|
|
|
|
| Status: |
|
Operating since 1958 |
| Phone: |
|
405-478-2412 |
| Web: |
|
Frontier City's site |
| Address: |
|
11601 Northeast Expressway
Oklahoma City, OK 73131
USA
|
| Visits: |
|
32 |
| Rating: |
|
 |
| Share this park: |
|
|
|
|
|
| Reviews |
RllrCoasterFan
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 744
View Park/Ride Count
|
It is the closet thing I have to a Six Flags or anything bigger than Bell's so...I actually really enjoy Frontier City. It is a lot of fun during Fright Fest
|
| 9-23-04 13:42:11 |
|
Sir Willow
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 3550
View Park/Ride Count
|
Frontier City
The People- me and Dave
The Day- Monday, June 28, 2004
Crowds- very light
Weather- comfortable, threatening to have T-storms, though it never really did.
We stopped at a Microtel hotel about an hour to 90 minutes outside of Oklahoma City the night before, and while it rained while we slept, the weather was very nice to us this day, never really giving the rain that we were expecting. That was a very nice thing.
I had heard some about Frontier City, but not a whole lot, and what I had heard had been almost entirely negative. Comments like, "the pit" and "the dredges of the Six Flags" chain were not uncommon. So we arrived with low expectations.
We were there at 9:25, expecting a 10:00 opening and wanting to be a bit early. Turns out the park opened at 10:30 (check your schedules!) and we were the second car into the parking lot when it did open. We had a laugh because for a while, we were the only non-pickup in the parking lot, and didn't see a car arrive until about 15-20 minutes after the lot opened. Everyone else was in trucks.
Anyways, we went to the ticket booth and asked about our season passes being valid, though I didn't expect them to be, and offered my $10 off coupon also. Instead, the lady at the window waved away the coupon and gave us half price admissions since we had Six Flags passes, which saved us about $10 more than the coupon would have. Very nice and
friendly about it to. The same was true for the gentleman at the gates where you enter the park, and where we waited a bit. Very friendly, and we had a good time bantering with him while we waited.
Some big differences between this and other Six Flags parks- no metal detectors, no bag checks, no big crowds (they thought that 7000 was a large crowd), and very laid back. The entry is also quite a bit different, with only about 5 or 6 entry lanes, though if crowds are that small they don't need any more. You also enter by walking into a very large gift shop first, that has a couple of exits into the main park, the entry for the Diamondback coaster, and an animatronic bear show. Quite different, but we thought it was very nice.
We wanted to start with Diamondback, but it was closed to start the day (as we had been warned by the gate keeper that it might be for a short time), and Nightmare, an indoor mouse, was closed also, with the man at the gate saying that it's probably done for good as there had been talk that it was no longer safe to operate. If the small portion of track that could be seen outside is any indication, it's an old mouse, so I wouldn't be surprised there. But still sad, none the less.
So instead, after opening, we headed to the back of the small park, walking past a beautiful western town setting with shops and restaurants, past several flat rides, including an inverter, pirate ship, a yoyo themed with sixguns on the side, and some others, and ended up at the Silver Bullet, a Schwarzkopf single looping formerly portable coaster.
Silver Bullet delivered a great ride- every single one, including the several rerides we took all over the train. With no lines this early, we were free to pick our seats out, though once a line appeared later the seat selection instead became assigned seating based on where you were in line. With the small station that was built with these, that makes sense. And since the coaster delivers all over the train, it wasn't that big a deal, though the back certainly has a much more intense pull down on the drop. It was a great coaster, and one we enjoyed thoroughly, getting a score of 8-8.5 on my 10 point scale.
We checked out the Wildcat wood coaster, but it was still closed as they were getting it ready to open. So we walked a bit and checked out other parts of the park, including taking a ride on the Casino (a trabant), their elevated ferris wheel (the Grand Centennial), and admiring the scenery. Finally the Wildcat opened, and we hopped on, taking rides in the front, middle, back, and Schmeck seat.
Wildcat is an NAD built coaster that resided somewhere else previously (sorry, forgot where), that when the park closed, ACE helped get it moved and rebuilt here. And it looks like they did a nice job with it, including a very nice plaque outside the coaster, and several displays in the queue area featuring other "landmark" coasters to. So how come ACE never talks about this one as much as they talk about the Leap the Dips? I didn't have a clue that they had a thing to do with this. Oh well, that's another discussion.
In any case, the Wildcat is a fairly basic out and back wood coaster with a steel support structure, and it delivers an ok ride. It had a couple of nice pops of air, and wasn't rough in any way, but it didn't do a whole lot. Fun, and one that we enjoyed, but with Silver Bullet sitting so close to it, it was easy to choose which one we preferred. But on the scale, it would probably get a 6.5 to a 7.
We then took a walk down the back pathway a bit and went by the Eruption, their S&S slingshot type of ride with 3 towers (can you tell I'm writing this on the road since I can't remember any of these names? Hehe) And we came across a big surprise- it's free! No paying $10 a ride for this one! So heck, with that great deal, we jogged in line while it was still short and took a ride. I didn't like how painful the lapbar portion of the restraints were, and miss the harnesses that the first versions of these used, but it was certainly a faster boarding procedure than they used to be. And it was still a lot of fun, delivering a very good ride. Still not sure that's something that I would more than about $5 for, but one I won't pass up at the price they charge here- as long as the line isn't to long. Hehe
We took a round on the rapids, which were very wet, had some great waterfalls and targeting blasters instead of the normal one shot cannons, and emerged pretty much soaked from that. So we took a round on their Huss enterprise to dry out a bit, a round on the go carts (which I lost due to my car being slower- I hate delimiters sometimes.) and headed over to the Hangman Hangman is a tower ride that looks a bit like an S&S, but up close you can tell it certainly isn't one. There's no air tanks or mechanics in the tower itself, they're all in a building on the side. And the seats go in a round circle around the tower instead of a box formation. It also ran a very odd program. You sit for a while after it lifts you up a couple of feet before it finally shoots you up towards the top, where you stop a good bit short of the tower. Then it slowly cranks you up to the very top of it, pause, and it free fall drops you down, where it has a low brake. It just felt very odd compared to the other tower drop rides, and left me kind of wondering what the heck it was.
At this point, we were starting to get close to the park front again, so we made our way back to Diamond Back, which was now open and running. Diamond Back is an Arrow version of the shuttle loop, with the station being at one end, and both ends being elevated. And it was also the source of our one real area of displeasure. This thing just hurt, all the way around. From the first drop, to the jack hammer at the bottom of it, to the anything-but-smooth loop, to the jackhammering rise up to the other side, then doing it in reverse (while the op kindly waved to us as we started backwards, with a look
of pure pity on her face). Bad all the way around, and with it being so close to the entrance, I can see how this could ruin people's days at the park if it was the first thing they rode. Since we had seen so much we liked already, it didn't affect us that much. But it certainly showed why so few of these exist. It gets a lowly 2.5 from me. Ouch.
Somewhere in here, we ate lunch at the pizza restaurant, since the BBQ and Mexican restaurants were closed (which didn't bother or surprise me since it was a Monday) Typically expensive, and bland in flavor, but the slices were large, and what they didn't have in sauce flavor, they made up for in abundant cheese. Not great, but not bad either.
The log flume had been having trouble all day, and hadn't opened yet, but we walked by anyways, and as we were looking, they started to load it, so we hopped in. Watching the testing procedures were quite interesting, as the unload station seemed to be having problems, and the op seemed to be doing anything but what the mechanic working on the ride wanted him to do. But they got it sorted out and we hopped
on for what we found to be a very fun ride. There are a few scenes on it, and some very nice dark ride sections in it that we found a lot of fun. And it's a very wet log flume- a theme that we found throughout the trip so far. I'm so used to ones that only sprinkle you, that it's been great to see so many really get you wet!
But it was a good thing we rode it when we did. When we got off, and walked around part of it to take some other pictures of the sets, it apparently jammed again. I was waiting at the flumes exit from its tunnels, and realized that there weren't any boats going through. Apparently the motor on the small lift out of the tunnel quit, and there were loaded boats stuck inside, as we could hear them yelling. I don't have any idea how long it took them to sort that out.
We also took a ride on their haunted house, which had a lot of the standard gags on it, and the "bus hitting you" one was very effective. Especially in comparison to Wonderland's feeble attempt at the train the day before. Not great, but not bad, and worth a ride or two.
Part 2 right after this:
|
| 9-30-05 14:57:17 |
|
Sir Willow
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 3550
View Park/Ride Count
|
Part 2- conclusion:
Before we left, we also decided to take in a couple of shows. Their western stunt show was very well done, with some great work on it, a good storyline (missing in most of these shows now, it seems) and having a great time with one of the guys when he realized I was from CA and wanted to know if they did a better show than Knott's. I had to agree that they did, since there was so much more to it, and they seemed to have a lot of fun with it while doing some very well done stuff. It's certainly something not to miss.
Neither is the magic show, which was also a lot of fun. While the poor girl at the snack bar in the theater was bored to tears (she hadn't seen anyone in 45 minutes when she served us) she was very friendly, and the show was very well done. Dave was picked as their human assistant, and I can't wait to tell his wife that he was off tying up a pretty lady, stuck together with her for a bit, and when they came out he was missing some clothing (the suit jacket they gave him to wear, which she was wearing underneath the ropes they had tied earlier before she was wearing it). One of my big beefs with parks lately has been the lack of shows, especially good quality ones, and
Frontier City got big points from us here.
We did a bit of shopping after that, and then hit the road to Tulsa, for a brief stop at Bell's, (another report) then on to my mother's in Missouri.
Overall, we really enjoyed Frontier City. The workers were very
friendly overall, though a couple were a bit on the slow moving side. But that seems to be the overall pace of life in this area to, so it didn't bother me that much. And with it being a sparsely attended Monday with plenty of time, there wasn't any reason to rush anything anyways. If anything, it was nice to slow down, take our time, and talk with the workers while we enjoyed the park. It was clean, and looked to be kept up very nice. Outside of a couple of rides being closed that I wanted to ride (and that's not really a complaint anyways), and the one horrible ride, we thought it was a very nice
park and one that we would certainly like to return to again at a future date.
|
| 9-30-05 14:59:35 |
|
|
|