Lake Compounce Trip Report (6/1/17)

After the night staying in the sketchy part of Georgia and a night sleeping on a bed that might as well have been asphalt, I am happy to say I stayed at probably the nicest Red Roof Inn I’ve ever stayed at in New Britain, Connecticut. I always stay at Red Roof Inn because I get a big discount through my job and I get a bunch of free nights after every couple stays. Plus, they remodeled all of their hotels nationwide over the past five years so most of them (even those in sketchy neighborhoods like the GA one) are in great shape. The one in New Britain was formerly a La Quinta so my room was huge, the bed was comfortable and I slept like a baby. I have narcolepsy so I can’t always say that, but that hotel was great. My only complaint was after arriving the night before, I went off in search of food and ended up eating at KFC because it was literally the only thing I could find after driving around for thirty minutes.

I knew that Lake Compounce was less than a half hour away, so I wasn’t in too big of a hurry, but I made sure to leave early enough to get there at opening in case there was a lot of traffic. I arrive at Lake Compounce around 8:45 with a 9am opening. After parking and walking up, it was still before 9am, but they were letting people in.

I was sort of aggravated that Wildcat was still down getting track work, so one out of the four credits I was for sure not getting.

Now, the weird thing was that as I’m walking up to the park, the only other people around are a couple middle school bands. I walk in and I’m literally the only one near Phobia Phear Coaster and Boulder Dash until at least 9:15. Boulder Dash didn’t immediately open, so I walked around to Phobia and rode front car. Now, I typically hate going backwards but this thing was fun. I really enjoyed it for being such a short ride.

By the time I got off Phobia, Boulder Dash had opened AND about ten different schools had brought their physics/science students in. The line was nearly back to the entrance and at the time, they were only running one train, so I probably waited about 20 minutes. While I was at the front of the line waiting to board, they loaded the second train, which I had never seen up close. That was a cool experience being right next to it as it moved over onto the main track. After a brief delay, I rode back car on Boulder Dash. It was a pretty fun ride, lots of airtime and I always like when coasters use the terrain, I find that to be extremely cool. That said, for a coaster that’s won Best Wooden Coaster a bunch of times, I was not blown away like I thought I would be. Maybe this is because I just rode Mystic Timbers in the past two weeks several times or maybe I just had higher expectations. It’s a great coaster, but it did not live up to the hype for me. Just my two cents.

At this point, Zoomerang still hadn’t opened and while I normally wouldn’t care about missing another boomerang clone, I still wanted the credit. In fact, it didn’t open at all. So I started exploring with my camera and I realized the whole second half of Boulder Dash could be photographed if you walked towards the picnic pavilions behind the lake, which I did. I got a lot of great shots back there, plus I had been wondering exactly where the lake was. The lake area itself is beautiful. If I ever go back, I may have to spend the night and camp there. I think my niece and nephew would love the waterpark as well.

I walked around and took some more pictures for awhile, but I realized that the lines for Boulder Dash and Phobia were both way too long to wait for a re-ride and teenagers (despite the fact I work with them every day and should have known this) don’t always have a sense of how to walk, manners, etc. and were getting irritating. I bought a Boulder Dash shirt and two pins (they actually had a bunch of pins – take note Six Flags) and grabbed a bunch of maps to trade and headed out. I had planned to leave around 1 because even though my flight isn’t until 9pm tonight (I’m sitting in the airport writing this actually), I was worried about traffic near Logan Airport. When I got in on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, it was 2AM and the traffic was still horrible. I stopped for some food and dropped my rental car off around 3pm. I got over to my gate around 3:30pm and found that this airport is way better wired than Atlanta or Cleveland. There are multiple desk-like setups at each gate that can fit about 8 people per side as well as outlets underneath each seat at the gate. So despite being here so early, I’ve been able to edit some pictures, charge my computer, phone and iPad and write these two blog posts.

Overall, Lake Compounce is a great, small park. For a guy who grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Geauga Lake, it reminded me a lot of Geauga Lake before the expansion. It has that charm that the chain parks just don’t have. There were a lot of food options and free drinks are always a plus. It is definitely a place I would like to bring my family someday.