California's Great America Trip Report

Day two or my Northern California adventure brought me south of SF to sunny Santa Clara and California’s Great America. Going in I was very much looking forward to my trip here. While the coaster lineup was very comparable to SF Discovery Kingdom my hunch was that this being a Cedar Fair run park I would have a better time.

The weather ended up being almost identical to the day previous with a lovely 30 C and sunny forecast. The park opened an hour earlier than the Discovery Kingdom so I hopped in a Uber driven by a lovely old SF resident and headed through Silicon Valley to the park. Unlike the day previous I opted to buy the Fast Lane for the park. I already had admission and a drink plan from my Wonderland season pass and the price was fairly reasonable for the time of year so I decided to go for it. It definitely ended up being worth it as both of the standout rides at CGA are low capacity.

The land under the park has unfortunately been sold to housing developers. As such the current plan is for the park to close sometime in the next ten years. So unlike Saturday which ended up being a get-in-get-out operation I really want to take my time and get some re-rides on the best coaster the park had to offer. I did end up being super fortunate and was able to ride everything including that kiddie coaster (which will not be featured in this report).

Coasters

Demon

Arrow loopers are always a bit of a mixed bag. There is never really any rhyme for what elements will be jank and which ones will end up being smooth. Sometimes the corkscrews are brutal, sometimes it's the transitions and and out of the turnaround, sometimes it's the vertical loops. Demon’s problem is definitely the loops. The transition in and out of them is pretty brutal, probably the worst I’ve experienced on an Arrow looper. Dragon Fyre at Wonderland gets a bad rap as being one of the rougher loopers still around but honestly having ridden both within a week I found Demon rougher. Not a horrible ride it has some interesting rockwork for theming but it did end being a one and done for me.

Flight Deck

This ride is awesome. It's short but goddamn it really makes the most of the track length. I ended up riding this twice and the first time was fully graying out coming out of the first loop. The second time my leg felt like lead from the blood rushing into them. The only other time I’ve experienced that on an invert was Montu which is impressive considering Montu is significantly longer. Now having ridden three B&M inverts I’m really a huge fan of this model. They are super intense while still being smooth. It kinda makes me sad that we literally have an invert at Wonderland with the same name but it is just so much worse than this. What could have been if we had a B&M invert instead.

Gold Striker

Maybe my third most anticipated ride of the trip. I really haven’t ridden a ton of good wooden coasters so I was curious to see what a universally regarded good woodie was like. Overall I really liked it but it didn’t blow me away. I think the best thing Gold Striker does is really convey a great sense of out of control speed. You really do feel like you're on a runaway mine train. The pacing is absolutely relentless from when you descend the first drop in the tunnel to when you hit the final breaks. I wouldn’t say the airtime is super crazy. You get some good pops here and there. This ride is rough but not really uncomfortably so and definitely not to the point of not wanting to re-ride. I ended up getting four rides on Gold Striker. Once the park closes this will definitely get scrapped which will be a shame since it's a really quality ride.

Grizzly

The other woodie at the park and a far cry from the quality of Gold Striker. This ride is just meh. It's not rough or anything like that but the elements are so drawn out that it doesn’t really do anything. Somehow Grizzly is faster than Gold Striker but you’d never know that riding them back to back. I wouldn’t go so far to say this is bad but it kinda left me feeling cold. Also the operations on this ride are pretty horrible.

Patriot

My second B&M floorless of the trip. However unlike Medusa (and like Rougagru) this is a converted standup. I think this suffers from a lot of the same problems Rougagru does. Mainly it just has a pretty lackluster layout albeit at a much smaller scale than Rougagru. Not horrible but similar to Grizzly just kinda whatever.

Psycho Mouse

My first Arrow wild mouse! I had heard some of these have crazy airtime when you get in the lower section. It definitely has good airtime for a mouse but I wouldn’t say it's super over the top. This comes in at number two on my ranking of wild mice. Better than The Fly (Canada’s Wonderland) but not as good as Wild Mouse (Cedar Point).

RailBlazer

My first RMC single rail and my most anticipated ride of the trip. This ride is great, super intense and super short. In the back row RailBlazer has some of the most insane ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced. It hits super hard on the first drop and the second drop after you turn back towards the station. The other elements are good as well, especially the zero-g stall. The pacing on RailBlazer is pretty crazy; you absolutely fly though the layout. I ended up getting a ton of re-rides on this probably in the neighborhood of 10-15 (lost count). This alone is a good enough reason to buy the Fast Lane as I don’t think I waited more than 10 minutes on this all day. Really wish I got some re-rides on Joker since I do think the two rides are roughly comparable in terms of quality. But having ridden this in every position on the train multiple times I have to give it the edge over Joker which I only ended up riding once in the back. Really hope this ends up getting relocated when the park closes. Also this has probably the best operations I’ve ever seen on any ride rolling trains all day long.

Conclusion

I really like this park. It's not on the level or scale of a Wonderland or Cedar Point but for what it is it's pretty great! Everything in this park is super well done. The layout actually makes sense. The different lands all have good theming and transition well from one to the next. It's just a very charming atmosphere overall.

It's kinda crazy to compare this to Discovery Kingdom the day before. Both parks I’d say were around the same levels of busy but CGA was so much better run. Everything at CGA was open with multiple trains in all cases. Aside from Grizzly the operations were consistently superior as well. I also enjoyed the theming way more at CGA. Everything is pretty well done without reaching that Disney/Universal level.

It's really a shame that this is closing and not Discovery Kingdom as 10/10 times I’d rather come to California's Great America. This park will be missed when it closes and I’m super glad I got to come here. Hopefully they can rehome as many coasters as possible.