While I'm on a rollercoaster tip I think I'll bore you with tales of riding one of the greatest wooden big dippers in the world (imho). Ghostrider at Knott's Berry Farm is enormous, so enormous that it stretches out into the car park and you get to drive under it's 2nd huge drop as you enter the park (this made me squeal like a two year old in the car).
That building with the spire to the right in the picture above is a full size replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia complete with Liberty Bell. Anyway, I digress, Ghostrider scared the bejesus out of us. So much so that Darren refused a second go. The entrance to the ride is marvelous. You walk through an underground tunnel just like an old mine then through a pretty cactus garden and then into a huge barn where you climb the stairs towards the station.




The climb to the top of the first drop takes forever cos this baby is huge. And the view from the top of the first drop is stunning (and by view I mean the view of the track below not the view out over Orange County).


At the bottom of that first drop there is no speedy climb up another incline as on most woody's. This evil twister has a banked corner at the bottom of the drop before it speeds up the second hill. The g-forces in that banked curve (at 60mph) are horrendous and from then on you know that you are in for a relentless white knuckle two minutes.


I remember Darren shouting at me half way round (as well as being very fast it is also very noisy, truly multi-sensory) "it's fucking broken and we're going to die!" We didn't die of course. I went straight back on and Darren had a sit down.