Working at the Magic Kingdom, your sense of holidays and seasons becomes drastically blurred. You literally spend months celebrating the same holiday 3-4 times a week. So when Christmas Day actually comes, it's kinda lost its charm. But luckily you have friends and family who work outside of Disney and will let you know when it's ACTUALLY Christmas. This was my second year spent in Florida for the holidays, and I spent it working (just like last year). But honestly, it's much better to be at work my with my friends than at home by myself. So I just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of my wonderful co-workers and friends that have made the holidays special.
With the new year just around the corner, I've been considering what kind of changes I want for 2015. There's always resolutions like "lose weight and stop eating multiple cheeseburgers in one sitting" and "get a different job where I don't have to yell at foreigners for violating my taped-off viewing areas", but I want to instead focus things I want to do in the coming year. Since I obviously love theme parks, I want to try and visit some parks that I've never been to before.
For this entry, I want to just focus on domestic parks. Realistically, I may be able to visit a few of these parks in the coming year, but I definitely don't have the resources to try and hit up any international parks. I plan on making an additional post to discuss my international theme park wishlist, so be on the lookout for that in the coming weeks. The parks on this list, however, are all right here in the United States.
Carowinds is part of Cedar Fair Entertainment, the same company that operates parks such as Cedar Point and Kings Island. This park is just a few hours away from Atlanta, GA, which is also home to a Six Flags park: Six Flags Over Goergia. I visited SFOG as a child, but never had the chance to go to Carowinds. I only live about 9 hours from this park, so a weekend or three-day weekend trip up there is actually somewhat plausible.
Carowinds is a pretty solid park with lots of coasters and flat rides. I've heard a lot about some it's headliner attractions like Intimidator and Nighthawk, but I'm also very drawn to its upcoming attraction. In 2015, Carowinds will be opening a new mega coaster called Fury 325. It's been a long time since anyone has built something this big, and it's exciting to see parks that still want to build big, expensive rides instead of short, gimmicky coasters. According to Carowinds' website, Fury 325 will stand at 325 feet tall and reach speeds of 95 mph. Additionally, it will have a ride time of 3 1/2 minutes, which is almost unheard of nowadays. With Carowinds not too far away, I hope to be able to take a trip up there sometime next year.
Number 4 - Holiday World, Indiana
I know it sounds crazy to want to go to a place called Santa Claus, Indiana where it's literally Christmas all-year round (especially after my opening paragraph), but Holiday World just has way too much to offer to turn it down. Many of you reading this have probably never heard of this theme park, since it's not park of a major chain like Six Flags or Cedar Fair. Admittedly, I myself know very little about this park. But Holiday World is home to some very interesting and very appealing rides.
As far as wooden coasters go, The Voyage is one of the top rated rides on coaster polls every single year. It boasts all kinds of airtime and speed while zooming through a beautiful forest. I'm a sucker for a good woodie (don't take that out of context) and so The Voyage is definitely on my list of must-dos. Holiday World also has a huge water park with some of the wildest and longest water rides in the country such as The Mammoth and Wildebeest.
Like Carowinds, HW will also be opening up a new coaster in 2015: Thunderbird. This coaster will actually be the first steel coaster built at this park and will be the first of its kind, too. The ride itself is a B&M wing coaster like X-Flight and Gatekeeper, but it will feature a launch to start the ride, which hasn't been used on any wing coasters thus far. I'm really excited to see how this ride plays out, resulting in me now following the ride's construction via Twitter @HolidayWorld #orangeisthenewtrack
Three - Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia
I've been to Busch Gardens Tampa a couple times, but I really want to head farther north to check out their Virginia park. Unlike it's Florida counterpart, this park is in a more forested area and is more themed to North American and European nature. BGW features rides such as Apollo's Chariot, Alpengeist, and Loch Ness Monster. Like Holiday World, I don't really know a whole lot about this park, except that I really want to go see it. I've also heard a lot of great reviews about one of their newer coasters called Verbolten. I don't fully understand how the ride actually do, but it's a coaster that goes fast and that's enough for me. BGW used to have a suspended coaster called Big Bad Wolf that was very highly praised, but it was demolished to make room for Verbolten years ago.
Number Two - Hershey Park, Pennsylvania
Since I'm a roller coaster junkie, Hershey Park has always had a strong appeal to me. This park has lots of great coasters, including some very unique ride types. As a kid, I remember first learning about Hershey Park through the Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 video game. For whatever reason, RTC3 decided to partner with Hershey Park to have their unique ride designs and attractions featured in their game. So when I was able to see and virtually experience rides such as Storm Runner, it fostered a desire to go see that ride in-person.
Out of all the parks on this list, Hershey Park is the one i'll end up most likely visiting in 2015. A very good friend of mine lives close to this park, and he's already invited me to head up there in the spring to check it out for a few days. Needless to say, I'm more than excited to take him up on his offer.
Okay so i'll probably get lynched for this but I've never actually been to Disneyland before. I've been to Six Flags Magic Mountain many times and even Universal Studios Hollywood once, but I've never made it all the way into Disneyland. We once even drove to Downtown Disney in Anaheim late at night, but failed to even get a glimpse of the parks. But in my defense, I wasn't a huge fan of Disney Parks at the time. Disneyland always seemed to be like a smaller, more disappointing version of Disney World. Since I had already visited Disney World a couple times, I figured Disneyland wasn't really worth it. It wasn't until I started working at Disney World that I realized how wrong I actually was.
I feel like the odd-man out here in Disney World whenever people start to talk about Anaheim and the great Mecca of Disney Parks. They talk about how magical that park truly is, and how the atmosphere is so much different than the extremely crowded and overrun Florida parks. They talk about how the rides are more detailed, more well-kept, and more unique. They talk about how Disneyland's version of a certain ride is so much better than Disney World's version. They talk about how the presence of Walt can be felt. And after all this talk, all I want to do is jump on a plane and fly out there for a week. And so that's what I'm going to do.
I've already got about 10 days of approved vacation time in September 2015, and I sincerely plan on making a trip to California during that time. I'll probably make stops at Magic Mountain and maybe even Universal Studios, but my main goal is to finally experience Disneyland and California Adventure for myself. I suspect that all-in-all I will still end up liking Disney World more, but I desperately want to see what the original park has to offer. Oh yeah and California Adventure, too because of Cars and stuff.
So those are the Top 5 Parks I want to visit in the near future. If you've been to any of those parks, I'd love to hear your opinions on them, whether good or bad. Be on the lookout for my Top 5 International Parks Wishlist coming soon. Thanks for reading!
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