kaylarudbek

Yesterday we visited Lake Compounce, a venerable amusement park in Bristol, Connecticut, for the first time since our visit a few years ago. I was very interested to get back there because of changes I'd heard had come to the park.

Recently, the park came under new ownership--it's now owned by Herschend, the same company that operates Dollywood and Silver Dollar City; but I didn't expect much to have happened yet as a result of that. I was more interested in work that happened on their wooden roller coasters over the past couple of years, and my #1 priority was to ride the one major coaster there I actually had never ridden before: the 1927 Philadelphia Toboggan Company classic, Wildcat. Here's Canobie Coaster's POV from last year:



This coaster has had a checkered history. It had been completely rebuilt by the Dinn Corporation in the 1980s, and was reportedly OK but not great in that condition--but a major retrack several years ago by Martin & Vleminckx mysteriously made it far worse, according to all who dared ride it. It was a rough, painful ride. Things got to the point that Compounce decided to shut it down for the entire 2023 season and bring in Gravity Group, purveyors of the precut wooden retrack that has been saving old rickety woodies across the world. They replaced most of the track after the first drop and large parts of the structure. For 2024, the last few hundred feet were still original, but after that season they came back and redid even that. And by all accounts, it was fixed!

I'd never ridden it before because I'd been warned away from it as one of the most painful rides in the world, and unlike YouTube coaster enthusiasts, I think riding coasters universally regarded as bad is not worth it when you can just go ride the good coasters at the same park. But with its reputation magically improved, I figured it was time to give it a try. And, best of all, my daughter decided she'd come along this time. I rarely have a riding companion on the big coasters!

Sure enough, we both had a great ride. It's remarkably smooth for an early-20th-century woodie, about on par with the current state of Yankee Cannonball at Canobie, and it's taller (85 feet) and feels faster than Yankee Cannonball. The bunny hills were giving some significant air, and there's one that sort of jinks sideways at the same time to give you a really weird combination of forces.

This was the first big thrill coaster my kid had ridden since a ride on an older, rougher incarnation of Yankee Cannonball years and years ago that had her swearing off of them. I was a bit nervous about whether she'd like Wildcat, since I have a pretty bad record with cajoling my family members onto these rides, but she thought it was a lot of fun! Now she might tackle comparable rides like Yankee Cannonball or Six Flags New England's Thunderbolt with some confidence.

Progress on Boulder Dash

Speaking of rough coasters, I'd had a pretty bad ride last time on Lake Compounce's #1 signature ride, the gigantic, brilliantly situated mountainside woodie Boulder Dash. It was jackhammering so hard that it was difficult to enjoy. But since then, there had been some controversial modifications made, including the replacement of the whole first drop and the pass over the station with GCI's steel Titan Track, technically making this no longer a 100% wooden coaster. I was interested to see if it'd gotten any better. My ride was in the next-to-last seat, a good place for forces but not a wheel seat, which I imagined might help with the roughness.

Well, it's... better. I think it still has a long way to go. That Titan Track section is of course perfectly smooth and it leaves the ride running impressively fast. But on the big middle hills in the outbound half, it's still jackhammering pretty hard. Here's Coaster 101's POV:



It looks to me like they've done some more retracking (some in wood? I'm not sure) on the back half, particularly the first hills after the turnaround. And that is welcome. This section is in much better shape than it was. Overall, it's an improved ride, but it needs more work.

Other rides

Just like last time, their triple-launch Sky Rocket II, Phobia Phear Coaster, was basically a walk-on (crowds were quite light on this cool day with a few rain sprinkles), so after getting off Boulder Dash I just banged that one out in five minutes. I still think it's underrated. Coaster fans are starting to look down on these from over-familiarity, but Phobia Phear Coaster is the good kind without the "comfort collars" that plague some installations. It hasn't changed: it's still smooth, whippy and forceful, and by far the scariest-looking coaster from off-ride, though it's not nearly as scary as Boulder Dash when you actually ride it.

The rest of what I rode was family fare. This was actually the first time I'd ridden their miniature steam train, an impressively long ride that goes all the way around to the other end of Lake Compounce, past the far reaches of the (not yet open) waterpark section. We rode their silly classic shooting dark ride Ghost Hunt three times, and I managed to break 100,000 points, a personal best.

Sadly, a couple of old favorites are gone: they took out the full-sized vintage trolley that they used to run along the lakeside to the section with Thunder Rapids, and the full-sized bumper cars are also gone (they seemed to be in poor shape the last time we were there).

All in all, it was a great time. I'm particularly happy that my kid could ride with me on a coaster with some real thrills.