Lake Winnepesaukah

The final surprise park of the trip was one I had known about and after leaving Dollywood we stopped off here for a couple of hours in the evening. The park is a small family run park that just oozes charm, and it ended up being one of my favourite parks on the trip.

We were welcomed by one of the owners. I was going to say she was dwarfed by Bart, but we all were. The park gave us one of the friendliest welcomes of the trip by not charging us for anything, including the evening meal they laid on for us.

The park is by no means large by any stretch of the imagination and positively tiny compared to some of the monster parks we had encountered on the trip. They had the standard selection of fairground rides with a bias towards the family rather than the thrillseeker.

Hardly surprising given its name, Lake Winne is on the side of a lake making it instantly photogenic and relaxing.

I had planned to meet a friend here, that I would go onto spend time with in Atlanta. However she didn't turn up but couldn't contact me to let me know. So I spent a lot of time here looking for someone that wasn't to appear.

The park has two coasters the first being a monstrous mouse coaster that didn't spin and instead subjected you to some pretty violent laterals as it negotiated the hairpins.

We had an evening ERS on this and the other coaster in the park but most members preferred the other ride to this one.

The other ride is their wooden coaster, a glorious old ride that was running extremely well. You could instantly see how much care had been given to its upkeep and in chatting to the ride engineers how proud they were of their ride.

There are parks that make you want to run the biggest rides and there are other parks that keep you busy with large crowds, loud noises and over the top neon. Then there are parks that just welcome you in for a relaxing time, such as here. Given the hectic pace we'd undergone this was a great time to unwind as the sun went down.

The parks flume/splash ride is custom built and has a very deceptively long tunnel that slowly turns you around whilst giving you the impression that its travelling in a straight line. During prom night this is a very popular attraction for the privacy it gives the riders. Its funny that there are hidden cameras which you only realise as you exit the tunnel.

I rode the cable ride a couple of times just for the views it offered!

The evening ERS on Cannonball was one of the better ones, you could tell because people stayed on it for the duration of the time it had been given to us. This ride, as well as being very smooth, has one of the best endings on a ride as you hit the final hill into the station just as the brakes stop the car giving you a strong out-of-the seat feeling.

The park also had a drop tower, which had a great surprise drop once it reached the top. There was no time to take in the view on this beast. You went up and then shot down with no waiting around. It was also cool to see the staff from the other side of the park run over for an end-of-day ride once they'd closed their rides.

I loved Lake Winne. As I mentioned earlier it was a great way to unwind after all the travelling we had done in the days prior. Its a shame there weren't many parks that could offer this slower relaxed pace on the trip (Knoebel's being perhaps the only other one that springs to mind). As an enthusiast we're often expected to like the big parks with the best rides over the smaller parks with the average rides. However you tend to find that its the smaller parks, free of the corporate policies and in your face tack that reign supreme. We could easily have a park like this in the U.K. but for whatever reason we don't.

South to Six Flags Over Georgia