| Trip Report: Jungle Jack's Landing (7/25)
My very first trip report.
Well, I finally got the chance to go to Jungle Jack's Landing at the Columbus Zoo in Powell, Ohio (which is right outside of Columbus, in Delaware County). Some info first:
-Powell Road has been completely rerouted as a result of the remodeling of the zoo entrance. Instead of ending at a fence, it now leads over the O'Shaughnessy Dam.
-The side of what was formerly Wyandot Lake has been cut into and fenced off. The fence starts where Sea Dragon is and goes all the way around to Powell Rd. This of course also means that the old picnic area is gone now.
-Now, to go to the park, you need only walk across a bridge that's in front of the zoo entrance. You don't have to pay separate admission since, well, the zoo owns the ride park again. To ride rides, however, you have two choices; either you can pay 15 bucks for an all-day wristband, or buy Z-Cards.
Z-Cards are rechargeable and carry the money you put into the machine on them. There are two machines and one stand in the park that sell them. The one machine is in front of the Condor Craze (bumper cars) and the other is near the Zoombezi Bay entrance. The stand is right as you go into the park. Depending on the ride, you'll need one or two bucks to ride each one.
-The zoo really likes Indiana Jones, as all the ride signs are wooden with the ride names in Indiana Jones font. Sheesh.
Okay, now my trip report begins. I can't really report on riding anything as I sorta have motion sickness now. I'll mostly report on what's new about the park.
The first thing that you'll notice is that when you pull up to the park itself, there's a whole vast stretch of grass where there used to be trees. The sign has been completely redone, as has the entrance to the zoo. From the parking lot, you can see the Zamperla Galleon that the zoo bought, and a compact log flume. Of course, you can also see Zoombezi Bay on the left, where Wyandot used to be. If you go closer to the entrance, you can see the new Flying Scooters, the Matterhorn, and the Sea Dragon.
I went to the zoo Friday as part of a group activity, and only had to pay 1 dollar for admission. I got there at about 8:20, over an hour before the zoo opened and about an hour and a half before Jungle Jack's Landing opened. The ride ops tested each ride before the park opened.
Now, this park's layout is odd, to say the least. To get there, once you go through the first gate (there are now two gates to go through to get to the zoo, or was it always this way? I don't remember), just go to the left and you'll see a sign that says "Jungle Jack's Landing" and a long path. There weren't a lot of people here, and most of them went straight to Zoombezi Bay even though it wasn't quite open yet (to get to ZB you have to walk across Jungle Jack's Landing to the entrance on the far left past the kiddie rides). The ride ops sat there for a couple hours before anybody really started riding.
The first thing I noticed was that the ride park's layout is very modest and understated. I saw no food stands, no games (except the weight-guessing game by Condor Craze), just rides, and quite a few of them. The first one I saw once I got in was the new Flying Scooters, called Mission Macaw.
I'm not sure of the particular company that made these, but they look suspiciously like the Larson Flying Scooters. The seats were painted blue and the tower is a light green; very good choices. I noticed there was no decal anywhere to be found on the ride. This ride kicks; I saw some of these Scooters get some decent snapping action out of them, and they fly higher than usual.
Over to the left is a log flume called Jungle River Falls. I haven't seen a lot of flumes similar to this one. I'm not sure of the company who manufactured it, but it was full all day, even though the lines were very short. It seemed they were only running two or three logs on it (which seem to hold about 2-4 people apiece), which was a little odd, I thought.
Behind that was a Zamperla Galleon called "Journey to Zanzibar." It appears to be a Galleon 33 model, and boy, was there some pretty good ridership on it. But peculiarly, earlier that morning before I got into the park, it said on the entrance that neither Jungle River nor Journey to Zanzibar would be operating that day. What the?
The ride gets up to full swing quite quickly; and just doesn't seem to let up. It seemed that the ride on it was fairly long (I clocked it in at about 3 1/2 minutes), so of course, it was a no-go for me. :P
Over across from JtZ were the bumper cars (Condor Craze). These are the same Magic Mountain-style bumper cars Wyandot Lake had before its closing. Before actually getting in line I got a Z-Card to ride 'em. And boy have they not aged well at all. When you go forward, the car jerks forward and then backward before it actually moves, and turning the cars around makes them do donuts even when you didn't mean to. But man, when I got off the bumper cars, I was beat from all the punishment the car gave me.
Me and my friend headed up the path after Condor Craze, and looked to the left and saw some kiddie rides. We didn't really pay attention to them, but I saw a Zamperla teacup ride called "Jack's Tea Party" and a miniature train ride called "Rio Grande Express." There might have been more kiddie rides, but I didn't see any of them.
Across from Jack's Tea Party is a Zamperla Family Swinger (Swingin' Gibbons). It's not as big as, say, a Zierer Wave Swinger, but it gets the job done just the same. The theming on the ride, which shows a bunch of silhouettes of swinging gorillas, is pretty nice.
Something I noticed is that this model, unlike most Zamperla Family Swingers, actually does rise into the air much like a regular Wave Swinger, instead of just raising a slight bit and vaguely mimicking the wave motion. I thought that was cool. I bypassed it, though, as motion sickness or not, Wave Swingers usually make me insanely nauseous.
Behind the Swingin' Gibbons is an SDC (?) Matterhorn called Safari Stampede. Holy heck does this ride stand out from the rest. It's got jungle theming out the wazoo, and the cars are each shaped like Jeeps. It's brand-spanking new, just like most of the rides in the park. It's probably the most outlandishly-themed ride here too, as most of them are quite understated in their designs. A funny thing about it is that although the sign outside the ride says "Safari Stampede," the actual manufacturer-made sign on the ride itself simply says "Safari." Heh.
The ride, I noticed, lets off compressed air before it starts. I've never heard that on a Matterhorn-like ride before. Unfortunately it seems like the ride ops only wanna run the ride at half speed. They run it forward for about a minute (half speed) and then stop it and run it backwards for another minute (at less than half speed).
I think that's just because they knew little kids and families would be going on it mostly, because SDC (?) Matterhorns have a ton of kick at full speed. Just ask Canobie Lake's. :P
Behind that ride, down the path, was Wyandot Lake's old Scrambler, renamed "Dust Devil." The second cool name in a row given to it.* It's been repainted from egg white to a brown/beige color.
It seems the zoo fixed whatever was wrong with the speed in the 2006 season, as the ride gets up to speed quite quickly. It seems almost as fast as Coney Island Cincinnati's Scrambler (but not quite as fast as Americana's old one).
Across the way from the Scrambler is the Tilt-A......Wait! I thought Wyandot auctioned off all their rides but the Scrambler! But apparently they didn't, as the zoo took their old Tilt-A-Whirl (formerly at Geauga Lake) and renamed it "Whirligigs."
It's gotten a huge makeover, too. The seats have been repainted brown, as have the spokes sticking out of the ride's outer platform. The inside platform, where all the seats are mounted, has been repainted blue with green lilypads, to look like a swamp. Hmm. Quite nice, except the brown kinda clashes with it, and the spokes on the outside platform, which once held up the original sign now don't, making the ride look somewhat unfinished.
But this doesn't matter since it runs the same way it did when Wyandot Lake had it: well. It seems the slight squeaking of the seats from before has been fixed too.
Now, the last stop: the Sea Dragon. Actually, the whole reason I wanted to go back to the Sea Dragon was to see what they did to the site of the former WL.
To get to the Sea Dragon, you must walk all the way past Scrambler and Tilt, and go through a rather long queue line. You then see Croctail Creek (formerly Canoochie Creek) and....the bridge that you have to cross that goes over the creek to the Sea Dragon. What the heck? The walk to the Dragon and over the bridge is really narrow since they built a wooden fence in front of and around the Dragon that blocks entry to the former WL site. It looks weird having that fence there and then the bridge in front of it. Should have taken a picture.
So anyway, after peeking over the fence and the orange tape and seeing where the Carousel once stood, me and my friend went over the bridge and I was trying to look at the station platform to see if they left a certain thing alone.
And they did. The original levers that have operated the Sea Dragon are still there, after over 50 years! Most coasters with these types of levers got converted to a control panel, but not this one! Since I felt kinda exhausted from the heat, my friend went on the Sea Dragon, and reported that it rides really well, with no noticeable roughness or anything. Just how I remembered it. I noticed also that the cars seem to have gotten a fresh coat of red paint, and look awesome. The whole track has also been given a fresh coat of white paint. The sign, however, needs some work. :P It's chipping a lot. After a walk to the front gate from the Dragon, we were picked up by our ride.
Overall, JJL is a pretty cool ride park.
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