Trip Report: Magical Midway, etc.
Orlando, Florida - 02/18/2006

"You still can't get there from ANYWHERE"

When the meeting ended, it was barely lunchtime. I went back to my motel and changed into more appropriate clothing, stopped at an IHOP for lunch, and "checked in" to my outbound flight for the next day. On the one hand, it's kind of nice to be able to get certain details for air travel taken care of over the Web, but it really doesn't save me much time or effort given that I still have to wait in line at the ticket counter to check my luggage. And even for a weekend trip, I still have to check luggage just so that I can have my tools with me at my destination. Of all the rule changes the TSA made recently to allow more pointy stuff on airplanes, why wasn't my Swiss Army Knife on the list?

Anyway, after lunch, I climbed into the nondescript beige rental car (so nondescript that it doesn't even have a name, just a number: 500) and headed up IR-4. Interstate 4 is the road that cuts diagonally across central Florida from Tampa through Orlando to Daytona Beach. It connects IR-95 with IR-75, and runs right through Orlando, right along the edge of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. It's about an hour's drive from Tampa to Orlando, and I am always amazed at the sheer volume of traffic along the route. The car performed adequately, although I found its performance somewhat lacking. If I stomped on the gas, it would take a couple of seconds for the engine to rev high, then about ten seconds later the vehicle would start to move. It's adequate for a four-cylinder. The only trouble is, when I looked under the hood, it appeared to have a V-6. I say "appeared to have" as I could only positively identify three cylinders; it looked like the other three might be pointing straight back towards the firewall. It's most certainly not the engine my old Taurus had!

Somewhere in Polk County, traffic on Intrastate 4 [Footnote 1] came to a complete stop. It was at this point that I could really see the true benefit of running a GPS receiver and mapping program on my computer even though I knew exactly where I was going and how to get there. The computer keeps track of where I am, and that makes it dead easy for me to zoom out on the map and instantly pick out a detour around the mess. I exited IR-4 at US-27 and took US-27 up to US-192, which I knew would take me right through Reedy Creek and Kissimmee. It wasn't exactly where I wanted to be, but I could get where I wanted to go from there. As I cruised down 192, I noticed that the interchange with IR-4 is a total mess, under complete reconstruction. I wonder if they are redesigning it so that in addition to dumping traffic off onto 192, they can bring a separate ramp around from IR-4 to dump traffic straight onto the nearly-adjacent World Drive.

Just past IR-4, I turned left onto International Drive South and headed North. The little red arrow on my mapping program happily skidded across the unmarked beige expanse. I guess the map data is in need of an update. I just followed I-Drive all the way up past Sea World (which I think was just closing when I passed it), and on up past the Convention Center, an area which is still almost impassable even when IAAPA is not in town. I bailed off of I-Drive at Universal Blvd, which took me around behind Wet 'N Wild (which was just closing for the day) at which point I knew I had gone too far. I made a left onto International, and returned to my destination, which unfortunately meant a left-hand turn in the block just North of Sand Lake Rd., where the traffic is always at a stand-still. Seriously, if you've ever been there, you love to hate the traffic on International Drive.

My destination was, in fact, a place called "Magical Midway". There are three stucco buildings which look very much like the old White City or Luna Park buildings, set right off the sidewalk on International Drive. The structures have the classic look, but they lack the overall design elegance of the designs that inspired them, as they are completely engulfed by the wooden structures of a couple of Go-Kart tracks. These are elaborate timber structures that are quite common in, say, Pigeon Forge or Wisconsin Dells, but apart from Magical Midway are almost totally unknown in Orlando. I parked the car and entered the site. I was there not for the Go-Karts, the S&S tower, the Spring Shot, or the Wisdom Tornado, and I was certainly not there for their mostly-redemption arcade. The attraction that got my attention was the 240-foot-tall rainbow-colored tower, visible for miles around. I looked around the crowded facility, then approached the ride, which, like the Spring Shot, appears to be operated as a concession by the manufacturer, Funtime Group.

The Star Flyer at Magical Midway

It's called the Star Flyer, and when the original was constructed in Vienna, I thought it odd that the general consensus of the roller coaster discussion groups was, "You won't get me onto that thing!", and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. The ride is really little more than an overgrown Yo-Yo. Because space is at a premium and the Star Flyer is a HUGE ride, it loads from a circular platform about 20' in the air, at the top of a broad, straight staircase. Because of the platform, which hangs over the parking lot and a flat Go-Kart track, the ride has a very small footprint, barely any larger than the cross-section of the tower itself. In that way it is a little like the Rocket Ships that once operated at Geauga Lake. The ride has twelve sweeps, from which hang twelve seats...six singles and six doubles. The seats are similar in size and construction to those found on a Yo-Yo, but their attachment to the sweeps is more like that of a Wave Swinger. Each seat is suspended from four very lightweight chains. I mean, these chains appear to be thinner than the standard chains used on the Wave Swinger. It's delightfully unnerving. A lap bar consistent with most circle-swing type rides drops into place along the front suspension chains and is secured in place with a safety belt that plugs into a socket between the rider's legs. The seat is also equipped with a standard (and totally unnecessary) automotive-style lap belt.

The ride is perfectly smooth, and except for the wind, totally silent. The ride center hub is counterweighted, and I am unsure of the lifting and rotating mechanisms. But there is no gear noise or vibration as normally found on a Wave Swinger, and even the screaming of fellow passengers quiets down before long as the screamers realize suddenly that it really isn't such a frightening ride after all. It goes up rapidly, and initially there is a bit of "Are we there yet?" as it goes up. You quickly realize that you have a view that extends out for miles (I should have asked about taking pictures on board). You can easily make out the coasters and towers at Islands of Adventure from up there. As part of the ride cycle, the center unit drops and rises a few times, but that part of the ride is not very effective. In order to keep the chains taut, the center doesn't drop fast enough to give much of a 'dropping' sensation, and the limits of the drop are not far enough apart to make a significant difference in the view. It's very much the same as the descriptions I have read of the Space Shot ride on the Stratosphere tower: the lack of reference points and the high starting point mean that as you are blasting up and down the tower you really have no concept of the motion. If the Star Flyer dropped and rose faster, it might add something to the ride...but then such an addition to the ride might not be desirable, and in that case they might want to upgrade the seat suspension to wire rope. If the ride were surrounded by higher landmarks, the up and down motion might be more noticeable...for instance, if the park were in an urban environment, or if the ride were plopped down in the middle of Cedar Point where there are seven rides over 200 feet tall already.

At the end of the ride, the lap bar safety belts all pop open automatically. The ride is clearly built so that it can easily operate at high capacity, something that Funtime is not known for. I understand that several major amusement park operators are going to come down and look at the thing soon, and I hope that means we're going to see more of them spring up around the country. It's a very simple concept, a mere extension on a classically popular ride, and in my opinion it works extremely well. I'd like to see some minor revisions to the seat design to make it a little more comfortable for people like me who have large thighs (just an inch or so of flat plate on the inboard side of the front seat rib would do the trick). For a large park, it would be nice if they could figure out how to add six more sweeps to it, increasing the capacity from 24 to 36, equal to that of a Wave Swinger or Yo-Yo. But what they've got is an excellent ride. It's very much what I expected, and it's a lot of fun, just intimidating enough to be a little unsettling, but not so frightening to make it a "oncer".

It's worth at least mentioning the Sling Shot ride located next to the Star Flyer. It is also operated as an apparent concession, and it has a unique feature: the loading platform is built on a platform surrounding a "volcano". As the springs are tensioned, the platform is dropped into a pit, a pit filled with red light and theatrical fog. It's a neat idea to have the gondola "expelled" from the volcano.

Perhaps this is a Hall of Shame candidate?

From Magical Midway, I proceeded down International Drive, and eventually ended up stopping at the Disney Compound. I wasn't planning to visit any of the parks, but I stopped in at Downtown Disney, thinking I'd at least pay a quick visit to the LEGO shop there. Apparently this is an extremely popular place this time of the year. What I don't understand is why an operation that does such a great job of moving people in the parks, right down to incredibly efficient parking lot designs, did such a lousy job of parking for their shopping and entertainment complex. The massive parking area is divided into a series of very small lots that are not interconnected in any meaningful way, and a traffic pattern that absolutely defies logic, let alone explanation. My guess is that the entire facility was planned and built by the retail group instead of the park operations group. Once I found a place to park, the Downtown Disney facility proved again that it has almost nothing in common with the nearby amusement parks. The layout involves an unbelievable amount of gratuitous walking (was this place designed by the Herschend group?), poorly laid out walkways with dead-ends and not enough space for the people. While it's better than most modern shopping centers in terms of traffic and people flow, it's significantly worse than anything else I've ever seen from the Disney empire. I wandered around a bit and got some photos of a gentleman doing something shocking on a European carousel. In the LEGO store, I was a little surprised to find that all the minifigs they had available had spring-loaded legs, which means it's darned near impossible to position the legs into walking positions for animation. I'm not sure what they're thinking with that maneuver...anyway, one of the displays in the store is an opportunity to build minifigs from parts. I found pieces that almost look like a little LEGO Dave, but I failed to buy it.

After fighting the crowd at Downtown Disney, I decided to head on down to Old Town, and perhaps even take a ride on the Windstorm. That was the idea. When I got there, the parking situation was actually worse than it was at Disney, with cars parked anywhere they could be crammed in. The midway at Old Town was positively jammed full of people, and the line for the Windstorm extended well down past the ride's plaza. I satisfied myself with a few photographs, then headed back to Tampa, stopping for dinner (and worse service than usual) at a Denny's just down the road from my motel. The following day, I had a particularly long flight to Portland via Albuquerque. Oh, dear, now all I can think of are all those Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs pops up out of a hole and says something about making the left-turn at Albuquerque. I just hope that $AIRLINE remembers to turn right instead, sending me to Portland for ride safety school.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: How can it be an "Interstate" if it does not leave the State of Florida? [Return to text]

--DCAjr.

Next: Northwest Showmen's Club Safety Seminar

Back to Trip Reports 2006
Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page.