checked out for signs of concussion (no), filled out a
form, and was given an ice pack. That's also when I finally looked at my
goggles. When the medic asked what color the slide was, I was able to point
to the Gelcoat scrapings on my goggles and say, "That color." Apparently I
did some damage to the slide on my way down. Still, had I not been wearing
those goggles, I probably would have sustained more damage, possibly even
broken my nose. So it worked out. I looked around a bit, and returned to
the wave pool.
The others in the group wanted to ride a couple more slides, which they
did. Attractions include the obligatory ProSlide Tornado, another enclosed
slide that features music playing on the way down, and a pair of water
coaster type attractions, one with a long drop and a trip up a large wall
for an action similar to the Tornado.
Finally, closer to closing time than I would have liked, we adjourned the
waterpark through its normal entrance. This leads out to what I gather is
now Adventure Cove, formerly Jungle Jack's Landing (they say Jack Hanna is
retiring at the end of this year as Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo.
I thought that title meant he was already retired!). This is where the Zoo
keeps its collection of carnival rides, and the classic Sea Dragon wood
roller coaster. Since we had less than an hour, we bought a couple of ride
tickets instead of a wristband.
The Sea Dragon is now the oldest operating wood coaster in Ohio, and tied
with the Little Dipper at Sluggers & Putters as the second oldest coaster
in the state. It's a standard PTC junior coaster, and is the earliest
surviving John Allen/PTC coaster. The Columbus Zoo has abandoned the
loading and unloading platforms on the ride, and now loads and unloads from
the back of the platform (the unloading area). They have also added a
kick-board to lock the brake handle for the unload brake in place. Oh, did
I fail to mention that this ride still has the big wooden brake levers?
Yeah, it does.
Even though the five of us were all in the same group, we were not
permitted to fill the train. Even weirder, they were loading only rows 1,
3, and 5, meaning I couldn't back up one more seat and ride in the back.
Odd. Very odd. Anyway, the ride is in good condition, and has a fair amount
of new wood on it. This is what the Scooby Doo-type coasters are supposed
to feel like. Resplendent in its gleaming white structure and bright red
handrails, the ride looks good, rides good, and appears to be in good
hands. It's the largest, longest, steepest, fastest, biggest, baddest
roller coaster in all of Delaware County, and it's only 36 feet tall. When
we exited, the operator wiped down the seats we had occupied.
The only "classic" ride we rode was Mission Macaw, the Larson Flying
Scooter that has been in storage for the last year or two. It's been
painted an ugly green color, and oddly enough the seat belts have been
replaced, in a move of spectacularly poor timing. This was the one Larson
Flying Scooter that had been equipped with normal push-button seat belts;
for this season it has the buckles with the covered release button that
requires a tool to open (I still think that violates ASTM F2291-20:6.3.8.1
and F2291-20"6.3.8.3, but Safe-Strap disagrees with me on that point). The
ride was running beautifully, and relocating it to be away from the odd
breeze that blows over the roof of the stingray pavilion has improved the
ride quite a bit. I was able to quickly gain control over my vehicle, and
set it into aerobatics. I held back a little when the operator
said..um...something over his PA, but the Zoo has apparently not instructed
their ride operators to remove their masks before making announcements, so
I have no idea what he said. I probably could have had that bird doing
corkscrews the way it was running. For what it's worth, the only NOTAM I
have seen on this ride (courtesy of the FAA [Footnote 1], of course) was
that backwards flying and rotation beyond 90 degrees is prohibited. I don't
know if that's still the rule or not.
We also took a ride on the Hafema log flume ride. It's actually slightly
taller than the roller coaster, but not really quite as much fun. Ever
since Arrow got out of the flume business, it's like nobody really knows
how to do it right. This one is mostly in concrete, mostly floating around
in its own reservoir. But it does so very slowly. Ever build a flume ride
in Roller Coaster Tycoon, where the boats can speed up nicely on a drop,
but grind to a near stop at the bottom? That's what this ride does. And the
splash at the bottoms of the drops isn't a satisfying splash, or even a
drenching. Instead, you get a little bit of a splash, followed by water
dumping in over the nose and sides of the boat, kind of like Pilgrim's
Plunge or Shoot the Rapids. The only time I ever had an experience like
that on an Arrow flume was the time we...jammed...five overweight adults
into the Log Jammer at Kennywood and literally sank the boat, rolling
around the course with water pouring in over the sides of the boat. It's
not a bad ride, but everything about it feels heavy, slow, and generally
uninspired. Didn't anybody inherit Karl Bacon's notes after he retired? I
think, especially with a lot of the old Arrow flumes reaching the end of
their service life, there ought to be a market for something like that old
ride...but this Hafema flume isn't exactly what I have in mind.
By the time we got off, the Zoo was closed for the evening. We made our way
out the main gate and located our vehicles and went to a nearby Culver's
for dinner. Now what am I going to do next weekend?
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Flyer Addicts Anonymous (flyeraddicts.com)
--DCAjr
/X\ _ *** Respect rides. They do not respect you. ***
/XXX\ /X\ /X\_ _ /X\__ _ _ _____
/XXXXX\ /XXX\ /XXXX\_ /X\ /XXXXX\ /X\ /X\ /XXXXX
_/XXXXXXX\__/XXXXX\/XXXXXXXX\_/XXX\_/XXXXXXX\__/XXX\_/XXX\_/\_/XXXXXX
NEW! When emailing this account, include the 'canonical magic word' in
the body of your message for a quicker response.