Matt M.
Google
Excalibur, made by CCI in 1998, is the largest roller coaster in Maine, and the second-largest *wooden* coaster in New England. I think it may actually be my personal favorite wooden coaster in the region, simply because at the moment it's running fantastically well, thanks to a recent retracking with Gravity Group's precut wooden track. It's not so smooth that you can't tell it's wood, but beyond the rumble that gives such rides their character, it's a very smooth ride.
The layout is basically a twister, beginning with some airtime-filled drops and camelbacks and proceeding into a second half with twists and turns inducing powerful lateral forces.
It's a grand ride with a nice presentation for a park this tiny. It is near the parking lot and looks impressively huge from there, but from inside the park, you get to it across a medieval-themed "Camelot Bridge" that passes through a lovely small wooded area. On the other side, there's a gift shop and a walkway sloping up to a castle-themed station. The seats on the train cars are labeled with the names of the Knights of the Round Table, with King Arthur in front. The station area also has a little observation deck for watching the coaster do its thing.
There are special lines for both the front row and the back row, in addition to the general line for the other rows. I recommend the back row; as with many coasters, the forces are great there since you get yanked over the hills. There are bins for your loose items in the station; if you haven't put them in a locker, I recommend using these bins as the ride does have some airtime.
It's one-train operations and not particularly fast operations, but on the day I visited, a weekend toward the end of the summer, crowds were light and this was not a problem. Excalibur's capacity was more than enough to handle the situation. The middle rows were nearly a walk-on and the back row just involved waiting a couple cycles.
The ops seemed to be letting people re-ride without getting back in line. I don't know if this is general policy, but on a light day it wasn't a big deal.
