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Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Santa Cruz, CA Weather: 70s to 60s, clear Crowds: Heavy Lines: Moderate This has been a week of anniversaries for me; most notably I’ve been living in California exactly one year today. It’s hard to believe I hadn’t made it to SCBB in that time, but there are a LOT of things to do in California, so I’ll give myself a break. It’s my first visit to SCBB in almost exactly 10 years, which means this week is also the 10th anniversary of my first visit to California ever! SCBB has a great promotion on Mondays and Tuesdays. After 5pm, all rides, sodas, hot dogs, and cotton candy are only 75 cents! Keeping in mind that all rides are normally between $2.25 and $4.50, and snacks are about the same, it’s a huge draw. It definitely got us to skip out of work a little early and head from San Jose around 3:30pm. We made record time over the Santa Cruz Mountains, and found a meter spot (sans quarters) around 4:15pm. Parking is plentiful, but if you want to avoid the $15 parking that SCBB charges, bring quarters (or dollar coins) for the meters. Change machines do exist, but they will likely require a nice hike to find. All told, we were on the boardwalk with 30 minutes to spare before the “1907 prices” kicked in. SCBB is also celebrating an anniversary, their 100th year. Now I think 75 cents may have been an entire day’s pay back then, but a promotion is a promotion. One thing that would not get cheaper after 5pm was beer, so there was no reason to hold off! The midway was packed with people, and after the announcement came over the loud speaker that it was 5pm, the lines started to swell. No question we would start our day on the Giant Dipper. After about a 20 minute wait (running one train) we lucked out by getting the front seat. You can sort of choose your row, but they leave the station empty, so it only works out if you’re the first one in the station. For those that don’t know, this coaster is ancient. It’s the 6th oldest operating coaster in the US, opening in 1924, the same year as the Thunderbolt at Kennywood. It was awarded National Historic Landmark status some 20 years ago! With that said, this ride still flies. Not only do you get the amazing and authentic California seaside park experience, but the coaster is actually great! The front seat ride is all about the visuals, but they don’t help much in the beginning tunnel. It’s a few seconds before you can see light again as you travel a few hundred feet even before you catch the lift. The ride itself offers an amazing classic twister experience (a la Cyclone) with great laterals and good airtime hills. It’s really just all-around fun. So there would be a stop for a drink (beer or otherwise), hot dog, etc. after almost every ride we took. We optimistically bought 15 tickets each, which seemed appropriate considering the park would be open for 6 hours, but with the lines looking healthy, we weren’t so sure. I passed on a ride on a Kamikaze. No thanks, I spend enough time hanging upside down on those at county fairs when I was 14. Besides, someone had to hold the beer! Next up was the Cave Train Adventure. A classic hokey cave train black light cheese-fest. Definitely 70’s themeing at its worst! Let’s just say it’s a good thing there had been some drinks. Up next was a well-spun Wisdom Tornado, followed up by another fair mainstay, a Round-Up. With the beer kicking in, we were able to work up the nerve to go on the junior coaster at the park, Sea Serpent. Fortunately there was a crowd up unsupervised kids in front of us in line, so it looked as though they were us. Not that you are required to have a kid to go on it, but we didn’t want to look creepy. No surprises on this coaster (i.e., credit), but let’s hear it for double circuits! Log flume was up next. They way than cram in this (and EVERY) ride here is amazing. They use just enough room for the queue and station, and then the ride itself goes over, under, and next to a bunch of adjacent rides. It looks like the Pirate ship is going to swing right into the freefall tower! The flume itself was fun, it’s gave a beautiful view of the beach and sunset over the Pacific thanks to how it’s up on stilts about 50 above the park. It even had a good little drop, and didn’t create TOO much of a splash. Working to the far south end of the park we found a Himalaya, and with 3 adults, it was nice and “squishy”. We worked our way back towards the center of the park, and saw that the lines were getting sizable. We had yet another snack break since we were somehow not tired of hot dogs. Fortunately they had chili dog and bacon dog varieties discounted to $1.25, so they were a nice change of pace. Sort of. Making sure we got all 3 coasters, we headed down to the other end to get on Hurricane. Now I remember how disappointed I was with it 10 years ago, and it holds a spot very near the bottom of my coaster ranking. I wasn’t thrilled to be greeted with a full queue, but with 2 trains, it moved quickly enough. The ride itself was not so terrible, but probably only because of the faint memory of being the worst coaster I had ridden at the time. I guess I’ve been on worse since then. Now completely dark, it was time for one of the “scary” rides, a classic (have I used that word enough to describe this park yet?!) Haunted Castle dark ride. Only slightly more startling than Haunted Mansion at Disney, it offered a lot of the same cheap tricks, just with a lower rider capacity. Fun ride, some of the scenes were actually pretty creepy. Rides like this make me miss Halloween. With the evening winding down, we only had time for a few more rides. Giant Dipper had filled its queue, but it was now running two trains. We lucked out again, first choice in the station, this time we went for the back. Night ride, back row, ageless wooden coaster, seaside park, it was just perfect. This is a special coaster for sure. Next door was Fireball, which we affectionately refer to as The Claw. I don’t know the manufacture name for it, but it’s essentially an inverted Frisbee. Either way, it’s got great swinging and spinning motion, and the huge light display it puts on attracts a lot of attention on the midway. We found our way back to the south end of the park for the other “scary” ride, Ghost Hunt. This is your typical Sally shooting dark ride. If you read a lot of my reports, you know how much I suck at these. Fun, as always, but still a bit emasculating. Oh well, I think I beat the 5 year old girl who was ahead of me in line. Time for one last ride, we went all the way up the park to Double Shot, the S&S tower. Another ride that attracted a lot of bystanders, this one also gave a great view from the top as we were facing the pier. Pretty much what you expect, a nice rush to end the day. So that was it, all told we got on 14 rides with countless beer, soda and hotdogs in between. There may have also been some cotton candy and deep-fried Oreos somewhere during the evening. The park was crowded, but the smaller rides usually had a cycle or two wait, and the bigger ones were no more than 20 minutes. We were back on the road not long after 11pm, and thankfully home a good bit before midnight. As you can probably tell, I think this park is terrific. It’s not the cleanest or most efficiently run park (though the SIX ride operators on Giant Dipper made things move quickly), but it’s the ultimate seaside park, at least in the US. I know I need to go to Blackpool in England to compare, but for now, it’s nice having this throwback park only 45 minutes away from home. Back to Trip Reports
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