Monday, February 15, 2010

Aerial Antics: Worlds of Fun


The park may be themed to Around the World in Eighty Days, but this trip around Worlds of Fun will only take a few minutes. Who has eighty days to set aside for anything, anymore? In fact, we're wasting time right now! Let's get moving.

Before you even enter Worlds of Fun you should know that they're technically now a full resort. The park opened the Worlds of Fun Village some years back, and you can park your RV there or stay in one of their comfy cabins. There's a club house with a nice pool, too, but considering the off season nature of this photo it doesn't look like much fun.

Adding to the resort theme is the separately gated Oceans of Fun water park. As the aerial image above shows, there's lots of water fun to be had at this place. Slides and pools, water play structures, and even a splash down boat ride are available to visitors.

Once in the theme park proper there are plenty of rides to hit, and here we see the park's Boomerang with a lot of woods behind it. Well, some of those woods had the bite the dust last year, but for good reason - that's the home of the Prowler wooden coaster. The ride starts in the upper left of this image and heads out into the wilderness.

Mamba was Cedar Fair's big present to the park a few seasons after they purchased it in 1995. The Morgan hyper coaster is just too big to fit into one image, but I've always though the coaster's turnaround, with it's series of support head-choppers, looked like fun. So here it is!

And here is the park's second coaster with bright yellow supports. Spinning Dragons is a Gerstlauer spinning coaster, the same layout as several of those Tony Hawk rides at Six Flags parks. I believe that's the station from the removed Orient Express looping coaster in the far upper left corner - now used in the park's yearly Halloween Haunt.

Secretly I picked Words of Fun on this Presidents Day because of this uber-patriotic coaster... the Patriot! The B&M inverted ride was added back in 2006, and actually opened on my Birthday. I like to think that was fully in honor of me.

When the Timber Wolf opened in 1989 the ride was a big deal, but I think it's popularity has dinned over the years. Did I say dinned? I meant dimmed, I must have been thinking of what happens to Dinn Corporation wooden coasters over time. Haha!

No really though, the park has been working on retracking sections of the ride for years now, and though it still may not be as smooth as opening year the effort is appreciated!

For your look at the park via Bing's aerials, click here.


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