Trip Report: Lakemont Park

Altoona, Pennsylvania - 08/01/1998

"Park on the grass, over there..."

When I arrived at Lakemont Park, there were no parking spaces. The park was packed with picnicers, picnicing in the pavilions provided. This presented something of a parking problem, but once parked I perambulated in through a back entrance prepared to partake in this Pennsylvania park's package of presentations.

Lakemont is fenced, but not gated. This generally causes some inconvenience. The main entrance and parking area are located at the top of a hill, then at the base of the hill, the park is laid out on more-or-less flat ground. The trouble is, the ticket booths scattered among the rides and pavilions are invariably closed, meaning that even though entered through a gate down near the rides, I still had to climb the hill to the main gate in order to buy my ride pass.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the park, but since most of the patrons were picnicing instead of riding, the lines remained short. I headed for the Skyliner.

I'm not wild about the color scheme of the refurbished train, but it does look good, and quite frankly I wasn't wild about the old paint job, either. These are old PTC cars, possibly the oldest electric-lap-bar cars still running in the U-S. In fact, the lap bars look a lot like the ones used on the "junior" trains, with the semicircular loops on the ends. In any case, it is nice to be able to sit in the center of the seat on a full-size wood coaster again.

What really caught my attention on the train, though, was the upholstery. The seat cushions have been re-done with a hard-wearing fabric. It looks really good, it is a lot cooler than the typical
vinyl, and looks like a pretty good idea. The only problem with it is that this particular fabric is a little bit slippery, meaning that riders will tend to slide around a bit on curves and drops.

On the subject of curves and drops, the Skyliner is a dependable performer. Airtime is plentiful in any seat, but particularly noteworthy in the back. There are some rough spots on the ride, most particularly the drop that parallels the lift hill, and the ride suffers from some bouncing which makes me think some track mintenance is in order. But unlike certain coasters, Skyliner is still quite re-rideable. I noticed something else interesting about the Skyliner. The bottoms of all but three of the dips on this coaster are flat. I mean, it's like the bottom of the Steel Phantom's first drop, or Cedar Point's Blue Streak right before the turnaround...but like that on every dip. Hmmm...My guess is that it has something to do with making the coaster fit on its original site. In any case, I spent a lot of time with my thighs pinned against the unpadded bottom rail of the lap bar and the rest of me just floating in space. It's getting a little rough, but Skyliner is still a very re-rideable coaster. I hope Lakemont does some bolt-tightening on this one in time for next season, because with Leap The Dips re-opening, Lakemont is going to get a lot of attention from the enthusiast community. They would do well to insure that the Skyliner is running in top form next year, and it really wouldn't take much to do so. They take pretty good care of the Skyliner, but the track needs just a little work.

From the Skyliner, I headed for the Toboggan. The Toboggan is designed for continuous operation with four cars...one unloading, one loading, one heading up the lift, and one coming down the spiral. But with one operator, such operation is rather difficult, so the operator loaded all four cars, dispatched each in turn, then unloaded all four once they had all returned to the platform. I'm not sure how I did it, but somehow I managed to avoid bumping my head on the car ceiling during the final dip. The biggest problem I had with the ride is that the Plexiglass windows on the fronts of the cars are so badly scratched and clouded that riders can hardly see out. The vertical lift is a neat system, though, and considerably more efficient than the elevator on PKI's Batflyer. The spiral is so long and disorienting that you really aren't expecting the dip at the end. Anyone know if this is a single-trailer ride? If so, it may be the only ride to put a whole coaster on a single trailer...

Adjacent to the Toboggan is another Chance ride that Chance won't admit to, the Twister. This is a rare ride, so naturally I gave it a whirl. Unfortunately, it was pathetic. The operator cranked it up to top speed and let it run, meaning the tubs just swung outward to face the center and more or less stayed there, oscillating slightly as the sweep moved up and down on the raised portion of the track. What a disappointment...a little operator training would be helpful on this one. Based on this, I can see why the Tilt-A-Whirl survived and the Twister didn't. While the Twister can give a wilder ride than a Tilt, it won't unless the operator actually runs it. At least when a Tilt runs at a constant speed, the tubs will still whirl.

Lakemont also has a 16-tub Octopus which I had been looking forward to riding. Alas, the nicely-painted metal tubs were lined up along the fence, and the center cage and sweeps were.....ummm.....(Dave looks around, scratches head, looks around some more...)...Well, they were missing. The paint on the tubs looks new, so I am guessing that the center is being refurbished. I hope that is the case, anyway...

Right behind the spot where the Octopus had apparently been is another coaster. It's called the Little Leaper, and it is an Allan Herschell kiddie coaster. It is also unusual among Herschell kiddie coasters in that big kiddies like me are allowed to ride. Which is exactly what I did. Of course, in spite of appearances, it is nothing like the Overland High Speed Thrill Coaster at Knoebel's. But it is still a violent ride, and I wonder how many kiddies were so traumatized by these things that they never got on a big coaster until years later...

It seems like there is a lot of equipment at Lakemont Park from Chance and from Allan Herschell, including the fourth operating coaster, the Mad Mouse. This is an old portable Mouse with the angle-iron track. Oh, and this one is running five cars, so here are the numbers...
Mad Mouse:
Cars: 5
Load: 2
Interval: 0:39
Ride time: 1:14
Capacity: 184 pph

The cars have had some work done to them recently, as the side-bolsters are now upholstered with the same blue stuff as the seats on Skyliner. As you sit in the rectangular car, it looks like a tighter squeeze than it really is. The ride is a lot smoother than I expected, especially given the way the track and structure bounce around on the curve adjacent to the loading station. Mad Mouse is a lot of fun. I think this portable ride must have been one of the later models, smaller than the bigger Schiff mice, and all steel...but inspired by the hairpin turns of the original Mice. Who is our resident Wild Mouse expert?

Of course, Lakemont has a fifth coaster, towering over the crowded end of the midway. It's America's oldest coaster, the E. Joy Morris-designed side-friction coaster, Leap-The-Dips. Progress on this ride is abundantly evident. The station is crowded with workspace, sawhorses and makeshift workbenches, and newly-built and freshly-painted walkboards and track segments line the perimeter. An unrestored car sits in a corner, propped up next to a sign explaining the restoration project. More critically, there is now a small concrete footer under each of the ride's bents (has the ride been elevated four inches because of this, or have the bents been cut down?). A large chunk of the stacked-figure-eight structure has been completely removed behind the station to provide better equipment access. I have to think that a restoration project such as this is probably more complex than building a coaster new. Lakemont claims the coaster will be running next summer, and at the moment it looks like that just might happen.

Not far from Leap the Dips is the Lakemont Park museum. I stopped in...this is my third visit to Lakemont, and the first time the museum was actually open. Inside are the fully-restored Leap The Dips Car #1, and an old bumper car in addition to other displays and memorabilia. I bought the history book, which tells of the history of Lakemont Park through 1989, including the sad story of Boyertown USA. I haven't read it yet (nor my new books from Kennywood and Hersheypark) so I can't say much about it.

Finally, I almost rode the CP Huntington train. Now I am glad I didn't. As the modern amusement park train pulled out, I noticed the old train parked in the station on a siding. Specifically I noticed the unmistakable metal grillework on the sides of the train. Lakemont has a NAD miniature train similar to the one at Erieview.

I typed up a ride list before I headed for Kennywood...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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