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"Just entirely too clever..."
Upon arriving at Seabreeze, we began by investigating the various admission plans. It's gated traditonal park, so grounds admission is available, as is a P-O-P option. But ride pricing is a little ambiguous, and a "rides only" (no waterpark) option is not available. We bought our POP passes and entered the park.
Seabreeze is laid out as essentially a long midway with Jack Rabbit and Bear Trax at one end, Quantum Loop and Bobsleds at the other. A second path down the middle, runs perependicular to the midway, providing additional midway space and access to the waterpark. The waterpark, then, is laid out parallel to the main midway. So it is an easy park to get around in. Just the same, I obtained a souvenir map [Footnote 1] before we headed over to the Jack Rabbit.
"FAST-FAST-FAST" is the bold statement painted on the Jack Rabbit loading platform. The ride is an interesting wood coaster, which delivers an interesting ride. The ride has the only Morgan wood-coaster train I have ever ridden in. I suspect that the lap bars in this one are hydraulic and infinitely adjustable, as there do not seem to be any detent positions. The train is trailered properly, and it tracks well, but the Fiberglas body acts like a guitar body, making for a very noisy ride which, quite frankly, just doesn't sound right. The train also feels light, like it doesn't quite do justice to this wooden coaster. Someone else recently mentioned the Jack Rabbit, saying that it "doesn't quite 'do it'" for that person. Strange as it may seem, I think that is an amazingly good description of how the Jack Rabbit runs. Yes, it has a little airtime. Yes, it has some laterals. Yes, it features some neat surprises in the tunnel that are a whole lot of fun. But while all the elements are there, it's almost as though they just don't all quite come together. Jack Rabbit is a fine coaster; it just seems appallingly ordinary. It's the kind of ride that makes the Kennywood Jack Rabbit look very good and the Cedar Point Mean Streak look very bad. Meanwhile, the Seabreeze Jack Rabbit sits in that middle ground of rides that are fun, good enough to ride all day, and not worth going too far out of your way for.
Shortly after riding Jack Rabbit, I noticed that John was engaged in some kind of negotiation, but I couldn't see with whom. Then I looked down and realized he was conducting negotiations with two gentlemen who were only about four feet tall. Suddenly John smiled and gestured to me. I knew exactly what was going on. We were about to ride Bear Trax. I was about to increment my steel coaster count to 93. We had not stooped into actual bribery or rental, but we were borrowing kids.
Bear Trax is a small Miler coaster, the third modern Miler coaster I have ridden [Footnote 2]. This means I have ridden Miler coasters with three different layouts. Topcat's Taxi Jam at Paramount's Kings Island is a simple oval, and is the smallest of the three; the Zoooooom coaster at Oaks Park is a large oval with a helix toward one end of the oval, it is the largest of the three. Bear Trax is unusual in that the helix runs in the opposite direction from the rest of the ride, so with a little imgination, Bear Trax looks like a twisted figure-8. One ride is a couple of trips around the track. It is a surprisingly wild ride for its size, with unusually strong lateral forces on its curves. Seabreeze has built up the ground around the helix, so at that end it is almost a terrain coaster. For kids my size, the Jack Rabbit is more fun, but for the shorter set, Bear Trax is plenty of fun.
Right next to the Jack Rabbit is a set of road-model Flying Scooters. These are, without a doubt, the worst Flying Scooters I have ridden this season. I couldn't get any swinging action at all, let alone any cable gymnastics. These made the ones at Americana and Geauga Lake seem good by comparison. Yuck!
We worked our way down the midway, ending up at the Quantum Loop. This is a unique double-loop coaster from Soquet. We picked a random seat near the back of the train, and pulled down the unusual lap bar. The Soquet train has cleverly molded seats which are very well designed, then this strange lap bar arrangement is attached to screw everything up. A single lap bar (for both riders in any row) fits into a single position notch in the side of the seat. So far, so good. This bar is attached to four support bars which attach to pivot points located on either side of the deep-dish headrest. Again, it is sensible enough. Where Soquet went wrong was to take these four support rods and bend them inward so that they pass over the riders' shoulders and meet at the attachment point on the lap bar right in front of the riders. This turns the support rods into a rudimentary shoulder bar assembly, which seems to be located slightly below shoulder height...and is non-adjustable...so that the support rods dig into the rider's shoulders. Ouch! For our first ride, we...without thinking about it...sat in one of the "LARGER RIDERS SIT HERE" rows, and I barely noticed the problem. It was on the second ride, taken in a 'conventional' seat that I ended up with sore shoulders.
Quantum Loop is built as a portable coaster, with no foundations required, but Seabreeze has sunk the whole ride into a pit next to the midway to facilitate loading and unloading ramps. Like the Schwarzkopf Doppel Looping coasters, Quantum Loop has a lift arrangement with a pusher that comes up behind the train rather than conventional chain dogs. Anti-rollback dogs are conventional in design, but located at the outboard rear corners of the cars, engaging with twin sawtooth strips on the lift hill outboard of the track. From the lift, riders get a fairly spectacular view of Lake Ontario, across the road and to the left; this is the only place in the park where one is likely to experience an actual sea breeze. Apreciation of the view is short-lived, however, as the initial twisting plunge leads immediately into the back-to-back twin vertical loops. This is followed by a compact twister layout more akin to an SDC Galaxi, but remember this is with a much longer train. The ride is surprisingly good, particularly considering its origin [Footnote 3]. The ride also has a few spots with impossibly tight clearances.
Somebody at Seabreeze is mechanically very clever. The first time I noticed this was when I saw the drop-down lap bars they had added to their kiddie Turtle ride. Then there is the in-house Bobsleds coaster (more about that in a moment), and the "SHOES REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT" signs at the waterpark exit cleverly hinged so that the text may or may not begin with "SHIRT AND". Another example of this kind of thing is over on Quantum Loop. Quantum Loop is the only roller coaster I have ever ridden which is equipped with a wireless hand-held remote control. One of the attendants carries an X-10 Palm Pad controller rigged up to provide control over the lap bar release mechanism. I imagine this is probably because many riders do not easily fit in the seats, and the manual release pedals are covered up on the side of the train...
Bobsleds: (Long/1968)
Cars: 3
Load: 4
Interval: 1:07
Ride time: 1:44
Capacity: 215 pph
Speaking of clever...While Andy Vettel was cleverly reversing the Kennywood Pippin and creating the Thunderbolt, Seabreeze Park was doing much the same thing with their John Miller junior coaster. But here, the work was even more dramatic. An upper level was added to the ride's structure, and the ride actually jumped into another category altogether with the installation of tubular steel rails. I think this is the only wood coaster that has been outfitted with tubular track, in spite of what some Cedar Point visitors think [Footnote 4]. Now called the "Bobsleds" the coaster runs three single cars. Each car can handle four riders using side-by-side seating on two benches. The brake is a manually operated (with a foot-pedal) crowd-brake that rubs against the right-hand side of the car. The ride begins by plunging down into a shallow ravine and winding around a bit before reaching the chain lift which carries the car to the top of the structure. A long drop and some more winding around, mostly over shallow dips and sudden turns, leads to a rolling chain-brake that looks like it was taken off of a Zyklon, which pulls the cars into the first crowd-brake in the station. On the back of each car is a 6" thick upholstered foam pad to provide collision protection at the loading station.
Bobsleds is a neat ride. The first part reminds me a lot of Lola's (as in Kentucky Kingdom's "Twisted Sisters") drop-turn-bounce-dip-and-turn run from the station to the chain lift. The whole ride is a lot of fun, not terribly intimidating. It has the look and feel of a wood coaster, but the ride of a Runaway Train. The single cars allow for tighter turns than a train can handle, for a ride more like a Wild Mouse, but with a more random feel than that. The mid-course lift gives the ride even more in common with the Kennywood Thunderbolt...but the comparison stops there. Thunderbolt is a much wilder ride.
We rode the Yo-Yo, and we stopped by the waterpark and noticed the "Vortex" logo on the waterslide tower. We wondered aloud whether Paramount knows about that one. We also took a ride on the Screamin' Eagle, the park's Zamperla Hawk. I think they have changed the floor assembly (I could swear it was hinged last year instead of rising in a single piece, but I could be wrong). We also rode the Gyrosphere, which is an Eli Scrambler operating inside a dark dome in conjunction with loud music and flashing lights. It's the first Scrambler I have ever ridden with a divided seat and the handlebar replaced with a padded cushion, and the ride ran so slowly that it was almost boring. I sampled the local frozen custard (Mmmmm! It turns out that Darien Lake sells the same stuff!), and it was time for us to head for Darien Lake. I still think Seabreeze is the kind of park I would like to have in my town. Not a huge park, but it has a nice collection of rides, some of them unique, and a couple of coasters. A couple of their rides are more than a little disappointing (the Scrambler and the Flying Scooters), but apart from that it's a good park to spend a pleasant afternoon.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
The obligatory ride list:
| Name | Manufacturer | Common Name |
| Major rides: | ||
| Flying Scooters | Bish-Rocco | Flying Scooters R/M |
| Jack Rabbit | Miller | Wood Coaster |
| Bear Trax | Miler | Junior Steel Coaster |
| Tilt-A-Whirl | Sellner | Tilt-A-Whirl cable drive |
| Screamin' Eagle | Zamperla | Hawk |
| Teacup | PTC | Crazy Daisy |
| Gyrosphere | Eli Bridge | Scrambler |
| Bumper Cars | Duce | Bumper Cars |
| Carousel | ? | Carousel |
| Quantum Loop | Soquet | Double Loop coaster |
| Sea Dragon | Chance | Sea Dragon |
| Bobsleds | Seabreeze | steel coaster/wood support |
| Yo-Yo | Chance | Yo-Yo |
| Log Flume | ? | Flume |
| Miniature Train | MTC? | Train |
| Kiddies: | ||
| Red Baron | Allan Herschell | Red Baron |
| Turtle | Chambers | Kid Tumble Bug |
| Sky Fighters | Allan Herschell | Sky Fighters |
| Boats | Allan Herschell | Wet Boat |
| Swing | Sartori | Kiddie Swings |
| Thunderbirds | ? | Tracked car ride |
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: That is, I took a photograph of the large map just inside the park gate...[Return to text]
Footnote 2: There is some disagreement about whether the Wild Mouse at the PNE Playland in Vancouver is a Miler or a Schiff, and I don't know who to believe, so it is excluded from this comparison.[Return to text]
Footnote 3: I can make rude comments about French engineering...I used to drive a Renault. Great car when it ran, which wasn't often...[Return to text]
Footnote 4: People have INSISTED to me that Gemini used to be a standard wood coaster...[Return to text]
--DCAjr.
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