Boomers 25 photos HERE at Flickr. This is a good sample of how healthy the food is that most people will eat during a Florida vacation. I also included this picture to pad what is a very small update. Wednesday was the most relaxed day of the trip, but with a good bit of driving. This was from Cheeburger Cheeburger, a fast food burger joint. I had never been to one before, and was impressed. There were tons of toppings that you could add for no extra charge. This was not in my original plans, but I figured if I was going to go all the way to Florida, I might as well make the extra drive to Miami for the only wooden coaster in Florida outside of Gwazi at Busch Gardens. The Dania Beach Hurricane opened in 2000, and many claim it to be the best roller coaster in Florida. Given my love of wooden coasters, I had to make it down here. This is how it looked pretty much all afternoon. Me and 29 empty seats going around the track. Only twice the entire time I was there did anyone else ride the coaster. So dead in Florida this week, but like my resort, I almost wish there were a few more people, because I would have liked to ride with a fully weighted train. Again the weather called for storms, and I drove through some nasty ones on the way down, but they never reached the park during the day. At the bottom of this first drop is one of the worst potholes I have ever experienced on a wooden coaster. It is absolutely bone jarring. I found that I pretty much had to ride in the front seat to really enjoy the ride. Offseason (although there really is no offseason there) maintenance is coming up soon, though, so hopefully they can iron that out. Aside from the rough spots, Hurricane is a great ride in the front seat. There are several fantastic spots of ejector airtime. These last two drops may be the best part of the ride. Extreme airtime, especially the final hill onto the brakes. Boomers is one of those places where a big coaster looks a bit out of place. Inside is an arcade, and outside are some miniature golf courses and go-cart tracks, plus a couple small flat rides. Then, there is a huge wooden roller coaster. With a full train and the rough spots in the track ironed out, Dania Beach Hurricane is probably a top 10 coaster for me. As it is, I still rate it pretty highly. I must have ridden it at least 20 times, and could have kept riding it into the night were it not for the long drive back and an early wake up call on Thursday. While I was that far south, I decided I should at least do something else in addition to the coaster. Here I had probably my only healthy meal of the trip; a fruit smoothie and a wrap. Both very good. The beach is very nice, but swimming was off limits due to strong tidal forces from a tropical storm in the Atlantic. On my way back north I passed by downtown Miami. Boomers was on my route back, so I thought I might as well take advantage of my $12 wristband to get a few last rides in at dusk. I would definitely like to hurry back here. It's so far out of the way that the trip is hard to justify though without a visit to Miami or something else in the area. Ultimately, Dania Beach Hurricane is my favorite roller coaster in Florida. I think I made the right decision to spend a day traveling to Miami and back from Kissimmee just to ride it. So, as you can see, it was not exactly a busy day. The next write up will not be so brief, though, because Thursday at Disney World was a wild one. Return Home Content copyright Jonathan Hawkins