A Review of Carowinds Amusement Park in Charlotte, NC

I have been a NC native form my entire life excluding the 4 years I spent serving in the military. Of this NC time, I had never been to Carowinds. My move to Charlotte last year made it a priority on my theme park list. I had heard mixed reviews of Carowinds but, I wanted to check the park out for myself. My family had taken a vacation to Busch Gardens, Williamsburg and had had an awesome time. I felt. that if Carowinds was anything like Busch Gardens, I would be in a an excellent time! I soon found out that Carowinds was nothing like Busch Gardens.

I should have known by the current Carowinds commercial that I would be disappointed in the amusement park. The commercial I am referring to features a Carowinds employee searching through trash underneath a roller coaster. The trash is items that riders of the roller coaster are losing as they ride. Trash should not be a selling point in your campaign to attract amusement park visitors.

Nevertheless, I was excited to attend the park with my husband. We decided to purchase season passes. We assumed that we would visit the park many times before the operating season ended.

We arrived at the park gates shortly after opening. Since we were going to purchase our season passes at the front gate, we were not yet eligible to park in the designated season pass holder area. I must admit I was a little shocked when the parking attendant asked us to pay a $10 parking fee. This gave us extra motivation to pay for a season pass!

The walk into the park entrance gates was uneventful. We purchased our season passes and were ushered into the park by several Carowinds employees. Upon park entrance, we looked for the Guest Services Office so that we could get our season passes made and have access to the season pass holders parking area.

The Guest Services Office experience was fast but rude. Although it was a nice air conditioned building, the experienced was squashed by the rudeness of the photo takers. After having our season passes made, we still needed to upgrade our parking pass. We found the needed building and paid an additional $25 to purchase the parking pass.

We were finally off to ride the rides and enjoy the fun of Carowinds! Carowinds boasts that it contains over 42 rides. Please note that the rides include water rides and kiddie rides. We chose to go on "The Borg Assimilator" mainly because it was the fort big ride that we saw. While it is true that the ride lays you out flat after you are strapped in, the ride itself is unremarkable.

We continued to walk around the park area but, there was not much to see. There were no characters walking around or shows to sit down and watch. In fact, the only show was an ice skating show called "Endless Summer" and it played every two hors all day long. We did watch the show and found it to be disappointingly horrible. The best thing about the show was the air conditioned building in which it was performed.

I must admit, I did enjoy the wooden roller coasters , The Hurler and Thunder Road.

Rather than list all of the rides I will just get to the point of my recommendations regarding this amusement park. The bottom line is that Carowinds does not come close to being the ideal amusement park. If you like the look and smell of trash, then you will be right at home. It seems as if Carowinds is bordered by a landfill. The smell of foul water and trash overpowers the senses as you walk though several areas of the amusement park.

While it is true that the main rides are located in close proximity to each other, this does nothing with the traffic flow to and from the rides. If you are looking for a quick place to go to waste a little time then go to Carowinds. If you are looking to find a memorable adventure you would be better off going to Busch Gardens.