Friday, September 4, 2009

'Making A New Memory' - Part 3


This is Part 3 in a series of trip reports from NPN's recent visit to Kennywood Park. If you missed the previous posts, here are links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Let's continue on with our tour of Kennywood, shall we?

What's that up through the trees and beautiful waterfalls?

I've decided to break out a section of the park and cover it all together, making this already long report move into 4 sections. But you're loving it, right? So it doesn't matter.

A very beautiful and unique area, Lost Kennywood stands out as a modern approach to creating a long gone era of the park.

The area's beautiful main entrance can be found just past the Turtle, tucked neatly under the lift hill of the Phantom's Revenge. The entrance structure is a one third replica of the front gates which used to stand at Pittsburgh's now defunct Luna Park.

I love concept art, just love it!

The entire area was the park's big addition for the 1995 season. It is located on the former site of the park's swimming pool, as well as some parking spaces. It's architecture is a throw back to both Kennywood's history as well as the general feel of many classic amusement parks. It's all very nicely done, and is centered around a beautiful lagoon with an abundance of fountains.

There's actually a separate fountain (above) inside the main entrance to the area that is a reproduction of the one that stood at the swimming pool that Lost Kennywood was built on.

The section of the park is so photogenic that it's hard to sort through all the amazing shots we were able to take. Above we see both the gorgeous fountains and an example of the themed architecture throughout the area.

The Pittsburg Plunge stands in the center of the section, and utilizes the same lagoon as the fountains for it's massive splash. It's wooden structure adds nicely to the area's theme as well.

Riders are treated to a quick ride up the lift, around the corner, and then down the drop into the massive splash you can see in the above photo. On a day as hot as the one we visited, the ride appeared quite popular.

I realize now that the fountains are almost such a distraction from a photographer's standpoint that we missed out on several of the rides located here. The park's Wave Swinger, classic Whip, and the S&S created SwingShot are all located in Lost Kennywood.

An attraction that we did not miss out on was the Pitt Fall, a 251 ft. Intamin drop tower. Let's just say that the view from up there is just amazing! The ride's not so bad, either.

Tucked away in the back corner of Lost Kennywood is the park's Exterminator indoor roller coaster. It was added in 1999 and is a Reverchon spinning mouse coaster with the cars themed as giant rodents that are well, being exterminated! A fun idea, and an even more fun ride. Occasionally spinning rides give me trouble with making me sick, but not this one - it had me laughing the whole time!

The area behind the building that Exterminator is in is also of importance to the park, as it's a possible area for future expansion. See the aerial to get a better picture:

Jeff mentioned that the grove of houses back here are known has "Kennyville" because the park owns most of them and employees live in them. And expanding into that area wouldn't even require dealing with a big elevation change! Again, the possibilities are almost endless...

Coming in our last part of the Kennywood report, another coaster, more rides, the Turnpike, and some great news about a so-so darkride!


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