coasterbill

Everyone knows Knoebels is my favorite park anywhere ever period, but you really have to have the right mindset to understand what Knoebels is and what makes it great. If you go to Knoebels to ride the coasters and leave, you're doing it horribly wrong. Don't get me wrong, Flying Turns and Impulse are fun, Twister is absolutely spectacular and Phoenix is one of the best coasters on earth, but despite that I feel like the coasters are secondary in that park. At a corporate park I rarely ride flat rides, but at Knoebels I ride them all. They all run long, super-intense programs. We love the coasters but things like Downdraft , Paratrooper, the great old Mini Golf course with the hole that launches the ball through a tube up a hill, the Looper, the world's best Bumper Cars and Flyers, StratosFEAR, Flume, Black Diamond, the Mansion, Skyway, the Carousel with the brass rings, Kozmotron and Fandango are just as important to the Knoebels experience. When you go to enough corporate parks it's so refreshing to go to Knoebels. Every ride runs the best cycle it can run, every coaster is perfectly maintained, all ride crews are ridiculously efficient and they have rides you can't find anywhere else or rides that seem like the same rides you can find at other parks but they run much better programs. And then there's the food, the carousel organs throughout the park, the old school fun atmosphere, the great free museums. The park is an absolute gem. I guess it's not for everyone but if you go into it and dedicate time to ride the flat rides, take in the atmosphere, eat the food, ride the old dark rides and check out the museums it's really one of a kind. There's nothing out there like Knoebels and I'll take it over any corporate park.

I going there next week with an enthusiast friend who loves it, and goes a lot, so I'm excited to hear this about it! I knew about Ravine Flyer II being great (my friend's #6 coaster), but like that is sounds like the whole park is nice and charming to go to as well! You're in for a treat. This park is a gem and doesn't get praised nearly often enough! Definitely my #1 vote for this thread. I hope you're staying till close because Waldameer after dark is pure magic and RFII night rides are life-altering. I almost said Waldameer too. I went with Morey's but Waldameer was a really pleasant surprise. It's a really pretty, clean, well manicured park with a really fun atmosphere. Going to Conneaut immediately after helped to further enhance that opinion but even before that we really liked it.

No problem just felt like it was a lot of general statements that aren't always accurate from previous years and insulting to the employees in many instances. I've met and talked to several good employees for all the ones that aren't and yes I agree there are plenty that do suck. That can be said for any business. Also on the ride side SFNE did get the largest Sky Screamer and GA did make theirs larger based on feedback. It can happen and it's been designed so it's not custom in my mind. Either way a new coaster is coming to SFNE! Eh, it goes without saying that there are some employees at SFNE that are great and I've encountered some of them but we go to a lot of parks and as a whole Six Flags New England routinely has the worst staff of any corporate park anywhere and the worst staff overall outside of Jolly Roger and Rye Playland which are both together in a league of their own. It may not be a nice thing to say, but in my opinion it's also an honest observation. That's not to say they don't have a few people that rise above the climate of mediocrity and rudeness towards guests but those people are the exception, not the rule. The staff is a little better than they used to be. Ironically I think the single worst year they ever had staff wise was the year they were voted by the Golden Ticket awards as the 5th friendlest park in the world (which had to be done sarcastically).

By "custom" I mean a Free Spin that's never been built before, because so far there are only 2 of them and they're the same exact design. Just like this one will be. Also, I'm agreeing with you that that would be great. I never said it was a bad idea, I just said it would never happen. So I don't know what the problem is honestly. We're basically on the same page.

Don't kid yourself. This happens with every park. If it's a park where they get new rides all the time it happens because they're spoiled (as you mentioned), if it's a park that never gets anything it happens because people bitch that "We waited XX years for a new coaster and it's just a stupid (Insert anything that's not an RMC or Intamin here)". If it is an Intamin or RMC they'll still complain, they'll just wait until it opens and the complaints will be about "vibration" in the case of an RMC or the restraints if it's an Intamin.

That's nice. So what's that supposed to mean? Just making a statement. It means that I totally agree with you that that would be wonderful, but there's a better chance of this park running 2 trains on Thunderbolt, giving guests free soft drinks, not hiring a**holes to work at every food stand and offering to give every guest a complimentary b***job on the way out than actually getting a custom free spin. (Can I say that? I know Robb has said it. Oh well, I'll put stars there. Stars make everything better)

That's nice.

Not busy at all. Please note the ridiculously asinine hours that day (1 to 10 PM) and that Early Entry for passholders won't be available.

Yeah but their policy is changing now and as of late last year they've been cutting ride lines early to avoid that. Personally I find that policy deplorable but it doesn't really matter what I think.

I believe every coaster and some other popular rides (like Skyway) all close about 8 to 10 minutes after close regardless of line length and run as long as they have to to empty the lines. It's not at all uncommon on busy days for rides like Millennium Force and Dragster to be running an hour or longer after the park closes. Take notes Six Flags.

No.

I'll most definitely be back, but the trip will have everything to do with Montreal and very little to do with La Ronde. I'll pop in to ride Goliath, Vampire if it has no line and La Pitoune (easily the best ride in the park and it's not even close) just because we have a pass and then get the hell out of dodge and go eat and drink the day away in Montreal. Yup. I want to say it's $10 per person for a ride which is a little steep but worth doing. The first time we went we got wristbands which payed off quickly but this time it was late so we just bought tickets for White Lightning and the bat sh*t insane Paratrooper. Honestly I'll probably do this every time we go to Florida and then get a drink or two (just because they're so cheap). I love Fun Spot.

Yup, that's 100% legitimate. Here's the direct link to the town website and the planning board agenda. Not a bad addition.

Much like with the people in this thread, for the media it's apparently not possible to just wait for the results of the investigation so they're interviewing people who went to the park who know nothing about how the water slide works and using their quotes to create news articles that may or may not be true but it doesn't matter because they need to invent stories and ride the wave of interest and don't have time to wait for any real information to come out and validate these claims. These accounts could be true, or they could not but I'm not paying any attention to them. I'm waiting for the actual investigation.

Flats? This is Six Flags New England. They're allergic to flats. Tell that to the most recent ride that was added to the park. It's not a flat ride, it's "An all-new seven story soaring and inverting coaster!" that's "unlike anything you have ever experienced". How dare you.

Flats? This is Six Flags New England. They're allergic to flats.

A few reasons, 1) We went to Canada's Wonderland / Toronto / Niagara Falls / Marineland last year 2) Because we had never been to Montreal and wanted to go, and it didn't disappoint. We enjoyed the city itself much more than we enjoyed Toronto simply because Toronto really felt like any American city and there wasn't anything that made it terribly unique. We went to a Blue Jays game which was fun and did the CN Tower Edge Walk which was amazing, but the city itself was very generic (though very nice) while Montreal is simply oozing with culture. 3) Because the beer in Toronto sucks. Like seriously... god damn.

Thanks for the great feedback everyone. ^ I like this guy Okay! Here's Part 1 of the La Ronde Report. Buckle up... DISCLAIMER: I usually like to be positive in my trip reports because I usually enjoy every park we go to, but this is going to be difficult with La Ronde. If you like this park for some reason (lol then again does anybody?) and get upset when people bash it, DO NOT READ THIS REPORT. You've been warned. ---------------------------- Over Memorial Day weekend we decided to make our first trip up to Montreal. We didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t speak the language, we didn’t know too much about the city and even though we were only 5 hours from home it felt like we were planning a trip to an entirely different world. Some may laugh at this but we’d never ventured anywhere where English wasn’t the primary language and we really weren’t sure how the experience would be. I’m happy to say though that the city is amazing. The culture is wonderful. People are friendly and unlike in America they’re always welcoming of foreigners even if they can’t speak the language (though we tried but our attempts were piss poor to say the least). Montreal is an amazing place. The cobblestone streets are filled with history. Everywhere you look there are small French eateries, some of the best food in the world, amazing architecture, cute little shops and tons of great people watching. The city as a whole has an incredible vibe to it. It’s very welcoming, a cultural melting pot and even though everyone can’t always understand one another everyone was incredibly friendly, helpful and generally very happy. That being said, every city has it’s scars. Away from the carnival atmosphere, the happiness, the fun and the incredible culture there’s a depressed part of town. They tried to hide it… they even put it out on an island away from the city so people wouldn’t notice it. It stands in stark contrast to the fun, festive and unique nature of the city. It’s cold, it’s generic and it’s miserable. Some say the sun never shines there. A mysterious sh*thole on an island out in the abyss. What’s the name of this sh*thole you ask? The locals call it, “La Ronde”. At “La Ronde” everything is generic and lifeless. Soulless clone after soulless clone is separated only by decrepit walkways and mostly crumbling buildings. Anything that breaks goes unrepaired. Trains sit un-dispatched for what seems like ages and ages. Urban legend says that once a train goes into the transfer area on one of their rides it sits there forever to rust… never to be seen again until all rides are left with just a single, lonely train. … okay, okay I’ll stop. But god damn this park sucks. Like what the hell? Six Flags really outdid themselves this time. Generally speaking with any park we visit we can find some positives. Sure, there’s no such thing as a perfect park and every park has it’s flaws (well… unless you happen to be in Elysburg, PA) but this park is an absolute dumpster fire. This would be a really nice little boardwalk / walkway, but you can't walk on it because it's fallen into a state of disrepair and they have no intention of ever fixing it. Welcome to La Ronde. Have a Six Flags Day. We arrived on a Satuday around noon and planned to spend the remainder of the day there and then return the next morning for passholder ERT on Goliath and finish riding whatever we didn’t get to ride earlier before spending the rest of the day in the city. Upon arrival we were directed to the back parking lot so it was apparent that the park was pretty busy. We entered the park planning to get the bad rides (aka just about every ride in the park) out of the way first and then hit Vampire and Goliath last. It quickly became apparent that those rides might have to wait until the next day since the Vampire crew was stacking trains and taking names and the ride had a 2 hour wait and thanks to VR, Goliath had a 3 hour wait and was averaging 10-12 minute dispatches. That being said we wanted to start our La Ronde adventure off with a bang so we decided to seek out a real winner to start off our day. Scanning the park map we came across "Super Manège". According to Google this means “Super Horsemanship” but it’s the ugliest horse I’ve ever seen so we went with RCDB’s translation of “Super Ride”. Well okay, La Ronde! You’re feeling confident today. In America we name our amazing rides things like “Maverick” and “El Toro”, but I guess in Canada when you have a coaster that’s this wonderful and amazing you proudly announce it to the world by declaring it “Super Ride”. Obviously our expectations were through the roof as we approached this piece of Vekoma greatness. We strapped ourselves in for our super-riding-horsemanship adventure and prepared to embrace the greatness and um… yeah Lol such false advertising... Good thing this isn’t America or someone would sue them for false advertising. To be fair the ride wasn’t that bad, but it was far from good and it’s name had us convinced that French Canadians had a pretty sick sense of humor. After the super horsemanship ride we decided to continue the greatness and make out way over to Cobra. An Intamin stand-up coaster. Besides the Carowinds Vortex I despise all stand-up coasters but I was particularly worried about this one since I’ve never heard a single good thing about Intamin standups. The queue line is a joke, the paint is chipping off of everything and the ride sounds like death every time the train (notice how “train” is singular… that’s a recurring theme) pulls into the “station” (if you could call it that). Let’s forget about the ride experience for a second, this is the ugliest god damn ride ever. Somebody please paint the thing and go to Home Depot and buy some mulch. Sorry I mean go to "Home Depot: L'Entrepot de la Renovation du Quebec" and buy some “le mulch” for “le sh*tty montagnes russe Manège le painful dumpster fire piece of sh*t ” (my French is really good, and to anyone who lives in Quebec… yes, Americans are all as dumb as you’ve heard, I’m living proof of that). I didn’t really take any pictures of this ride (you’re welcome for that), but it was terrible. Not quite as terrible as I expected (I think Riddler’s Revenge and Green Lantern are worse) but it was pretty terrible. At this point we were still forming an opinion on the park so we tried to make it look good. Look at us... so hopeful... so full of optimism... so naive. Determined to keep the mojo going our next stop was Le Monstre. We honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this one but figured the ride had potential to be pretty good (Spoiler Alert: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) and we needed a break from the crap. The ride certainty looks imposing This ride has 2 tracks (that don't race) but as far as I’m concerned the ride is one credit because neither of us had the patience to ride this crap twice so we got in line and were pleased to see that they were running both sides so the ride was probably running efficiently and the line would probably move fast (Spoiler Alert: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). As the line dragged (and dragged) on we realized that both sides were running 1 ridiculously short train and taking forever to dispatch it so actually while the line was on the ramp the entire time we ended up waiting an hour. Somehow we got a front seat ride and I have to say, while pretty good for La Ronde, this ride sucks. Some of it had topper track on it which obviously rode nicely, but the rest of the ride was a jackhammering nightmare with no airtime, interesting moments or redeeming qualities. The ride is visually appealing (which at La Ronde is a welcome change) but god does it ever suck. After Le Monstre we were honestly getting exhausted with the crap rides. We thought of riding Goliath but the 3 hour wait and atrocious dispatch times deterred us so we bit the bullet and decided to go for the SLC. Let me take a break for a second and point out that this ride actually looks really nice. The entrance area is themed, the location is great, the paint looks like it was applied this century and it was (brace yourselves) running TWO TRAINS!!!!!!!. Seriously though the queue area was impressive. I mean, it’s not Disney. But after suffering through the queue for Cobra and Monstre a “Loch Ness Monster” level queue line seems like Tokyo Disney Sea. I love the placement of this ride. Wow, I just realized I spent a few seconds praising the park, but don’t worry because now it’s time to talk about how the thing actually rode. Yeah… this ride sucks. Don’t get me wrong, for an SLC it’s one of the better ones. It’s better than Mind Eraser at SFA and SFNE, Fly the Great Nor Easter and it’s horrific Canadian cousin at Wonderland but even a good SLC is still a terrible ride. I don’t really have much more to say, so let’s move on… even talking about this park is exhausting. After that we had over an hour before park close, so we figured we’d go ride Dragon and then finally hit Goliath and end the day on a high note. Dragon is an indoor coaster that we purposely did no research on. I have to say, this thing is easily the third best coaster in the park. The theming was cheesy and dumb but at least it was there. This is a fun little coaster and I actually have nothing bad to say about it. Kudos La Ronde! Things were looking up and we still had 30 minutes to get in line for Goliah! Just kidding. And as soon as we started liking the place they had to go and “La Ronde” it up. Apparently the park closes all coaster lines 30 minutes before closing as one final reminder of the pure sucktitude of the park on your way out. We were almost defeated, ready to leave but then we learned that there was still one coaster operating. We still had a chance to end the day on a high note! What great news. Excited we ran over to the coaster to get one last credit for the day... Ugh... it's the f**king Boomerang. Sorry "le" f**king Boomerang. This has to be a joke right? Now I have to say that Brit and I were still optimistic. We don’t share in everyone’s hatred of Boomerangs and while some suck, we enjoy a lot of them like Flashback at SFNE, Sea Serpant at Morey’s and Carolina Cobra. We both decided that as bad as the park was, we’d both be happy with a nice boomerang ride to end the day as long as it rode like one of the better ones. Some of them were a little rough but dammit we had reason for optimism. (Spoiler Alert: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) Okay this is the worst boomerang possibly ever. Not only does it do that typical boomerang thing where it slams to a stop 500 times in the station when it parks, but the entire thing is a headbanging nightmare. How is this thing allowed to operate? Seriously how???? So that put an end to our first day at La Ronde. We were pretty exhausted at that point (because this park is exhausting) so we headed back to the hotel for a few drinks and to get a good night sleep so we could get up early for ERT and then spend the rest of the day in Montreal. That concludes part 1 of the La Ronde trip report, but first let’s play a game. The game is called… Is this a backstage area at La Ronde that we snuck into in order to bury a dead hooker or is this seriously a major midway that’s one of the first things you see when you enter the park? What do you think? I'm leaning towards the dead hooker... The answer to that question (and more) in part 2. Get hyped!! And for any locals who are offended, while I hate the park, I'm going to gush all over the greatness of your city in part 2. Please don't hate me yet.

Glad to hear it's not just me.

You guys are the best. I need to get to Holiday World soon.

Thank god he's banned. He had started sending me (why me?) PM's defending his knowledge of engineering and I really couldn't take any more of those.

While everyone is different and I totally get that and respect all opinions, I legitimately feel bad for anyone that goes to Knoebels and doesn't have an amazing time there. Not every park has to be a corporate, concrete, soulless place with flat rides running mediocre (at best) programs.

CedarFanboy... 15 years old and somehow the voice of reason. You and tykunkel1031 give me hope for the future of humanity.

Not to speak for anyone but once you spend enough time on this board you'll understand why Prozach is entirely sick and tired of humanity in general (and in his case he's a police officer who gets to deal with the same type of stupidity out in the field, in the real world all day, every day times ten). In my case I've grown to have a pretty quick trigger finger on this board and I admit that, but it's hard not to after awhile.

People are really this stupid. My honest opinion is that people saw your post about people "vomiting words at the screen thinking that by writing anything it will make them appear as though they have some sort of knowledge on the subject." which is an incredibly accurate description of what's going on. They then decided that they needed to prove that they were they exception to the rule by vomiting more words at the screen but surrounding the words with other words like "pinpoint", "investigation" and "safeguards" to make it sound like well-thought-out word vomit so that you would realize what a stellar member of the community they were which of course leads to more asinine posts. I think there's a misconception out there that being intelligent means you have to be knowledgeable about everything. It doesn't. Sometimes being intelligent means knowing what you don't know and letting the people that know what they're doing (like the people performing the investigation and people who actually design water slides for a living) figure it out before jumping to conclusions. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know anything about water slide design. I wasn't there so I didn't see what happened. I'm going to wait for the investigation to run it's course before forming an opinion."