Our Trip to New England

With the success of our last family trip touring amusement parks, and with our bravery at an all-time high, we decided to plan another big trip – this time to visit all new parks in New England. It was a little bit of a further drive, but with our Six Flags Memberships in hand, it seemed to only make sense to squeeze as much use out of them as possible. And since they’d already paid for themselves at least twice over – why not make it three-times over?

So, we made plans to visit Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury, Connecticut, Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut (a sister park of Kennywood!), and Six Flags New England, in Agawam, Massachusetts!

Disclaimer: Just in case you can’t tell, about half of the images in this post were taken on my iPhone and the other half were taken with my DSLR. Sometimes, the best camera is the one you have easiest access to! I’m not crazy enough to have my DSLR in my hands at an amusement park all the time – especially with two little ones – that’s just not happening.

And so, we left on our 4-day adventure! And “adventure” was definitely a good word to describe the beginning of our trip. “Terrifying” and “Nail-biting” also would be good words! We drove thru some of the worst storms & rain that we’ve everdriven thru in our entire lives (meaning, we literally could not see the road we were driving on). And the worst part was, for a long time, we were driving right along withthe storms. So, typically when you drive, you drive into a storm, and then quickly pass out of it, but since we were headed in the same direction that these storms were, it was a bit of a race to get out in front of them & then stay ahead!

Thankfully, as insane as the weather was, we made it into Connecticut on Friday night! We literally weren’t sure how far we’d make it with the kiddos, so we planned to book our hotel while we were on our way – hoping to simply make it as far as we could. And we just about made it all the way there! These two munchkins were super-stars in the car!

Our first stop on Saturday morning was to Quassy. It’s a free admission park – you just pay for tickets (or an all-day pass) in order to ride rides. There was one ride that we (okay, let’s be honest: Derrick) wanted to ride at Quassy, so we planned to simply run in, ride Wooden Warrior, and be on our way.

Much to our surprise, Braelynn was tall enough to ride this Gravity Group wooden coaster! And, unlike when she changed her mind & decided she didn’t want to ride Oscar’s Wacky Taxi at Sesame Place earlier this year, she decided that, YES, she would ride this one with Daddy!!

Braelynn has ridden every single “kiddie” coaster at every park we’ve ever been to – but this is definitely nota kiddie coaster! This is a big wooden roller coaster & she was so brave to ride – in the front seat no less!!
And yes, she’s plugging her ears because she hates loud noises & wooden coasters are notoriously “loud”.

Look at her face in this photo (better than any “on-ride” photo ever)!!
After seeing this, I really was nervous that she was going to come off hating the ride..

..but she didn’t! After a moment of letting the big ride sink in, she decided she wanted to ride again – this time with Mommy! I was so proud of my big brave girl – and you can be sure that her Daddy’s heart was simply bursting with pride!
Go watch Derrick’s review of this ride over on his YouTube channel!

So, that was pretty much all we did at Quassy! In hindsight, we wish that we would have extended our trip out another day so that we could have spent the entire day relaxing at this park – it seemed like a real hidden gem & had some really fun little attractions (plus a cool-looking waterpark!)

But, since we had only planned to spend about an hour there, we were very quickly off to spend the rest of our day at Lake Compounce.

Braelynn found one of her very favorite rides at this park: the Elephants!

Much to our surprise, Lake Compounce has Daniel Tiger! It’s just a show (and the exact same show that Idlewild has), but it was such a fun surprise!

Boulder Dash was one of the “main attractions” at Lake Compounce – you’ll have to watch Derrick’s review of the coaster in a few weeks to hear my thoughts on it (let’s just say – it was super unique & I truly appreciated how cool it is being built into the woods & trees & mountain – but I’d probably skip riding it again).

The three parks we were visiting all sit fairly close to one another (way closer than the parks we visited on our last trip), so after flying by the seat of our pants with our hotel reservations the first night, we had booked the next 3 nights at a Hyatt – thanks to a fantastic deal I got! I’ll never forget Braelynn’s squeals of delight as we walked in to find a SUITE!! Especially compared to our first hotel room, this room was giganticand the kids absolutely lovedall the space!!

We spent the next two full days at Six Flags New England, and I’m so glad we did! With their hugewaterpark, it would have been impossible to ride everything we wanted to ride if we had spent just one day there. Plus, our first day there was superbusy (and we later found out it was a “buddy day”, so Members could bring a non-member friend into the park for a reduced price). 

Even though it was a typical “concrete-jungle” Six Flags park, New England sure had some really pretty coasters to photograph!

Wicked Cyclone was a hugefavorite – both Derrick & I absolutely loved this ride!!

Six Flags New England had two really nice “kiddie” areas, so while Braelynn was marathoning a few rides, Leander & I got to meet Tweetie Bird!! I really did try to get Braelynn to come over with us, but she was notinterested. Leander loved the experience though & simply wanted to hold onto her hand!

I might be a bit biased, but I love below photo that Derrick snagged – that’s me & my hair!

Our second Day at New England was a Monday & that means I had to take my weekly photo of Leander! Hotel setups are a little trickier than when I take these photos at home, but thanks to our suite – it was fairly easy!
(If you’re confused, I take a photo of Leander every single Monday – just like I did with Braelynn – they end up over on my Instagram if you’d like to follow along!)

Thankfully, the crowds on our Day 2 at New England were much thinner! We started out our day in the waterpark & then headed out to ride as many rides as we could!

One of my favorite photos ever. 

My sweet babies.

Six Flags New England had a handful of games that were “kid-friendly” meaning, if a kid was playing, they would simply play until they won – Braelynn won herself this fancy unicorn that way!

We closed the park down on our Day 2 at New England – so the kids were asleep before we had even pulled out of the parking lot. They were such troopers the entire day!

We spent more time driving home than it felt like we spent driving out to New England (probably because we ended up getting stuck in New York City for a little bit – in other words, we started our trip with a nail-biting driving experience and then endedour trip with a nail-biting driving experience!) But, we had a wonderfultime. 

We’ll have more to share about each specific park we visited in the coming weeks (so stay tuned for that)! Otherwise, we have one more “mini” trip planned for this summer – a way to cap off all the fun we’ve had! (how is it the end of summer already?!)