Lakemont

Lakemont is a very small park and we were only going to be here for a few hours. It's home to the oldest surviving coaster in the world, Leap the Dips.

The park has been up and running since 1894, a very long time indeed! It has a small selection of rides ranging from the lazy crazy golf to the coasters and one very intense spin ride (more on that later).


Whilst waiting to get in the club entertain themselves with displays of their double-jointedness.
The park had rather kindly given us 5 rides to play on before opening up to the public: their four coasters and that insane spinning monster.

Considering its age Leap the Dips runs really well. I wasn't expecting the most amazing coaster and it isn't but there are a lot of worse coasters out there.

Really nice trains too, I do like sofa seating on the rides.

I had seen pictures of this before coming on the trip but didn't realise I would get to ride one. It's best described as a coffin helter skelter attraction. You each get into your own metal box before being lifted up the centre of the tower and sent spiralling around the outside and hitting the final drop with a clunk! A little too claustraphobic for me to be honest.

Florian models the other steel coaster in the park with an as exclusive ride session as you could ever get. I think he liked it!

PTC have also had their influence here with the Skyliner coaster. This reminded me of the Phoenix in the way it runs, it didn't use the figure 8 layout, going for a more out and back but it was smooth and pleasant to ride. There were also some very nice looking ride ops here, which most of the club noticed!

Next to the park is a baseball ground. The park had come up with an ingenious way of cheering on the local team.

They added a message to the side of the trains!

I'm quite a fan of crazy golf and had so far played at Knoebels. This one had been themed around a train station and was more of a challenge than the other course. It offered a nice break from the riding.

This is the G-Force monster that I rode (first mistake) immediately after lunch (second mistake) with Tim Herre (final mistake). After being severely stapled into the car the ride started and as it spins you get to choose whether to give yourself negative or positive G's depending on the position of the car. I could just about taking this like a conventional loop, but like the pretzel loop on Superman, going the other way was quite a challenge. With the blood rushing to my brain I am glad to say I survived the ride, as did Tim.

Lakemont, cute park with a really nice character to it. Something that a lot of other parks had so far lacked.

Westward ho to Idlewild