Silver Dollar City

USA 2014 Blog Day 10

Welcome to Branson, Missouri. Well eventually got to bed at 01:15am early hours this morning and up again at 05:15am so feeling a little tired today having only 4 hours sleep after 12 ½ hours in the park yesterday! We arrived at Silver Dollar City for opening this morning and had literally been there 5 minutes, and whilst looking for a locker to store the camera equipment we thought ‘Hey...we recognise those 2 faces’ ... and would you believe it walking towards us were our good friends (and fellow coaster enthusiasts) Jeff Holmes and Andrew ‘Viper’ Barrett who just also happened to be in the USA at the same park on the same day, and it’s Friday 13th ... spooky!!!

Still amazed we'd met the 4 of us headed straight over to Outlaw Run the parks wooden coater (with inversions) and had our first ride in the front seat as always. WOW what a ride...steep drop, fast, furious, airtime, overbanked turns, and what can best be described as a sideways taken speed bump. It also has what must be the best finish to any coaster – 2 inline twists back into the break run. We all loved it and both Jeff and Andrew said it was their new number 1 woodie, although Adrian and I still prefer Prowler. The front seat ride proved better than the back where the Lapbar pushed down another notch or two during the ride which made it a little uncomfortable.

We all sat down for a drink and a chat and had a good catch up with what we were doing on our trips. It really made our day spending time with these guys and had a really good laugh. It was soon back to riding to tick off the other coasters PowderKeg, WildFire, and Thunderation, along with the Giant Barn Swing for good measure. We left Jeff and Viper for a while as they wanted to visit the parks cave attraction and we wanted to film and photograph. We found out during the afternoon that Outlaw Run had closed down and the maintenance guys were working on it for reasons unknown, so decided to head back over for the last hour hoping it would re-open. We were relieved that we managed to get 4 rides during the morning as this was the only reason we added this park to the trip.

At 6pm the coaster was still down but they had started to send empty trains round for testing and the ride ops were hopeful to get us back on the ride, but advised ½ hour later that it would not be opening so we headed back to WildFire for another couple of goes before we left the park. However, at 18:45 Outlaw Run suddenly opened and sent out 3 trains full of people just for the last 15 minutes, so we managed to get one final ride in the front seat which was just a superb end to the day. Overall this is a very nice scenic park although a little difficult to navigate around even with the park map as it’s just a maze of pathways. Definitely worth a visit.

Have two special mentions today:

Dad – Hope everything went well with your shoulder operation today and that everything is now repaired and less painful. Wishing you a comfortable and speedy recovery. Love from us both.

Mark Lonsdale – Happy Birthday mate and we’ll see you out for a drink when we get back.

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