(This review was originally published on CoasterSims.com in June 2008)

Ah, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina… one of the world’s most popular tourist traps, with miles of pristine, white condominiums and beachwear stores intercepting the views of the beach. Every year they feed on millions of disposable tourist dollars to provide some form of artificial self-sustenance for people with no idea what else they can do with their lives before they’re excreted back home thanks to the rising costs of gasoline. It’s like a little slice of the-next-best-thing-to-heaven on Earth, which I guess would make it a little slice of purgatory?
Okay, really, so why would anyone as intellectual and cultured as myself (yeah…) dare be caught spending valuable money and time in a place this superficial and tacky? Because I also happen to consider roller coasters a fine art, and the first real new theme park of the 21st century has opened its gates this past month. Was it worth the time, money (especially money) and personal risks of bodily harm to get there? Hell no! But, really, what is worth it these day?

* * *

Originally I was planning to visit Hard Rock Park on Sunday the 25th of May, to save as a grand finale to the weekend before flying back to Michigan on Monday, but as it happened park management decided to reduce hours on Saturday and Sunday to close at 10:00pm instead of 1:00am. No biggie since 10:00pm was still more than generous especially when Cedar Fair and Six Flags have been cutting their parks hours so they’re hardly open past 9:00 during the summer season. Still, I sent a letter to the park expressing my disappointment since a 1:00am closing time still would have been very enjoyable (I’m a big supporter of the belief that all aspects of a park are best experienced after dark) and figured that’s that. But less than a week before leaving, I found out that they once again cut their hours, closing the park entirely from Monday to Wednesday on both weeks before and after Memorial Day weekend, and further reducing hours that Sunday from 10:00pm to 7:00pm. So a last minute switch was made at some expense from an already booked hotel in Charlotte to visit the park on Friday which still had hours until 1:00am, along with one of their larger concerts for the season.

We arrived at the park about five minutes to opening only to find that there were six or seven other cars in the parking lot. Apparently the Friday of Memorial Day weekend is *not* a popular day to visit. Granted the park was open until 1:00am that night and given it’s a smaller park I figured most people were planning on arriving later that afternoon or evening for the George Clinton concert. Even then, it seemed that if crowds were to pick up later in the day, it would be assumed that a larger percentage would be planning a full day starting at opening like me. While normally this is a good thing since it means tons of re-rides, with a limited number of attractions I was almost counting on longer lines to fill in the day, and of course I was also concerned about the park’s own well-being as I was really hoping to see a new park open this decade as a success story and not go the way of Wild West World or Jazzland. It’s still far more promising than those two examples, but I was more than mildly concerned that these almost non-existent crowds might indicate some failed market research and reduced expansion plans for the future, or raised eyebrows concerning other new park plans across the country when investors see the hard times of Hard Rock. The planned Main Street America park in Grayling, Michigan is just a little more than an hour from where I live which would make it my new ‘home park’, and while I do have criticisms of the plans themselves I’d still like to see it happen sometime, plus it’s no secret the Michigan economy needs something like that.

I unfortunately should also mention that another possible reason for the lighter crowds: Memorial Day weekend is the start of an event officially called “Black Biker Week” in Myrtle Beach. Talking to one of the employees later in the day he candidly expressed some concern that they’ve had problems encountering the huge numbers of bikers (and their many girlfriends), many of whom, whether because it’s part of that culture or it’s just personal, have had some bad attitudes that were partly responsible for the low level of regular tourists to Myrtle Beach and Hard Rock Park. While these large numbers of bikers weren’t present around the Hard Rock area itself, going into town the next day the problems were… I’ll just say more than self-evident, and I’ll leave it at that. This unfortunately also meant a visit to Family Kingdom to try out the classic Swamp Fox wooden coaster had to be cut, in fact Saturday was more or less a loss as we had to call it quits early and head back to Charlotte.

Moving on… tickets were $50 per person without tax included, which really made it closer to $54. It’s definitely on the steep side compared to other parks of comparable size but considering everything is still shiny and brand new and it includes whatever concerts happen to be playing it seemed fair enough for this year at least. However, here’s a large problem with the park’s ticket structure: that’s the only ticket option available, besides the season pass for $150. That’s right, there’s no discounted admission price for those under 48” or for senior citizens, and no evening passes, which I would assume would have been very popular with area tourists not wanting to spend a full day at the park nor willing to pay $50 for only a couple hours in the evening.

Tickets in hand we’re quickly processed and inside the gates of Hard Rock Park.

Next: All Access Entry Plaza

Skip to One Year Later essay

On your right when you first enter is I Want Candy!, which I didn’t personally go into but it appeared to have a large collection of colorful confectionaries from outside that I am sure every seven year old who passes through the gates will force their parents to make their first stop. In front on the midway is the Hard Rock Car which guests are allowed to sit inside.

If you entered the park early and are in need of some sort of breakfast like we did, your first stop might likely be Amp’d Coffee.

Turning it up to eleven since 2008, this shop had a nicely furnished interior and a good selection of coffees and other pastries. Got a warmed jumbo cinnamon roll with a milk and an orange juice, the roll was very tasty. However the prices, especially for the drinks were a bit higher than I was expecting, since those three items cost just over $10.

Opposite Amp’d is All Access Merchandise, featuring a huge selection of souvenirs featuring both rock bands and park icons. The shop was split up into several different rooms, although despite the huge size there was surprisingly little more to offer than a huge collection of t-shirts as well as other standard amusement park knick-knacks including several series of pins. Outside on the midway is an arch that spans between Amp’d and the All Access Merchandise, beneath is a large mural depicting God handing the guitar pick of rock to man in a very Michelangelo sort of way.

Continue onwards and to your left you will find Origins Theater. This is a place that sounds far more interesting than it actually is, and that clearly isn’t saying much. Enter the lobby and there are a couple of guitars and flat screen TVs on the walls running footage such as their poorly done NoLimits Zeppelin re-creation, pretty basic stuff. On the back wall are three stained glass windows depicting legends including one of James Brown which had been signed right before his death. Okay, good anteroom, what’s next?

The next room is mostly bare minus a few more guitars and memorabilia (what a hellish word that is, “memorabilia”…) as it shows a documentary about the origins of the Hard Rock brand. Maybe interesting to watch for a minute or two, but let’s face it, there are better things to do than watch a franchise promote itself. The next room is where the rest of their Hard Rock Park displays, including that giant model of the park, should be located. That is what I was expecting when the only other door out of that second room led us straight into the All Access Merchandise. Awesome.*

Up on the right is the Whammy Bar, which featured a live performance throughout the evening as well as an outdoor seating patio that you can people-watch from the T-intersection as people head off into the other areas of the park.

The mens room also has a questionable mural on one wall (though I’ve heard nothing similar for the women, apparently).

The pavement for the entry midway ends as a large guitar, with the neck leading from the far exit of the All Access Merchandise and the base making an overlook of the central lagoon, with water jets spouting from the pick-ups. From here you can turn either left into Rock and Roll Heaven (which is what many people do), or right into Cool Country.

Seeing as this is our first visit, crowds are light and there’s no need to rush to the biggest attraction in the park, let’s start this review by going counterclockwise…
* Which is slang for “skip this”.

Next: Cool Country

Previous: Introduction

However this is actually a HUSS Bee Bee, a family version of the ride I remembered, and I was rather disappointed when I found it to be a very tame, stomach-friendly ride, in which the seats were hardly pushed to a 45 degree angle and the slow revolution speed didn’t increase the excitement either. While family-friendly rides like this are always fun, the Just-A-Swingin’ next door more than has those elements covered and a ride with a name and look like Muddin’ Monster Race needs a bit more kick to it. As I recall this flat was late to open during the soft-opening for no apparent reason, so perhaps the ride program is in some sort of ‘safe-mode’ for the time being as the park continues to tinker with it.

Next up is the area’s second flat ride, Just-A-Swingin’. As it turns out, this was the perfect ride to help beat that tired, hot late-afternoon lag common to many extended amusement park visits. Feeling rather exhausted from the Carolina heat, with the sun coming in at just that angle where it hit the back of my already burnt neck, getting a nice breeze and up off my feet left me very refreshed and ready to make a mini-marathon of the Eagles. This is a very nice swing ride, featuring a fully covered queue complete with fan misters, and the swings themselves get some good height and tilt going. The rotation speed was quick but nothing too intense, and to further add to the family friendly element were double-wide two person chairs on the inside row of seats. I had forgotten why these are so popular at parks and was pleasantly reminded.

What’s for lunch? For me it was pulled pork sandwich dressed with a Carolina Vinegar base and a side of corn on the cob and mac’n’cheese at the area’s main eatery, the Rockabilly BBQ. The price: about $10 per person. While I wouldn’t call it the steal of a lifetime, when you compare it to other amusement parks I found their offerings to be quite exceptional.

The sandwich was fantastic, not in the least bit dry, with the vinegar adding that special ‘zing’ that’s almost impossible to get out of amusement park food. Later at Carowinds I was reminded how normally the best you can do is low-quality, bought-in-bulk food, so it was very refreshing to actually get a good meal inside the park in which the higher price wasn’t clearly all mark-up for the park’s own profit.

Between the Rockabilly BBQ and the Ice House is a strange statue the park calls the “rock-cow-billy”, which resembles a bovine version of Elvis and squirts people both from its udders and its rear end. There are all sorts of displays and other interactive features throughout the area, but none quite so curious as this one.

Of course in the Ice House located behind it is one of the park’s main shows, Country on the Rocks. This 25-minute ice show is located in the far back end of Cool Country in an authentic ice house that was re-used when the park bought the land, and runs about four shows throughout the day between noon and six in the evening. From the outside it makes a pretty nice backdrop for the rest of the environ, and despite its somewhat weathered exterior appearance the interior was very comfortable and high-tech. The show begins with a music video showing the skaters getting ready, and then the screen retracts and the skaters take the ice.

The skating here was surprisingly professional. Most amusement park ice shows feature pretty beginner level skaters obviously pulled from whatever local skating club exists and as a result you get a fairly cheesy show that’s not entirely reminiscent of some sort of Waiting for Guffman On Ice. My younger sister has been figure skating for the past several years and so my mom knows inside and out all the technical skills that go into figure skating, commenting on how some of the soloists were capable of double jumps and combination spins in a very tight area. The show itself seems to consist of a collection of about ten or eleven country-rock numbers running back to back that don’t form any cohesive storyline but the quality of the performances as well as the stage decoration and overall energy of the show made it so it didn’t really matter. Overall it was a pleasant surprise, and I’d recommend that if you see one of the park’s shows you make it this one, as it offers more than an air-conditioned reprise from the summer heat.

Finishing the review for this environ is Cool Country’s star attraction, Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane. I was continually calling this one ‘Midnight Rider’ throughout the day. Not only does that name fit the theme better but it rolls off the tongue much easier. It was closed at first arrival due to issues with the speaker system on the trains, but they got it rolling less than an hour later and I must confess, for a bare-bones mine train, Hard Rock Park was really able to make it feel like a first-rate attraction.

One thing of note is a new locker system at the ride’s entrance. Unlike Six Flags or Cedar Point where you have to pay a dollar to get a locker token that’s only good once, Hard Rock Park has a special electronic set-up where you get your locker via touch screen, and instead of a key you enter a 6-digit password, and then the computer unlocks an available locker for you, no keys or tokens needed. Best of all, since you have to go back to the computer when you’re done, this system allows the first two hours of usage to be free, with an hourly charge being applied to items kept for any longer. However one down side is you not only have to remember your password, but also the number of your locker, and chances are even if you did bring a pen and paper to write this info down (I didn’t), they’re getting locked in your locker as well.

The entrance to the ride is a fairly inconspicuous pathway on the left side of the CC Trading Co. souvenir building, with a rumbling motorcycle situated right in front as well as the standard ‘For Your Safety’ signs. The queue begins outdoors as it parallels the first brake run, with a small section of overflow switchbacks set behind a small grove of trees. The queue crosses under the track, running through the middle of the ride area and under the dual lifts allowing for some close-ups of the action if it weren’t for the tall fences, eventually entering the station. It splits between a room that contains a series of gently sloped switchbacks plus a flatscreen TV playing videos of Eagles concerts for busier days, or a simple stairway in a narrow hallway. At the top of the stairs where the two paths meet is a boarded up door for an ‘employment office’ with some fire and heat effects blazing behind. A quick left and you’re in the station, able to choose your seat. The ride has two, 22-passenger trains, although only one was on the tracks that day (which was more than enough capacity… later that evening I couldn’t get an off-ride photo without waiting several minutes for the train to go by because I was the only person in the area that had been riding it!) Sitting in the station you can see the other curving tracks that cut through the building to lead to the second lift hill ahead of you, and projected on the wall behind it are silhouettes of mice scampering across a beam, a very clever effect. Unlike some parks that seem to think guests are safest when they are pinned down by their restraints (really the reverse is true when you consider the risks of bruising or other internal injuries caused by a too-restrictive restraint on a bumpy ride), the attendants here let us set the restraint at a position that was comfortable for us without then pushing on it with all their weight, but they didn’t let anyone by with too loose of a restraint, which I think shows a rare dedication towards both guest comfort and safety. The only real discomfort is that the seats are a rigid plastic that aren’t formed as nicely as they could have, but they’re still pretty good.

The all-clear is given, and our mine train takes right off with the first chords of the Eagles coming in loud and clear on the on-board sound system. Off of the first lift hill the train makes a spiraling left-hand helix under the opposing lift hill, before making another banked right hand turn around. The first half of the Eagles is mostly an unfocused collection of swooping turns with no big drops to speak of, although as they gradually work their way back down to ground level you’ll noticed that each progressing curve seems to be taken just a little bit harder and more intense than the one before it. The ride is fairly smooth although there was much more of a rattle than I was expecting, and the trackwork seems reminiscent of something made in NoLimits with the HSAK and AHGed with longish segments but a low heartline value. Working its way back towards the loading station it ends the first half with two more abrupt dips (offering some brief out-of-seat experiences especially in the back of the train) in between some fast curves, then a smooth left turn into the first set of brakes, which consists only of three strips of magnetics, no pinch calipers or tires for blocking.

I think this is where the song selection really does help make the ride experience something more than just a standard mine train. Instead of simply having an empty lull in the middle of the ride the music is queued so it also changes pace into a guitar solo and midpoint to the song, and effectively turns this lag into anticipation for second part of the ride. It helps that the lyrics don’t start until the approach of the second lift hill to also help distinguish the two halves of the ride.

The train rolls off the top of the second lift hill, where there is a small rise over the track from the first lift, and it then makes a descending 540 degree right hand helix which creates a good sensation of building speed before making a sudden left curve dive into what is clearly the fastest point of the ride. There are two more inclined curves which are taken at a fast clip before the ride and accompanying music dive down for the final sprint to the station, a series of tightly paced skips mixed with jolts to the left then the right, all while hugging the ground and dashing beneath overhead track. The train slides into the final magnetic brakes and offers one last surprise to finish the experience on a high note: a metal eagle sculpture erupts right beside the brake run with a huge burst of flames, the heat of which can nearly be felt from the midway.

Let there be no mistaking that Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane is a moderate family coaster. It needs far more before it can even begin to possibly be considered a four-star attraction, much less a ‘great coaster’. But it has a great element of re-rideablity and it needs to be ridden several times in order to fully appreciate some of its subtler elements that make it so good, such as its slight pacing changes in an otherwise uniform ride experience or the ways the music can build anticipation and highlight certain changes. This is a small ride of smaller pleasures that might not leave you very impressed the first or second time around, but if the lines are short and you come back again for thirds and fourths, especially if you can experience it after nightfall, I think you’ll find this one almost as much fun as that big bad beemer across the lagoon. If there ever was such a thing as a Must Ride three-star coaster, this is it.

Next: Born in the USA

Previous: All Access Entry Plaza

Moving forward on the left side of the midway is our next coaster, Slippery When Wet. I think this is technically part of the Kids Rock! State Park but it has a separate entrance connecting to the main midway closer to when you first enter the environ. Unfortunately, as with Premier’s other contribution to the park, this one was DOA. It was tested once later in the afternoon, and then continuously throughout the evening, but by that point it was getting late in the day and they clearly didn’t have attendants on standby to run it for the public, so we were out of luck. From what I heard in the park they were making some modifications to the lift hill so that operations would run more efficiently than they had during the couple of weeks it was already open for the public. This was a big disappointment as with those two coasters out of commission it basically left us with all the same attractions that were available at the start of the soft opening, which I have to admit, coupled with the light crowds this visit felt more like one of their ‘sound checks’ than a standard operating day.

The station area appeared very nice with plenty of stonework and rich, varnished wood in an open air design. There were some geysers as well as other water elements like a water curtain and mist effects along the course. I think I would have liked this as a water ride, offering more of a sprinkling of water rather than an outright drenching like many parks have their water rides do simply because they can, as spending the rest of the day wearing clinging, soaked cotton doesn’t exactly scream ‘fun times’. One thing that sets this one apart from other similar suspended water coasters is it has a fast, quiet elevator lift system that takes the cars up to surprisingly tall heights for this type of coaster.

You will next encounter the very blue Main Street Gas & Gifts which looked to be a smaller sized gift shop featuring a photo opportunity for you to pose on a surfboard in a tidal wave. Right past that is the rest of Kids Rock! State Park, which features a mini-ropes course along with a large rock climbing wall as well as other various play structures.

Up on the right is the Born in the USA’s other roller coaster, the Shake, Rattle ‘n’ Rollercoaster. The ride is designed to look like it is on a seaside pier, set entirely above sand dunes. The queue looks like a wooden dock that’s longer than it probably needs to be but it goes in and around the coaster allowing for some more interesting perspectives. Actually being on the coaster it felt larger than it did from the ground, and the long train relative to the ride’s size makes for some different experiences if you try it front or back. The 8-car, 16 passenger train features comfortable, hydraulically set lap bars and individually molded seats with padding.

It starts with a left turn out of the station and into the tire drive lift hill. The first ‘drop’ is a gradual right turnaround that rises back up to cross under the lift hill to make another left turn/dip combo alongside the station. If you’re in the front of the train you’ll be nearly to the bottom of the first drop before the rest of the train catches up to you, but you’ll also get more of a push up the subsequent hills.

SR&RC feels a lot like a miniature version of the Eagles. There’s a couple more shallow turns and hills that end with a clockwise helix before sliding into the magnetic brakes. (Interestingly of all the coasters in the park the only one that doesn’t feature magnetic brakes was their most ‘advanced’, Led Zeppelin.)

Overall the ride lasts, from the top of the lift hill to the beginning of the brakes, no more that 15-20 seconds, and unlike other family coasters of this size they don’t give multiple circuits around the course, although on my first ride that morning when no one else was in the area the ride attendants did insist that I try it in the back row without having to exit and go around again. All in all it’s probably worth a ride even if you’re not interested in riding everything just for the sake of riding everything, but don’t go in thinking there’s somehow more to this ride than what can be seen from the ground.

One final note, you may have noticed that the last row of seats on both this ride and the Eagles are just an empty platform. I believe there was a rumor that this is a “wheelchair row”, which would certainly be one hell of a scary ride if you ask anyone. That’s half-true; while they are for wheelchairs, they’re actually so that way the wheelchairs (or anyone else that needs to) can cross the tracks easily while in the station, since I think the queue lines for both of these are handicapped accessible.

Exiting Shake, Rattle & Rollercoaster you’ll find yourself in a small area known officially as KidsVille, which so far features only a mini train ride and a small children’s spinning ride. I think these were both brought in late in the construction process when park management realized they had very few mechanical rides for kids, especially when they’re paying the same price as their parents. In fact I believe this area was also home to that mysterious Zierer Flitzer that was brought in from a Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Maryland apparently also as a last minute effort to increase their ride count. Just as quietly as it appeared, it is currently nowhere to be seen. Presumably Hard Rock decided against it although I have to wonder if there’s more to the story of this 6th ghost coaster.

Further up on the left again is the area’s main eatery (you’ll notice each section contains one sit down and one walk-up eatery plus one gift shop), the Great Meals Diner. If you’ve read any other of the countless Hard Rock Park reviews floating out there on the internet you’ll know that neon sign contains a cheeky joke at night. The restaurant itself looked pretty big with plenty of indoor (and outdoor) seating room, although the menu seemed a bit too basic to choose eating here over the Rockabilly BBQ or other places. Across from the diner sporting shades and a Zippo lighter is the Liberty Kiosk which houses a mini gift shop that sells merchandise for whatever concert is playing behind it in the Live Amphitheater. The midway also splits again, with the FunkyTown Midway and the entrance to Lost in the 70’s straight ahead and the One World Place and British Invasion off to the left.

Situated it between this cross is the all-too 80’s Love Shack Snacks which sells various kinds of sandwiches a la Subway. While I didn’t get any food there I did find out more about the park’s drink policies. Unlike most other parks that give out small cups of ice water for free, which I have depended on many times during hot summer days, your only options are bottled water (no thanks since I prefer having the ice cubes to chew on more than the water itself) or a 22oz. cup of soft drinks for $3.75, which is the only size cup they have. If there are any good deals to be found in the food they make up for it in their beverages. Funny, since I always figured it was some sort of law that a closed gate, outdoor summertime attraction like an amusement park need to supply its patrons with some form of free water to prevent cases of dehydration, but I guess the occasional drinking fountain is enough.

The FunkyTown Midway features some interesting spins on classic games, most notably the devilishly amusing Whac-A-Boy-Band. One of the unfortunate things about these midway games is how rarely I ever see them in use any more, after all who would want to separate themselves from $3.00+ to only get to play a game once, especially in this era of video games and other cheap entertainment. I’d like it if parks offered a ‘no-stakes’ way to play these games, in which the price to play is mere pocket change, but you don’t stand to win anything other than the thrill of winning (or possibly something small like a candy bar).

Continuing up on the left is the Garage Jam!, a foam ball shooting play area for the kids, and, along with Kids Rock! State Park and Maximum RPM!, constitutes one of three excessive uses of an exclamation point in a ride name. The area looked kind of fun but also somewhat lacking in balls, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Next: Lost in the 70′s

Previous: Cool Country

That leaves this section with the Kings Road Boutiques, which is really just a fairly standard gift shop at the exit of Nights in White Satin, and Pinball Wizard, advertised to be an arcade game Mecca but despite its impressive looking façade it’s really about the size of something you’d find in your average shopping mall.

To be fair, the area will also be home to Alice’s Restaurant, the park’s premier, full service restaurant when it opens, and from the looks of progress so far it should be ready for opening soon.

There is one other feature of Lost in the 70’s. The area right now is basically a long hallway that connections the FunkyTown Midway in Born in the USA with the Piccadilly Circus in British Invasion, so they’ve been letting guests in the first month sign their name or whatever on the walls of this hallway.

If anyone is visiting the park, check out in the bottom left hand corner of the orange wall on the Pinball Wizard side of hallway (near the Born in the USA entrance).

Bonus points to whoever can read what it says.

Next: British Invasion

Previous: Born in the USA

If you’re coming in through Born in the USA the first thing you’ll see on your left in one of the area’s London Calling booths.

Also on the left is the Carnaby Street Café, this area’s main indoor eatery and one of the larger ones in the park, with a fairly eclectic menu. On the right is a row of your typical, slacker teenaged buildings which might just appear as if they’re staring back at you. These would belong to The Punk Pit, which looked like it houses a children’s bouncy fortress/ obstacle course. On the other side of the Punk Pit is Piccadilly Circus which I think is only a small pathway that leads to the other Lost in the 70’s entrance, and the Guitar in the Stone, which I somehow completely missed.

Straight ahead at the center of a large plaza is the London Cab Ride, also the best flat ride in the park. Unlike the Muddin’ Monster Race, this one runs with a decently fast program (nothing mind-blowing, though), but like their other circular flat rides the queue area is covered and equipped with misting fans. The ride itself is another contribution from HUSS, one of their Breakdance models. The cabs feature lights that work after hours, and the program alternates the speed throughout the ride from a ‘gentle fun’ speed to a ‘hang on’ speed. Factor in an easily viewable location, and this one is definitely worth a spin or two.

On the other side of the road is All the King’s Horses, the park’s merry-go-round. The park’s description made it sound like it would be some kind of mythical, Arthurian spin on a traditional merry-go-round but from what I could tell it was a standard Chance Rides carrousel, the same as we have in our local mall’s food court. I was expecting a bit more here, especially considering how some modern theme parks have used their carrousel to express their unique identity, such as Island’s of Adventure’s Carro-Seuss-El.

Just past the carrousel inside the old mall structure is by far the park’s most enigmatic attraction, as well as possibly their best, if for no other reason than it is able to defy almost every convention you expect from an amusement park ride and yet still be amazing. It is the Moody Blues: Nights in White Satin – The Trip.

The ride begins almost immediately as you enter the queue under the impressive painted entry sign. There’s first a main series of switchbacks in a dark-lit, air conditioned room with several artifacts on the walls included a giant, glow in the dark knight and a holographic skull. Around a small corner there is an attendant waiting to give you a set of 3D glasses (for free, even! At Cedar Point with Disaster Transport you have to pay like $3.00 for a set of plastic glasses).

Put them on and then make your way around a small special effects black lit hallway before coming to a rotating tunnel (they have a “Chicken’s Shortcut” around it for those who are afraid they might not have the stomach to make it through.) You are now in the ride station, where an attendant will usher you into one of two, four passenger cars. The cars depart in pairs and move through the entire ride together. I’d recommend trying to get the front seat of the first car to start with since there are times when if you’re riding in the second car the first will obstruct your view, but if you’re going around for seconds there are a couple of effects you’ll miss in the first car that can only be seen in the back.

I’m not going to go into a detailed breakdown of this ride, partly because I don’t want to take away the surprise of riding it the first time but also because to describe it all here would be fairly useless. There is no story line, at least not a literal one. I find that most dark rides that try to have some sort of literal story usually fail, because let’s face it: they’re created by people in the amusement industry, not the Coen Brothers.

This attraction is more fully realized because it uses the music to dictate the dark ride effects and thus can create a far more effective if not abstract emotional arc to the ride experience. That basically means that if you simply don’t like the music (which is unique for its orchestration and classical influences- there is also a scene where there is no music and just a narrative), then I can tell you you’re not going to like the ride and will be left wondering what the point of all that was.

But if you can appreciate the music and are open to trying something that might seem a bit weird at first, I think you’ll be blown away by Nights in White Satin if not for its special effects then just for that it is so refreshingly unconventional and, yes, even artistic, it’s quite exciting and invigorating for a theme park-weary traveler to get off a ride feeling like they’ve experienced something truly different from the usual stuff.

That said, not all the scenes work, there were a couple that either seemed to be missing some effects or the effects still felt a bit too ‘classic dark ride’, which is something you don’t want with a ride like this. You can also catch a glimpse of a bright red EXIT sign or two along the way, but thankfully they weren’t quite as intrusive as I thought they could have been. Some of the particularly good effects (in no particular order, and this is hardly a complete list or even a list that mentions some of the best): A couple very good holographic effects that seem to enter your vehicle, smoke rings, water droplets, and many, many candles. It’s also very dark (thanks partly to the 3D shades that act as sunglasses) so you can never see the riggings that give away the effects, and in many cases you’re completely unaware of your orientation.

If there is one other disadvantage to Nights in White Satin – The Trip, it is that it’s not very re-ridable. I’d say it’s best to let one ride sit on you for several hours before going back, otherwise it’ll lose some of the mystery that makes it seem good. On a simple satisfaction level alone I’d probably rate this as the second best ride in the park, but if I were to really analyze things from an intellectual creative point of view I could easily see myself declaring this the best ride in the park, and maybe even… best non-coaster ride in any park?

Okay, there’s no way I could make that claim without leading to disappointment. Still, this one is definitely worth it, especially for any dark ride enthusiasts out there.

Continuing…

Secluded in the far back corner of the environ, dressed up like the Globe Theater and sporting an “evolution of the rock star” mural is the Roadies Stunt Show. The show is a brisk twenty minutes (was it even that?) that contains some okay stunts and set pieces mostly involving trampolines but overall felt far underwhelming considering the impressive size of the open air theater containing it.

It starts with an introduction to the speechless, hapless roadie-wannabe. He tries out a guitar for a minute, and then the band leader and his roadie posse enter stage and tell him he’s not cut out to be a roadie and to hit the road, etc. You know, because the Globe Theater is meant for tragedy on such a Shakespearian level. They then show off some of their stunts, they leave, the roadie comes back and accidentally ruins the set in some attempted physical comedy, then the rest of the show consists more or less of the angered band leader and roadie posse chasing him around the set performing various stunts and hi-jinx before they set off the pyrotechnic finale and the roadie gets hired and everyone cheers.

Like I said, it’s all nearly Shakespearian.

Next door is a small gift shop named The Underground Souvenirs which again is a fairly basic collection of rock and roll themed t-shirts and other knick knacks. If you’re looking for traditional roller coaster t-shirts that’s more than just a logo (like the kind I help design…) you’re not going to have much luck anywhere, but if you’ve got a favorite rock band chances are you’ll find more than enough souvenirs.

Further on the main midway is a double-decker bus in which a pair cleverly named The Fab 2 had an evening show consisting of all Beatles songs. They were very good and talented, especially considering they were playing music intended for four. We stayed through the first half hour and I felt kind of bad they (and many other performers throughout the park) didn’t have more of an audience since they were playing for about six or seven people plus whoever happened to wander by.

On the right side of the midway is the area’s final flat ride, the whimsically named Magic Mushroom Garden. It’s extensively themed to this magical English garden which contains colorful toadstools and butterflies like in the fairytales… okay, who are they kidding, if you’re over the age of thirteen (or maybe even younger these days, I don’t know) you know what this ride is really about. The front entry way contains a “toddler play area” which I only saw consisted of three very small foam toadstools that toddlers could step on top of. The queue takes you along the back side of the ride with the far switchback area by the ride op booth also covered. As with Muddin’ Monster Race, I originally thought that this was a HUSS Troika when it’s actually a smaller family version of that model, a HUSS Airboat. The ride itself is okay but better for the 8-13 age range rather than any serious flat ride. Supposedly it’s designed to glow under black light but passing by it at night the effects weren’t particularly dazzling, with only the giant mushrooms and butterflies decorating the ride glowing at all.

Right behind the Magic Mushroom Ride is another at-present construction site but hopefully ready before too long, the Phonehenge. I managed to snap a photo of them lowering some of the props in place, and yes, this is a re-creation of Stonehenge made with red telephone booths. It’s going to be home to a magic show and other presentations. I’m fairly certain this one was created the same night they came up with the rock-cow-billy and the Magic Mushroom Ride.

On each corner of the intersection that splits between the shortcut across the lagoon to Born in the USA, and the bridge to Rock & Roll Heaven ahead are two more walk-up food venues, the Cod Piece Fish-and-Chip, and the Queens Head Pub, with a nice patio overlooking the lagoon. I’m sure all of these uniquely themed restaurants will be of great service to the park on a busy summer day especially once they’ve expanded more, but I do have to wonder if two of them right next to each other was really the best logistical planning.

Before we exit British Invasion and head across the bridge into the final environ of the park, let’s take one last, forlorn look at the silent red and grey structure behind us that is Maximum RPM.

As you can tell, the ride obviously is related to the Italian Job coasters with the MINI inspired cars and tight layout. But I think this is really a more distant relative to those designs.

This one is also much more based on traditional roller coaster elements such as height and speed than the Italian Job coasters, which from what I’ve heard Paramount designed the scenery first and then made Premier fit the track to that.

Connecting the track on the lift to the track off the drop is what had apparently been causing the delays.

The station will sport the world’s first karaoke queue which should be murder.

This blue car was parked halfway up the lift hill all morning.

More cars parked in the station. From pictures I’ve seen, I’ve counted two red ones, a blue one, a green one and this British flag one, for a total of five cars.

Seems a nice complement to the Eagles style family thrills and along with Led Zeppelin will finish off the park’s thrill ride triangle.

Well, to be brutally honest, at a glance I really don’t think I’m missing out on very much. Yeah, the Ferris wheel lift looks great and unique, but looks at the layout that follows. First drop is steep, and it follows up into an almost overbank curve, but that gives up into a short series of shallow turns that seem to be there only so they could meet the bare minimum requirements of a ‘roller coaster’. It’s never a good sign when a ride’s signature element is its lift hill. I have to think (and this seems true of the other coasters but is most evident with this one) that their actual layouts, i.e. the heart and soul of what will make a coaster any good or not, seemed to be neglected by the creative teams while in the drawing rooms and were left up to an engineer whose only objectives was to fit together a series of elements as easily as possible within a given set of parameters.

Well, maybe I’m being TOO unfair. Let’s take another look. Alright, I’m imagining that I’m in the front row of one of Maximum RPM’s mini convertibles. Whatever 80’s new wave soundtrack they have on-ride starts up and we roll out into the Ferris Wheel lift. I can see the rest of the layout with the car at the top of the lift dropping out right in front of me. The lift starts up and slowly we curve our way to the top. There’s a pause as everything locks up, and hopefully the music will hit a dramatic note here to play up the anticipation of rolling over the first drop. A small push, and off we go! There’s not much explicit airtime on the first drop partly due to the short train length, but the angular change that comes with such a steep drop helps make up for it. The pullout is faster and more intense feeling riding it in person, and the car makes its way up into a steeply banked hill. But instead of falling back out of it as is the normal expectation, we’re given a moment to pause as there’s a gradual decent that allows the sensation of building speed create the excitement before ripping around the turn at the bottom at once again maximum speed. A partial helix up into another moment of pause with the midcourse brake run, and then it’s another spiraling downward helix that once again creates the sensation of building speed as the forces around the curve become greater and greater as we make our way down to the ground. But instead of heading back up into another slower paced alternation as we’re getting accustomed to, there’s instead a fast, lean bunny hop that gives some nice floater mixed with an oddly banked entrance before changing directions again for a quick, hard turn with some real rotational g-forces before slamming into the final set of magnetic brakes. Not finished yet, there’s a quick moment of comic relief as we make the slow turn back into the station we get a ‘car wash’. Overall fun, if not too short, I’d give it maybe a 6 out of 10, 7 if I’m feeling generous.

Congratulations, you’ve just read what has to be the world’s first imaginary ride review (I evidently rode the Magic Mushroom Ride once too many doing this one). In gratitude for sticking with me this long, I hereby award you with photos of Maximum RPM making one of its first test runs:

Next: Rock & Roll Heaven

Previous: Lost in the 70′s

The first thing you’ll see on your right are the crimson roofs belonging to The Kitchen Below, one of the park’s better looking walk-up food service locations, with seating locations on a patio overlooking an R/C Boat set-up in the lagoon.

Just ahead are the area’s four main attractions, arranged closely around one another as if in a small plaza. On the left is one of the entrances to the Malibu Beach Party. This is one I would definitely say to skip, unless you’re really starved for entertainment. There’s a plot here involving some sort of win a date contest with the beach babe, but to watch it in person it’s really much more avant-garde than that, so long as you define avant-garde as “an incoherent collection of 20 sec. sound bites from various pop culture songs to set up a bad one-liner.”

“Loud” is, I think, another way to describe it. There were some okay elements of audience interactivity before the show started which the other shows didn’t have, and they ended with an okay diving stunt with a pool of flaming water, but really, if you don’t want to look like a total putz, skip this one. The one redeemable quality for me seeing it was right before the show started I noticed Maximum RPM starting up and was able to snap the pictures of its only test run of the day, which I otherwise probably would have missed…

Sandwiched between the Malibu Beach Party seating and the main midway is Rock and Roll Heaven’s other thematic idiosyncrasy, Reggae River Falls. This thing really belongs in a water park, because there is no way to approach it without getting soaked head to toe. I was surprised to see as many parents let their kids go in it as I did, since they’d be left with a waterlogged child for the rest of the day and the weather wasn’t warm enough to necessitate it anyway. One thing of interest is the music that plays throughout the area was also recorded with a steel drum version which fades in as you approach Reggae River Falls. Similar is true with other areas of the park as well.

Opposite that is R&R H’s main restaurant, Taste of Paradise Grill. For dinner we split a coconut shrimp (and fries) with sweet & sour and some sort of Jamaican dipping sauces, plus a tray of fruits and some soda. The fruit was reasonably priced considering the market for fruit these days, but once again it was mainly the drinks that were setting us back, since the shrimp w/ fries, were only a little more than $5 together, and were fresh and tasty, especially with the free sauces.

The restaurant itself is quite nice, with plenty of indoor table space which is something you really don’t see at many parks. The bathrooms also had an added feature, a ‘slow mirror’ which really confused the heck out of me.

If you continue onwards, the rest of the environ is mostly a winding pathway alongside the lagoon back to where we started with a couple of crafts booth and games with a tropical flair. But if you’re in Rock and Roll Heaven you really came for one thing: Led Zeppelin: The Ride

At the entrance to Led Zeppelin is a giant, double necked guitar that uses water as its strings. Run your fingers over them and it’ll play a note, and supposedly if you do all of them it’ll start playing Stairway to Heaven but I was having a hard time getting that to work. There’s a small section of winding outdoor pathway amid tropical palms with the coaster’s rise into the midcourse block brake towering overhead, and then the queue enters the lower level of the station. It contains numerous murals and other pictures and memorabilia on its blue walls with gold trim, including several flat screen TVs playing Zeppelin concerts as well as fans to keep everyone cool. Thankfully this was nowhere near ever needing to be used today. Take some stairs on the right side of the room and you’ll find yourself on an open air (but still covered by the roof) switchback ramp that takes us up to the main station area, and also offers some tasty views of the first half of Led Zeppelin. At the top of the ramps, we enter the station.

The station splits up into five different rows, each correlating to its own preshow room named after one of the band members plus a Swan Song room, with numbers denoting each seat on the train. There was an attendant at the entrance assigning seats, although they were extremely easy on requests that it almost defeated the purpose since everybody was requesting the front or back rows.

When the doors to your room open everyone fills in to a small, dark preshow room with the same numbers on the floor. You get a five minute preshow that starts off with a brief introduction to the band, followed by a couple of interviews before a music video plays the first couple minutes of Whole Lotta Love. It’s not just everyone standing, watching the screen at the front of the room, when the concert starts up the walls change to make it appear as if you’re in a giant amphitheater, later with small ‘lighter’ effects, and by the last minute of the song there are many more special effects filling the room. The problem, as you can imagine, is that on a day like this with short lines, having to go through this preshow over and over really becomes repetitive especially when it’s the same thing over and over. Although supposedly it’s not keeping us from riding the ride and is just an alternative to waiting in line more, but with only two preshow rooms running at somewhat long intervals between one another I have to suspect that the preshows weren’t dispatching up at optimum capacity. What I do like about the preshow, however, is that it can really help build up anticipation for the ride itself, which I imagine would be even more effective on a day with long lines. When the song first starts up it’s a cool feeling knowing that before it’s over you’ll have gone from just standing there in a dark room to having completed a 150 ft. tall B&M coaster with six loops.

The doors to the preshow room open and the music follows you into the Zeppelin shaped station. The crew here are great, cheering us as well all race in to take our seats, giving us high fives as we pass. The trains are standard B&M sitdown, unfortunately not the open-air, tipped back design found on Wildfire, but these do come equipped with a decent sound system in front of each seat.

The all clear is given in a timely manner, and the train rolls forward to begin its ascent up the lift hill. The music follows us up on some exterior speakers before it’s finished. There’s a brief moment of silence before the on-ride speakers are triggered halfway up to begin the final part of the song.

Waaaaaay… down… INSIDE…

Just looking from offride you can tell that this lift hill is much steeper than a standard B&M lift, and as you’re going up with the restraints you can’t do much else but look up at the clear blue sky above as you listen to the music.

Woman, Youuuu… neeeeeed…

This lift hill moves very quickly and silently as well, getting to the top in what feels like mere seconds. And then-

DA-DUM… Da-Dummmmmmmmm

There, laid out in front below you is Zeppelin’s imposing first act, a tangle of vertical loops, cobra rolls and zero-g twists, with nothing but a bottomless, 150ft. drop between you.

Loooooooovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeeee…………..

Yes, please! The front seat is worth it just for that dramatic view that is underscored perfectly by the music, but the back will have you lifted off your seat for several seconds as you dive down the surprisingly steep first drop. The vertical loop comes next, offering quite a bit of hangtime as you fall back down to the ground.

Surging right back up into the cobra roll, this is probably my favorite element offering two quick inversions located high above the ground. This isn’t a coaster you ride to be impressed by the subtleties in pacing or the intensity of direction changes… it gets its kicks just by making you think ‘wow’ as you soar through colossal inversions that leave you feeling downright puny, kind of that same wonder when you stare out into the starry night and think about just how big it all is, only in that case you’re looking down, not up, to see the sky!

Zero-G roll next, again nothing intense, but you wouldn’t be expecting high g-forces from an element that promises (and delivers) none anyway. The back row seemed to capture the ‘zeroness’ of this element better, but my last ride in the front went through this element perfectly as well.

Not wanting to give you a moment to look at things upright, the train glides through another vertical loop. This one I was slightly disappointed by, because I was expecting the smaller size and tighter radius to result in this being a faster paced, positive g-force heavy element to contrast the slower, more impressively size first loop, but instead it takes it at about the same relative speed resulting in an element that only feels like a lesser version of what we’ve already ridden.

Next is an inclined helix that offers a slight change of pace as it keeps its speed up all the way through. It dives back down to the ground through the many palms surrounding the coaster’s entrance as we get our picture snapped, and then back up into the midcourse brake. This hill is somewhat unusual in that instead of being shaped like a continuous, parabolic curve, it’s actually very flat, with a much tighter crest into the brakes that provides a very brief but strong moment of airtime if you’re in the front seat.

I hate to get negative but I kind of have to. The music at this point has become fairly repetitive and it doesn’t really add much to the second half of the ride experience to make up for any lulls, such as on the Eagles. And the second half needs an extra boost to make it finish as strong as the first part to make up for the lack of height and slower speeds, but instead of tightening up the pacing or intensity, it all stays pretty much the same, if not slowing down.

The trim brakes grab a bit more than they need to, and the helix off the midcourse is taken very slowly, although you do at least get a bit of a good sensation of building speed before it dives the rest of the way down and into the corkscrew. There was also a odd vibration that seemed to stem from one very noticeable bump in the middle of this turn, resulting in a surprising amount of ear banging from a ride this new. I almost have to wonder if there was a slightly offset footer in this area that caused the track to not fit completely as it should to account for this, since the glitch was visibly noticeable from the back seat.

In any event, the corkscrew is good and quick, and the final upward helix is a fun way to finish off the ride, but nothing particularly breathtaking. If I have one, somewhat major problem with this ride, it’s that it starts off strong but after the first four elements it more or less diminuendos until the final brakes. That said, it starts off strong and really uses the music in the first half to add to the anticipation and excitement that I could put it as number 15 in my steel coaster list.

Next: The Park After Dark

Previous: British Invasion

Back in the rest of the park, I can really say that the 1:00am closing time is great as nighttime is easily the best time to experience Hard Rock Park. Unlike other parks where you’ll be rushed to get in one or two rides after dark, if the park is open that late at all. It used to be no self-respecting major amusement park would dare to be caught closing before 11 or even midnight during the summer, but I guess the marginal profits just weren’t enough and now it’s hard to find a park that will be open much past 10 in the summer, let alone 7 or 8 during the early part of the season. I really hope that management will continue with these later hours in future years and not give in to shorter schedules like every other park has.

Speaking of which, one good reason to stay later in the day is the park’s Bohemian Rhapsody nighttime show. It’s not the biggest or the most sophisticated of shows, in fact it relies on pretty much four basic elements: fireworks, water fountains, a few lasers and (of course) Queen. One really good thing about the show that sets it apart from other park’s nighttime shows is that it can be viewed from anywhere around the central lagoon without missing out on very much. At only about 10 minutes long it’s really easy to stop whatever you’re doing in the park at the moment to check it out, and then just as easily go back to riding the rides. They even have audio announcements throughout the park letting you know how many minutes left to go before the show starts. The coasters are all very worthwhile to try at night, especially the Eagles with it’s final fireball, and I also felt that my best rides on Led Zeppelin were the last few I had before checking out for the day just before midnight. Despite criticisms that the park doesn’t have enough to do, I was amazed when I found myself wishing I could stay all the way to the 1:00am close time just to get more Zeppelin re-rides despite having already spent fourteen hours in a park with only three major adult rides open.

Next: Concluding Thoughts

Previous: Rock & Roll Heaven

Almost.

If you’re already planning on visiting Myrtle Beach (but please see my opening paragraph before you do), or are within a day’s drive, then yes, at least once Maximum RPM and Slippery When Wet are open or if there’s a concert playing that you really want to see.

However, if you’re like me and you have to spend a lot of money to fly in and out, and aren’t otherwise charmed by ‘vacation destinations’ like Myrtle Beach, then I suggest waiting for it to grow or making it a stop on a larger trip, since at this point in its life it is better thought of as a smaller regional park rather than an Islands of Adventure substitute.  (Unless of course you’re really like me and have to check out the century’s first new major theme park regardless of cost, time, risks of bodily harm, etc.)

So what’s in the future for Hard Rock Park?  For one it’s already been made public that the park hopes to expand their children’s section with better, more permanent rides, possibly before the end of this season.  It also seems like a very good probability that those plans for Bump ‘n’ Slam are still waiting to be realized for next season, hopefully giving Lost in the 70’s their first actual attraction.  And there seems to be signs of possible construction for more 2009 projects already, like a rumored flume/water ride in the mystery spot at the end of the Heavy Metal Graveyard.

Beyond that, it’s all speculation at this point, not just for us but also for the general managers as they wait, breath abated as they see if their fledgling park has the wings to take off or not.  Bearing in mind that this is all speculation (and maybe suggestion ), I think there is still a large chunk of land in the middle of the park behind Slippery When Wet that might make a good home for another flat ride for British Invasion, or possibly something like a central tower ride.  There is also still plenty of unused room in the old mall structure; possibly a second, interactive dark ride to give Lost in the 70’s a signature attraction?  They’re relatively cheap, highly themed and great for riders of all ages.

Looking ahead a few more years, while the family element is always vital, I do think the park could use another major thrill ride in the area behind Born in the USA to help diffuse the current polarity Led Zeppelin has, give that environ an anchoring e-ticket attraction, and give the park as a whole a much needed boost when popularity will inevitably begin to lag after several years of operation, as was the case with Jazzland, VisionLand, et al. How about a nice, airtime focused wooden coaster (since their other coasters are more curved based)?  A big, headlining attraction for an affordable price and a quality ride experience that could offer the perfect balance to Led Zeppelin.  And for whatever reason I’m hearing Like a Rolling Stone as the perfect accompaniment to such an attraction…

And just dreaming now, but Rock and Roll Heaven could use a bit more company since right now it’s pretty much a one ride show.  Wouldn’t an inverting Intamin Accelerator coaster be great set to U2’s Vertigo?  I thought so.

Whatever their future has in store for them (so long as it’s not bankruptcy) I think Hard Rock Park has tremendous potential to be one of the nation’s better theme parks.  When you think about, music and roller coasters go together quite naturally that it’s amazing more parks haven’t tried fusing the two more often.  After all, both are inherently illogical pleasures, as series of meaningless sound waves beating against our eardrums that when arranged in certain patterns, due to whatever evolutional anomaly, translate to pleasure and, later, an art form.  Same with roller coasters, only replace sound with track and G-forces and you’re on your way to becoming a fine art as well…

…I can only hope…

Next: One Year Later…

Previous: The Park After Dark

The whole story of Hard Rock Park’s downfall definitely highlights some of the paradoxical absurdities of the current economic climate and business world. First of all, the park was only open for about four months (including their soft-opening period) before creditors jumped on the park, forcing it first into chapter eleven, then chapter seven bankruptcy. That’s perhaps sensible given the abysmal attendance the park experienced in that time frame, but really, what were they expecting? If you’re investing or supplying products in the amusement industry you know the very nature of the business requires large initial investments with a slow return on capital spread over several years. These aren’t condos or retail stores where the return on capital is instantaneous as soon as the available space is let out, and if no one buys right away that doesn’t necessarily mean that means the project was poorly planned and they therefore must liquidate everything they can to recoup some of their losses. That the park was so quickly seized and gobbled up by the people that built it is probably much more indicative of the tight credit market outside the park’s gates rather than any real problems within it.

Yes, there were problems with the park that contributed to its failure. Most of these problems seemed to have less to do with the physical park and more to do with some of the managerial decisions made behind the scenes. From what I’ve read the key larger problems were, first, a poorly conceived and overpriced ticket structure that kept many guests away (see my introduction for details). Second was a bad marketing plan that suggested the park was too edgy for most families, at least the kind of families that think Myrtle Beach is a good place to vacation. They also simply did not market themselves enough; beyond the multitude of billboards in the MB area the only way you would have heard of the park outside of the state would have been in news and magazine articles about the park. Supposedly they ran out of funds to fuel a large marketing campaign just after they finished construction, but they still weren’t doing nearly enough beforehand. And thirdly was an unwillingness to work with local businesses, which I’ve heard was more the fault of Hard Rock Intl. rather than Hard Rock Park (refusal to have their brand associated with any hotels but a few, which is not how the Myrtle Beach tourism machine works).

That last point about Hard Rock Intl. I think hits on another problem the park experienced before they were even built. Internet legend has it that when former CEO Steven Goodwin was trying to find financing for the park the bank told him to get a name brand to back up the park, and low and behold his next door neighbor happened to be high-up on the chain of Hard Rock Intl. The problem was that the relationship formed between the two companies was fundamentally an antagonistic one. Hard Rock itself was not involved in the park at all, they simply demanded a seemingly exorbitant amount of money for the use of their name as well as some demands over how they run their business, including the above note which ultimately proved to be fatal for the park. I think Goodwin and CCO Binkowski (whose land and idea to build a theme park it had originally been) should have looked a bit further for a sponsorship deal than literally in his backyard, since between the perceived edginess associated with the brand that drove families away, the huge amount of money spent to acquire such a brand, and the general bossing around they received from HRI, I think that was their first real mistake.

Here’s where the real paradox comes in. Pretty much all of the above mentioned could have been corrected by the original management, with the possible exception of the hotel issues where the Hard Rock brand intervened. But the creditors cannot simply ‘stay the course’ when it seemed to be going much more poorly than planned and instead want to step in and try to do something. Alright fair enough. Except that in these efforts to get themselves out of the hole, the course of events that followed was a shuttered park that could have easily remained operational, a quest to find a new owner that didn’t go through until late in the off-season, resulting in even more opportunity cost lost from having an inactive park early in its second season. Furthermore, Goodwin and Binkowski later pointed out that they had created a creative design services company while building the park, meaning that unless the new owners wanted to pay them royalties on the various names and creative touches throughout the park, Baker would have to completely re-theme the park. Stepping back from it all now it seems a complete absurdity, as not only was much potential revenue lost and a lot of expense was paid to re-theme the park, but the new park quite frankly appears to be an empty shell of the old one (not much of a surprise considering Baker only had three months to redesign the park opposed to three years). How was this whole process supposed to ever help creditors or the park?

Nothing can be done about any of that now. Hard Rock Park is gone for good and Freestyle Music Park is standing in its place. Besides all of the name changes on notable difference to guests is the ticket pricing. Hard Rock Park cost $50, while Freestyle Music Park now only costs $39.99. The former was the better deal.

Besides wanting to ride the Premier coasters which were closed on my visit, the only two things Hard Rock Park had that would make me want to return there specifically instead of visiting somewhere else were Nights in White Satin and simply to enjoy exploring a park that actually felt like the designers had a fun time in making it, rather than the corporate committees responsible for the creative design at most other similarly sized parks. Both features are now gone, with incredibly sanitized, ‘family friendly’ replacements left in their wake. I’m having extreme difficulty finding any improvements in other sectors of the park as well (the new children’s area not counting, as that could have easily been a part of the original park as well). The only thing I can think of is that the rechristened Time Machine coaster, now has five different musical tracks instead of one. There’s almost no way to even tell that this is still a music-themed park, as from what I can see nearly every musical reference has been removed, and the few that remain are references to a broad genre rather than a specific band or song.

That was what I loved about Hard Rock Park. Goodwin and Binkowski were clearly huge fans of the music and had all sorts of fun geeking out over obscure cult rock band references from past half decade. That reverence was made clear to me throughout the park, most notably in the Led Zeppelin and Nights in White Satin attractions. I get the sense that Steve Baker is not as big a fan, and what Freestyle Music Park will likely be cursed with from now on is a tone that replaces that authentic love for the music with 20 second sound clips that simply mine pop culture for the most obvious references (that was found in the Malibu Beach Party which not coincidentally was probably my least favorite thing in the park). I’m not sure if in the end the Led Zeppelin to Time Machine transformation was entirely a positive one, despite fixing the ride’s main problem of repetition after many rerides. Hearing the entire seven minute song played out created a unifying mood to fit the entire experience. I haven’t been on the new ride myself so I can’t say for sure, but I get the feeling that by only playing clips of random tracks from the various decades, it will all become background noise and fail to elevate a mediocre layout into anything more powerful the way I was surprised to find the Led Zeppelin soundtrack did.

Maximum RPM I believe also suffered from the same problem last season as well, although it fit the theme somewhat by sounding like a scanning car radio, and still does. If Hard Rock Park were still around, one thing I would have loved to see them do for their second season, besides expand their kid’s area as FSMP did and add that indoor bumper car to Lost in the 70’s, was to see if it would have been possible to re-theme MaxRPM to Pink Floyd. They already had the station designed from their album Animals (complete with pig floating overhead) and would fit perfectly inside British Invasion… their other three major attractions Eagles, Nights and Led Zep all had real bands behind them, why was MaxRPM the odd one out and left with a generic theme?

Of course Nights in White Satin’s demise and the creation of MonStars of Rock hardly needs me to criticize it, I’m quite confident that it has become the most universally hated dark-ride in existence in the space of about two months so far. Right now the ride has removed all the mind-bending special effects in place of nothing but 2-D cardboard cutouts, and that has attracted a lot of negative heat for the park. However I must go a bit further about my contempt for the replacement attraction. I get the sense that most fans would in theory be okay with the attraction if it supported more technically interesting scenes, with actual animatronics and the like. I say that this new attraction is, at a fundamental level, vastly inferior to the original, and nearly no amount of animatronics will ever allow it to even come close to the old ride it used to be. The groundbreaking art-rock musical accompaniment has been swapped out for a tedious, repetitive ‘rock and roll’ soundtrack. In my review I think I mentioned that what made the original ride so great was that I think it was the first and only dark ride I’ve heard of (or been on at least) that completely forgoes both the gag-based dark ride setup found on most classic dark rides, and the strictly (and always flimsy) narrative-based dark ride setup found on many modern dark rides, instead aiming for an experience that is at base a purely psychological one. I’m not sure if MonStars even qualifies as either a gag- or narrative-based dark ride, but the park has made it clear that they do plan to at least improve it somewhat in upcoming seasons, so it’s bound to go in at least one of those directions. In their defense they had extremely little time to get anything together at all after they lost their creative rights, although I believe they announced immediately after buying the park in Feburary they were gutting NiWS to make it ‘appeal to a wider audience’ as well as being more ‘family friendly’.

I’ve put all mentions of ‘family friendliness’ in parentheses because I frankly find most amusement park operator’s definition of ‘family friendly or ‘child friendly’ a very condescending one. They have this myth that assumes that children under the age of twelve need everything to be as sanitized for their protection as possible or else they will somehow become emotionally scarred. Based on my own childhood experiences and those I see elsewhere, most kids that age either won’t understand a double-entendre and think nothing of it, or think it’s the coolest thing in the world. It’s the parents if anyone that demand this super-clean vision of an amusement park experience, and even then I am quite positive that they are not anywhere near as demanding in that regard as amusement park operators think they are (save for the few who blacklist Bambi in their own homes and are likely to make the biggest fuss at public relations if they find anything inside the park that might tarnish their innocent angels).

Actually the same applies to adult-oriented attractions as well; most theme parks I’ve been to, if they’re ever going to reference anything from popular culture, it is always of the most well known, easily accessible brands, the assumption apparently being that if ever exposed to something a bit outside of their pre-established tastes that it’s going to be completely lost and rejected by visitors. I’ll admit I had never heard of the Moody Blues before Hard Rock Park came around. I’m sure I might have been slightly more motivated to visit if they had used a more well-known and popular band (well, not really, but that’s just me since I’m generally disapproving of pretty much all contemporary popular music), but by the end of the day I had found that Hard Rock Park had expanded my tastes.

I’ll end this probably overly-long article with a personal story that relates to the above (if you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re probably the first). I’ve been ‘off’ music for most of my life, which is kind of weird since both of my parents are heavily involved in music (my dad and his brother and father all band directors, and my mom studied clarinet most her life; that’s how they originally met in college) I never had much interest in it; music to me was playing the recorder in elementary school, it was sitting through concerts while observing the fish-scale like pattern the chairs make, it was all the popular stuff on the radio: repetitive, annoying, lyrics about shallow stuff that didn’t interest me, and even the best stuff was only moderately tolerable despite the shortcomings inherent to all music. Music was just an inherently overrated artform, a steady pulsating of soundwaves against my eardrums arranged in different patterns that have no forebearing on how good my existence was at that moment in time.  When Hard Rock Park was announced I had no interest in the music theme at all, in fact I figured if I were to visit it would be in spite of the musical theme, as normally music in theme parks is something I try to tune out since it’s either really hokey or just the same popular crap from whenever. After listening to songs such as Whole Lotta Love,  Life in the Fast Lane, Bohemian Rhapsody and especially Nights in White Satin, none of which I had ever heard before, I found throughout the course of the day I began to develop an appreciation for some of it, perhaps because it was contextualized within an artistic paradigm which I was very familiar with: roller coasters. When I got home I found myself looking up more of this sort of work online, at first because I just liked re-living the whole Led Zeppelin: The Ride experience, but soon found myself listening to other related tracks I hadn’t heard at the park such as Stairway to Heaven just for my own enjoyment. The one popular band from this era that I found consistently enjoyable was Pink Floyd, especially their work on Echoes, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here… sooner or later I noticed a tag next to their name I didn’t notice on any of the others, labeled “progressive rock”, and a now after both a Wikipedia search and a full year later I now find myself listening to the work of bands such as Jethro Tull, Soft Machine, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Änglagård and particularly King Crimson (Lark’s Tongues in Aspic just finished playing as I write this sentence… brilliant Crimson composition, you must have a listen if you’ve never heard it before, which you probably haven’t) and am discovering more every day (I’m even starting to come back around to some of the classical stuff I listened to in those concerts, although I’m quite positive the radio top ten hits will forever be lost on me). I don’t believe that chain of events ever would have happened had I never visited this park that took a chance with more divergent tone and ultimately failed because of it. So thank you for that Hard Rock Park. Hopefully Freestyle Music Park will one day return more closely to its roots instead of continuing to follow the direction of lowest common denominator pop-entertainment it seems to be headed.

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