coasterbill

Well played.

It looks good on weather underground too which is my personal favorite weather site. It also looks like any chance of precipitation (which is less than 25%) will be late in the afternoon.

For some ridiculous reason yes, they still have it. They have no problem removing popular rides in prime locations and not replacing them but the one ride that nobody will ever see is still operating. It used to be a little better when it was near the entrance to the waterpark but now it's down a pathway that's not inviting at all and almost looks like the entrance to a backstage area. It makes no sense. The problem isn't really Goliath, everyone loves Goliath. A lot of people, even people on this site (myself included) consider it the best coaster in the park since Bizarro is a shadow of it's former self at this point. Goliath is a great ride which always has long lines and it's a coaster that I think is really underrated. The problem is that Flashback is still there even though Goliath is much better, but to be fair it's still really popular even though it's a horrible ride.

You have some great ideas but this is Six Flags New England we're talking about here. They don't usually replace flats, they just remove them or replace them with a flat they already had and then they leave that ride's old pad empty. Rodeo, Time Warp, Colossus (this one really is unforgivable), Spider, Double Trouble, Chaos, Nightwing and now Twister have yet to be replaced with rides. Colossus was replaced with a swing ride we already had and that ride wasn't replaced... Nightwing was replaced with a Trabaunt we already had and that was never replaced. Besides that all we have in place of these rides are smoking areas, a bathroom, games, or usually nothing. They've left much larger pads empty... this ride had a small footprint so it's easy for them to pretend it never existed. There's no way they're going to replace it with a ride.

Oh my god this looks horrible.

It's too bad this park is in the middle of nowhere. I'd love to get out there one day but I really don't see it happening just because of it's location.

That looks great, I really hope they maintain it well. I can't imagine the fog lasting for more than a few seasons but I really want to be wrong.

God I have to go on one of those soon! Are they that awesome? Of all the drop towers I've been on (Lex Luthor, Mach Tower, the Gyro Drops at KD and KI, the 2nd gens at SFA and Carowinds, the 1st gens at SFMM, SFWOA, Dorney and CP, a ton of S&S towers and a ton more that I'm forgetting) that little drop tower at Knoebels puts them all to shame. None of them are even close.

This is really an amazing story. Thank you so much for sharing it. I can't wait to read more.

Amazing pictures!

It depends on who you talk to. Dollywood won't start Wild Eagle (or any of their coasters) when the temperature is below 40 degrees but they'll run them until it gets to 35 once they're started. Hersheypark won't run Great Bear (or any of their coasters) unless the temperature is over 50 but once they start them they can run until it gets into the lower 40's. Great Adventure doesn't care about weather at all. They'll run coasters in sub-freezing temperatures and flat rides in severe thunderstorms as long as there are people in the park. They even opened the park in the morning the Sunday hurricane sandy hit. It all depends on the park, but I'm sure since since it's the opening of the ride they'll figure out a way to get it running.

I think that even if it's not as crazy as their other towers in terms of the time you're actually dropping, I think the fact that you're facing the ground will more than make up for it (as you pointed out). Plus it's still testing so it may be operating much differently on opening day. ARM/Larson towers defy the laws of physics.

I'd answer that question but then it would just turn into the conversation from a few days ago all over again.

It sounds like the park decided to close at noon today because of the weather. I can't say I blame them... the place must have been empty.

This may sound strange but Monte is probably my favorite coaster in the park. I can't get enough of that loop... it's probably my favorite vertical loop on any coaster (though Kumba is close). Normally I think traditional vertical loops are kind of dull inversions but the one on Monte is incredibly forceful.

This looks like a really nice park. Great report!

^ I know everyone rotates around all the time but were you by any chance at the panel on Saturday afternoon? When the ride op said that El Toro was the best wooden coaster in the world, better than Goliath at Great America I figured he must be an enthusiast. lol

I don't think anyone said this coaster wouldn't be fun. Everyone knows it will be... we're just saying that it doesn't look like it's going to be on the same level as B&M's older coasters like Montu and Raptor. If comparing coasters isn't your thing then that's great... but saying that people are "sucking the fun" out of it by doing that is a little over-the-top. For me at least, it's fun to speculate about the ride before it opens.

It looks like they're testing it again today. By the way, Monster's new paint looks really great.

Saturdays are busy, but you'll have no problem riding all of the coasters without a Flash Pass (assuming you don't ride the Safari as it will take up a huge portion of your day). Still, I would get one as you'll want to re-ride a lot of rides... especially El Toro. Unfortunately Kingda Ka will not be open... but El Toro will more than make up for that.

The skycoaster in Kissimmee. While the ride was totally safe and skycoasters have an impeccable safety record this ride still made us feel like we were going to die. It was awesome.

It's open... I suggest riding it first thing in the morning before the line gets unbearably long. They cut off the line around 4 PM on Opening Day.

While I am surprised to hear that this happened, I'm not surprised to hear about how they handled it. This park has a serious issue with their staff and they have for the last few seasons. We usually go to about 20 different parks each year and SFNE consistently has the worst staff of any of them. They're extremely inefficient, inattentive and usually flat out rude. They also ignore all posted park policies and make up their own. How you don't even go over and glance at the ride vehicle in question when someone brings this to your attention is beyond me. It could be a serious safety issue if it detaches when the ride is going over 70 MPH. Yup... sounds like they're in mid-season form.

The effects were coming on but the timing was way off. When you go through the ride everything is dark, then everything would turn on when there was no car around. I noticed that when we were on the brake run.

I'm so glad someone else saw the hair on the Nitro catwalk. That was hilarious. We spent the whole day at the park and had a great day. Operations were a little slow on most rides (except El Toro and Nitro where they were great) but every coaster was running all of it's trains, the skyride was running both sides and El Toro was running amazing. It made for a great opening day. We rode all the adult coasters (except Superman), the skyride (twice), Sky Screamer and the Parachutes. The longest we waited for anything was 30 minutes for Batman in the front row. I actually thought El Toro was running really smooth today (and much faster than it was last opening day). The ride rattles in a wheel seat, especially the front row of each car but it has for years. Just ride it in the middle row of a car if the rattle is an issue... trust me there won't be any more rattle. We have a Magic Mountain membership from last year (we live in New York... long story, lol), with an old pass they don't even make you use the finger scanner. You just scan the pass and walk right in.