Photo TR: 2013 San Mateo County Fair

Blue Fire Guy · June 9, 2013

Yesterday I made my second visit to the San Mateo County Fair, the first being in June of last year. TPR members Angry_Gumball, JeffyJosephNorCal, and some other friends joined me for a fun day. Here are the highlights:

1.) Unique to yesterday (Disaster Preparedness Day), parking and admission were free for anybody arriving before 11 am.

2.) Butler had brought in a pretty cool selection of rides including an ARM/Larson drop tower (my favorite type of drop tower), a Gravitron, a Larson Fireball, a Zamperla Energy Storm, a 1001 Nachts, The Zillerator and a Wacky Worm (I already have the former as a credit), and a Zipper. Sadly, the Zipper wasn't ready to operate the day I visited and was sitting in a fenced off area of the parking lot , but that didn't stop us from having a lot of fun!

3.) Animals are awesome. There were the usual pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys, but there was far more than just farm animals at the fair! You'll see it all in the photos.

4.) There was this really addicting exhibit with puzzles involving brain teasers, physics, and just stuff you could get addicted to instantly and want to do for hours. This will be in the photos as well.

And now for the photos, enjoy! Angry_Gumball will have his photo TR of the fair up on this thread some time later, so stay tuned!

Arriving at the entrance, a line is building up.

Don't have to pay admission today!

And we're about to go in...

Kiddie carnival...

...and main carnival waiting to open. While the ARM drop tower looks small, it packs a HUGE punch!

Angry_Gumball tries out a simple ball throwing game to kill the time.

Here's the fair's Jeff Johnson credit, complete with an RCT-esque station!

Here's the kiddie carnival's ferris wheel, Eagle 16. This thing rotated unusually fast and looks way more ghetto than Century Wheel in the main carnival!

Bear Affair, similar to Dizzy Dragons, is one of those controllable rides that is very easy to spin.

Kiddie swings...

...and the Chance Yo-Yo for comparison. This was actually a very fun ride! Not quite kick-boodie, but there was some bumping!

OK, this ride is seriously f**ked up and doesn't make any sense. I'm keeping what's inside there a mystery, but it's just LAUGHABLE how bad this ride is!

Ah, gotta love some "fully licensed" theming!

I wish my legs weren't so long, otherwise I would be able to try out this crazy thing!

Here's one for the cat enthusiasts.

The Zillerator, a surprisingly smooth Pinfari death machine equipped with magnetic brakes.

While it was testing, it stalled! I wish it could have valleyed with us on it, but it didn't.

Sign of quality.

NERD SHOT!

Just about every ride here had wooden footers, a bit unnerving...

Nope, not the B&M hyper in NJ...

...but a revolution/frisbee/pendulum type ride. For some odd reason, this ran a much better program in the afternoon. In the morning, it didn't even overbank!

Tilt-a-whirl themed to football teams. Fun ride as always, and shifting your weight around makes for some great whip moments.

This is the funhouse where I walked into transparent walls around 15000 times!

Wacky Worm with a creepy face as usual, but it looks like it lost its antennae! LOL!

Another NERD SHOT!

More wooden footers.

Zamperla Energy Storm. While nowhere near as intense as the Soriani/Moser Energy Storm Extasy at Wiener Prater, this ride was still very crazy!

1001 Nachts...or 1001 Orgasms. "I like the narrowness of his jibs..."

1001 Nachts has "fully licensed" theming as well!

Here's Viper, a strange flat that's basically a banked scrambler.

Viper's sign of quality.

I need to say this again: This ride makes no f**king sense whatsoever!

To conclude the carnival portion of the photos, here's Century Wheel.

SUPER UBER NERD SHOT!!!

I'll call this "NOM NOM Alley".

Mmmmmmm...

RIP...

AKA Ghetto Zorbing!

And now for some animals! Starting with fluffy, fluffy bunnies filled with medicine and goo.

These chickens made eerily perfect eye contact with my camera...

Afro chicken!

In case you want to know Angry_Gumball's real name...

This looks like a half basset hound, half goat. Basset goat?

Turkeys everywhere!

And here are the ACErs...er, pigs. Either they're too tired today or they've just gotten off Grizzly or a "new-school" B&M.

Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Stay hydrated, it's really HOT today!

All the pigs had Disney names.

Even this one is Disney now...and he line jumps! LOL!

Hidden Mickey in a jacuzzi! (That's JeffyJosephNorCal's hand if you're wondering)

Here's an empty one...

...and a full one. The drink table in the middle is pretty cool.

OMFG! A TRACKLESS TRAIN!!! MOST AMAZING TECHNOLOGY EVAR!!!

A rock wall where if one gets to the top...

...they get $100. Nobody appeared to get even close to it!

These were seriously the most disturbing fair souvenirs I've ever seen...

...see what I mean?!?!

This animal exhibit was the best themed area of the entire fair!

Macaw. This bird is what the new B&M wingrider at Ocean Kingdom in China is themed to. No joke!

These hedgehogs reminded me of those adorable yet troublesome tribbles from Star Trek.

I have no idea what this bird is, so I'll call it the Cray-Cray bird.

Snakey!

More snakey!

Laughing kookaburra.

This exhibit was incredibly addicting and fun!

"Balls."

Best. Puzzle. Name. Ever.

This guy was showing this cool copter thing that could spell out messages in mid air.

Wheeeee!

AKA, The Smiler Booth.

Complete with marmalizing illusions.

It's the Triforce!

Overview of the main exhibition hall.

New hotness has been imbued within these old and busted cars.

Hi Cedar Point, how's it going?

To conclude my tr, here's the Zipper. Yeah, it's a bummer it wasn't ready the day we visited, but we still had a lot of fun! Hope you enjoyed the tr!

simon8899 · June 10, 2013

Thanks for the TR!

What do you have against wooden footers? They use them here all the way to compensate not level floor on the fairgrounds - many of the smaller carnivals here are built on grass fields with gravel walkways so they have to use them.

Could the carpet be a Weber Carpet - if so it has travelled a long way from Bremen...

Angry_Gumball · June 10, 2013

Had an AWESOME time at the fair and as said, there was a decent selection of flat rides and such. As already said, we spent a good chunk of time in the exhibits playing with science stuff/hands on goodies...this kind of stuff easily amuses me!

Starting the day off, we warmed up on the Viper flat ride. Bizarre suspended banked scrambler that did absolutely nothing until the seats switched direction and spun the same way as the main ride structure...that's when this came to life! Other than that, it was quite bizarre seeing the empty seats running with their OTSR's open. That would never happen in a Six Flags or Cedar Fair park!

Supershot...After hearing rave reviews about it last year, I had to see it for myself. Don't underestimate this stout, 70' tower...it actually feels like it launches you downward, leaving you airborne until you hit the mag brakes. The restraints are a bit sloppy too so that gives some nice wiggle room. Bonus points for not being able to tell how high up you are on the tower, and the fact that as soon as you do hit the top it drops...I mean, shoots you down. My favorite carnie ride there!

Energy Storm was another crazy one that had to be experienced. Concept is basically another suspended Scrambler-esque ride until the seat sections rotate 180 degrees until you're fully inverted. You remain inverted for what felt like eons...how could this could be good for people? This was very intense and left me pretty exhausted by the time the ride cycle ended. As I said on the ride..."MY EYES FEEL LIKE THEY'RE GONNA POP OUT!!!"

Chance Yo-Yo...or should I say, Kick-boodie! This ride was bizarre, often felt like my seat was reclining back and then shooting forward. Had I extended my legs out during the ride, I could have sent Blue Fire Guy sailing into JeffyJosephNorcal. When the ride came to an end, I did crash 3 times into Blue Fire Guy...pretty hard crashes too!

Other highlights:

-SMOOTH Pinfari coaster (Zyklon Z47?) that however stalled on a test run, and just *barely* made it on the second run...."ROW! ROW! ROW!"

-Wacky Worm credit

-Funhouse...lost in the mirror maze that we over-complicated

-Forceless Zamperla Nitro...ran a pretty lame program in the morning and ran an okay program later in the afternoon...left much to be desired.

-Animals!

-As said...Voyager...ride film is meant to be a mystery...yes it's that bad, will say it looks like something that was bought at the local Dollar Tree store And you know you're in for a quality ride when the first thing you see on screen is "DVD Player."

-And....rubber fetuses! I don't know why...they are disturbing yet amusing at the same time! I really don't know if this is a bad thing or not

So, I'll let photos tell the story from my point of view

Arriving at the SMCF! I spy a death machine credit!

Looks like we won't be needing these today (Free admission promo FTW!)

The group

While waiting for the carnival to open (had about 30 minutes to kill) we checked out the surrounding area/familiarized ourselves with the Fairground campus. Random Airsoft target shooting game.

Pickles! (A certain member of our typical CGA group would be in heaven right now...you know who you are if you're reading this TR)

3D-ish pig painting that only looks right at a certain angle.

(Already shown)...anyone want some Winkies? How about some Reos?

(They aren't authentic Twinkies...they're Little Debbies!)

Back to the Carnival...we have 2 rings - like objects!

Jeff...what on earth are you doing with the inflatable Superman?

Yay, we got our sexy blue unlimited death machine bracelets! Let's ride!

Let's start with the innocent-looking 70' ARM/Larson Supershot!

Uh...why do we do these things?

The Viper - strange Scrambler-like ride made by Wisdom.

Forceless Nitro... let the forceless B&M jokes commence!

Now the wooden footers...on this ride, you can actually hear creaking sounds as Nitro swung about. Sounded a bit scary

Zillie! (Zillerator)

Please don't (do) stall on us, please!

Wacky Worm, another Pinfari masterpiece...this was actually pretty fun! It had more airtime than El Toro and Skyrush combined!

Lift Chain Porn... Feeling excited anyone?

Super Slide of Death! Uh...this slide did NOT deliver the same experience as we faced at Global Winter Wonderland back in December.

It's a yo-yo in front of a yo-yo!

One of my favorite carnie flat rides...not just because I'm an avid yo-yo enthusiast.

...but because this thing actually reclines in weird ways and then launches you forward!

And in the end of the ride you actually SLAM into the rider in front of you...if you stretched your legs out, the poor rider in front of you would go sailing into the rider in front of them

I found these foot massage benches quite disturbing...

(Fully licensed) Shrek Adventure funhouse...scary suspension bridges to navigate!

Jeff is ready to TAKE THE TUNNEL on the plastic slide of death...where you can feel the slide joints run along your back.

And it's time for food!

Where to go, where to go? So many options!

Uh....yikes?

After eating, it was time for EATing! (EAT...exclusive animal time)

Yea, what?

Meet our friend, Necky! (You may remember Necky from the Donkey Kong Country games)

Sleepy pig

... if only they knew what lies ahead for them...

Oh God... (time to be mature adults and play with the rubber fetus!)

Ugh!

Back at the carnival area... I love Ring of Fire rides!

Can't forget you either Super Shot!

Want to see what's inside the Voyager? You sure? Welcome to DVD Player: The Ride!

Now that we witnessed what's inside the Voyager ride, it's time to move on. Let's see some aerials of the main carnival! Just behind Ring of Fire is the Zamperla Energy Storm of hot juicy death!