Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 49

COVER STORY Asbury Park Press Friday, June 21, 1996 D5 By SHANNON MULLEN rra nn an STAFF WRITER rat? doll. The Great White, the newest and biggest of the old-fashioned wooden coasters, is ready to swallow you It's called The Great White, a massive, wood and steel monster of a roller coaster lurking off the beach in Wildwood. The newest thrill ride of The Morey Organization, which owns and operates three piers and two water parks on the boardwalk, The Great White is billed as the largest roller coaster on either the East or West coasts. Coaster enthusiasts will be pleased, including those from central New Jersey contemplating the two-hour drive to Cape May County. 1 That's because The Great White is a monument to the roller coasters of yesteryear.

It's a long, 110-foot high, clickity-clack-ity, out-and-back, 1950s retro ride. You half expect kids in bobbie socks and pompadours to come tumbling out of the cars at the end of the trip. The Great White's signature feature is a 100-foot plunge just a few heart-palpitating jnoments after departing from an elevated platform high above the WildWheels Adventure Pier, located in the heart of Wildwood, one of four boroughs traversed by the board I owned company, is to reach a broader demographic than just fearless teen-agers. The experience is meant to be intense, but not exactly terrifying. Nobody's blubbering when they get off this ride, at least not in public.

One final rattle The excursion culminates with a giddy series of undulations that brings you perilously close to the coaster's match-stick undergoing. At the end, the cars come to a surprisingly abrupt stop that gives the nerves one final rattle. "When they hit the brake," Morey said, "if they're not screaming, we didn't do our job." The new coaster, which is dramatically illuminated from underneath at night, opened the week of June 10. Morey said the response has been encouraging. Frank Ellison, a coaster nut from Wilmington, compared it to the Hercules roller coaster, another woodie in Dorney Park, near Allentown, Pa.

He gave the edge to The Great White. "Hercules has a higher drop but this is a longer ride. With this one you've got like four or five descents," he said. Heading into the summer there's only one foreseeable problem for the Morey Organization and its new ride. His name is Raheem Turner.

The 14-year-old youngster from Wildwood is a huge fan of The Great White, but the company won't recoup one penny of their $4 million investment from him this summer. That's because the organization awarded free season passes, worth $210, to anyone in his class at Wildwood Junior High School who passed every section of the state-mandated Early Warning Test. The company apparently expected one or two dozen pupils would ace the EWT, but the actual number was 40. Turner was one of them. One day after school last week he raced off to the boardwalk, smilingly flashed his Unlimited Magic pass good on any of Morey's 100 or so attractions and proceeded to ride the coaster no fewer than 20 times in just a few hours.

And his summer vacation hadn't even begun. Come August the Moreys will be begging his mother to send him off to camp somewhere, like maybe Walt Disney World. A "once in a lifetime deal" is how a Morey spokeswoman phrased it. Next year's achievers, she predicted, will get something a little less outrageously cool. gC W')tJfm if I Midi- '-V' i .1.

j. LLA walk. Atlantic Ocean, dead ahead Before the big climb, the cars actually dip beneath the pier and bank hard to the right as go-carts race overhead. When you emerge from this tunnel, already breathless, the Atlantic Ocean lies dead ahead. Up and up you go until you're looking down on soaring seagulls and admiring the awesome breadth of Wildwood's free beach a good thousand feet of hard-packed, driveable sand, a shock in itself for those accustomed to the tiorthern Jersey Shore's relatively puny shore- Jine.i At the summit, the wooden track disappears beneath you and the fun begins.

i I Designers of The Great White made sure those all-important negative G-forces keep kicking in after that first gum-swallowing drop. "There's a rapid succession of high-speed twists and turns and several ticklish descents but no fancy loop-de-loops or upside down shenanigans. You'll get that kind of punishment on Morey's two other coasters, The Great No-r'easter on Morey's Pier and The Sea Serpent on Mariner's Landing, both of them a short trolley ride or vigorous walk up the boardwalk. BOB BIELKStaff Photographr I The aim here, said Jack Morey, vice president and chief operating officer of the family- Ten Sheehan, Rock Spring, Wyoming (left) and Tina Ieradi, Ridley, try out Wildwood's Great White roller coaster. Bra M.

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