Wonderland

Wonderland is located in northern Amarillo and was one of a few parks around this part of the country that only operated in the evening. It added a little extra challenge to the planning to ensure we didn't arrive too early, and it worked out that the Jeremy Reid visit helped eat up some of the time that could have led to us arriving too early. 

Wonderland has been open since 1951 but was opening today at 19:00 (the difference a comma makes) we arrived soon after opening and made our way straight in.

The park is a long midway full of rides, a lot of them being carnival staples.

A nice chairlift runs along most of it. There is only one station though.

The first coaster was the Cyclone, a Miler wild mouse that has been here since the early 60's and that was running extremely well. These single seat cars take the hairpins at a pretty good speed, slamming you into the very welcome foam padding that lines the sides of the cars.

Being an older park the park has a great dark ride. Fantastic Journey is a surreal ghost train type ride with good use of strobe lights, UV and typical dark ride theming. This is definitely worth doing if you're here.

The second coaster was Texas Tornado. A bizarre thing made by Floridian coaster makes Hopkins, who have since moved onto water rides only.

The signature loops just look like they got the maths wrong but apparently not. It is however rumoured that the layout of this ride was designed on the back of a napkin; that I can believe.

The ride though was actually very good, but did suffer some downtime whilst we were there.

I like that the ride doesn't have much of a height limit.

There's a Zyklon coaster here too, and like the one in Nebraska relied on pushing the cars through the station. A good workout I guess.

(Photo is Tal's)

The final coaster was Hornet, a bizarre custom built Vekoma machine that looks like a flitzer but with very large, and unnecessary, track. It was alright.

There's a good selection of rides here, Tal thought about doing the water slides but changed his mind. The sun was beginning to go down so he'd probably end up still wet at the end of the day.

There's a rather cool crazy golf course in one corner of the park, I only spotted this trying to find a toilet.

Thomas enjoying the chair ride. It offers a nice vantage point for some of the rides.

The Zyklon at sunset.

A couple of old style midway games too.

This made me laugh and perfectly shows the attitude of the park.

A very nicely lit carousel.

This was quite a nice little park. Being an older park there's character and charm. It's not a park you can spend a full day at by any means but it's a perfect park to finish a day at, which explains the opening hours.

Coaster of the day had to be Thomas's Silver Bullet.

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