Today we made our way up to Ocean City, Maryland for a day trip to catch some rays, waves, and coasters. It was my first time going to Ocean City despite living in the DC area (about 2.5 hours away) for the past decade so it was about time. The weather was superb and sunny (I have the sun burn to prove it)

We arrived in Ocean City just before 11 o clock. After parking in the middle of the city we gathered up our belongings and made our way to the boardwalk and beach. We walked through Jolly Roger's at the pier to see what activity was going on there or what was open only to find the Looping Star roller coaster with its trains covered and no signs of anything happening any time soon. So we headed to the beach and spent a good amount of time swimming and chilling in general. Just after noon I saw the first trains making runs so we made our way back to the pier, bought our tickets, and got on the first coaster of the day.

This was actually probably the ride I was most excited for out all the rides at Ocean CIty I was planning on getting on. I had never been on a Pinfari looping coaster like this and was very curious to see just how good or awful it would be. After getting our card scanned (a system that I have to say is really cool) we walked over and jumped on the front seat. We ended up eagerly waiting a good 10 or so minutes for a ride, though as they like to wait a long while to see how many folks they can end up getting on one train at a time, at one point after several minutes I was seeing if I could possibly reach the operator panel from my seat and actually just start the ride myself as I was tired of waiting (I couldn't)... Finally a couple more people jumped on and one of the ops came around to get the ride going. This ride definitely exceeded my expectations. I was anticipating a rough and in general bad ride but I found this to be a pretty fun time all in all. It was surprisingly smooth, a couple transitions were rough but all in all I found it to be very smooth and enjoyable with some fun drops and an intense little loop. The views of the ocean were also awesome.

After this we were done with Jolly Roger at the pier (I wanted to get all the major coasters done in Ocean City and not waste time/money on any other rides). We were feeling pretty hungry so we headed to a nice beachside restaurant called Davey Jones. The downstairs is a small walk up food joint while upstairs you find a nice sit down restaurant. We went up stairs and ended up having the most delicious crab cakes EVER. The price wasn't too bad either. Super highly recommended!

After lunch we went across the boardwalk to the Haunted House dark ride, unfortunately it was having some technical difficulties so we moved on to Trimper's Rides for the next two rides of the day. We bought enough tickets for a ride on Tidal Wave and Toboggan. First we went on Tidal Wave, we jumped right on the front row. After waiting a while for more riders to come up we were locked in and ready to go. I had only been on one Vekoma boomerang before this one (Sidewinder at HP) and found that to be a surprisingly fun time, so I wasn't too worried about this ride beating me up too much. All in all Tidal Wave was a fun ride, imo. The only real bad aspect was the first/last inversion, going forwards and backwards through the first half of the boomerang was pretty rough. I thought it was good all in all.

Next we went over to Toboggan. I had never been on one of these Chance contraptions but had heard nothing but horrible things, so I was mostly just hoping to come off in one piece. The vertical lift started things off kind of fun, the turns going down was alright although pretty mundane and boring after a while. Then came the brutal finale. The drops at the end of this thing are just plain horrible. I got banged up in all kinds of ways and felt like I had the wind knocked out of me briefly. Just a really bizarre and painful experience.

After Toboggan we headed back to the Haunted House which was now operating. We hoped on after getting our tickets (found it funny that you have to go to the ticket window, hand one guy money, he hands you the tickets then you promptly hand the tickets back to a second guy while boarding... Seems you could cut out the ticket guy and tickets in general completely here... haha) This ended up being a pretty interesting little dark ride. Some fun effects (I especially enjoyed the spinning tunnel), not scary but not a complete waste of time either. All in all a fun enough time that met my expectations.

Now the only thing left on the itinerary was the other Jolly Roger's park way down on the other side of town. So we headed down the boardwalk to 30th street (about a mile and a quarter walk I believe) we thought it would be fun to get a look at what all the boardwalk had to offer and ended up being totally worth it as we got some delicious fried twinkies along the way. After a long and tiring walk we arrived at the other Jolly Roger's, home to the Wild Cat.

We got another card with the exact amount of money needed for a ride on Wild Cat. We walked right on. All in all it was a fun time, some nice drops and turns and an all around very smooth ride. the highlight for me, though was while exiting I noticed they set aside a tip jar! A tip jar? For operating a coaster? A coaster that is already over priced (nearly $5 for a single ride)? Sorry... I know working at a park can be a bad time, but I definitely don't think tipping operators is at all a good idea.

So we got on all of the major coasters in Ocean City and a fun dark ride to boot, my goal had been achieved. It was going on four o clock at this point so we headed over to the ocean to swim for a little while longer before making the drive back home at 5ish.

You probably noticed a complete lack of whacky worms from my day - I just can't get myself to spend extra cash on those credits. I'm not quite THAT much of a credit whore...

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"For each path you walk down, there are several others you have to bypass. Maybe walking those paths would have made you happy, maybe they wouldn't have. You'll never know. Choose your path, walk it, and make the best of it."

I'm glad if you went either way: ride the Wacky Worms or not. I did and they will drive you completely insane at the end of the day because of how repetitious it is with 3 in the whole town. It's a lame kiddie ride with a trim on the ride's only real drop. Thanks for the crab cake advice. I'm hungry now.

Now I can judge between OCMD and OCNJ. The NJ still has a mine train I have yet to ride and which might pull that one ahead.

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Thrillnetwork Moderator - Sophomore Original sn: CHILLERLC1
2008 & 2009 TN Coaster Draft Champion
You knew I wanted the other repeat too

sounds like you had a good time. You can probably come back in about 2 years and expect Jolly Roger's to have a completely different coaster. It's weird how they replace each coaster every couple of years or so. I'll be at OC all week next week, the only coaster I plan on riding again is the boomerang.

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I live in MN. but made the drive to O.C. from D.C.
Could have used the food tip back then, as our lunch was over priced and blah!
Made up for it at dinner in Virginia beach that evening.

I just got back from Ocean city (literally like a few hours ago) and don't worry you didn't miss anything on the looping star. It felt like a wacky worm ride with a mini-loop.