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Have they moved from SheiKra to IG or do we now have warring factions of wasps at BGT?!!?

The only Pigeon Forge attraction I've done outside of Dollywood is that Jurassic boat ride. I thought it was hilarious, but the mannequins outside were scary. Great report, Adam.

Jeffrey has been posting updates on his Twitter, as they have been working on the theming in the show building: and updating us on the progress of the 3rd train for Iron Rattler:

Some pics from our visit today!

HOnestly, you can do both. They both offer early entry options that can help maximize your eperience. I have never stayed past midnight at either as I had did everything by then. HHN offers early entry to the lower lot at around 4-5ish. That way you can make your way down to the lower lot (or sneak into hogsmead lol) they usually open a maze or two early down there. Knock out those maze and by that time, most would have made it to the lower lot and the upper lot is more accessible and less wait times. Knotts offers the dinner with the early entry. you get to be in the park before KSF opens and take advantage of the houses past ghostrider then head to the back by xcelerator, knock out dark ride and the one behind xcelerator and finish the rest. I would do KSF that sat and HHN that sun. but if you had to chose one, I would go to HHN because knotts recycles mazes for forever before changing out so you wouldn't miss it if you go the next year. oh and your platinum pass doesn't work for KSF so you'd have to eventually buy passes for each event.

Park is going to building a new RMC single rail currently set to open March 30, 2024.

HHN Hollywood is not worth the money they charge. They like to think they're Orlando but they're not. If you're lucky you'll get one soundstage haunt, the rest are in existing queues or tents. The budget is simply not there, either. Endless empty black hallways with occasional lightweight sets and the only scares are sudden loud noises, possibly accompanied with an actor or dummy and flashing lights. Scary Farm is the clear winner between these two options. You'll have much more fun at Knott's and they have almost every ride open for the event. HHN has maybe four rides operational if you're lucky.

Went to the park for the first time of the season last Friday and all I can say is... wow. KI has done a lot to improve the atmosphere of the park over the last couple of years, but they've really pulled out all the stops this season shining everything up for the 50th. The Beast retracking has moved it back into my #2 slot at the park (just barely behind Mystic Timbers) and I suspect people will be really impressed with how well it's running now. You can still feel the trims (especially in the shed) but it still feels way faster than ever before, so I really don't mind too much. Racer looks gorgeous in its new paint job, and the GP has clearly responded well to the retracking, since it consistently has a wait now, when it used to almost always be a walk-on. And all of the effects are working on Adventure Express, along with a new lighting package and a repainted track! I also noticed new BGM throughout the park, with an attempt to have appropriate music for each themed area instead of just playing generic pop in each section of the park. I really appreciate all the little details like this that they're focusing on and it seems to be paying off for them. Hopefully they keep making little tweaks and improvements like this to really make KI stand out from other seasonal parks.

I have ridden Iron Gwazi on 11 separate days since pass previews started and this past Wednesday was the first time I saw any wasps at the top of the lift. I hope they can find a way to deal with it. The coaster has been having enough down time already without the wasps.

My God, just stop. Can someone post a Diabolical update please? Enough of this other crap.

Well it's been a month and I have a update from yesterday, some sense of order has returned to the park with the park not being a construction mess any longer. 1. Parking Work continues at the parking area of the park still no idea what they're doing here, solar panels on the extra parking are still not done so far I know. 2. Hotel No major movement on this front yet. 2.2 New path. The new main straight after the entrance has been set in use, the old one is completely gone, this change happened a day after I came to visit. 2.3 Path to Fata Morgana So to also address Robin point here: The path going to Fata Morgana is coming back, but this will be straight after the hotel in the future. This will most likely not be a bottleneck situation, the park had the single railroad crossing for years. The only thing that will have changed after all these years is that there is no longer a access point to the fairytale forest at this point, even after the hotel opens. 3: Things are better: Main Entrance is back in business. No more scaffolding. A lot more simple border. Top is back, but still will take a while for it to be in use again. 3.1: Kind of better but still: George and the Dragon reopened and not long after that a smoldering fire was detected on the fire track, they're fixing it but are using the water track as there is no danger to do that. 3.2: Kind of progress: A new dock closer to the fountain is being build at the entrance side is being build. 3.3: Construction update The renovation of the fairytale house has gone vertical. 4: New attractions in renovation. Baron has closed for the first time for renovation. Raveleijn despite running the show apparently (I didn't check to confirm) a problem with the mechanical dragon of the show and the show has do without it this has been a long running problem as it happens more and more that the dragon has issues and they're looking into a way to fix it more permanently this time. Both new attractions Archipel and Sirocco are undergoing renovation work, Sirocco despite that was open in the weekend and closed last week and upcoming week, it just gets temporary parts replaced by permanent ones (supply issues during construction). Archipel is getting ready for water to be added to the ride this includes a coating on the floor among other things. 5: story time Had double trouble at the Python yesterday. First I wanted to visit the ride and noticed single rider line was open at the entrance, went in and when I came to the station there was nobody appoint seats and people had to walk into the station themselves, while they had removed the chain at the single rider queue at the end the normal queue was a five minutes wait and I felt not comfortable to cut the line like this so I turned around and refused to queue in the normal queue as I wasn't feeling it any longer. Then I sat in the flying Dutchman and noticed the ride had gotten stuck halfway up the hill, when I took this picture after getting out of the ride the train already started to move again. That was everything.

Jersey folks are a special breed that never get over themselves. Snookie up!

Vogel Rok

The pretzels are hand made in front of you and delicious! Gwazi is incredible and so powerful. What a beast!

Ouch, I'm hurt? And yeah, the Golden Ticket Awards are kinda a joke around here, but with only 86 posts on a not-even-three-years-old account, I shouldn't expect you to know that. Have fun with your "amazing" Cedar Point experience, featuring: -30-minute-wait-after-merge with Fast Lane on two of their top 3 coasters -Their top four coasters being maintenance nightmares, and rarely running for an entire day straight. -Most of the flats not being on Fast Lane. -The only superb food being at Melt and Famous Dave's, which aren't even CP restaurants. -No sense of urgency by most ride ops. -Separate admission water park, without any Fast Lane-accepting rides (the swim up bar is nice, I'll give it that). -Complete lack of a log flume. Like I said, I do not question that CP has the better coaster lineup when compared to KI, and I still consider CP to be my number 2 favorite park. My opinion was, and is, that Kings Island is the better overall park experience. But this is a Six Flags thread, and arguing about CF parks belongs elsewhere.

You're wasting your money.

Seriously everyone as a teacher and a Mom I am disappointed in the behaviors, Play nice!

^I know right?! It was actually pretty cool of SeaWorld to do. There was a covid rule that the events had to be outdoors and they stepped up and gave a decent price to many of the local schools so they could still have the dance.

^I will say that last year the way they ran the event they were able to open up a second section of the park for private events and run both simultaneously. Kristen had her homecoming dance in the Antarctica area with Kraken included while Howl o Scream was going on on the other side of the park!

I still can’t believe they wouldn’t just run all of their coasters when they only have 4. It’s just so weird…

Awesome write-up! It's been over two years at this point since my family and I have been down Smoky Mountains way, and this is definitely making me eager to get back there. Little surprised that the Rowdy Bear in Gatlinburg got picked up by Ripley's, but I guess they still have their other location in Pigeon Forge going strong with the tubing mountain and a few other coasters. I wonder if the mountain coaster market down there has reached saturation point yet...

Great TR, Adam! I was also interested in that menu item on the right of the waffle fries & cheeseburgers. Looks nice and filling. Was it?

Thank you for the nice write up. Gotta love the smoky mountains

I just got back from an Orlando/Tampa trip and was able to ride Iron Gwazi. It was a fantastic ride, but it unfortunately did not live up to the hype for me. I rode Velocicoaster earlier in the week, and I much preferred it; it really shows how far theming can go to make an experience complete! Comparing to other RMCs, I put it behind Steel Vengeance and Twisted Timbers. Interestingly, I really enjoy the second half of SV that brutally nails you with a bunch of airtime hills that was described above. Because of the length of SV, it also feels like more of a dramatic experience. Even though IG has incredible pacing until the end of the ride, it feels as though it runs out of elements during the second half. The first drop, sideways airtime hill, barrel roll of death (way more crazy than I expected) and wave turn are incredible. After that, the stall and twisty bits just don't match up. It is kind of the opposite of Velocicoaster, which ramps up from beginning to end.

Interesting because I disagree 100% with this. To me SV is by far the more intense/ thrilling ride.

I prefer SV too, and by a very large margin. But SV is too intense for some, so maybe that's the reason.

Have you ridden both? I have. And I prefer Steel Vengeance.

Trip report from my 2 days at the park, Tuesday March 29th, and Wednesday March 30th. First I’ll start with the area around the park. Some said it wasn’t the best of area’s, but I thought it was fine. I walked a mile and a half to and from the park from my hotel both days. This wasn’t my first time at the park so I’ll start with what’s new: Iron Gwazi, and it’s a masterpiece! The most intense coasters tend to be my favorites, and Iron Gwazi takes my #2 overall spot. Bumping I305 down to 3, and sitting behind Steel Vengeance. Everything that makes RMC’s great makes this great, but at a higher level. And it being a walk on for most of the second day was just fabulous! The addition of Iron Gwazi also shot BGT up my park rankings to #3 behind Cedar Point and Kings Island. But it wasn’t JUST Iron Gwazi that did that. Some of the coasters were a lot more fun than I remember. Cobra’s Curse was closed on my first visit, so this was a new credit for me. And no coaster has ever exceeded expectations more than this one. I thought it would be a fun family ride, but this ended up being a top 50 coaster for me. Ranked ahead of quite a few inverts, wing’s, dive’s, and a couple hypers. Maybe I just LOVE spinning coasters, which means I need to get myself to Silver Dollar City this summer! Another ride that surprised the crap out of me was SheiKra. Now I’m not sure this is true, but it seems like they hold you up there a split second longer than the other North American dive coasters. It’s still very smooth, and very enjoyable. And it moved up to #2 in the dive coaster rankings behind Yukon Striker. Montu and Kumba were both running great as usual. Montu’s new paint job is AMAZING. Montu’s first half is still the best part of any invert, but it’s second half is below average IMO. Which is why it stays at #3 on the invert list behind Afterburn and Raptor. Kumba I’m still in love with. Still glossy smooth, intense, and overall just an awesome ride! I still prefer it to Maverick… The rest of the coasters are fun, but they ran as I remembered them. The only ride I dislike is Cheetah Hunt because of the hard restraints, they dig into the top of my shoulders, and the seat isn’t comfortable at all. That ride just wasn’t designed for me at all. And unfortunately Falcon’s Fury was closed both days due to high winds, and the sky ride was closed. Overall my visit was very fun, very enjoyable, and with the addition of Iron Gwazi I think this is now one of the super elite park’s in the country!

I get why people want to compare these rides, but I’m really not going to do it because they’re nothing alike. Space Mountain (in all of its forms) is a rollercoaster with very, very light theming on the actual ride by Disney standards. Mummy is much more of a dark ride where the coaster sections themselves are much less impressive than the ones on Space Mountain and are broken up by lots of show scenes but the whole experience is fantastic. I’m not picking a favorite and you can’t make me. I’ve been on Orlando Mummy, Paris, Anaheim and Orlando Space (and I love them all for different reasons). I don’t even know if I could pick a favorite of the three Space Mountains I’ve been on, let alone compare them to Mummy. I love the Paris mountain for being so unique (and more “coaster” than I’d expect from Disney), I love the Anaheim one for being a ton of fun and very polished ride, I love the Orlando one for being “Magnum in Space” and bringing a hilariously aggressive ride experience to a park where it doesn’t fit in at all and I’m surprised that it doesn’t kill people’s grandparents multiple times per day.

Just thought of this: Mr. Six on roller skates...wouldn't that make this ride Mr. Six's Hip Breaker? Seriously, it'll be interesting to see how far SFMM carries this theme. Personally, I kinda like it. Eric

Records, no. Bones perhaps...

Adam who?

Wildcat is terrible, rough garbage. I'd be fine with RMC. . or just bulldozing the damn thing.