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Silver Comet
Website: Martins Fantasy Island Homepage
Ride Type: Wooden Coaster
Ride Status: Running
Average Rating: 4.2308
TPC Overall Rank: Rides need more than 25 reviews to be ranked.
Reviews: 15
Last Review: 9/6/2008 12:49:00 AM
In User Top 10: 3 times.
User Tracker Count: 25 times.
 

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3 Rating
0 Rating Rate Down Rate Up bumprnugit on 9/6/2008 12:49:00 AM
Silver Comet is a very accessible ride to me as I typically travel out to Buffalo at least once a year to visit family, but I finally got around to riding it this year. For some reason it never ranked high on my list of things to do, but I made a concerted effort to hit up Martins FI (whose slogan on local TV for years had been &quot..Fun? Wow!&quot..) Fun? O.K. A rather reasonable fee grants one access to this bizarre park, which at the same time I found quaint yet cheesy. coaster05 put best when he said the park has many rides that appear that can &quot.be picked up and taken away by gypsies&quot.. On a positive carny note, my jumbo Budweiser was a modest $6.50 poured into a 32 oz(!) Pepsi cup. I could not drink it fast enough before the temperature made this libation worse than it already was. But I digress. The outward appearance of Silver Comets station harkens back to the Crystal Beach Comet (which the park, when owned by Charlie Wood, had hoped would relocate there during TGEs fiasco with the Town of Queensburys objections.) But that is where the comparison ends. The first drop and leg out are great. I found it to be rambunctious and fun.
The final diving left hand turn and run toward the station was also wild and exciting, but the middle of Silver Comet left me disappointed. It seemed to be nothing more than high elevation turns with shallow, ineffective dips. It was like a sandwich where the bread was the highlight. Certainly not a destination coaster in my opinion, you should still divert to ride Silver Comet if in the Niagara Falls area. If you wear glasses, bring a sport-strap with you, as for some curious reason, the park will not allow you to wear your spectacles on the ride without one.

4 Rating
0 Rating Rate Down Rate Up coasterf42 on 8/15/2008 7:50:00 AM - User's Top Ride #10
Just an outstanding wooden coaster, and my favorite of TPR&#39.s Behemoth/Ravine Flyer tour. Thankfully, the ride opps were letting us position the lap bar basically wherever we wanted, allowing us to get some great, stand up air over the first few bunny hops! The third hill on this (second bunny hop) may look small, but has some of the best violent ejector airtime I have ever experienced. The other good spot of air is on a double down after the first turn around. The rides turns are killer, but as my friend said they, &quot.hurt so good.&quot. It is a barable kind of rough, and when these turns are mixed with the insane airtime scattered throughout the layout, it really makes for a great coaster. The final turnaround is one of the most intense turns I&#39.ve ever encountered on a coaster, and really keep you on your toes, even after a dozen rides or so. This may look like a little wooden coaster in a little park, but it is fast and furious, and landed a spot on my top ten for a while.

4 Rating
0 Rating Rate Down Rate Up T-Rex on 2/13/2008 8:37:00 PM
Very good wooden coaster that definitely is the best ride in the park. The views of Niagra Falls on the lift are great and the first drop gives really good ejector air. After that is a tangled mess of track complete with decent air in spots to go along with awesome laterals. The ride did seem a bit short though, but it definitely was really fun.

4 Rating
+1 Rating Rate Down Rate Up coaster05 on 6/18/2007 9:32:00 AM
Definately a ride that does not get enough recognition, but that is due to the stateof the park other then the rides ability. APPEARANCE-8 One of the few rides in the park that cannot be picked up and taken away by gypsies. The station looks nice, the ride is in good shape, but the ride doesnot cast that massive woos shadow that the bigger coasters do. CAPACITY-8 One train and they do not move especially fast in this park. They did do a nice job later on in the day and I like how the ops have more than one job. RIDE QUALITY-10 Nothing I can find fault with this other than maybe the length. It runs smooth, but not wimpy, has good air in spots, and offers nice laterals. FUN-9 The ride though great needs just one more thing for me to be a 10 on the fun scale. Maybe one more pop of air. RERIDE-9 This is obviously the best ride in the park, but to get me back to this park they would need a new credit, so I cant give a 10 to a ride in a park that cant guarantee a revisit. OVERALL-44 AVG-8.8 I will go 9 since the ride is so good in a park that is very average and is hurt by that. For a side note if you are just coming for the 2 credits do the after 5 special as it is very affordable.

4 Rating
+1 Rating Rate Down Rate Up sowinski on 7/2/2006 12:39:00 AM
I recently rode the Silver Comet for the first time. I gave it a good trial and tried 5 of the six individual cars (all cars except the 3rd car from the back. Actually, I rode six times with one duplicate car ride. I found the ride to be quite fun. There are some good head choppers. The ride is butter smooth for a wooden coaster and the finale is one of the best of any coaster, steel or wood, that I have ever been on. I find that the smoothness detracts a bit from the overall ride experience. I prefer a more out of control woodie feeling, more like the Beast at PKI.

I found the rides in the front and back to be the best places to ride. The front gives riders the classic weepy eyes that are the sign of a fast and exhilarating ride. Although, I found that the front car goes a bit far over the first lift hill before the lift hill release kicks in and you start your descent, detracting from the front row thrill factor. However, in the back row this adds to the fun, because I found that this late release coupled with the short train, throws off your established coaster timing. This means that the hill release catches you by surprise and gives you a little more time to sweat things out before the drop finally happens.

A word of caution to taller riders, people 5 feet 10 and taller. I found that the front of each car is more uncomfortable than the back, so plan accordingly. The restraints which consist of a lap belt and a padded safety bar work well to keep taller riders in place avoiding any shin/knee banging when sitting in the front of any car. However, there is a noticeable difference in overall leg room and side padding between the front and back of a car on this coaster. I do recommend trying a ride in the front at least once, even for tall riders.

I went to the park on a Sunday and even though this is the best ride in the park, the lines were rarely longer than one train. Most of my rides were a rope duck and a walk on away.

5 Rating
0 Rating Rate Down Rate Up coasterwom on 6/14/2006 4:22:00 PM
The Silver Comet is a wood sit down roller coaster. It was built by CCI. It was designed by Larry Bill, Dennis McNulty in 1999. It is 85' tall, 2,800' long. It is fast, fun, rerideable, it has a large capacity, and a long duration.

4 Rating
0 Rating Rate Down Rate Up thinkdif on 9/3/2005 10:23:00 AM
This is another great coaster done ny Custom Coasters. The first drop is really fun )although not huge) and the rest of the ride s enjoyable and smooth. However for some reason I HATE woodies with steel supports. That is my only big complaint about this ride ( it is also a tad bit short). All in all, a great coaster for a park this size.

4 Rating
+1 Rating Rate Down Rate Up x307 on 7/9/2005 11:27:00 AM
While I enjoyed this coaster, I thought it could have been so much more. It seems like an overgrown family coaster, rather than something that would bring in the thrill crowd. While that was probably the parks aim, it left me feeling a bit flat. The turns were the most intense part of the ride, and outside of the final turnaround before heading back to the station, there wasnt a lot of intensity there. Contrary to Mr. Funland, I thought the front provided a bit better of a ride, as there were a couple of pop-up air moments at the top of hills heading into turns with had me flinging up and laterally at the same time. Its also very smooth, which is a nice change for me, as pretty much every other woodie Ive ever been on has been rough as hell. All in all, this is a good ride, albeit quite short, but still good enough for an 8.

4 Rating
+2 Rating Rate Down Rate Up BobFunland on 6/5/2005 5:13:00 PM
The Silver Comet was a very, very good wooden roller coaster. I was fortunate to be in the area and was able to hit the park on a school day with no more than 1000 people in the park. I got the first two rides of the day on the Comet, alone in the back seat (it was really a ghost town at opening) and came off disappointed. With an empty train, it reall moved slow and was not as good as I had expected. Fortunately, I figured the emptyness was playing a major role, and I didnt write it off at that point. I came back over and over in the short day, riding it about 10 times, with 7 rides in the back car and three in the front row. It is certainly a back car coaster. The front was nice, but the back provided some awesome airtime, especially on the first trip "out". That was a very good start to the ride, and the view of the island was neat.The middle part of the ride was a bit dreary to me. The coaster, even when full, seemed to glide through the track rather than speed through it. The pacing just wasnt there for that part, though it still provided a couple of nice little air pops here and there and some good lateral.s Oh, the laterals, they were overall wonderful on the Silver Comet. I thought for a second that we were on a GCI and not a CCI. Though the coaster had an ok middle section (in my book) it came to a point on the turnaround to head back towards the station for the second time that one of the best moments of lateral forces I have ever experienced occured. The riders were slammed to the right on a tight and high-banked turn that just dropped to the ground. From there, the ride really kicked butt again in the last third, with a couple of little bunny hills and another sharp turn up into the brake run, providing more vertical and horizontal Gs.Overall, the ride was pretty good. Though I hate steel supports on woodies, I can live with it for a good ride. I also, for some reason, liked the stations sign. The PTCs were just PTCs... nothing new there, and the great beginning and the fantastic ending make Silver Comet a wonderful woodie, but only the middle section kept it from being a 10. It was pretty good, but it just did not live up to its own bookend sections. The ride, and the park, are worth half a day at Martins. Too bad they only run one train, and dont even have a storage shed. I wouldnt want to be there with a large summertime crowd, so try to hit one of the school days in June when the park is empty and the admission is about half off.

Edit: I rode it again today during peak conditions. The ride was running very fast and the forces were as strong as ever. The one-train operations didnt hurt the ride much at all as the line rarely stretched beyond the bottom of the stairs. I managed to ride 16 times within three hours or so (with other rides mixed in between) so the single train may not be much of an issue at all. That is, until the ACE Spring Con is there next year and you get a couple hundred angry ACErs hungry for ERT. This thing still flies into the brake run and is just plain fun. Consider it a 9.5 and definate Top 20 material.

5 Rating
+1 Rating Rate Down Rate Up larrygator on 8/29/2004 4:44:00 PM
Certainly a &quot.hidden gem&quot., I dont give 10s out liberally but this coaster gets one as it is only a shade behind the other woodies I have given 10s to, but not far behind. It&#39.s a woodie on a steel frame and I didnt even bother to read any of these other reviews before I rode last weekend. It goes 55MPh but never slows down as the ride is not braked. Lots of good air and lateral Gs. The 1st and 3rd drops give great &quot.stand-up out of your seat&quot. air.

The only drawback on my visit was the ride operators more concerned about talking to each other and letting their &quot.friends&quot. cut the line. Someone finally confronted the ride operator about these two guys getting off the ride then hoping back over the car into the station queues and bypassing the whole line. The ride operators says she is only doing it for them because they are her cousins. Oh i guess that makes it OK.

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