Florida Trip 2017: Part 1 Fun Spot Kississimee & Fun Spot Or

Well for our big coaster trip this year, we decided to visit the Florida parks. I has been a very long time, 2001, since my last visit to Florida. My kids were there in 2005, with my wife and her parents, but have very little memory of it, and weren't tall enough for the major coasters. With the addition of Maco at Sea World Orlando last year, Mine Blower and Avatar Flight of Passage this year, it was the perfect time to make this long overdue trip.

We left house very early in the morning on Saturday August 19th. After a 14 1/2 hour drive we arrived at our hotel. We stayed the entire week at Days Inn near Florida Mall. It was about $54 a night, and that's where I stayed at in 2001. It's sort of in the middle of all the parks. After checking into out hotel we then headed for Fun Spot Kississimee.

When we arrived at Fun Spot, we bought season passes that were good for both Fun Spot parks. I think we paid about $75 per pass. That first evening the park was actually crowded. Our first coaster of our 2017 Florida trip was the Gravity Group woodie Mine Blower.

Mine Blower was a coaster that grew on me more and more every time we would ride it. The first drop is really good, as it tries to dump you. The inversion over the station is really good. It has great ejector air time all throughout the entire ride after the inversion. Now Mine Blower is extremely aggressive in the turns, and some enthusiasts would consider it rough in the turns. If it does get any worse, it wouldn't be tolerable to marathon it. At first I ranked Mine Blower in my top 15 favorite wooden coasters. We visited Fun Spot Kississimee on 3 different evenings during our trip, Saturday August 19th, Sunday August 20th, and Friday August 25th. We ended up with 31 total rides on it, and back seat was by far my favorite seat. I now would put Mine Blower at #10 on favorite wooden coaster list, right behind The Phoenix and right ahead of Mystic Timbers. Mine Blower ended up being my favorite coaster in Florida and my son Hayden agreed. Mine Blower was a little too aggressive for my daughter. It gave her a headache every evening we rode it.

Fun Spot Kississimee has 2 other coasters that we rode for the credits. They have a spinning mouse coaster called Rock Star and a Kiddie coaster. We only rode these once for the credit. Fun Spot Kississimee also had a new flying scooters credit for me. Now this set of flying scooters, called Screaming Eagles were a modern Larson set, but we're spectacular. I immediately started snapping, Knoebels Flyer style, and we ended up getting shut down early because of me. The ride op came over asked if I was OK. I played stupid and acted like I had no idea what had occurred, as I blamed the wind for my wild ride. He said he never seen that happen before. This was actually the only ride we would take on Screaming Eagles. With marathoning Mine Blower each evening, we sort of forgot about the flying scooters.

Fun Spot Kississimee has two different go cart tracks. One is called Vortex and I can't remember the other one. We took a ride on both tracks, and both tracks very unique and a lot of fun. On our second evening, I had my expensive Under Armor sunglasses fly off onto the track. The ride ops picked them up for me, but they are now scratched up on one side. I wasn't happy about it, but I was glad the ride ops were nice to pick them up. In fact, all the employees at Fun Spot Kississimee were friendly and energetic. The crew on Mine Blower was just great guys, who dispatched trains fast, and had fun doing their job. All in all I liked Fun Spot Kississimee much more than Fun Spot Orlando.

We did spend 2 evenings at Fun Spot Orlando; Sunday August 20th and Wednesday August 23rd. Now I have heard so many reviews of the GCI wooden coaster, White Lightning. It seems everyone loves this coaster, so I had high expectations going in. It's a true out and back design, that looks to have many moments of air time. Well, it's a very fun coaster, but I only got one moment of what I would consider air time. It has a nice layout of consecutive drops, but I only found the double up to have any significant air time. We rode White Lightning 15 times and the front seat was my favorite. I actually liked this coaster, more than my kids. My kids were actually very disappointed in this coaster. I'm glad I did finally get to ride it.

Fun Spot Orlando had a junior inverted coaster called Freedom Flyer. On our first evening, it had just stop raining, so they weren't offering VR on it. On our second evening they did offer VR and we tried it. I kind of liked that it had VR, and sort of made a junior coaster a little more fun. We ended up with 3 Total rides on it. We also rode Early Serpent, a Kidde coaster, for the credit. They also have a S&S screaming swing called Space Invader, that we rode. It was actually just as good as the larger models that we have ridden.

All in all, both Fun Spot parks are what their name is, Fun. I wish we could have spent another evening at Fun Spot Kississimee and got even more rides on Mine Blower, but with our busy schedule, we did well, to get as many visits and rides as we did. Next up Sea World Orlando.