West Mifflin is home to Kennywood Park, considered one of America’s oldest traditional amusement parks. Its attractions range from classic rides to a dark water ride, with an outdoor focus added by T’s Trail. This makes for a clear choice when planning your trip: Should your stay be centered mainly on Kennywood’s rides and their history, or would you also like to include a trail with outdoor exercise stations? The differences below can help you decide which parts of West Mifflin best match your interests.
Kennywood: Classics and distinctive rides
Jack Rabbit is a classic wooden roller coaster with a 70-foot double dip. Auto Race, a classic attraction dating from 1930, offers a different experience: electrically powered cars travel along a winding wooden track. The two classics are distinguished by the features that define them: Jack Rabbit’s wooden roller coaster and double dip, and Auto Race’s cars and their course along the track. These details offer concrete points of comparison if you’d like to compare the historic rides.
The modern-day Racer also combines a historic date with a distinctive track feature: it was added to Kennywood in 1927 and is the only roller coaster in the United States with a continuous single track. Phantom’s Revenge can be distinguished by another feature: the ride has a 232-foot drop. The comparison therefore focuses on different aspects: Racer’s single track and Phantom’s Revenge’s drop height.
Park history in different forms
Old Mill is Kennywood’s oldest surviving ride and the world’s oldest continuously operating dark water ride. It is also a dark boat ride with unexpected, family-friendly scares. The historical details and the ride description offer two different perspectives on the same attraction: Old Mill has a special place in the park’s history and a clearly defined spooky theme.
Noah’s Ark opened at Kennywood in 1936 and is the last operating ride of its kind in the world. Here, too, a historical distinction can be paired with a unique feature. The Olde Kennywood Railroad, in turn, offers a ride through Kennywood’s history and views of the Monongahela River and Edgar Thomson Works. Turtle has been a Kennywood tradition since 1927. Together, these attractions show the different ways park history can be expressed through a ride, a view, or a long-standing tradition.
T’s Trail offers a different focus
T’s Trail includes a 3.1-mile WPIAL trail. In its third phase of development, the trail is open to the community and has outdoor exercise stations. Its focus is therefore clearly different from Kennywood’s rides: here, the emphasis is on the trail’s length and outdoor activity. Access may be restricted during scheduled school activities. If you’re planning to visit the trail, take this possible impact on access into account when planning your visit.
When choosing a stay in West Mifflin, you can start by considering what you’d like to focus on: Kennywood’s rides offer historic and unusual features to compare, while T’s Trail combines outdoor activity with exercise stations. This can help you decide which of these different discoveries you’d like to include in your trip.
Discover more destinations: Pine, Morgan, Carnegie, Whitehall, Imperial, Kennedy Township, Gibsonia, Bridgeville
For the broader travel overview: Allegheny.
