coasterbill

It's set up so they'll be able to limit the amount of people who will be allowed into the area. They'll have a maximum occupancy and they'll abide by it by limiting access.

Obviously the coasters people enjoy are subjective and everyone has their own opinions but... really? That does explain why you're the only one in the thread who doesn't think Goliath is all that rough though. Some people enjoy being in pain.

Maintenance? Is the ride still operating? Mangnum is operating right now on the live cam which is a miracle considering the fact that it's a little breezy today so the park decided to close pretty much everything. I guess you can't blame the park for their wind policy though, why would a park on a peninsula in the middle of one of the largest lakes in America consider wind when building new rides?

I'm still trying to figure out why they did this... normally Six Flags lets rides go to crap with lack of maintenance and by cutting corners. Here they spent a lot of time, effort and money making the former best ride in the park so unbelievably terrible that nobody wants to re-ride it. The craziest thing is that the new trains don't even increase capacity. These things are completely pointless. I don't think you're far off with the Mind Eraser comparison by the way... I think Goliath is better but only by a little bit. I just looked and out of steel coasters I ranked it #14 in last year's Mitch Hawker Poll out of 186 steel coasters. As it stands right now I'm planning to put it at #183, actually one worse than the Volare but still not as bad as Mind Eraser.

I think Ninja is absolutely one of the best rides in the park... the only ride I like better is Tatsu and Apocalypse when they properly maintain it.

Front row is always the best on an invert.

I have to admit the first time I rode it I was very underwhelmed (that was back in 2001). I didn't ride it again until a few months ago where I had the exact same opinion. Then later in the day we rode it in the very back row and I have a whole new appreciation for that coaster. The difference between the last row and second to last row (or anything in front of it) is night and day. I'd have to say it's my favorite B&M hyper now, and it's also much smoother than Nitro, Intimidator and Diamondback... the other B&M hypercoasters I've ridden (none of which are rough, but they're not nearly as smooth as Apollo). The wait for the back is never much longer than any other row... do yourself a favor and ride it there and you'll love it. The ride provides some great airtime, especially on the first drop thanks to that weird pre-drop it has.

If Knott's ever built a giga people would hate it and talk about how it was ruining the charm of the park (especially if it went over Ghost Town). The ride would have to replace things and be built over things since the park has no room for expansion... everyone wants it now but if it ever happened the amount of complaining would be amazing.

I never liked the term "GP" because I think the way enthusiasts talk about the "GP" is ridiculously condescending. There are stupid people everywhere but they're not a representation of everyone who's not an enthusiast but that's a conversation for another thread I guess (one that we've already had). In my opinion if they take a ride that's anywhere from mediocre to terrible depending on who you talk to and make it awesome they shouldn't worry about stupid marketing gimmicks. El Toro didn't have any real gimmicks (steepest drop on a wood coaster, but who cares... 99% of people riding it didn't know that since the park didn't market it anywhere near the ride) but people still love it because it's an awesome ride, the same can be said for Maverick (someone might pull a stupid gimmick out of thin air but the ride didn't hold any important records when it opened). I don't know why people are so concerned with gimmicks and classifications (like saying they really want it to be a wood coaster because the park needs X amount of wood coasters or saying the ride needs x amount of inversions so it could have more inversions than any other wood coaster). If a coaster is really good and it's in a really popular park then a ton of people will ride it and tell other people how awesome it is. Pointless marketing angles are nice but they're not necessary.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because it's not the opinion of the majority but I think Alpengeist is one of the best inverts in the country. The first half is extremely forceful and while the second half is less so, the great theming and close proximity to the ground absolutely makes up for it. Plus, the second half of Alpengeist is still more forceful than anything you'll find on a newer B&M invert (minus Banshee). Alpengeist's cobra roll is awesome and I like the snappy turn into the mid course. It throws you around but it's not painful. Like I said though, this is coming from someone who loves pretty much every B&M invert and someone who loves Raptor which I know you said you weren't a fan of. I actually consider Raptor to be my favorite invert because of it's snappy transitions and relentless intensity, giving it the slight edge over rides like Montu, Afterburn and Alpengeist and blowing Banshee out of the water (though I really love Banshee).

I just went back and read through this entire thread. This is really excellent.

I think you guys need to give this ride the benefit of the doubt. I know it looks painful from the pictures but I'm sure they used high tech coaster design software and algorithms (RCT Loopy Landscapes) to ensure that this ride would have at most a "Very High" intensity rating.

My personal opinion is that both TTD and KK are amazing rides, and since I only ride them in the front I have a very hard time deciding which is better. I'll probably give TTD the slight nod only because it's main selling point is it's height, and on TTD you have an amazing view from the top rather than a view of the parking lot. They feel basically the same to me though and they're both amazing. If you don't ride in the front TTD is much better than KK but like I said... I don't understand why you wouldn't ride in the front so this isn't an issue for me.

Nobody cares about how many wood coasters a park has versus how many steel coasters they have besides hardcore enthusiasts. Even if people did care I would guess that at least 90% of park guests (understandably) think the park has 4 wood coasters right now (Blue Streak, Mean Streak, Cedar Creek Mine Ride and Gemeni). I would hope that Cedar Point wouldn't even put a second of thought into that, if they want to RMC Mean Streak and someone complains about it because they don't have the proper wood / steel coaster ratio then that person is crazy. As far as Mean Streak goes, my opinion of the ride is that it's just okay. It's not bad, it's not good... it's just there. I think the only reason people pay so much attention to it is that it's at a high profile park and it's taking up a lot of room. When people say it's one of the worst coasters they've ever ridden I really feel like that's an exaggeration based solely on it's reputation which it only has because it's at Cedar Point. If you want to ride a wood coaster that's truly terrible I'd like to direct you to Gwazi or Hades360. I think an RMC coaster would be amazing, but I don't think the ride is so terrible that they can't just leave it alone. I could see them going either way, but regardless of what they do I hope their "wood coaster count" doesn't get discussed ad nauseam because as long as a coaster is good I really don't care what it's made of.

That sounds like a typical ride on Kingda Ka when you're not in the front seat... if you get back to the park try to ride it in the front and you'll have a whole new appreciation for Kingda Ka. Glad you had fun anyway!

B&M coasters do sometimes break down occasionally, usually for brief periods but that's to be expected with any modern coaster. That being said, they're almost never closed for very long and breakdowns are usually infrequent. When comparing their coasters to a lot of Intamin coasters it's night and day... the problem is you can usually say the same for ride experience in favor of Intamin.

Wow, this looks really great. We'll definitely get out there this year.

Thanks for sharing, and personally I'd be very interested in weekly updates!

I think this would look a lot better if the entrance area was toned down a little bit. I like everything else though... nice to see this RCT2 renaissance at TPR. It's by far the best RCT game ever made.

That abandoned factory is simple but really, really nice. Great stuff.

That red roof is really overpowering, I like everything else a lot though. This has a great old school feel.

I really enjoyed this. Maybe we can stop by later this year while we still have the chance.

El Toro isn't so bad with a full line, that happens all the time and like Nitro1118 said it's 45 minutes... an hour at most. Nitro's line almost never fills up if it's not Fright Fest. You should never wait for Nitro during Fright Fest though as the line is about 2.5 to 3 hours when full even though if that happened on a regular operating day it would be much less. There are 2 reasons for that, one of which is that they sell too many Flash Passes so the Flash Pass line is all the way down the Flash Pass stairs and the bigger problem which Great Adventure really needs to control is the exit passes. Exit passes take up a ton of seats on every train which causes empty rows to go out since people were lining up to ride with their friends. The exit pass line can extend all the way down the top incline on the ramp and it screws everything up. Maybe someone can shed some light onto why this is such a problem at Fright Fest. It's not people with disabilities, so I'm assuming it's employees or friends of employees. In any case... avoid Nitro when the line is full at Fright Fest. Ride it in the morning or at the end of the night or not at all.

I absolutely love Flight of Fear, though the one at Kings Dominion is much smoother for some reason.

They're really not... on a Saturday in the summer the longest you'll wait for anything is 45 minutes except for Superman and SORA because of their capacity. We almost always go on Saturdays in the summer because we don't get too many days off from work and we always have a great time even without a Flash Pass. Fright Fest is a nightmare but that's the case in most parks. Agreed.