Funtown Splashtown U.s.a And Palace Playland

During my yearly trip to Lake Winnipesaukee, we decided to visit Funtown Splashtown again. We also stopped at Palace Playland quickly just to ride the coasters. The park was a small seaside park that was a lot like a carnival with a Galaxi coaster and a few other rides. We didn't stay long but got on their two coasters.


The kiddie coaster was obviously nothing special but the Galaxi coaster was pretty fun. I have never been on one of these coasters before so it was definitely interesting. One thing I noticed was the supports came incredibly close to the train. It seemed like If I put my hands out just a little, I would have hit the supports. They also had someone manually operating a trim brake towards the end of the ride which I thought was funny. The coaster did seem pretty shady but it was fun and smooth.



Went off to Funtown afterwards and was greeted with a pretty much empty parking lot. It was even less crowded than last year and last year it was raining. I thought there would be more people here. We had a little more time than last year so we did pretty much everything we wanted to go on.



The main reason to come.


First up was Dragon's Decent. It is a very good drop tower but stays at the top for a lot less time than Downtime and is not as forceful. Still very fun ride and has excellent theming.





I was going to ride the cars but somehow a bunch of people got in-between me and my group so I passed on them. I went on them last time though. Really nice looking car ride!


The log flume. Very fun ride, this time we opted to take two boats instead of us all going in one which seemed like we were going to sink the boat last year.


They have a tea cup ride in the middle of the cars, very cool.


The park has a lot of bridges you can go over.


The main attraction.


One of the weirdest pre-lifts iv'e seen.


Excalibur is an awesome wooden coaster with awesome theming. Unfortunately, It seems like the track has had pretty much no work done and is in need of some attention. Some spots are very rough including the brutal turn after the first hill. The ride definitely needs some work including some re-profiling and banking. I did get some very good airtime on it though. It is definitely ride able, but could use a lot of work. I was thinking that an RMC overhaul would be really cool on this ride because the second half is kinda dull and they could spruce things up. I doubt the park would be able to afford that though.

One thing I noticed were the employees here. Most of them were really dull and never really said anything or had any enthusiasm. How hard would it be to say enjoy your ride on blank or say welcome back how was your ride? The employees were literally saying nothing including the go-kart workers. I know go-karts are pretty self explanatory but they should at least tell you which is the brake, gas, and when to come in when the ride is over.

Once the employees on Excalibur dispatched a train, they would all go outside the station and chill/chat on the tracks. I know its not a big deal and I am sure they know what they are doing so they won't get killed, but these guys would get fired instantly at any other park iv'e been to. I mean there has to be some sort of safety violation if the ride operator leaves the control panel to talk with the other employees on the track outside the station.






The park is pretty laid back when it comes to safety, but if they had some of the clientele that SFNE or LC gets, there would be an accident somewhere very quickly.

We went on the Thunderbolt and the Yo-Yo as well. The swings were not as fast as Quassy's but they were still very fun. Thunderbolt was very painful and didn't seem very well maintained. They run it backwards too which only adds to the pain.

We did the indoor scrambler which seemed to have the same music/light pattern as last time. Would be really cool if they had a few different programs or played some rock music. It was fun though although the scrambler wasn't too intense. It would be really cool if they cleaned up the wires and cables for the lights too, it does look a little messy.

Went on the Wild Mouse next, was pretty much the same thing as GCG, did seem a little faster on the hairpin turns.

This year we went over to the Go-Kart area of the park, for some reason we didn't make it over there last year. I couldn't find any signage at all if the go-karts were included with the wristbands but it seems like they are. The employees punched a hole out of our bands and I never figured out if we could ride twice if we wanted to or what. The go-karts were great and it was cool that they were included with admission.

We went over to the rest of the area and noticed they had bumper boats. I thought they were really cool and fun especially if you have a large group with you like I did. They were really fun. Went on the slower car ride as well, was a nice ride.

Overall I got 13 rides on Excalibur and went on almost everything else that they had. It is a very fun park and would definitely recommend going especially after 6pm with $13 admission.

^your pics aren't showing and i think you have to check your settings on photobucket.

hmm... so it seems like Photobucket made it so you can't do 3rd party hosting unless you pay $399. Guess I will be finding another photo hosting site to use or just upload straight here. Seems a little ridiculous. I can see the pics on my desktop but not mobile. Guess I will have to find something else for the future.

Nice report. Thunderbolt was rehabbed by Chance around 7 or so years back. not sure how much effort the park has put into keeping it up since.

Strange might e because of how much you have on the system I share out images form photo bucket and thy still show up.

Photobucket is now charging for use of IMG code to hotlink in forums, looks like I'll also be looking for another place to host my custom smileys...

That's a dumb move on their park. people are going to be more likely to just upload their photos to a social media site and share out the folder.

You ain't kidding, but with the new forum platform you can now upload your photos directly into a post so you don't have to hotlink to them anymore, @BizarroAj or @WiCy#1 could you confirm if there's a file size limit on directy-uploaded photos?

I can just upload them under The Whalom site. so I have an alternative. but photo bucket was convenient to upload and share when I was out and about. But now I'll just use twitter.