Paramount’s Great America

Photo Sources: All photos are mine

Grizzly at California's Great America!

<- Previous | Start | Next ->

Opened: 1986 Manufacturer: Kings Island Construction Height: 91 ft (28 m) Speed: 55 mph (89 km/h) Length: 3,250 ft (990 m) My most recent ride: 2022

God I didn't know it was possible for a relatively large coaster to literally not do anything but somehow Grizzly pulls it off. Looking at some on ride POV videos to jog my memory of this one, it is so clear that this thing just absolutely crawls through its layout. When I rode it back in 2022, I already knew that it was a really tame ride so I more or less knew what to expect, but even then I was underwhelmed.

There are zero forces to be found here anywhere. Not on the drop, nothing in the valleys and definitely nothing in the turnarounds. This is definitely a family style coaster just on a bigger scale. To give Grizzly one positive though, it was a smooth ride. Apparently the ride had been re-tracked by GCI over the span of a few years and I imagine that did good things for the ride. I only rode it once and that was back in 2022, so I can't speak for how the ride ran before the re-tracking or in the time since, but when I rode it at least, I don't remember it being rough really at all.

That's mainly what saves it from being lower on my list. As dull and boring as Grizzly is, it's mostly harmless. Pretty much everything below it on my list that we've seen so far has some outright bad quality that I directly dislike. But being boring is Grizzly's biggest fault and in the world of faults a ride could have, it's far from the worst.