So now I’m back home from a great trip visiting three parks in three days, and I’m still pretty exhausted, but it was well worth it. Dollywood was surprisingly entertaining with big thrills, and Alabama Adventure has an outstanding wooden coaster that doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves anymore. The third park on the trip was Lake Winnie, just outside of Chattanooga on the Georgia side of the border.

The main reason we visited Lake Winnie was the Cannonball wooden roller coaster (wood was the “theme” of our trip), which were hoping would be just as good as Blue Streak. But I’ll tell you more about that in a second. If you have never been to Lake Winnie, it is pretty much just a permanent carnival on a slightly larger scale. I think there are only three rides at the park that I would say are actually permanent attractions, the rest are all portable. The first ride I’ll mention is their wild mouse. I kind of enjoy the newer models, but this was definitely a little on the older side. It ended up beating the crap out of us on the turns because the trims and brakes on the ride (the few there were) seemed to be off. Of course it was a fun ride, but a little more painful than expected. There really isn’t much more I can say about this coaster.

Next up was Cannonball, which we were all looking forward to. It still had a single lap bar, but it did have individual seat belts and seat dividers. We were still pretty sure we would have no problem getting some great airtime with that restraint setup. Unfortunately, the ride is lacking in anything beyond some mild floater air. Needless to say, we were all kind of bummed that the reason we came here ended up being a bit of a letdown, but there were other rides and we still had fun. One ride that I won’t forget was the Boat Chute, which is a really old and small splash ride. The reason I won’t forget it is because it has a ridiculously long (and kind of freaky) tunnel, which lasts until you get to the lift. However, they also had a shirt in the gift shop that says, “What happens on the Boat Chute stays on the Boat Chute.” Once again, this is a very long, very dark tunnel, which I would say lasts about three or four minutes. All of us had a good laugh at that shirt, and I’m sure you can figure out why. One other ride that I have to mention were the Fly-O-Planes. These things were old but looked really fun from the ground. Earlier we had seen the ride running and one of the planes just doing constant flips for the entire ride cycle. We all love good inverted fun, so of course we went for a spin. Unfortunately, it ended up being beyond painful and not really fun. Instead of actually doing flips, all I managed to do was violently roll myself upside down, and then I was pretty much stuck there, painfully stuck against the restraint strap. The only way to pull yourself out of being upside down is to fight your way to the other side and try to pull yourself up on the bars of the open windows. But when you do finally start to shift your plane right side up, it just rolls right over upside down in the other direction faster than you can adjust yourself. Overall a very painful ride that wasn’t very fun in reality. My recommendation, skip it unless you are someone who enjoys hurting yourself.

We spent about four hours at Lake Winnie before deciding it was time to head back to Toledo. So we started our extremely long drive, but decided to stop at a Famous Dave’s outside of Knoxville for some food at about 9pm. As always, it was amazing barbeque, and some good fun. Overall a decent end to what turned out to be an absolutely amazing trip.

Here’s a recap of the trip: Dollywood was a very pleasant surprise, with a top ten wooden coaster in Thunderhead, and two great steel coasters with Mystery Mine and Tennessee Tornado. The theming around the park is outstanding, especially on Mystery Mine in the ride. They also have a great kids area with a few rides that are still enjoyable for the older thrill seekers, which is always a fun part of the day. Overall a great park with outstanding rides and great employees. The only thing that keeps this park from getting a perfect ten in my book were some small issues I had with operations and such (I’m sorry, I worked at Cedar Point for two years, I can’t help it). Alabama Adventure is a pretty typical small amusement park in need of some real rides to expand their market’s interest, but it is still a great park. Rampage is an outstanding wooden coaster that can run up there with some of the best in the industry in my opinion. The Vekoma boomerang may not be a favorite of enthusiasts, but it is still a fun ride and a good fit for the park. The management team is fresh, and they have really started almost entirely from scratch with their seasonal employees. I am very confident that this park is headed in the right direction, and I am very excited for their future. Keep your eyes on it and please do visit it if you are ever in the Birmingham area, as Rampage is not a coaster to be missed! Lake Winnie is, well…an interesting park. It doesn’t really have anything that makes it a park you really need to check out, but if you have a day you need to fill with something while you’re in the area, or maybe even just a few hours, it may be worth a visit. Don’t expect amazing rides, though, because you will be let down.

It was a great trip, and well worth the cost (thank goodness gas isn’t what it was just a year ago!). I have to of course give a shout-out to my friends on the trip, because they were a lot of the fun in the trip; Chris, Bryan, and Bre. Once again thanks to Chris and Mike at Alabama Adventure for showing us a great time and giving us a “behind the scenes” look at some stuff. To all of you reading, thanks for reading and for putting up with the lateness of the posts as I traveled. I really had a great time with it, and hope to bring you all another Live From the Road series before the end of the year. And that’s a wrap!