coasterbill

I agree, no drop can ever beat El Toro's drop. Easily my favorite first drop on any coaster. ... but you might want to re-read the thread title.

As they should be Anyway I wonder what caused the crowds. We went to plenty of Haunt Saturdays last year and lines were never waited more than 15 minutes for anything (except Maybe Thunder Creek Mountain but that ride always has a line), maybe they had a bunch of groups in the park? That's incredibly strange but good for them.

My thought on it is that it's not going to break any top 10 lists and it really doesn't have any airtime but it's still a fun little gem of a coaster. It's one of the better rides in the park, probably my favorite after Batman, Wicked Cyclone and Superman Ride of Bizarro the Ride or whatever It's called this week. I bash the crap out of this park because overall it's terribly run, they have terrible staff and they make terrible decisions but the one thing they do right (that I always thought was pretty uncharacteristic of them) is they've always taken great care of Thunderbolt and I do give them a lot of credit for that.

I've heard so many complaints of roughness but the coaster couldn't get any smoother... it's seriously one of the smoothest wood coasters around. Plus that holds true in every seat since we've been forced to sit in all of them thanks to the fact that there's no choice of seat. It's just a great little coaster. To each his own I guess but I just don't get it. lol

Am I riding a different Thunderbolt than everyone else is? At this point I'm convinced that I must be.

Lol yeah I know, though they don't seem to run it much in September and October. On days where there's a chance it won't operate all day or the wind speed is borderline they usually don't open it at all. I get it... Staff is needed elsewhere but that always annoyed me.

Honestly the Super Himalaya one is kind of odd... obviously this has to do with staffing but I'm sure that ride only needs one op. They probably figured it's basically the same thing as Matterhorn though and to be fair they're kind of right. Then again... who really cares.

Good find, I knew it must be lying around somewhere... Anyway wow! Unless I'm imagining things It seems like they expanded their Friday night ride lineup quite a bit. Obviously Rougarou's been added but I feel like a few others have as well (was Mean Streak always open on Fridays?). That being said... ...ahem, excuse me? Oh, well screw Halloweekends then. I'm boycotting this entire event.

Okay so stupid question... the park is opening tonight but do we know what rides are actually open? I know Friday nights are always "limited ride availability" during Haunt, but normally they put out a list and I don't see one this year.

If Vortex is as bad as everyone says it is then a conversion seems like a no brainer. It did wonders for Rougarou and while I don't expect Vortex to be that good it could probably be one of the better rides in the park.

For Larson flyers, assuming you're right handed grab the sail with your left hand and turn it at a 23 degree angle until the ride really gets going. Then once it does (still using your left hand) jerk the sail all the way to the right and dive down. Simultaneously with your right hand pull out your iphone and open up "maps". Then type in "Knoebels Amusement Resort". Let it get you directions. While it's calculating the directions do whatever with the sail because seriously who cares... once the ride stops use a key to push in the hole in the ridiculously stupid safety seatbelt so you can get out of the ride, go to the car, don't get a hand stamp on the way out and drive to Knoebels.

Skull Mountain is a lot like Batman for me, it's one of those rides I like more and more every time I ride it.

Smart decision on your part.. especially the Knoebels part.

Before I even read the comments I was thinking the same thing. Keep being awesome coasternate! Great report... it looks like you had a great time.

Great report! Fury is just greatness (as is Afterburn). Glad you got to ride it.

This is a thing?

Shockwave follows the standard, familiar stand-up coaster pattern for me... great, smooth drop, great, smooth loop, thoughts of "Hey this isn't so bad", and then the rest of the ride is the equivalent of being in a car accident.

Yeah I know I say this a lot but I don't get why anyone wastes their time riding anywhere other than the front row on Ka. It's a ridiculously awesome experience in that seat.

I have to say that's probably the best video I've seen of opening day of Six Flags America's Bourbon Street Fireball "coaster". Isn't it a little late to be posting that now though? The ride's been open for awhile now.

Probably not. The next day is Columbus Day and that's their busiest weekend of the year. Saturday would be worse but I'd expect large crowds. If it were me I'd still go though... a busy day at Cedar Point is still better than being basically anywhere else.

While at first I was really surprised to hear this it actually does make perfect sense. Between the fast dispatches / lack of seatbelts / incredible reliability and the fact that it can run in every type of weather I guess it makes sense. I'm sure it'll pad it's numbers a ton during Holiday in the Park. By the way, are you working that event?

Medusa used to roll trains like nobody's business when it was brand new... then again they probably had plenty of available staff since they could pull them from the parachute drop, Evolution, Viper and the 25 random flat rides every day that were never open. I'll give Great Adventure credit, at least they've moved on point in their history.

This is unrelated to anything but the last 2 posts reminded me of something... When we were at the park we noticed the ride ops constantly mention Leviathan's "306 ft Drop" and Behemoth's "230 ft drop" (or whatever the exact drop height is... I know the ride height is 230). What's interesting about this of course is that everywhere else in Canada everything was measured in meters and any time we went anywhere where this came into play (The Skylon in Niagara Falls, the Niagara Skywheel, the CN Tower) everyone bragged about the height in meters. I acknowledge that this really doesn't matter at all but I'm curious... the only reasoning I could come up with for Canada's Wonderland doing this is because big round numbers like "over 200 feet" and "over 300 feet" sound cool and intimidating. Is this basically the reasoning here? Again... I know this is a pointless, stupid question but I found it interesting and now I'm curious. lol

At least from what I've seen Dragster and Ka are probably about the same as far as reliability goes (see: not reliable at all). Ka seems like it breaks down less now that it can't launch many trains thanks to Zumanjaro. Dragster puts a ridiculous amount of trains through per hour. I've never understood the huge gap in rating between the 2 though. Even if you prefer Dragster and find Ka rattly I still don't think Dragster should be ranked that much higher.