Trip Report: Cypress Gardens
Winter Haven, Florida - 02/03/2008

"Where did all these people come from?"

By now, the story of Cypress Gardens is somewhat well known. The gardens and the water skiing shows have been Florida tourist attractions for many years, in fact Cypress Gardens was one of Central Florida's leading attractions long before the arrival of the Walt Disney company in 1971. But while the park was successful, it had stagnated into an operation whose customer lists appear daily in the newspaper in the obituary pages. Management announced its intention to close the park, the State declared it some kind of a landmark, and amusement park operator Kent Buescher strolled in from Wild Adventures up in Valdosta, bought the park, and set about trying to turn it into a traditional amusement park in the same model as Wild Adventures. Unfortunately, while construction was underway, not one, but THREE hurricanes ripped through south Central Florida, doing significant damage to the park's gardens and new attractions. Well, it gave Buescher a pretty good idea of what to name his wooden coaster, anyway. Unfortunately, the ensuing fight with the insurance company and the costs of rebuilding the park forced Buescher to declare bankruptcy and to liquidate his company.

When I visited, the most recent purchase had just been completed, and Kent Buescher's relationship with the new company had just ended. It's a shame. He is the one who put up the money to save Cypress Gardens, he is the one who envisioned the park as a traditional amusement park to augment, not to replace, the gardens, he is the one who prevented the site from turning into retirement condos and timeshares for people going to those other parks. He is the one who bought the Starliner from Miracle Strip and saw to it that Florida's classic wooden coaster would continue to operate. And now that he's demonstrated that his vision is successful, he's essentially lost his investment. I'd even taken to referring to the place informally as "Buescher's Gardens," in part as a bit of a poke at Florida's other garden spot, that glorified zoo over in Tampa.

Winter Haven is about 40 miles Southwest of Orlando, which puts it further inland. But the more Southerly location means that it's getting into the part of Florida where "inland" doesn't really mean that much. As you head South, Florida gets increasingly swampy, beginning with the appearance of many large lakes, with the amount of surface water steadily increasing until you reach the Everglades. The result is that Cypress Gardens is hotter and more humid than the Magic Kingdom had been the day before. I paid an excessive parking fee, then parked in one of the closest non-handicap parking spaces to the park gate. The park gate is a very large tensioned fabric dome (i.e. "tent"). There is lots of open space for people to collect, a couple of tables for the standard Florida park meaningless bag inspection, small kiosks for ticket sales, and the entrance gate. At the entrance gate, I noticed that Cypress Gardens is the only park I have visited with signs up specifically prohibiting those wheeled shoes that a lot of the kids are wearing. I've often thought that to be a good idea. I see a lot of kids wearing those shoes to parks, and I wonder how many of them are using them to try and beat the height requirements on some rides. Little did I know that "shoe height" would actually be a topic of discussion on my next visit to Florida!

Once inside the gate, the park is nicely wooded, and there is a layout of shops and facilities. Inside one building is a model railroad display that almost seems to be a little bit out of place. A little further along is quite possibly the most unique ride at Cypress Gardens, and Intamin Flying Island ride called the Sunshine Sky Adventure. Built by Waagner-Biro for Intamin, the ride is kind of like those 300' observation tower rides, only without the tower. Instead, the large circular platform rises, cantilevered on the end of a 120-foot counterweighted lifting arm. Until recently, this was the only ride at Cypress Gardens, and as impressive as it is, it isn't impressive enough to get a ride guy like me interested in the place. I noted the boilerplate sign at the ride entrance that suggested that, "Due to seat restraints, exceptionally large guests may not be able to ride." Ummm...okay. This is a ride with no active seat restraints, on which riders are invited to spend most of the ride standing up, and anyone too large to get through the gate and fit in the space between the seat and the railing has got more serious problems than an inability to ride this thing. Anyway, it's a nice ride, technically a lot more interesting than it looks because of the arrangement necessary to keep the revolving platform level as the arm rises. From the top, the ride gives a nice panorama of the entire park and the adjacent lake. This is a good thing, as it was my best opportunity to see the half of the park that I was going to miss getting close to. Pity I couldn't spend the whole day, but such are travel restrictions...

After exiting the Flying Island, I started down the path into the park. Very quickly I was given a very simple choice: Gardens are to the left, rides are to the right. I went to the right, past an ampitheater, and under a banner declaring "Bugsville". That's also the name for the section of Wild Adventures which houses the Wild Mouse coaster and several kiddie rides. Here, a carnival joint trailer called the "Bugsville Cafe" and several kiddie rides line the midway:

Interspersed with these rides along the right-hand side of the midway are three major roller coasters and the Fiesta Express, a teeny tiny Wild Mouse-style coaster that looked too teeny tiny for me to try to ride. The three major coasters are the Okeechobee Rampage, a Vekoma junior steel coaster; the Triple Hurricane, a Martin & Vleminckx junior coaster; and the park's star attraction, the Starliner moved up from Miracle Strip Amusement Park. I started with the Okeechobee Rampage. Overall, it's not a whole lot unlike the other Vekoma 700J coasters I have ridden, but it does have a new train design, where each seat has its own lap bar. In addition, it has a set of magnetic brakes on the station approach. As expected, it's a mild ride, smooth running, and a great starter coaster for just about anybody. For me, it's Steel Coaster #216, Coaster #311 overall.

My next ride, even though it wasn't the closest entrance gate, was Cypress Gardens' original wood coaster, the Triple Hurricane. It's the earliest coaster credited solely to the Martin & Vleminckx Group, and even though it doesn't look like it's significantly shorter than the Starliner it is a junior coaster, and it runs the modern PTC junior cars, similar to the ones on Zach's Zoomer up at Michigan's Adventure. Of course, that configuration means that the cars have single-position lap bars and do not have seat dividers, so even though the ride opened in 2004, it does qualify as an ACE Coaster Classic. It is a simple ride, essentially an out-and-back profile, not a particularly noteworthy ride, but it is fun. Another check-mark for Wood Coaster #84, Coaster #312. For me, the ride's exit ramp was particularly useful as it provides a good vantage point for looking at the turnaround curve on the Starliner. But why look at it and take photos when I can ride it instead? I back-tracked down the midway.

Cypress Gardens is really playing up the history of the Starliner, promoting it as Florida's original wood coaster, keeping an original lead car (with the multi-color MSAP logo) from Miracle Strip on display along with a billboard explaining the history of the ride. Painted brilliant white, the ride sits along the perimeter of the park, tucked in behind the Triple Hurricane. But the coaster's heritage doesn't mean it hasn't seen any updates. As always happens when a wood coaster is relocated, the ride was completely re-tracked, which means that the ride now has cut curves instead of the bent curves it would have had when it was new. Most noticeably, the coaster has a brand-new PTC train, but even though it is a new train (complete with the new-style open frame seat dividers) it still has the standard seatbacks and (perhaps most important) the classic two-rail lap bars. I was not surprised to see that PTC still has not updated these to a double-locking all-mechanical system. Less noticeably, like the other coasters in the park, the Starliner has magnetic trim brakes, these equipped with a mechanical shifting system to make the trims adjustable. I never made it to Miracle Strip, but...especially after riding the Cannon Ball at Lake Winnepesaukah a couple of seasons ago...I've really been looking forward to riding the Starliner. And the ride certainly does not disappoint.

Starliner looks and rides like a slightly smaller version of Cedar Point's Blue Streak. The biggest difference (apart from the ten feet or so of overall height and the lack of a cupola on the lift hill) is that Starliner has a swooping, diving turnaround. The ride delivers significant airtime throughout, and there is an interesting lesson to be learned in the return leg of the ride. All the way out to the turnaround, the coaster runs glass-smooth, leaping over the tops of the hills. About halfway through the turnaround, there is a spot where the tracking isn't quite right and the train jerks to the left an inch or two. I got a photo of it from the Triple Hurricane exit ramp and you can clearly see in the wear pattern in the road steel that the outer rail has a little bump to the inside. Since the train is moving pretty fast here, there is enough that the lateral force keeps the train stuck firmly to the outside rail, so when the guide wheels hit the bump, the whole train feels it. But it isn't bad, so that really isn't the whole story. What I noticed was that for the return run, the train comes off of the turnaround and starts bouncing, making for an unexpectedly rough ride back to the station. Now, I should emphasize that the ride is generally tracked very well, and in fact that one bump in the outside rail is the only obvious problem. But the trackwork on the ride is done so well that it gives an unusual opportunity to see the effect that a very simple defect can have on the whole ride.

It truly is a great ride, and it is in like-new condition. Saving the Starliner is a definite "win" for Cypress Gardens and all of its customers. This isn't just a ride that was worth saving because it was some old wood coaster that a lot of people liked to ride. This is truly a good ride, the kind of ride that very quickly becomes a favorite and stays that way. It's easily in league with the Cannonball at Lake Winnepesaukah, the Phoenix at Knoebel's, and the Blue Streak at Cedar Point. Moving the Starliner was clearly a good decision for Cypress Gardens, and I hope that the crowds discover it. Certainly the small crowd of coaster riders who were in the park on the day I visited were enjoying it, as it had the most riders of any ride in the park. For me, it was Wood Coaster #85, Coaster #313

Of course, on the ride side, Cypress Gardens is more than just its kiddie rides and its three coasters. It has a decent collection of adult rides:

I worked my way down the midway, and took a ride on the Galaxy Spin, a Zamperla version of the Reverchon spinning mouse coaster. It's very much like the one at Beech Bend, and for me it was Steel Coaster #217, Coaster #314 overall. Across the midway, the Fiesta Express teeny tiny Mouse coaster looked so teeny tiny that I didn't even attempt to ride it. At about this point, the midway spreads out to the right and wraps around a small pond. It looks as though a combination of adult and kiddie rides was simply scattered around the pond almost at random, while the Paradise Sky Wheel and the Boardwalk Carousel are positioned to nicely anchor the area. Off to the left there is a concrete building that is advertised as an arcade, serves as a pass-through from the rides midway to the botanical gardens, and inside is one of the most depressing sights I've seen in any park. Most of the building is empty, and inside there is a very small arcade and a bunch of spaces that look like they could accommodate midway games, sales joints or a food court, but instead the building is mostly dark and empty. I returned to the rides midway and took photos of all the (mostly empty) rides. I took a ride on the Flying Scooter, which is the strangest looking set of Flying Scooters I have ever seen. These are comfortable enough to ride in, but I wasn't able to get any significant action at all out of the ride at all. The cars are gigantic (for a Flying Scooter) with two seats that look like they are made out of those molded plastic stacking chairs...not the resin chairs that break when you sit on them, but the molded plastic ones with the metal frames underneath. This ride, unfortunately, ranks only slightly above the Chance Aviator for ride quality.

The other disappointment was Swampthing, the Vekoma junior inverted coaster. I've been on a couple of these...Rugrat's Runaway Reptar at Kings Island and Silver Streak at Canada's Wonderland...but for some reason, Swampthing is a little different. I was the only person waiting on the platform (in fact, instead of waiting for the ride to return to the station, I had to wait for the operator), so I tried to sit in the front seat. First, the dress panel under the lead axle hangs down further than on the one at Kings Island, which means the shoulder bar can't open quite as far, so I had to duck a bit to get into the seat, then when I pulled the shoulder bar down, I simply could not get the safety belt to fasten. Reptar and Silver Streak were never a problem, but I simply could not ride Swampthing. Instead, I took the long walk back down the midway to shoot video on the Triple Hurricane and to take a couple of rides on the Starliner before heading back to Orlando to catch my flight back home.

I realize that I got to the park very early in the day, and I was visiting in what is decidedly the "off season", but it was almost disturbing to see the park so empty. Cypress Gardens has established a nice collection of rides, in a very attractive park, but I kept wondering why there were so few people taking advantage of it on a Sunday afternoon. I pushed the schedule a little bit to take a couple of rides on the Starliner and then it was time to go. I went back out the way I came in, passing the ampitheater, and...WHOA! The midway was absolutely PACKED with people. People were standing around, sitting on every available bench and planter railing, wandering in and out of the shops, and in general making me wonder what kind of special event might be going on in the shed. As I approached the entrance, all the while feeling more and more like a salmon swimming upstream, I noticed that there was a steady flow of people, many (but not all!) of them elderly, streaming through the park entrance. Outside, the parking lot where I had parked so close was filling up rapidly. I don't know what was going on, but the large crowd entering the park was reassuring after seeing the empty midways. It is also worth noting that Cypress Gardens is quite a large park, so even a large crowd can be dispersed easily, a trait the park shares with MarineLand up in Canada.

In the end, I'm very glad I got to Cypress Gardens, and the park is most certainly on my return visit list. I think this park has a bright future as a traditional amusement park, perhaps something along the lines of what Elitch Gardens originally was, only on a much grander scale. The story of how Kent Buescher managed to lose out on the park he saved is a sad one, but his legacy is a good solid foundation for the new and improved Cypress Gardens to build on. Now that it is a couple of months later, I see that the new management is taking on some major renovation projects and has sold off the Inverter with an eye towards replacing it with a better ride. Knowing what I do about the Inverter I can't say that I think it's a bad decision, and I wonder if the Mega Bounce or the Power Surge is next. The present midway was thrown together in a bit of a hurry, and although it was nicely done, it is obvious that it was a large package put together in short order and possibly 'on the cheap'. The collection is an imperfect fit for the 'look and feel' of Cypress Gardens, but it's an excellent foundation to build on. I would expect that in the coming years the midway side of the park will see improvements in landscaping and infrastructure, and who knows? Perhaps next we will see some rides tastefully integrated into the gardens as well. Even though Cypress Gardens is an older park, somewhat mature already, it still has a lot of potential, and I am confident that great things are in store for the place.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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