Monday, June 21, 2021

Morey's Piers: Great White Coaster Revamp Amazingness and June 2021 Trip Report

We spent the better part of a week in Wildwood for a nice vacation, starting with a visit to Great Adventure (with a review on the Jersey Devil Coaster at this link) on the first day of the Jersey leg of our trip and then another visit as we headed out of Jersey. We hit Morey's Piers, Playland's Castaway Cove, and Casino Pier while we were down at the shore. Today we will cover our time at Morey's Piers, which we did over several days on the trip. To me, it really does not get much better than the vibe of visiting a seaside amusement park and boardwalk area. I love the ability to go ride some waves for a while and do beach things, then decide to get dinner and ride a coaster and a few rides, and play some games, all in an aimless fashion. The fun feels more organic that way, as opposed to going to a single park for a day and having it feel akin to work. Morey's Piers is perfect for this chill kind of atmosphere. 

This was our first visit to the park and it was awesome. The highlight of the park's piers is CCI's Great White coaster. The heavy track rebuilding work over last offseason has this ride running absolutely incredibly. This is a balanced ride with a variety of intense lateral forces, right from the pre lift section before the station, right through the end, coupled with a great mix of floater and ejector airtime. 

This coaster is on point and just fantastic and it is definitely one of my absolute favorite wooden roller coasters. I do not rank my coasters, but I pick my top tier and mid tier favorites. This ride, hands down, comes into a tie within my top tier for overall favorite top tier wooden roller coasters. This list includes Voyage, Ravine Flyer II, Phoenix, Legend, Twister, Swamp Fox, Conneaut Lake Park's Blue Streak (fingers crossed it comes back), and now Great White as well. 

Riding off into the sunset on this ride, right on the beach, is about as great as it gets. I was not expecting this ride to be as ridiculously great as it was. The heavy duty revamp project on this ride has it riding smooth and intensely. Rumors were that they were going to add Timberliner trains to the ride, but I hope that does not end up being the case. The coaster is absolutely superb and it should be on any coaster seeker's bucket list. Everything about this ride is just perfect.

I had heard talk for years that the Vekoma Boomerang and Vekoma SLC at the piers actually run well and I am glad to say that those reports are correct. I had my first enjoyable Boomerang ride in more than a decade, and my first excellent SLC ride ever. Both have the advanced shoulder straps that cut away any uncomfortable head banging, and Great Nor'Easter, the park's SLC, had its track completely replaced recently. 

I saw the full potential of what an SLC can be with this ride and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was a definite rush and I loved it. While it still does not hold a candle to the compact and intense B&M Batman invert clones, I am glad to say that I had the chance to enjoy an SLC clone at the finest it can be. 

While I was unable to ride, other dummies were able to ride DooWopper. No big deal though because I really do not like standard Zamperla Wild Mouse rides, no Twitter cryfests over here for "missing out on a credit." Rollies Coaster, the park's non looping Pinfari Zyklon was painful, but it is pretty hard to bat a thousand when it comes to notorious clone rides. The park has figured out a way to keep their boomerang and SLC in fun and fantastic shape, which I have never seen pulled off before. 

Another big surprise with the park was just how awesome the Runaway Tramcar coaster is. For those of you who have never visited the Wildwood boardwalk, they have these shuttles that run up and down the large boardwalk, similar to a parking lot shuttle at a theme park, that you pay to shuttle you up and down the boardwalk. As it traverses the boardwalk and anyone gets close to being in the path, a notoriously flinty and sarcastic recording of a voice yells out "watch the tramcar please." For other Star Trek geeks, you may recognize the voice as being that of Majel Barrett doing the voice of the computer on the Enterprise D in Next Generation. Anyways, the Runaway Tramcar coaster is a Zierer and it is a dynamic and fun ride with a really compact footprint. It is a great midsized family ride that has terrific pacing.

One of the coolest things about Morey's Piers is the lighting packages on most of the coasters and rides, and the way they have built as many rides as humanly possible within small pier footprints. The care they take to appearances makes this place a unique and stunningly beautiful place. Just thinking about this vacation time makes me want to go back immediately now that I am back to reality this week. 



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