Having left at around 10, we found ourselves arriving at DelGrosso's by around 4. The parking lot was across a highway from the park itself, so we had to take a pedestrian bridge to get inside. DelGrosso's offers a ride-all-day wristband, but since we were going to be there only a couple of hours, we opted to buy tickets and pay by the ride. We each bought 10 tickets at 50 cents apiece, enough to get all the rides we really wanted to.
Though I've been at DelGrosso's several times, including back when they had the unfortunate name Bland's, I'd ridden neither of the coasters that are at the park now. When I last visited, they had a different coaster, a small steel production model known as Zyklon. As unassuming as that ride was, I loved it because its first two drops offered extremely sharp airtime. However, DelGrosso's saw fit to sell it to another park (Blue Diamond Park in Delaware), and replace it with two new rides. Both were also production models, but catered to different tastes. Wacky Worm was for the kids, while Crazy Mouse was for older riders. Perhaps they decided that one ride couldn't serve their entire clientele.
Wacky Worm was right near the entrance, so we went over to ride it first. Though it's designed for kids, they allow adults to ride it too. Feeling a bit foolish, we boarded. The ride only has one drop of any magnitude whatsoever. More memorable, though far from thrilling, is the odd undulating section of track at the top. The train moves over it slowly, but the small wiggles in the track do give it a worm-like movement and a mild sensation that even the youngest kids can enjoy.
We continued on to Crazy Mouse for our other coaster credit. It is a spinning coaster, a style of ride that has become very popular over the past few years. Like the older Wild Mouse style of ride, the cars travel along a track featuring many sudden switchbacks and only a few drops, but halfway through, the cars begin to spin in random directions. Every ride is different. Ours was pretty good, with a fast spin at the beginning. On a later turn, the car reversed direction, a rare occurrence. All in all it's a good ride, but it's been so frequently copied these days that it's not as fresh a concept as it seemed when this kind of ride was first introduced.
We still had a few tickets apiece to spare, so we looked for some other rides to try. The first was Space Odyssey, though each of two different signs had the name misspelled! This is a standard Caterpillar-style ride, where the tubs travel around forward, then backward around a circle, over some small hills. They've added a twist that is common at a lot of small parks, enclosed it and given it music and a light show. We found our seats under the wooden dome, then waited for the siren to sound indicating the ride was beginning. The operator has the choice of song and control over the lights. Our song turned out to be "Footloose", not exactly a favorite of mine. Some operators are distinctly better at their light shows than others; perhaps my lack of appreciation for the song bled over into my feelings about the light show, but I found it unspectacular. The ending was the best part, simply because it tickled our sense of humor. As the ride was slowing down, all the lights went out except for a blacklight illuminating a poster of a panther, a very incongruous ending to the ride.
Next we took a ride on the park train. Since rides like trains aren't thrilling, they often take lower priority to me than coasters, unless they can be used to get from one part of a park to another quickly. If I have extra time to spend though, I'm happy to try a park's scenic rides. I think trains and sky rides, whether used for transportation or just scenic diversion, are all too neglected by many parks these days. The most beautiful of all, garden boat rides, are all but unknown in the US, though common in Europe.
DelGrosso's train is far from elaborate, but we enjoyed it. It runs by a little creek to one side of the park for a short distance before turning around by the picnic groves to complete its loop. It's a very short course, but takes a while to complete simply because the train is so slow.
We expected the train to use the last of our tickets, but found ourselves with one left over apiece. We decided to use them on the carousel. Unlike Lake Compounce's carousel organ, this one sounded in tune. This is representative of the level of upkeep around the entire park. DelGrosso's rightly has a reputation as being the cleanest, best maintained park around. All their rides look and run as if they were brand new, regardless of how long they've been there. It's a joy to visit the park simply to experience how immaculately it's kept up.
We'd used up all our tickets, but we remained at the park for one other reason, to get our dinner before the last two hours of our drive home. The park is actually a secondary business of the DelGrosso family. Their primary business is selling spaghetti sauce, so you'd expect their park to have good food. I almost always wind up getting their pizza, which is quite good. My only regret is that they don't sell some of their more specialized pizzas (such as white pizza) by the slice, only by the pie. We wound up sharing a pepperoni pie, which itself was well worth the stop.
All told we spent under 2 hours at DelGrosso's, but it made a perfect stop along our way. It was like taking a rest stop, but with the added bonus of being able to get rides. DelGrosso's is not exactly a thrill-seeker's paradise, but it's clean and well-run, has good food, and you can't get a better deal than 5 rides for $5.
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