coasterbill

I don't think anyone has ever mixed those rides up, and if they did I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that they both have "flight" in the name.

Believe me I wasn't implying that there was... it's definitely one of my favorite coasters and my favorite wood coaster by far.

One thing I like about El Toro is that you can't see the crazy ending at all thanks to Rolling Thunder, for first time riders that's pretty cool. Hopefully some well placed landscaping will keep this semi-hidden from people waiting in line.

I disagree. This brought joy to my heart.

I didn't think Rolling Thunder was rough in any way, shape or form. It wasn't even bumpy... but it was really, really boring and it made terrible noises around turns. I agree with the last poster about the ride racing also. When trains were sent at the same time one train would always win by about 10 seconds... this ride couldn't effectively race unless they adjusted the lift speed or sent one train a little later which would make the first half of the race very uninteresting. While I didn't care for the ride at all I am surprised to see it go. Old wood coasters in large corporate parks are very rarely demolished unless they're extremely painful and this one wasn't at all. I also think they could have turned the train backwards on one side and generated some buzz for awhile. They seem to be in love with turning coasters backwards lately and I'm surprised they didn't do that with Rolling Thunder. I kind of get the feeling that this ride was suffering from some mechanical issues over the last few years that were getting expensive to fix. It seemed like one track or the other kept closing for a few weeks while maintenance worked on it and just judging by the sounds the ride was making it seemed like they needed to do a lot of work on the trains. Obviously I'm just speculating but I think rising maintenance costs were definitely a big part of this decision.

This is great news. I actually think this is one of the best rides on the park. Then again I've never ridden an Arrow suspended coaster I didn't like.

For all the people that say "Shockwave at Kings Dominion", have you seen the line lately? I agree that this ride is horrifically bad and one of the worst coasters in the Northeast, but for some reason that I'll never understand people eat up stand-up coasters and this ride always has a long line. As far as what I'd tear down I'd agree with the poster above me that Mind Eraser at SFNE needs to die. Even on busy days it's rare that it gets a line... move it to Great Escape or something where people don't know any better and replace it with ANYTHING else. Ideally I'd love a Batman clone but we all know that won't happen... I think something like Dare Devil Dive at SFOG would be a good low-cost option for this park that people would really enjoy. Plus you probably wouldn't be able to choose your seat on it so it would fit in perfectly at SFNE .

^^I'd agree with that. We got exactly what we expected. I really enjoyed the ride but it's not even on the same planet as Phoenix and Twister. It's a fun family coaster, a great addition to the park and kind of a living museum of Flying Turns coasters. I like the ride a lot but it won't blow anyone away or come close to any top 10 lists.

I love their flying coasters, I don't understand why people have an issue with them. The same goes for the giant inverted boomerangs.

We went to KD over the weekend and had a great time. We got a hotel near the park Friday and Saturday night so we made the 6 hour drive Friday night and got there right before midnight. We spent all day Saturday in the park (10:30 am - midnight) and stopped by on Sunday morning for a few hours before we drove back home (and stopped for an hour or two at SFA to ride Batwing, Superman and get my Roar credit) on Sunday afternoon / night. I'll save everyone the long TR but I wanted to mention a few things. Fastlane: Since there is some confusion, I305 is on Fastlane (I know a few people mentioned that) and they did away with Fastlane Plus. The park was absolutely slammed on Saturday. Volcano's line was back to the store, I305's was out near Flight of Fear and even Windseeker was all the way back to the Skycoaster ticket office. That being said we got more rides in than I could count and never waited more than 10 minutes for any ride all day with the exception of Volcano. Even with the crowds you got instant access to the stations on every ride... there was never a Fastlane queue (except for Volcano which I understand). Even on Volcano the wait would have been 20 minutes if we didn't wait for the front (it was still only about 30). On I305 you could always get on in 5 minutes or less. I know ideally you should avoid Saturdays in October but when you're coming from far away it's not always possible. Thanks to Fastlane we got on more rides than we can count. Every ride had queue lines spilling out the entrance and even rides like Backlot and Avalanche were hour + waits but with Fastlane it wasn't an issue at all, even when most stores had sold all of their Fastlane wristbands. A few notes about the rides: Dominator - I want to preface this by saying that I know I sound like a crazy person right now, but Dominator was running INSANE on Saturday and besides the older inverts I've never had a more intense ride on a B&M coaster. This is definitely a back seat ride, the way it yanks you down the first drop and through the second half of the loop is incredible. I remember riding this last year during ECB ERT and it was a lot of fun, but nothing like this. I can't believe I'm saying this about a floorless coaster but this is a really intense ride and it really blew us away. I've had hundreds of rides on floorless coasters and I've enjoyed all of them, but wouldn't consider any of them overly intense, they're just fun re-rideable rides. Dominator in the back seat is a serious exception to the rule. Flight of Fear - They need to seriously re-consider closing this for a Haunted attraction. We knew the ride was closing at 5:00 so we got a ton of rides in, and even early in the day the line was spilling out the entrance. Once it became a maze, the line was never spilling out of the entrance and compared to the other mazes it seemed to be really unpopular. I'm assuming Flight of Fear can put through a lot more people than this stupid maze can so if Flight of Fear had a full queue before the park got really packed and the haunted attraction with a lower capacity had a shorter queue when more people were in the park, why would you close Flight of Fear? As usual, the ride was awesome. I think this ride is highly underrated. The theming is very good for Cedar Fair (I know it's a Paramount ride) and the ride experience is outstanding. This is the only coaster where I really don't know which way is up when I'm riding it. Seriously... why would you close a ride this good and this popular for a Halloween maze? Log Flume - First of all... kudos for leaving this open into October. Second of all, I really enjoyed this flume. It seemed pretty long and went way back in the woods. If you enjoy log flumes, don't miss this one. I305 - Between Saturday and Sunday I lost count of how many times we rode this. Every single ride we had on it was amazing, even first thing in the morning. I always thought the ride was slightly overrated as the over the shoulder restraints take away from the experience of the airtime but the first drop and those 3 twists are really insane. This is definitely a top 10 ride and I'll probably need to move it up a few spots after our night rides on Saturday night. We sat in a lot of different places (including the front) and I can't pick a favorite, it's a great ride in every seat. Overall we had a great time. We usually get to this park once a year and it's one of our favorite parks in the chain. They have a great coaster collection and it's much nicer than a lot of Cedar Fair parks (probably because it still has the feel of a Paramount park). We can't wait to go back next year.

Except I305 (assuming it's not on Fastlane since everyone has a different answer on that), the only coasters not on Fastlane are mediocre at best. Having the drop tower, flyers and flume on there are pretty cool too. I'm definitely getting it on Saturday since it will be our only trip of the year. By the way, it's nice to see a park actually keep the flume open into late October (according to the website). More parks should do this.

I just called the park (I feel like I've reached a new level of nerdiness for calling them but we're going down this weekend and it's a 6 hour drive, 2 nights at a hotel and Fastlane for 2 people so I wanted to make sure there was no truth to this before booking everything) and they said that the ride was open.

Are you sure they didn't mean that when I305 was closed most of the year they took it off Fastlane? They discontinued Fastlane Plus this summer when the ride first went down... it's been that way ever since. ^^ I was not there Sunday but had a group of non-enthusiast friends who went down to Virginia for the Zach Brown concert and went to KD on Sunday. They were all posting a ton of pictures and raving about I305 on Facebook.

So if the ride was open Sunday, when did it have time to break down between then and now since the park has been closed every day since? I'm really not buying this.

Pretty much all of their food is medicore unless it comes from an outside vendor. Fortunately there are enough outside vendors that you can get some good food without leaving the park and going to TGI Fridays or Famous Daves (though I'd still suggest doing so). If you want great park food at Cedar Point go to TGI Fridays and get the Jack Daniels burger. It's quite possibly the best burger I've ever eaten in my life. If you insist on eating in the park I suggest Chick Fil A by Maverick or Panda Express which is "appropriately" located on Frontier Trail. Keep in mind that Chick Fil A is (of course) closed on Sundays... even at Cedar Point. Oh, and avoid Midway Market at all costs. We didn't realize what it was when we sat down but it backs up to the picnic area and I'm 99% sure they make the food for the picnic area in Midway Market and take it out the back door and just make a little extra, give it a decent presentation and overcharge people for the buffet in the park. It's brilliant, but the food sucks. I know you would think that at a buffet you'd be able to find something good since you have so much to choose from but no... there's nothing good. That place is crap.

It's nice to see a lot of other people mentioning the zero G roll on Batman at SFNE. It's the best zero G roll I've ever experienced because you really do feel like you're floating through the whole thing. I know that's the point of a zero g roll but the weightlessness is very drawn out compared to other zero G rolls.

Exactly, if I don't have a long drive ahead of me and I'm staying near the park I always get in line for my favorite ride right before park closing. With crowds like that if you got in line for one of the more popular rides near closing by the time you get on the ride and exit the park you'll have much less of a problem getting out. I don't want to sound insensitive to the people who did have long drives ahead of them but I can't feel too bad for them because if you go to Halloweekends on a Saturday you should be prepared for huge crowds. Sure this was worse than anticipated but it's not like the major traffic jam should have come as a shock to anyone. Cedar Point needs to look into this and try to work on the problem, but the people in that video were being really over dramatic. They acted like the thought of being stuck in traffic with dead cell phones for a few hours was the equivalent of being stranded on a deserted island with no food, water or shelter. It's not the park's fault you didn't think to buy a USB plug for your car at the dollar store so you could charge the phone so you didn't have to deal with the horrors of actually having a conversation with your friend in the passengers seat.

If you drive from Knoebels to Kennywood as Larry is suggesting you're going to drive right through Altoona PA. If you do this it would be a terrible shame to miss Leap the Dips at Lakemont park. It's the worlds oldest coaster and it's a lot of fun... plus since you'll be on I-99 anyway it would only take 30 minutes of your day to ride it and the Skyliner (which is a good wood coaster). If you're a credit whore feel free to ride the Toboggan too. If you're a real credit whore stop at Del Grosso's which is also right off of I-99 just a few minutes away. Doing both parks would only take you about 2 extra hours... but if you're in a serious rush and don't have 2 extra hours you should still make time for Leap the Dips. You won't regret it.

We did and we did all of the mazes. Wicked Woods is by far the best, Total Darkness was a bit of a letdown but we also went on a Sunday so it may have been understaffed and the house in the Houdini attraction was a lot of fun... not too scary, but a lot of fun. That being said, an hour and a half drive is worth it even if it's not Fright Fest.

I hope you're right, I'm expecting it to open in late June and I'm expecting Kingda Ka to be closed for the first few months of the season while they work on it. Label me a pessimist if you want but when June rolls around we'll see if the ride is open yet.

We went to this park yesterday so my girlfriend could do some credit whoring. We live about 2 hours from Great Adventure, SFNE and Great Escape but never go to Great Escape because of their limited coaster collection... but when faced with a Fright Fest Saturday at Great Adventure or New England we figured it was finally time to put our season pass to work and head to Great Escape. I was surprised to see that the park was actually relatively crowded. There was a 20 minute line to get to the ticket booths in the parking lot but as we got closer we realized that it was because on a Fright Fest Saturday only one of the 6 available lanes was open. We did get a chance to look at the Great Escape lodge when we were in line and I think a wintertime water park trip is definitely in order... it looks awesome. Anyway we finally got into the park and once we figured out the confusing park layout full of dead ends we actually came to appreciate the charm of the place. It' a very nice little park, and it doesn't feel like a Six Flags park at all. We loved the cave to Ghost Town and the entire storybook land. It's just a shame they don't have a few more good coasters. This park will never be and should never be a major thrill park but they do need a few more coasters that don't suck and operations that aren't mind blowingly bad. The first ride we went to was the Alpine Bobsled because of it's limited operating hours (which are not really the park's fault). They were running 3 sleds but it didn't really matter because they found the most inefficient way possible to run this ride (and every other ride in the park). First of all, the back row of every sled was closed which took the capacity from 8 to 6. Then, of the 2 loading stations they were only using one. Finally... and this is the best one. They were not allowed to open the gates to START loading the train until they were already triple stacked. I'm not sure why this is, maybe they were worried about the trains bumping in the station but it was awful, and since the MAXIMUM CAPACITY of this ride is 6 people every 3 minutes or so it meant that the maximum capacity was right around 120 people per hour. Since all the seats weren't being filled it was probably closer to 100 people per hour. The line was right at the bottom of the stairs when we got there and we waited about 45 minutes. By the time we got off the ride the line was way back to the bend where it looks like they used to have some vending machines and the operator told us it was about a 3 hour wait. This blew our minds because the line wasn't really that long but when you're running the ride at less than half of it's capacity and making it (seemingly) mandatory to triple stack trains I'm not suprised. While the loading procedure was horrible the ride was a lot of fun. It's not overly thrilling but it's a unique experience. It sounds like this ride's on it's way out but I hope instead of getting scrapped it gets relocated to a park that knows how to operate it and takes some better care of it. It's easily the second best coaster in the park (though it's almost by default since it's up against a Boomerang, a Mine Train and an Arrow Loop Screw). Our next stop was Steamin Demon. The ride only has one train and to ensure that everyone has a Six Flags day they don't let anyone into the station until the train is back and completely unloaded. Once this happens they open the gate and everyone runs to whatever seat they can get and they board the train. Then they have to come by and slowly lower everyone's restraints for them. There was a good 6 or 7 minutes between dispatches but luckily it was still only a one train wait because it's a terrible ride. We heard a lot of people complaining about the ride when we got back to the station... it was really rough and had no redeeming qualities at all. Next up was Condor which was a ton of fun, and actually our favorite ride in the park besides the Comet. After Steamin Demon we needed to ride something fun. More parks need these rides!!!! Finally we got to the mine train which I thought was closed because in the 5 minutes we were in line for Condor I didn't see a single train go by... luckily it was just because it was at Great Escape which meant one train and ridiculously slow operations. The ride only had a 5 train wait but we waited for 40 minutes (we timed this on my girlfriend's phone because at this point all we could do was laugh... especially after the previous weekend we were at Knoebels where I think they could run 3 trains on Phoenix if they wanted to and still not stack them). As usual nobody was allowed to wait in the station until the ride was back and completely unloaded which made no sense since on this ride you have to decide if you want to ride forward or backward but you can't line up for it beforehand. Once the gate opened kids proceeded to plow over eachother to make sure they got to ride backwards and on our ride at least one kid ended up crying because they fell in the station running for their seat. Somehow we actually managed to ride backwards and I have to say that the ride was decent. If we were riding forwards I probably wouldn't have cared for it and it was very rough for a mine train but going backwards was a cool experience. I would have rode it more than once if it weren't for the slow operations. Next up was Boomerang which had a 30 minute wait. It was a typical boomerang, not overly rough. I'm proud to say I didn't hate it. They didn't let anyone into the station until the ride was back, unloaded and the catch car engaged the train (no, really). I'm not sure if this was a policy or if they were just that slow but never once did they let people get in line before the catch car engaged. Once everyone got in the station they still didn't open the gates for awhile, when they finally did they took forever checking the train. It was a good 7 minutes between dispatches. After that we rode Blizzard which had a huge line but it moved pretty fast (fun ride), Sasquatch (10 minute wait, standard S&S tower) and the Flyers. We were in line for the flyers for about 20 minutes and nobody managed to snap them. I couldn't snap mine but halfway through the ride I looked back because my girlfriend (who knows her way around flyers) was banging and crashing throughout the entire ride. Apparently you can snap these but you have to be really, really good. Finally after we endured all of these coasters ranging from sub-par to flat out terrible (Steamin Demon) it was time for the Comet. We were shocked to see that the ride was running 2 trains. They do have to wait for the train to clear the first brake run before dispatching it which makes no sense because the lift hill is supposed to be a block section but whatever, it didn't slow anything down. We rode the ride about 7 or 8 times at the end of the night and absolutely loved it (the station was full but it was only a 15 minute wait). Our last ride was in the front seat on the second to last train of the night. The ride kind of reminded me of Comet at Hersheypark, no real airtime but a lot of fun, fast hills that just made you laugh the whole time. Everyone had their hands up and there was a real party atmosphere on this ride (the ride ops were fast and were encouraging people to put their hands up and giving high fives to riders on the way out of the station). It's funny that it's such a long walk from the rest of the park because it really seems like the Comet is a completely separate experience from the slow operations and general crappiness of the rest of the coasters. Overall we actually had a pretty good day, but mainly due to our nighttime rides on the Comet. The park's atmosphere is really nice but the coasters and operations are terrible. I'd still say SFNE still has worse operations but only because their operators and mean to the guests and slow rather than at Great Escape where they're just slow. We probably won't be back until they get a new coaster, which at the rate they're going won't be for awhile. I think it's probably a nice park for families but they really need to get some coasters (even if they are family coasters) that don't suck besides the Comet.

No, but it happens a lot. This seems minor in comparison to what happened a few years ago.

It looks like there's some flooding in the park. Link The park and zoo are closed and the animals are being moved out of Zoo America. The park says the animals are all safe.

Not to sound like a nerd, but I love that sound. It actually reminds me of the weird sound RCT2 makes when you have racing wood coasters doing the exact same thing at the same time.