A 10-story, 90-foot vertical drop, and other reasons to visit Branson, Missouri
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BRANSON NEWS: “I’m watching a middle school marching band perform ‘60s pop,” texted Mekado Murphy, my New York Times colleague who had arrived just before I did to the Silver Dollar City Theme Park in Branson, Missouri. I caught up with him at the entrance, as a gaggle of preteens was finishing a spirited brass rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.” Both Mekado and I had gotten caught in the theme-park-fever weekend traffic that has of late hit this little city in the Ozark Mountains, an hour south of Springfield, Missouri. But we remained decidedly stoked about our mission: to try out the park’s brand-new Time Traveler ride, which cost $26 million to build and is the fastest, steepest, tallest spinning complete-circuit roller coaster in the world.
My roller coaster fandom is at about a 5. I’ll ride Space Mountain at Disneyland all day, but I’m not making a trip to California just to do that. Mekado is the most enthusiastic expert on roller coasters at The Times — he’s written 10 articles on the subject since 2010, while holding down his day job as an editor on the Culture desk — and the greatest theme park fan I have ever met who is not a 10-year-old boy. “It’s a controlled thrill,” he said. “You’re secure and you’re moving on a track, but the way that track twists and turns offers so many possibilities for excitement.” Mekado advocated for Branson to be on the 52 Places list and wrote the entry. Growing up in Oklahoma in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he used to come here regularly on vacations to see Andy Williams or fiddler-with-flair Shoji Tabuchi. He usually skipped Silver Dollar City, though, which opened in 1960 and mimics an 1880s mining town, complete with costumed characters dressed as train robbers. He …
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