![]() "If I fit, I sit like a cat in a box," Derek laughed. He will travel – and we have – hours and hours out of our way for some kiddie coaster that's considered a (coaster) credit because he counts all his coasters," Doug said with a laugh. "For Derek, there's no coaster too small. 'A big crazy adventure': Teen who biked from Alaska to Argentina is backpacking his way home Counting coastersĭerek has now ridden more than 1,200 roller coasters. Park tips How can I get the most out of my Disneyland trip? Pro tips from insiders who know it best last year, making special trips for most of them. Diabolical." They did wind up riding every new coaster in the U.S. It's a shame we can't get on it.' So for our birthday, we planned a trip to go ride Dr. "It was the end of October, and Doug was like, 'You know we've been on pretty much every new roller coaster that opened this year. Diabolical’s Cliffhanger, which is billed as the "world's steepest dive coaster," when they DJed at Six Flags Fiesta Texas' Pride event last June, but it wasn't open yet. Whenever they travel to new cities for gigs, they try to ride roller coasters nearby. "I'm thinking about music and coasters all the time," Derek said. Nowadays, Derek and Doug are DJs and music producers. They began traveling on their own for coasters in college and got really into it after moving from Rhode Island to California. "Surprisingly, we didn't get sick," he said. He said one rainy day with low attendance, they rode the Corkscrew roller coaster, their first upside-down roller coaster, over 30 times in a row. "And we would ride as much as possible, even if we weren't supposed to." The jobs included operating games and giving guests temporary tattoos. "We just loved being in the park and you know, we would do anything," Derek said. When the brothers were 16, they got jobs at Rocky Point Park, a Rhode Island amusement park that opened in the 1840s and shuttered in the 1990s. And as soon as we did go on the big rides, we fell in love." ![]() ![]() "We don't want to spend our summer vacation in museums, so that forced us on the rides. Even back then, tickets weren't cheap, but nowadays, the starting price for daily park admission ranges from $39.99 at Kings Dominion, with its Early Days Deal, to $109 at Universal Studios Hollywood. "They're not going to spend all this money going to these theme parks," Doug chimed in. "And our parents said, 'Well, if you're not going to ride the big rides, we can just go to museums for the rest of the trip.' " "We're looking at these big rollercoasters, and we're thinking, 'We don't want to go on, and we're too scared to go on.' Do you remember?" Derek said, turning to Doug, who immediately agreed. They were at Six Flags Great Adventure, the first stop of theme park road trip, which also included Hershey Park, Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. The brothers vividly recall their first "big rides" at around age 10. "But my passion was theme parks." Turning point "Then I remember I was talking to my mom one day about EPCOT and the different countries that have (pavilions), and she was like, 'If you focused this much on your school work, you'd be getting straight A's,' " he added. "I remember one time being a kid, there was an amusement park book, and our mom would read us pages from it like as a bedtime story," Derek said with a smile.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |