North American Gigatour 2025 - A trip 5 years in the making

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After 5 years of delays due to Covid, my apartment getting flooded, moving in with my gf and of course having a major work project scheduled for right during the trip, I finally managed to do the trip of my lifetime. Originally intended to include 22 parks and 223 rollercoasters, we managed to hit 24 parks (+ multiple 1 count stops) and 233 credits in total - including multiple lost counts and many spites.

Due to the sheer scale of the trip, I won't bother with an individual report for each park. Lets be honest, after being on a 4 week trip, it is hard to recall individual visits in enough detail to justify individual reports.

The itenerary started in Atlanta, led us eastwards toward Richmond, North to Montreal, over to Toronto and then back down to Atlanta. About 6,500kms (over 4,000 miles) were covered in total.

Ok, now lets get to the actual trip:

Upon arriving in Atlanta, we got our rental car and aimed for the Atlanta Shriners Carnival that apparently got a short term rename to Yaarab Shrine Circus and also changed its lineup significantly. So instead of 3 counts, we were only greeted with one, but a cred is a cred nontheless.

Our first real park was Six Flags Over Georgia. This was my first contact with a Six Flags park, so I was prepared for a parking lot with rollercoasters. Guess my suprise when I arrived there and realised that it is actually one of the nicer landscaped parks with some pleasant suprises like the Monster Mansion dark ride. Really fun and quirky.

Unfortunately, we were also greeted with 2 lost counts from the start: Georgia Gold Rusher was closed and Joker Funhouse was also not operating. But here is my rundown of the running rides:

Batman The Ride: It's a decently intense Inverter, although not my favourite layout.
Blue Hawk: Suprisingly smooth. Went down when we hit the final brakerun, so we had some time to enjoy the views.
Dahlonega Mine Train: +1
Dare Devil Dive: A smooth Gerstlauer for a change, unfortunately with a horrible capacity. Still nothing to write home about.
Georgia Scorcher: Next +1, but not a horrible experience
Goliath: The big suprise for me. My only other B&M Hypers to this point where Shambala and Silver Star. This one delivered very good airtime, and the helix turnaround was suprisingly intense. The ending was slightly unpleasant with quick transitions from airtime into positives, but overall a very good Hypercoaster.
Great American Scream Machine: A nice oldschool Woodie with good airtime. Really enjoyed that one.
Riddler Mindbender: A Schwarzkopf with a rattle? How? Next.
Superman - Ultimate Flight: The Pretzel Loop caused me to be slightly scared every single time. The rest of the layout truly exists, but does pretty much nothing.
Twisted Cyclone: A very pleasant RMC. Smooth, fun inversions, decent airtime pops and no overly aggressive as some other ones. I could do this one all day.

Over Georgia was truly a pleasant suprise and far beyond what I'd ever expect from a Six Flags park. The only area that felt really Six Flags was the Super Hero area around Superman. I did plan SFOG and FunSpot for the same day, and I did regret it to leave the park early.

It should be mentioned that we got to revisit the park for a couple of hours on our departure day, as our flight was scheduled for 4pm. That gave us not only 2 rerides on Goliath, which broke down just as we moved 2m out of the station, so we were sent up the lift in manual mode, but also Georgia Goldrusher. Keeping my previous scheme:

Georgia Goldrusher: The airtime was suprisingly good and consistent, definetely my favourite Intamin Surfrider.


But FunSpot made up for the 2 lost counts on our arrival day. The park itself was even sketchier than I ever expected, but I didn't care. I had ArieForce to make up for it. I was warned that it had the craziest airtime ever, but did it really deliver on that promise? Holy smokes, it did. The beginning is fairly normal, but I did like the long stall. The longer the ride goes, the crazier it becomes. The turnaround is suprisingly intense, the roll transitioning into the infamous quad down is great and the quad down itself... pure insanity.
The brake comes sudden and unexpected and hits you like a brickwall, worse than Zadra.
Yes, I did bring my accelerometer. And yes, it is the strongest airtime we've ever recorded. Video should come out soon™
I only did 17 rides on it, as my thighs were hurting like hell, but as long as no one forced me to leave the last row, I had to defend my honour and stay in the seat.

Next: Day 2/3, Carowinds - The Lost Counts continue

 

[Hixee]

Having been processing your LoG submissions, I'm looking forward to some more detail on this epic trip. It sounds amazing!

Glad to hear your first day(s) went well - I was also surprisingly impressed by SFOG and it's landscaping and feel.

 

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Day 2/3, Carowinds - The Lost Counts continue

Carowinds was one of the parks, that I was most curious about. I always felt like it was the second flagship park next to Cedar Point, and after being pleasantly suprised by Six Flags over Georgia, my expectations just rose.

Since we had planned 2 full days here and quite a drive in front of us to get here, we decided to skip early entry for our first day and "only" arrive at ~10:15am, so we' be able to get a bit more sleep.
Upon reaching the parking lot, my season pass caused some issues with the parking so the attendant had to make a quick call to then let us through anyway. Especially weird, because this was the only time we ran into an issue; maybe this was because the pass had never been used before?

Anyway, walking under Fury 325 towards the entrance was great, but to be fair it looked more bare than I expected. Fury 325 is still considered one of the best coasters in the world (#1 if you believe the Golden Ticket awards), so the hype was real. Knowing that we'd still get a morning ride, I did expect it to loose quite a bit of speed, but the B&M trimms should help a bit here.
After about 10 minutes of wait for maybe 4 trains worth of people, we were introduced to the first issue I'd have with the park: Their operations. Fury was consistently stacking all 3 trains, which is unusual to see for someone who visits Europa-Park on a regular basis. Anyway, 10 minutes queue for the best rollercoaster in the world isn't bad, is it?
We even got into the Front row, so everything was set for both of us to be blown away on our very first Gigacoaster. How did it deliver? Well, to be fair both of us found Fury to be quite underwhelming and rather... boring. For about 2/3 of it's overall ride time it just does nothing and is either coasting along quickly or coasting along slowly. Forcewise, there was suprisingly little to be had. The first drop into the overbanked turn does deliver a healthy bunch of positives, but than only the airtime hills start to do something for me.
I suppose most of the hype comes from it being fast for a sustained period of time (Don't get me wrong, the feeling is nice), but for someone who did Formula Rossa a bunch of times in the front row, it just fails to achieve the insanity that Formula Rossa brings to the table. In addition, Fury has quite a pronounced rattle throughout most of it's layout, which I simply don't enjoy.

I did have a lot more rides in the evening, and I enjoyed those rides more, but I would put it clearly below Leviathan and barely above Millenium Force.
At least their operations improved a lot towards the end of the day - the ops went from bad to perfect, even for my standards. I sometimes had trains stop in front of the lifthill, because they where pushing out the trains so fast. If that were their standard, I wouldn't dare to critisize their ops.

We then headed a bit more towards the back and got a ride on Hurler. I actually liked it until I thought to myself that the ride is actually enjoyable. It was then, when I got all the shakiness you expect from a Woodie like Hurler. In total, it was still ok, but nothing more.

As the rest of the day is a mess in my mind, I will switch to review mode:

Afterburn: A fun invert, that I really enjoyed.
Carolina Cyclone: I don't remember anything about this one, so it seems to be one of the better ones.
Flying Cobras: Vekoma Boomerang, urgh.... They also had dispatch times of 8.5-9 minutes, partly caused by them only filling the gates once every previous rider has left the station. Why even have airtgates if you're not using them?
Kiddy Hawk: Still crazy that the very same company can pump out amazing SFCs. This one is shaky and has bulky OTSRs.
Snoopy's Racing Railway: I actually liked this one quite a lot. It tells a bit of a story and is thrilling for young kids.
Thunder Striker: Good Hyper, but fairly shaky. I suspect the trains to be the culprit, as the other ones with this style of trains were also "rough"
Vortex: It is a standup coaster that exist. I've done better, I've done worse.
Woodstock Express: Decent woody for families.

As you might realise, there are 4 rides missing from my list. 4 rides have 4 reasons.

Carolina Goldrusher: Was down all day, I got told due to staff shortage
Copperhead Strike: Was also down all day, but did test for one or 2 cycles before shutting down for good. No one ever got to ride it.
Riccochet: We were in line, short time before boarding when the slightes drizzle of rain came down. This caused the ride to shut down "for the duration of the rain", which is Carowinds-speak for "We won't open again, even though we still have 4 hours after the rain stopped"
Wilderness Run: Due to the construction for the new waterride, Wilderness Run was completely inaccessible.

This brought us up to 6 lost counts, with just 2 major parks. This got me nervous. Why?
Well, I started the trip with 835 credits. In case everything was running, this would've brought me to 1,002 counts upon hitting Cedar Point. As I planned for some lost counts, the goal was clear: Make Steel Vengeance, the other "best coaster in the world", my #1,000. But with 6 lost counts in 2 days, it got me nervous if I'd be able to achieve this goal. In case you didn't read the answer to this question already in this forum, I won't spoil you here.

Luckily, there was a second day for the park to redeem itself. So, how did it go?
Well, it was a rainy morning, and I could see Fury testing from my hotel room. About 20 minutes before we left for the park, my friend saw an Instagram post from Carowinds, declaring they'd be closed for the day due to inclement weather. So, thank you for that, 1 day lost and no lost count to be regained.

Luckily for me, I did purchase at least one Fury shirt on the first day. I wanted to get more merch, but did plan to do most of the shopping on the second day. Gosh, I'd be even more angry if I hadn't got that one shirt early.

Well, as you can see, my time at Carowinds went not even close as good as I hoped it would. Luckily for us, I did plan 2 days for the park, so the impact from the closure was mitigated a bit. Still annoying, but could've been worse.

Due to the closure, we had plenty of time to relax and to tackle the travel towards Busch Gardens Williamsburg, including a few stops at Walmart and a Mall on the way.

Next up: day 4/5 Busch Gardens - even more lost counts?

 

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Day 4/5 Busch Gardens - even more lost counts?

A friend who did a US trip last year, told me I should plan 2 days because the park was so beautiful to look at, so I did. This descision turned out to be a very good one, although for completely different reasons.

The park offers some hotel packages, which include 3 days admission, multiple nights, parking, 10$ of Busch Bucks (per person) and 3 meals (entree+side+drink per person). I did the math, and it was definitely worth it for our 2 days stay.

Upon ariving at the park, we were greated by a sign that calls the park the most beautiful park in the world - fully in line with what I've heard.

The first day was dominated by rain. Sometimes just a drizzle, sometimes quite strong. But about 80% of the day were nothing but rain.
The good thing about it was, that the park was nearly void of people. We first headed for DarKoaster, as I heard that this has a horrible capacity. Additionaly, it was likely to be by far the longest line due to people fleeing from the rain. We got 2 rides in, with close to no wait.
I actually got pulled out of the car to be sent for measuring because the ride-op felt I might be too tall. So they opened the gates again, I had to go the the attendant that usually assigns rows and ask for being measured, just to go back and she signing to her collegue that I'd be good to go. The whole process took probably a minute.
Anyway, I got the cred and it was... alright. The idea is quite cool, but I don't get why the evil sceletons pop up *before* the actual storm. Obviously meant for families, and I do think that it fulfills that roll.

Pantheon was down due to inclement weather, Alpengeist was down for the whole day (and the entrance area blocked off), Verbolten was in "annual maintenance". At least Big Bad Wolf, the revenge was running. That was, right until we boarded our train. Up to a great start... again.

At least we were able to get the other creds:

Apollo's Chariot - one of the weaker Hypers I've done, but the ending got me every single time.
Griffon - It's large but remains a one trick pony
Grover's Alpine Express +1
InvadR - also a fun ending, the rest of the ride seemed to be lacking... something
Loch Ness Monster - very intense loops, very loud audio and one jolt that was quite painful
Tempesto - Sky Rocket II... I've done worse creds.

After that we went for one of our meals and decided to go into the Italian/Asian restaurant. The mongolian platter was decent, although not amazing, but was overall satisfying.

We also booked a backstage tour wich was up shortly. With the park being as empty as it was, we got a private tour that brought us to the maintencance bays of Loch Ness Monster and Griffon + 2 rides on each of them. Definetly worth the money, if you ask me. It was also mostly raining when we were inside the buildings, so we weren't even getting wet.



Towards the end of our day, I'd guess the last 2 hours or so, the weather brightend a bit. That allowed Pantheon to finally open. The ride itself is a typical new-gen Intamin, and very pleasant to ride. Truly something that I'd consider ERT-able, but nothing to write home about. The speed is great, but it fails to really do something with that speed.

Unfortunately, we were only allowed 1 reride at a time, so we only managed 7 rides within 45 minutes. They didn't even give us the final "one more ride" of the day - how dare they!

The second day looked significantly more promising. Well that is, except for the crowds which were massively larger than the day before. To be fair, that day wasn't hard to beat in the first place.

Anyway, we did head to Alpengeist first, and headed for Big Bad Wolf the wolfs revenge after that to get all available credits in.

Alpengeist: Maybe the most hyped invert for me, but I was a bit disappointed. Sure, the Cobra roll was absolutely insane, the entry to the MCBR was violent, but the rest of the layout was just to slow and quite forceless. In total, I found it to be kind of boring
BBWTWR: It tried to challenge Gotham City Gauntlet Escape from Arkham Asylum for the longest name, but luckily it had more to offer. The ride is a fun family invert with theming throughout parts of the layout. I especially liked the party area towards the end of the ride. As a family coaster, it obviously isn't amazing, but it is a fun addition to the park.

I then started to get some g-force recordings in, which was hard stopped thanks to a major hardware failure. Luckily for me, it was likely not the 1,000$ piece of equipment that failed, but something within my Laptop. I still got Alpengeist and Apollo's Chariot in, but unfortunately none of the other rides.

The queues on the day were quiet long compared to the day before. Pantheon hit 45-60 minutes, Loch Ness Monster stood at 30 for most of the time.
We did get a ride on Escape from Pompej in, which had a nice darkride part with cool effects. That one was a walk on as well, so we gladly took it.
With the queues being as they were, and most of the day gone anyway, we figured we'd leave a bit earlier to get a bit more sleep.

Oh yeah, did it deliver on the title "most beautfiful park in the world"? No, and it isn't even close. There are certainly amazing areas in there, especially the bridges above the river, but most of the park looks quite bare except for trees and bushes. The theming quality is usually below what I am used to. Was it an ugly park? No, but definitely not the most beautiful park. Dollywood e.g. is a way prettier park.

So, do I enjoyed the park? With both days being so different in crowd levels and weather, it is hard to judge the park objectively. I think it is a nice park, but as many others lacks the one standout attraction. I will certainly visit again, I do have some unfinished business here after all, but if it wasn't for that I think I'd skip it for the next trip. It isn't bad, but it didn't wow me either.