 Last weekend we made a trek out to Riverside to check out the amazing Castle Park which is definitely one of our favorite small parks. Well run, clean, an amazing collection of flat rides and family coasters ... what more could you want? Be sure to check out our report along with a construction update for what is coming soon!! Written by Gregg Condon Welcome to Castle Park!!    First stop is Merlin's Revenge. Be sure to check out our POV below.   Some of the amazing flat rides at the park.    In addition, they used to have a falling star which has been removed.  There is a "Rock n' Tug" in the parking lot that we assume is coming to this spot.  The parks resident peacock  Don't go on the train tracks   Like many small parks Castle Park has an amazing Arcade and Mini Golf area     In addition the arcade features an awesome custom Ghostblasters from Sally Corp. Let's head back to the ride park  Sadly the awesome log flume was closed, but looks to be getting some extensive work done. Hopefully this will be back soon, it's a fun one.    Lastly, our fun POV of the Little Dipper which is a great small ride as you can tell below. If you are heading out to Castle Park be sure to check out our discount page below, in addition we have some great discounts to other parks in the Palace Chain like Kennywood, Idlewild and Raging Waters. Related Updates:  This last Saturday since we had so many out of town guests due to Mountain Madness 2.0 we decided to join them on a trek to some of the smaller parks in Southern California. One that was new to all of us was Scandia in Ontario which is a great stop and is more than just a "credit run" park. Written by RD Sussmann and Gregg Condon Video and Pictures by Gregg Condon RD: I had long ago heard of Scandia - and their addition of the world's biggest Miler coaster. And I have to admit, it was interesting to me to see this in person. It is MUCH bigger than I'd anticipated. In fact, a junior coaster this most certainly isnt. The grounds & facilities of Scandia are much more akin to the modern theme park - but with more attention paid to smaller details. By far, the miniature golf course was certainly a stunning experience, complete with central fountain, terrain hills & holes, and Nordic/Scandinavian touches that go with the Scandia names. At the same time, this carried through to many of the other rides & attractions in the park.  Gregg: As a Southern California Native but from the north/western part of Southern California I had actually never had the chance to get to Scandia. As with so many things you take your local area for granted and don't see things until you have out of town guests. Such was the case on my first (and definitely not last) visit to this park.   Gregg: I was impressed that they took what could have been a very normal run of the mill family fun center and have been able to plus it not with the standard bumper boats, mini golf or batting cages that you'll see at other such centers but with a great place to hold parties as well as the amazing rides that accompany the aforementioned Golf and Cages.  RD: Unusual for me was seeing the idea of rotating staff on slower days. In this case, one group of attendants made their way around the park from attraction to attraction instead of being soley at one spot. With a park that had less than 100 people in it so early in the day, this made brilliant sense. Fortunately Scandia Screamer had an attendant first thing in the morning, making it easier to gain this needed & rare credit. And so, with crew in tow, it was time to grab my first new credit in many months. It did not dissapoint. In fact, for something 90 ft. tall & 2600 ft. long, it packed a bigger punch than other coasters longer, taller & more signifcant. In the back seat though it is advised to protect one's assets carefully... Very carefully.  Gregg: As I was explaining to some people at our event the other day, I'm not the "facts" guy. So if people are writing to the site about facts, those usually will go to others besides myself. And whenever you see a blog post that contains those facts I'm usually getting them from others. That said, not knowing the stats about Scanda Screamer didn't take away my enjoyment of the ride. It's a much different animal in the front and back row as you can tell from the difference from our mounted front seat POV (above) and our non-mounted back-seat POV (below). We obviously had a bit more fun with the back-seat video. =)    Don't ignore this sign ... it's for your own good. Be sure to watch the front seat POV before this one. Trust us. =)  The trains which made getting our mounted POV ... interesting.  RD: An honest treat at Scandia beyond Screamer is their Little Dipper junior coaster. Tucked into the structure underneath Screamer, this small Herschell dipper is a lot of fun, and gives a great experience. What you don't notice - or rather don't see - at Scandia are attractions that look faded or unkempt. In fact, the majority of the park looks amazingly fresh & well taken care of, including areas hard to keep looking good in a part of the valley known for exceedingly hot temps & blinding, fading sunshine. I can say it was a treat beyond words to encounter a F.E.C. that cared about who they were - and how they operated.  Gregg: I'll be the first to admit, if I'd been here by myself I would have likely skipped Little Dipper. But when I'm with friends and we're just being silly it makes these things even more fun. And this was actually a really fun ride.     For such a small park this actually worked really well and we didn't have to wait more than a few minutes for any of the rides More of the park ...   And of course the mini golf. If it hadn't been 105 degrees we would have easily spent a few hours playing a few rounds.     Arcade complete with awesome video games and ticket games. I believe Gary scored a Ring Pop. =)    Overall we had an amazing time at the park and we're looking forward to heading back this October for what we hear is a pretty awesome haunt. For more information on Scandia be sure to visit their website here. Related Updates:  We're always happy to share reports from far off places and recently Chris sent us a whole bunch of pictures from Colombia including some of the theme parks there. There is a LOT to get to so we're going to split this into a few updates. Written by Christopher DeRosa Hello, I’m Chris. I took a trip to Colombia to see some culture, ride some roller coasters, and have a good time. While I’ll be reporting on the amusement parks in the area, including Parque Del Café, I’d like to show you some of the trip besides parks as well. So here we go!  It took us all night to get down there from Los Angeles. Didn’t really sleep. The terrible chicken on board didn’t help that, either.
 This is me. That’s my friend Danny on the right. That’s the ceiling, an inch and a half from my head. I’m not tall.  This is Bogotá, as seen from our Airbnb apartment. Bogotá sits at and above elevation 8600’ or above, which made walking back up here at the end of each day a serious cardio adventure.  We checked out some night clubs and the area in general. The city didn’t seem ‘unsafe’ but it didn’t necessarily feel safe, either. One of our main goals of the trip was to go to a music festival called Estereo Picnic. One of the parks I was going to skip was way north of the city. Fortunately, the concert was also way north of the city…in fact, it was right next door to…  Multiparque! It’s mostly for families. I take that back. It’s entirely for families.  I’m not gonna lie. Part of the draw was to finally fulfill my dreams of living in The 5th Element, and get my very own MULTIPASS.  They had go-karts. The ‘normal’ track required you to wear this skin tight thing over your head as well as this huge helmet.  This is the hardcore track. It was pretty expensive, even by our standards, so we skipped it. I can’t imagine the gear they make you wear on this one. A full jumpsuit?  So here’s the first credit of the trip. “Spinning Coaster.” It appeared to be brand new.  Here it is with a person on it!  Here we can see two attractions. The Spinning Coaster, and the ‘Ride a llama around the park’ ride.  Dogs didn’t need to be on a leash because they are totally used to seeing random animals walking by.  There’s not much to the place.  A cute little midway,  Some rides for very small children,  And some miniature golf.  The bulk of the park was actually this area that you paid about $1 to get into, which was basically a huge public playground…on steroids. We didn’t go into the part of the park because my friend was not interested at ALL, and we had a busy day ahead of ourselves.  It goes way, way out of view from what you can see here. Apparently there’s a lake, a train, some random ropes stuff, and a petting zoo. I was totally down to check it out, but again, this was my friends first credit stop of his life and he was far too cool to go into that area.  The restaurant at the park was excellent. Our best meal so far (3 days in), but more importantly, Danny ordered Horse. lol. It’s not amazing, that's probably why they throw an egg and some tomato on top of it.  We spent the rest of the day and night at the music festival, Estereo Picnic. In case you didn’t catch that.  Balls  The prices in Colombia took some getting used to. Roughly, its col$3000 - usd$1.  I know you’re here for parks, so I won’t bore you with the details, but we had a great time. Colombians are beyond friendly and polite. The Policia mostly stood around and made sure nobody died.  It rained, so lots of people were dressed like happy little ghosts.  If you wanted a beer, you just asked one of these guys. No beer gardens, no lines, just..ask the dude with the crazy backpack.  This is the view from the top of this ice slide of death thing. You waited in line for an hour and a half and went down this ice ramp. Kind of terrifying. I didn’t get any pictures of it (alcohol), but here’s a super dorky video they gave me for free at the end. I had to tweet it.  So among other, mostly local artists, we saw The Flaming Lips, Kygo, Snoop Dog, and Jack U.  The Colombian drink of choice is undoubtedly Aguardiente. This stuff is not to be trusted. We had way too much. The next day was Bogotá Amusement Park Day!  The next morning, we got up with ~reasonably~ enough time to have a banana and hit the two parks for the day. One closed at 6 and one at 7:30, and we were out around 12:30. With a banana. Because Colombia.  Saltire Magico was our first ‘proper’ park of the trip, and this park was home to 4 credits. It’s a typical Latin American park, at least from what I’ve seen, resembling more of a permanent carnival than a park.  Our hangovers dictated that we were above waiting in line, so we spent a total of $67,000 pesos for admission and a fast pass. $22usd.  The first order of business was this Arrow Corkscrew called “Montaña Rusa.” That means Roller Coaster in Spanish.  It’s…an Arrow Corkscrew. Not smooth, not rough. Just Arrow.  “omg I’m totally using this for my Facebook Profile.”  Next up was this Jumbo Jet called Tornado.  It was running one train, so they only let 2 fast passes in at a time. The standby line had to be at least an hour and half. I only saw one other group of people with fast passes.  “Time to make a bunch of Americans jealous!!!”  I apologize, guys, I didn’t take the best pictures today.  The next coaster was this bizarre French thing called Doble Loop. It has two loops.  All the coasters were running one train. The lines weren’t long, but operations were slow and I’d guess this one to be an hour wait itself.  We walked right on. It was, you know, cool I guess.  This is Gusano Loco. After completely ignoring us for two cycles, I asked the ride-op if we could ride, and she said no. And she thought we were VERY funny for asking. Oh well :(  This bizarre thing was calling my name, so we checked it out. It was a walk-through with a tour guide. We learned all about prehistoric marine sea animatronics. Well I would have if I understood Spanish on that level. But I don’t. The kids were entertained by our presence.  They had a mirror maze.  As well as a giant wheel that was sponsored by Samsung before all cool kids at SFMM.  Some kind of Michael Jackson show that we very regrettably missed.  I learned in Mexico that haunted walk-throughs are a MUST. Unfortunately even with a fastness this line was not moving, so we skipped it. Here’s an overview of the midway, although clearly I’m missing something very entertaining in the opposite direction.  The next park was Mundo Aventura. At this point, my friend wasn’t feeling very good so this was just going to be a really quick credit run. They had an indoor Galaxi and some kind of large wacky worm.  The indoor Galaxi was closed, so unfortunately, no pics of that at all. However, we still had Tropical Track.  And there it goes. They didn’t even let us purchase tickets for this one. Again, we were met with utter confusion and hysteria. My coaster-whoring skills are minimal, I don’t put up much of a fight.  I really wanted to go on the malaria flume, but it was getting late and cold, and people were getting off of it soaked.  This park had several large flats, none of which we were in any position to enjoy. I’d like to come back and spend a little more time at this park, and maybe even get a credit.  Not all was lost, though. We did ride the SkyCoaster, my friends first and my 3rd.  Sadly, that’s all the pictures I have from Mundo Aventura. I promise to return someday, and maybe not down a bunch of Aguardiente the night before :)  The next day we played tourist in Bogota, and started out by riding this old school cable car to the top of a peak.  There was also a Funicular, which I was very excited about, but it turned out to be closed, just like the indoor Galaxi. Websites are not to be trusted in Colombia, as it turns out.  Nonetheless, the Cable Car was really cool, and the view up here was awesome. We were above 10,000’ at this point.  There’s a church up here. It was closed for something.  The views were amazing though, and the elevation could definitely be felt. If you look closely, you can see one of those Statue-on-a-Hill things like in Rio de Janeiro.  There were also a ton of places to learn about Jesus outside of the Church, as well as a beautiful hillside garden / oxygen free hill climb of death.  We wandered around a bit. I’m not one to stick around very long and take it in, so we took off after around an hour or so.  So that’s the Monserrat. We were told its dangerous to walk from there down to the city, but we didn’t feel any danger, so we walked. We were fine.  We ended up at the main plaza of the historic part of the city. Lots of pigeons. Oh and we got a coffee on the way. Because Colombia.  Big Church. Lots of Churches in this part of town. You can enter most, but no pictures, not even without flash. I gotta be honest, most of them were stunning.  We wrapped up our Tour-de-Church, and headed out.  So I may be slightly off on this, but apparently at some point in the past, some graffiti artists were killed by the police, which caused a riot, which caused graffiti to be legalized. And let me tell you, it was everywhere. Some was incredible, some was alright, and a lot was just chicken scratches like the ones you see on OTSRs.  And, in a very condensed nutshell, that’s Bogota! Off to Pereira! And with that, there's the end of Part One of Christopher's trip to Colombia. Part two will feature more fun and Parque del Cafe and of course includes Montaña Rusa. Thanks again to Christopher for the pics, we hope you enjoyed!! Related Updates:
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