Note: The Local Insider does paid and unpaid reviews of restaurants and attractions. This is an unsolicited one.
I’ve always been a big fan of amusement parks, but I’m less a roller-coaster guy and more an enthusiast of unique smaller rides.
I also love quaint New England, the presence of big shade trees, and not getting ripped off at every turn.
Enter Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire, one of few amusement parks left where those big old-growth trees are respected and embraced, left in peace instead of tearing them out for those ridiculous ornamental replacements.
The park is also respectful of history, giving detailed information on the various rides.
I’ll admit that my experience taking my daughter Añalia to this New Hampshire park on a double date with another dad and his daughter, Andrew and Rosie, was colored deeply by the nostalgia of my youth, but speaking as objectively as possible, I still rate it as the best amusement park I’ve ever been to, and it’s not particularly close.
It was a magical August day with no flaws, aided by perfect temperatures in the high-70s.
My grandfather, Erik Skaanning, worked as a pressman for Massachusetts newspapers for a half-century. His bosses would hold their company outings at Canobie Lake Park, and since he had legendary status and his grandchildren lived with him, he would take us with him each summer.
I hadn’t been back there since I was a teenager, and I was so happy at how little of the park’s character had changed. I even saw those company outing tents where I used to eat all the free hotdogs, baked beans, and corn that I could.
I knew we were in for an epic day when our daughters immediately noticed the old pay phone on the wall and ran to inspect it.
“At the amusement park, and we found the biggest attraction,” I posted.
From the Turkish Twist, that wildly spinning room with the floor that drops out, to the two-story carousel, to the gas-powered race cars, it was everything I remembered.
My sons are big on those giant roller-coasters, so they scoffed a bit at my pronouncement of the park’s perfection, but I’m standing by it.
Speaking of coasters, the Yankee Cannonball got bonus points for making you feel like you’re going to fall off, and for giving us a history lesson on our way up the steps. Built around 1930 for original installation in Connecticut, it was sold to Canobie Lake Park in 1936. When the ride was dismantled and moved, each bay had to be shortened by six inches to fit within the smaller ground area available.
The wooden “out and back” coaster has a track length of about 2,000 feet, and the highest vertical drop is 63.5 feet. A pair of three-car trains reach a speed of about 35 mph for a station-to-station ride time of one minute, 52 seconds.
The first hill of the ride was demolished by Hurricane Carol in August of 1954, but it was rebuilt the next season. Canobie Lake Park named it the Yankee Cannonball in 1983.
I learned that I’m still not a huge fan of rides where I dangle, such as the Sky Ride or Giant Sky Wheel (ferris wheel), but I managed them with the only side effect being clammy hands.
Another quality that’s great about Canobie Lake Park is how quiet it is. You can’t really hear the ride operators giving instructions very well, and I learned later that this is because they don’t use speakers in the park, including for a central PA system. Apparently because it’s on a lake surrounded by homes, they need to maintain peace and quiet for their neighbors.
The park also doesn’t have an over-the-top theme to it, and I loved that it fully embraces New England, from the Boston Tea Party to the Boston Red Sox.
The most surprising highlight for me was the ice cream priced slightly lower than many local coffee shops, for very generous portions. For those who frequent such places, this dynamic is almost never the case.
Still, five out of five stars.
