On a beautiful June Friday, Joe, George and I headed to Great Adventure for a day of roller coasters. (At least George and I did. Joe hates heights and roller coasters. Why did he go? Who knows?) It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been and I was looking forward to two new rides: Kingda Ka and El Toro.  George hasn’t been there for several years, so it would be his first time on several coasters.

We arrived at the park right around 10:30 and promptly headed for Batman The Ride. On the way we saw a sign saying Batman and Robin: The Chiller was closed for the day. I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Chiller, but George wanted to give it a shot.

We get to Batman and George and I head for the ride while Joe, despite our best efforts, waits outside. (We’d find out later that the reason he didn’t go in with us was he thought there might be a point inside where he would have HAD to get on the ride.) Batman is my “dear old friend” roller coaster. It’s been around since the early 90’s and I’ve ridden it dozens of times. For a while it was my over-all favorite, but the higher speeds of the newer coasters have left it in the dust. It’s still a lot of fun though because it has one of my favorite features. It’s an inverted coaster (which means the riders hang beneath the track) so on its loops it looks and feels like you can go flying off. I still love it after all these years.

Next we head to Nitro, a very tall steel coaster with a steep first drop and great horizontal loops. This supplanted Batman as my favorite ride because it’s really fast and you really feel like you could fly out of the car. Your only restraint is a lap bar and the sides of the cars are low, so it’s a great effect. Also, the lack of upper body restriction means you can ride it with your hands up the entire time. On the way up the hill, I tried to convince George that this was the best way to ride Nitro. The couple sitting next to us agrees with me and also tells George he has to try it. We try to peer pressure him into it the entire way up with no success. But when we get to the picture booth after the ride, the lady has her hands up, but the guy doesn’t. He rattles off some lame excuse. I love hypocrites.

After Nitro we head to Skull Mountain, the only ride we think we’ll get Joe to go on. Its hook is it’s an indoor, in the dark coaster. We figured if Joe couldn’t see how high we were, he wouldn’t object. It’s a really lame ride.

Medusa was next. Decent ride, but it doesn’t possess the speed of the newer ones or the nostalgia of Batman. Barely worth mentioning.

Now we head to El Toro, my first new ride in years. It’s a new wooden coaster built over, under and around another older wooden coaster Rolling Thunder. As wooden coasters go, El Toro is the third fastest (70 mph) and has the steepest drop (76-degrees) of any in the world. It has great headchoppers and lots of hills with ejector air. The best part of the ride is about three-quarters of the way through when you’re thrown through a series of highly banked turns that throw you from side to side. Nitro is out. El Toro is by far the new champ.

We decide to break for lunch and head for Johnny Rockets for burgers and shakes. We’re waiting in a long line, when I hear a roller coaster going. The only one it could be is the Chiller. I point this out to George and he runs (literally) over to check. Apparently “closed for the day” isn’t. $60 later (thanks Joe) we enjoy our meal and head to The Chiller, which is also not worth discussing. 

We make our way over to Superman, but Joe or George suggests we stop and go through this Houdini thing. It’s really stupid, and… let’s just say they’re both going to Hell.

There’s a long line for Superman, so we go on the Great American Scream Machine, which is a good ride that I hate. For whatever reason I always end up with my head being banged against the restraints. I feel concussed after every ride. 

We try to go on Kingda Ka but George says the line is too long. We go on Rolling Thunder instead and have to deal with an annoying announcer. He’s one of these guys that is always making very bad jokes just because he has a microphone.

Speaking of things that are annoying, now seems like a good time to mention something that drove us crazy. Each train has 30-40 seats on it and each ride has a theoretical capacity of thousands per hour. Of course that assumes that every seat is filled. Sometimes three people sit in a row of four and there’s no “singles” around to fill the last seat. That’s not so bad. Dozens of times we see trains going by with empty rows. Once we pointed to an empty pair of seats and suggested a duo about 10 feet away take them. They looked at us like we had two heads. I hate people. Back to the recap…

I’m dying to go on Kingda Ka, but George is wary (i.e. punking out). We get to the line for the second time and it’s still at least an hour wait. As we’re debating what to do, a guy with a flash pass (an electronic device which lets you bypass the line) comes over and says he can take us in five minutes if we give him $5 each. Joe passes immediately and is followed quickly by George. Since it seems to be the best alternative, I pay the guy the money.

Kingda Ka, or “Holy Shit” as I renamed it, is the fastest and tallest roller coaster in the world. Hydraulics propel the train from zero to 128 mph in less than 4 seconds. You go straight up 456 feet into the air, turn around and come back down while twisting. While Nitro and El Toro are all about g-forces and turns, Kingda Ka is all about acceleration and speed.  When the car took off, for a split second I started to think, “This isn’t so bad.” I got to the “n’t” part, when the acceleration really kicked in and I yelled “HOLY SHIT!!” Did I mention it’s fast? Five seconds later we were cresting the top of the hill and I got the best/worst view ever. Imagine being 45 stories in the air with nothing around you. Would that be amazing or terrifying? It’s both. Now I managed to just say, “Holy shit.” Then we started heading down. Straight down. 90-degrees vertically down. It’s so steep that as your going over the top, you wonder if they forgot to finish the track. As you go down you twist clockwise horizontally 270-degrees so that you finish traveling to the left from where you at the top of the hill. Now you realize that the worst is over. I say “Holy shit” one more time for good measure. The ride is over and I come stumbling out to meet George and Joe, still in awe. Kingda Ka isn’t long enough to top El Toro or even Nitro (from launch to coasting is at best 20 seconds), but it’s an amazing experience. (BTW, as I’m reading up for this post I find out that occasionally the train only makes it about 450 feet up and rolls back down. Luckily I read this after I went on it.)

We head over to Superman. It’s another inverted roller coaster with a twist. Instead of sitting, your chair is lifted so you’re held in a flying position.

By now, George is tired and cranky but Joe seems fine which is the exact opposite of what I expected. I’m more than willing to stay until closing but that’s not going to happen. We decide to ride El Toro and Nitro than head home. (We added Batman since it was on the way out.)

The worst ride by far is the stupid cable car that takes you from one side to the other. It was also closed early in the afternoon, but since we were tiring and it runs between El Toro and Nitro, we decided to take it. We get on the tram and Joe confirms with the attendant that we’re not too heavy for the ride. Of course it’s only after leaving the station that Joe notices the sign that the weight limit for the ride is 680 pounds. Doing a little math, we realize we’re within 15 pounds of the limit. Now all of a sudden Joe AND George are afraid of heights. Still we survived the day.

All in all, a whole lot of fun.