Nickelodeon Universe, American Dream Mall

Visited: November 19, 2022

Attending: Brian, Buzzed Bars Coaster Club

This trip is one of the BBCC’s smaller trips, called a “wobble” instead of a “stumble.” In this case, the “Gobble Wobble,” given its proximity to Thanksgiving. Those of us who live in the northern half of the country don’t get to ride year-round coasters, so we’ll often jump at the chance when available. This Nick Universe is in the American Dream Mall in the Meadowlands, very similar to the one in Mall of America, but much closer. Even though it opened a while back, I hadn’t been. There was some issue with pricing early on, and one or more of the coasters always seems to have maintenance problems. But on this day, all five were running, and the club took advantage. I took a short two-hour drive up the New Jersey Turnpike and met folks in the parking garage. Eventually, we made it inside, and even more eventually, we found the park sometime around 12:30.

The park is very visually impressive, loud and colorful, and of course being indoors magnifies the sound. It wasn’t too crowded when we arrived, but filled up later in the day. Despite being indoors, there are large windows facing east, and the park was quite well lit. I was surprised that although the park has strong theming to kids’ cartoons, four out of the five coasters were pretty extreme. Even several of the flat rides seemed extreme to me. There were some kiddie rides, but almost nothing in the middle range. We initially got in line for Slime Streak, but folks who’d been there before concluded the line would take 45 minutes from that point, so we decided to leave it for later.

Sandy’s Blasting Bronco

This was the one coaster that I knew nothing about going in, as it’s the only one that doesn’t have a counterpart at Mall of America. Pretty much the only things I’d heard about it was that it was the last coaster to open, and it was frequently down. So I had no idea what to expect, other than that it had some backwards elements. It’s a fairly small Intamin, and basically looks like a few loops next to each other. Which pretty much describes it. There’s an LSM launch straight into an immelman, then a dive, another immelman, and a slow rollover, then back to the start. Not very notable, except at that point, the entire loading area is on a turntable, which rotates 180 degrees, and then launches you through the ride again, except facing backward. I’ve gotten to do some backward launches recently, but this was just kinda strange. And made me rather dizzy. It’s an interesting ride on a tiny footprint, which makes me surprised there aren’t more of these. It’s well in the back of this park, and folks didn’t seem to be able to find it, so it had very little line.

TMNT Shellraiser

Shellraiser was my highest priority for the day, so we went over there next, and I was blessed with a walk-on. It’s a Gerstlaur Euro-Fighter model, which I’ve ridden before, but it happens to have the steepest drop in the world at 121.5 degrees. (It’s a clone of Takabisha in Japan.) I’d also heard it was unusually rough, especially in the back. The cars are tiny, two rows of four, and I drew the front row all the way on the left, so I was off to the side of the track. I’m not really sure if that explains what went wrong, but I didn’t enjoy it much. There was an almost immediate rattle that jarred my teeth and threatened to give me a headache. Which is a shame, because the layout is unusual, if not really creative. There’s a jojo roll out of the station, which I normally appreciate. Then a straightaway with LSMs to launch into the first few loops of the ride. Which is odd, because there’s a vertical lift hill, but it’s in the middle of the course. The lift goes up above the roof of the park, into a cut-out with windows that face east, so you can see the Manhattan skyline while it hangs you there, Hang-Time style. The drop is just a drop…if you’ve done one beyond-vertical, this is pretty much the same. I really wish I knew what caused me to be so uncomfortable, because I think I disliked this more than I should have.

It was around 2:00 at this point, and Matt declared he was hungry. I’d had a filling breakfast, but I thought maybe hunger was causing my problem too. Given that the remaining two coasters were spinners, I thought it best to get something to eat. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that Matt intended a sit-down restaurant, so the lunch break was longer than I expected, but the barbecue chicken quesadilla was pretty good.

Shredder

After my extended break, the half-pipe was down for a while, so I gravitated toward Shredder. It’s a Gerstlauer spinner, a clone of the one at Mall of America, and heavily intertwined with Shellraiser. On Gerstlauer spinners, the riders face the middle of the car, which I find less exciting than other models. There were four of us in the party, so we tried to arrange seating so there’d be a weight imbalance, but that turned out to be futile. We barely got any spinning at all, except for a few swoops around big curves. Matt was very disappointed, but I was just kind of “meh” about the whole thing.

Timmy’s Half-Pipe Havoc

While we were riding Shredder, the half-pipe reopened, and somehow Matt finagled us totally unnecessary skip-the-line treatment, so we rode in two batches. I wasn’t real fond of the half-pipe at Mall of America, possibly because I’d never done anything like it before, but this one didn’t seem nearly as intimidating. It’s the same size (20m), but seemed a little more wedged-in than the other. Perhaps because I knew what to expect, I enjoyed this one more than my previous ride. There’s not a ton to say about it; it just goes back and forth. The spinning seemed less intense, but I’m not sure that was it. I’d ride one of these again, but there’s only two in the US for the moment.

At that point it was getting close to 5:00, and most of the crew were thinking about rolling out to get to the bar that constituted the next part of the evening. I wasn’t, so I got in line for Slime Streak again, but after seeing just how slowly the line was progressing – they had one train, and one of the five cars was closed to riders – I decided I didn’t really need that credit, and I just went home.