Myrtle Beach

Having met up with Keith, it was time to start the final leg of the trip heading out of Atlanta and back up to New York with some other parks along the way. It was a pleasant surprise to see that he had planned the itinerary to a great level of detail. I knew where I wanted to go but thought we'd be playing it by ear. A very nice surprise to the start of this leg.

First destination was over to the East Coast and Myrtle Beach.

After the drive to the area we had the evening to relax before we hit the parks the next day. We ended up seeing a Cirque de Soleil type show full of the usual chinese acrobats, which were all really impressive. What wasn't so nice was the animal act that had also been included in the line up. Seeing cats and dogs in costumes walking on their front legs wasn't that enthralling to me to be honest.

The beach is popular with teens for showing off their bodies and their ridiculous motor vehicles. The equivalent of the chav burning their "pimp my Ford Cortina" on Brighton promenade. Some of the vehicles were pretty cool though such as this Hayabusa!

and this car with clearly over sized wheels. The people who do this cruising do go back and forth up the road so if you missed the car the first time around you'd see it coming back the other way a few minutes later.

The Hummer H2. If I could afford the petrol I'd love one of these!

The Myrtle Beach pavilion is the most famous park in the area and was celebrating its final year in season, the victim of developers who wish to build shops and property rather than providing fun to people in the area. A shame but not a unique situation by any means. Actually its closure was the reason for me wanting to visit it. Had it remained open I may not have chose to come here. The Pavilion wasn't quite open when we got there so we headed down to the other park down the road, "Family Park".

Interesting Sign #24
Not the big white sign, the little pink one in the top right corner.
"Closed Private Party"
Oh, great. Looks like we'll have to come back here later!

Having made our way back up the main street to the Pavilion, the park still wasn't open so I had a quick look around the beach. It was full of people worshipping the sun (hardly a surprise really) and the odd one or two people who we so tanned that they needn't worship anymore. A sand castle building competition had taken place and this appeared to be the winner, at least given the security it had. It was also funny to see that this particular sandcastle had been sponsored by several companies such as "Hawaiian Tropic" sun cream. I wonder how that was pitched to the company executives?

With the park finally opening, it was time to make our way inside. This year's budget had clearly been spent on advertising the fact it was the Farewell Season. At least they didn't have to ponder on deciding what attractions to buy this year.

The large wooden coaster in the park is the Hurricane which is only 5 years old but runs like its been around for 50. It's a little rough to be honest but I still rode it a fair number of times. Two women with big hair had commented that it was the roughest ride they'd ever been on. They clearly hadn't been to Clementon or Coney Island then. We could tell they weren't enjoying it as we saw their big hair bouncing with the jarring ride.

I thought putting a spin ride inside the helix of the coaster was a nice touch though. Perhaps they had no choice with the park taking up a small footprint they had to cram rides in where they could, not necessarily a bad thing.

In fact the park did a really good job of getting the rides close to each other. Take note Dollywood, we shouldn't have to walk half a mile to get from one ride to the next.

The park has a really cool ghost train themed around a journey through a haunted hotel.

As a fun of good puns it was nice to see them trying on the theming to this ride. "Scare Conditioning", "Doom Service". All very funny; well that's what I thought!

Little Eagle is the park's kiddy coaster and it is actually not too bad at all.

The park also has a great log flume with a nice surprise near the start and a good number of drops to get you a little wet. Unlike the monster rapids at the back of the park that got you totally soaked.

The mouse coaster was actually my favourite in this park. Unique in that it had banked bends and trick track as shown here. It certainly made it significantly better than the majority of mouse rides.

Before we left we had a couple more goes on the Hurricane, just to say "goodbye". It's not a great coaster by any means but it is great for the area.

With Family Park closed we headed to the third park with coasters in the area at Myrtle Beach Grand Prix. As the name suggests its primarily a go-cart track (actually its several) but they'd added some other rides to attract more people and keep them spending once they'd turned up.

Unlike the Pavilion's the mouse coaster here was one of the generic spinning models. Alright but not remarkable. We only had the one go on this. I also had one go on the other coaster, a small caterpillar thing that I'm not going to post on here because you've seen them all a thousand times already (but then again you've probably seen mouse coasters just as often)

The one go on the coaster was one more than we had on the race tracks. I figured it unfair on Keith to have him driving when we get to a park, especially considering all the driving he was doing to get around in the first place.

The newest attraction was the small version of the swing shot ride that I'd done to death at the other parks. The ride operator was trying very hard to get us to part with our $10 bills for a very short program. Having seen the ride running, we knew to avoid the ride this time around.

Having finished with the Grand Prix park it was time to head back to the Family Park where the private party had ended. This park wasn't too bad at all and a decent alternative to the Pavilion. They're clearly going to be cashing in on the other park's demise in years to come.

I loved the theming that they'd done on this kiddy whip ride. Nascar is all about turning left so why not have a Nascar Whip. The kids were lapping this ride up; not with their tongues, just generally.

The park has a wooden coaster called the Swamp Fox which is actually really good and a lot better than the Hurricane IMO.

Myrtle Beach is a nice area but I felt a bit old and pale compared to the majority of people I saw. There is a lot of development going on in the area, a sign of its success perhaps. Its just a pity that that development has meant the loss of a really nice park. However the other park just down the road is still a good reason to go back here when the Pavilion has gone.

Back west to Carowinds.