Trip Report for Visionland
6/9/04
Crowds/Weather: Virtually empty/HOT
“You supposed to check alla the restraints. Ev’ry single one of em.”
Rampage Ride Op

“Do you know when you’re supposed to let go of that?”
Rampage Ride Op referring to the dispatch button

Park Rating
Mike: 2.5 out of 5
Mike’s Park Comments: I’ve never seen a park as empty as Visionland on our visit. Almost everything about this park screams “financial trouble.”

Ride operators exist with a casual attitude of people who’ve never really had to do their jobs. Lots of horsing around, slow movement and extended breaks.

The park itself doesn’t have much to offer if you’re not interested in the waterpark. The usual suspects of flats, with nothing of note unless you find a round up exceptional. The river rapids ride is sub-par due to poor maintenance. We took an interest in the bumper cars, which looked to be the right blend of anarchic, multi-directional, fast and bumpy, but didn’t have the time. This is a shame, as I may have rated these cars as high as my faorite Coney bumper cars at Astroland.

The highlight of Visionland, the Rampage, is quite a highlight indeed. One of the best wood coasters we’ve ridden, our re-riding over 2 hours on this destined to be a classic coaster proved to be the 2nd high point of our trip for me.

However, 1 coaster, no matter how great, can’t do everything for a park. Visionland has a lot of problems. I hope they fix them, because I really want Rampage to stick around.

Clarisse: 1.9 out of 5
Clarisse’s Park Comments: A friend who lived in Alabama said that the mayor of Birmingham was very excited about Visionland when it was announced, making statements to the news media to the effect of, ‘I have a vision for Birmingham’ and having high hopes for what Visionland would mean for Birmingham’s economy. Well now that I’ve been here, ‘I have a VISION…of apparent failure!’ This park was like a ghost town. The majority of the people here appeared to be teenagers whose parents had dropped them off for the day. There were herds of them waiting for rides at the end of the night. It really is a shame that this park has so many problems, cause it has a kick ass coaster. I hope Rampage gets bought and transported after Visionland closes.

What is notable in the general photos of the park is the lack of people. The demeanor of the employees shows that they are used to the park being empty. The sand art employee was so nice that it was like southern hospitality turned to 11. But really I think it was boredom. I wonder if she’s had any employees all day. Other employees showed more obvious signs of boredom. I saw at least one person (a game employee) leaning over the counter, resting her head and upper body in her arms. Another one was standing hunched over, limply holding the pa in his hand. At first glance it seemed like many of the attractions were closed, but they were just unattended. On one ride the ride ops were playfully harassing each other, one was whipping the other one with his shirt ( which he had taken off!) outside the gates of the ride. At the end of the night when most park employees are looking forward to closing the ride and getting people out of there, we saw a girl excited to learn how to run a ride.

The ride ops for rampage clearly have the best job in the park outside of air conditioning. They were pretty punchy and slaphappy on the pa system. Examples of this were they told people that they must have their hands up before they would dispatch and that the coaster was broken “For added excitement and thrill, keep your hands up during the entire ride.

I was writing in my book on line for Rampage when someone asks to use my pen. I let her, and she wrote for a long while on a paper towel since paper could not be located. It turns out she was writing the schpiel that the ride op says because he kept messing it up. He started to read it and then said, I gotta read all this? And then he disregarded it. During our marathon on Rampage we got to see ride ops hitting on one another.

Numerous times my lap bar did not get checked & I just got used to checking it myself.

During the ride, teenagers like to take off their seatbelts and stand, which given the forces on this ride, is pretty stupid. One kid managed to keep his lap bar open during the ride! He was sitting in front of us, and I was the annoying adult making sure he had his seatbelt on. I did that because, I didn’t want 170 pounds of human hurtling at me during the ride. Then again, Mike also whipped out the cell phone on the lift hill and called a friend cause he could! So much for responsible adults…granted we were in the back so if he let go of the cell phone it wouldn’t have hit anyone.

At another point in time on our marathon of Rampage, a ride op from another ride came to hang out. He accidentally leaned against the emergency stop button while the ride was going up the lift hill! All of the ride ops were nervous about this, cause apparently he wasn’t supposed to be hanging out there and they didn’t know what to do to get the coaster started again. The guy whose fault it was wouldn’t take responsibility for it and the ride op whose station it was nervously muttered that she would just say that it looked like there was a problem. They got the coaster started again with no problem and it looked like no one got in trouble.

There was no bag check entering the park. Of course there was no line at all to enter the park, so the elimination of this process expedited nothing. It is nice though that they eliminated the personal violation part of entering an amusement park. There haven’t been bag checks at several parks such as Dollywood. However, I feel less safe here…maybe its due to the surreality of the place, or maybe its due to the fact that he just asked if we had food or drink, (in our fannypacks! Although I’ve been known to sneak a Luna bar or 2 in there). I think an appropriate response to that question would be, ‘no sir I have no food, but I do have a gravity knife’ (well, it’s inappropriate, but its funny). Later on, in line in front of me, there was a girl with a see-through mesh backpack with obvious outside drinks in it. The moral iof this anecdote is : Bring whatever the fuck you want into the park.

Rampage

Mike: 5 out of 5
Comments: Yeah! Rock n Roll! Whoohooooo!

These are my feelings and thoughts about Rampage. This is one helluva wood coaster. It’s got punch, personality and speed and it’s a nice, long ride. It was a great end of our day after being teased with one ride and hour plus waits on another great coaster (Thunderhead at Dollywood) to be able to marathon on this wood monster for 2 hours.

Clarisse: 4.96 out of 5
Comments: This woodie is fun to ride. Its fast and satisfyingly bumpy. Bring your sports bras ladies! The airtime on this baby was so good that I was virtually standing up at times. There is a point in the coaster where (especially if you get into the coaster first) you feel like you will get thrown out, and you probably would without the restraints. Be prepared to check your own restraints, over half of the time mine were not checked. Ride operations were phenomenal to watch.

Giant wheel

Clarisse: 2.8 out of 5
Comments: A ferris wheel where the cars have an axle where you can grab the center pole, twist it and spin the car. Its senic up there, but we were too busy spinning the car. When we stopped spinning I was too busy being dizzy to notice the view or to take pictures.

Mike: 2.25 out of 5
Comments: Semi-cool concept but um… whatever. Nothing to write home about.

Raft ride

Clarisse: 1.9 out of 5
Comments: If they haven’t made some major improvements to the boats, skip this ride. The seat belt was rotting with mildew and there were visible patches of mold and mildew on the car. It’s a pretty ride, but it was hard to notice the outer surroundings when the more proximate surroundings are so nasty. The ride op midway through the ride was classic. As we approached his station, he squinted at us and yawned. Then he leaned his head back and draped a washcloth over his face. I guess we disturbed his nap.

Mike: 2 out of 5
Comments: This rapids ride is somehow able to be both violent and boring. The disgusting state of the rafts could have given this ride the title “Worst rapids ride EVAH!” save for some interesting visuals.