The night before the trip started proper we met in our hotel next to Hobby Airport south of Houston. Christof and I had flown over from London, Thomas flew from Germany and Tal had already been in the US for 2 weeks visiting New York and New England.
Day 1 focused on the parks in the Houston area before heading west to our San Antonio base.
After a 90 minute drive we arrived at the lowest part of the trip, at sea level and the first park; Galveston Pleasure Pier. A great selection of rides on a short pier.
Tal has a quick warm up on a swing fitted with an overhead restraint.
The park originally existed from 1943 until 1961 but as with any coastal structure fell victim to a hurricane, in this case Hurricane Carla in '61. It reopened in 2012 with a new selection of rides.
As well as the rides there is a number of other attractions including something called "Gump on the Run", which sounded a little dubious.
The water flume had a fairly small splash zone. I wonder just how wet it gets?
This spin-and-swing ride was pretty decent, nothing like a travelling fair but still enjoyable.
The first coaster of the trip was Iron Shark, which made its debut when the park reopened. I 100-metre Gerstlauer ride with a small station and single-car train.
The ride is a punchy little thing positioned well on the edge of the pier with a layout that makes good use of the small footprint it has been given. It's not a long ride but doesn't need to be with 4-inversions and a beyond vertical drop making the ride a lot of fun. Two criticisms though: They have a no-glasses-on-the-ride rule and a quite loud vocal soundtrack that got the phrase "bone crushing" stuck in our heads for majority of the trip.
To escape the heat Tal decided to give the flume a go. From his brave move the rest of us knew we weren't going to ride it. In his defence he did dry out very quickly, it was a very hot day...as was every day on the trip.
I loved the bright colours on this ride!
Here's a good use of the ride dummies, leaving them out in the sun and saving the shaded seats for the real dummies!
Rather disappointingly "Gump on the Run" was just a take-out version of Bubba Gumps.
Just off the pier we found this very bizarre Segway type vehicle.
A pano from the promenade. With this being the only coastline on the trip I did of course dip my hand into the water.
This didn't happen but given the history of oil companies messing up in the Gulf of Mexico it wouldn't have surprised me if it had.
So, the first park was done and we had agreed we had gone with a good park to start with. There aren't many trips where the first coaster is one that inverts, so we liked how this one had started.
I found this in a Walmart and Gain is a washing powder. Clearly the marketing people thought a cocaine reference would be a good way to sell their product.
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