The Feria San Marcos is one of the larger fairs in Mexico with around 7,000,000 people visiting it during it's 3 weeks of operation, usually around Easter. This fair was the main reason for visiting the country so early in the year, and for rollercoaster riders it's important for one reason...time for another back story.
This is Tsunami, another of those Schwarzkopf coasters we seemed to be encountering on this holiday quite a lot. This ride was the last to leave the Schwarzkopf factory and started as most of these rides did on the German fair circuit in 1986. In 1996 it found a permanent home in Sweden for a year before being bought by the Six Flags chain who relocated it at their park in Houston where it remained for 3 years at which point it then moved west to the Six Flags park in San Francisco where I saw it sat in a parking lot when I visited in 2002. It operated between 2003 and 2004 when the park made the decision to put it up for sale. Whilst it was under the ownership of Six Flags it underwent some modifications including changing the layout to reduce forces and upsetting to most the addition of shoulder restraints to given the reduce the thrill factor; neither move was a good one.
Like The Bullet this ride fell off the radar until it appeared at this fair in Aguascalientes. Some people came to check it out at its new home but quickly realised it is only open when the fair is going on...and this now makes this a tough ride to get - just like it's brother in Jo'burg. In 2014 it was announced the ride was returning back to its birthplace to a park Germany but that fell through when the ride was deemed to not be up to the standard needed to operate in the country. Ironically it would appear the work done to "improve the ride experience" had rendered it unrideable, at least in Germany. It was OK to remain in Mexico where it remains.
So, we'd based ourselves in Aguascalientes so we had plenty of opportunity to hit the fair, this evening was our first.
A large dead woman statue at the entrance.
It was quite apparent that whilst the fair was in full swing, the big coaster wasn't as it stood in darkness at the rear of the park behind an exhibition tent that was also closed. We chatted to a security guard who told us it was only operating between 10 and 10. It was now 1030 so we'd apparently missed it.
So we consoled ourselves with the other coasters in the park that were operating. This was Speedy, a ride I wasn't familiar with and which quickly taught me a lesson of respect as it took one turn a bit too quick causing me to injure some ribs on the side of the car (I carried this pain for about a week)
An even better selection of rides than the last fair, all of which are operated by a showman called Garcia.
The second coaster was a Zyklon galaxy coaster, a ride that exists all around the world and which to be honest is pretty boring to ride. However this one had some great looking trains which held the track superbly and offered a really fun ride. This was one of my favourite rides on the trip.
Wacky Worm #4 didn't offer anything memorable other than me spilling the contents of my bag into the floor of the car and me having to run back to it having left realising my wallet was still under the seat. D'Oh!
So 1 coaster closed, 3 coasters open and ridden. Disappointing that we weren't able to ride the large coaster tonight but there was always tomorrow.
Now in researching this fair I noticed a Facebook post that mentioned a huge drop tower would be present, but we hadn't seen it. It turns out there is a second part to the fair which we caught sight of as we left. So visiting that would be part of our next day...
So that was day 2. 4 parks and 2 fairs. This is more than most people do in a week!
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