Jim S.

There are other parks with free admission (2 or 3 of them in Pennsylvania in fact), but if any of them are anywhere near as good as Knoebels I haven't heard of them. The campground is closer to the park than most of the parking lot is. (The picnic area is in the way.) In fact, there are campsites right outside Twister's fence. (This is only cool until they start hammering on it in the morning and you're still asleep though...) Not only can you camp at Knoebels, you can take your pets with you, in the campground and in the park. Some people have even taken their dogs on the train.

The Wipeout is open, and does attract a fair number of riders when it's running. Apparently it's broken down a few times already though, and when I was there on the 4th it was closed for a while because somebody puked on it.

The park should sue the family for having an idiot for a son. The enthusiast community should file a class action suit too for inconveniencing the park and potentially making our prices go up.

I hate vague news as much as the next person, but at this point I figure that vague news is better than no news, so... things may finally be looking up for the Flying Turns. First, a few weeks ago someone left a comment on one of my YouTube videos saying that they worked in the park and they had heard that it ought to be open in July, maybe even for the 4th. But they were skeptical because there hadn't been any activity around the ride in quite a while. Well, that got me thinking. If there was a problem to solve, as everyone has said, why wouldn't they still be testing? Could it be that they had found a solution and were just waiting for the final design to be fabricated? Then today, someone on another board said that they had been at the park yesterday and heard that they had assembled a new car. Then, they actually saw employees riding it. So take that for what it's worth, but I for one am glad that there is finally some progress going on!

OK, now I see why people are wondering why they'd take out the rapids ride for such a thing. You can go sit in a tube anywhere.

Since I don't really do water rides... what exactly is this lazy river that everybody keeps talking about?

On the subject of Gemini, how do they decide whether to use the trim brakes? We rode it on the 17th with the brakes on and it was still a great ride. Then on the 18th we got a couple of rides with the brakes off and you could practically get whiplash on that little helix right before you go back to the station. The funniest thing is, this is the only coaster I've ever seen that has a lighted sign in the station where everyone can see it to indicate the brake status. (It also seems to race much more fairly with the brakes off.) The other inconsistent thing going on that week was at Maverick. On the 17th, they were letting people pick their seats. On the 19th, they were assigning seats. (Luckily, there doesn't seem to be a bad seat on those short trains.)

What doesn't make sense about the Intamin restraints (other than why there's a seatbelt at all -- see B&M) is, if the lap bar goes down far enough, why isn't the seatbelt long enough to fit?

I don't know if this qualifies as a Stupid GP Trick or not, but it certainly is weird... Heard in line for Wicked Twister a few days ago: "The best thing to do would be to leave your body at the top, because then you could just stay there and watch your body going down."

Someone who claims to work at the park left a note on my YouTube video from the last PPP saying that he had heard that it would be open in July, maybe for the 4th. But he didn't believe it because there was no work being done on it. I do wonder though if the reason that they're no longer testing it is because they've decided on a final train design and are just waiting for it to be fabricated. It seems too much to hope for, but nothing else really makes sense.

According to their website, Wildcat was closed today. Nothing else was.

It looks like it says Stucky to me, which would be appropriate for one of them.

Leap The Dips has no restraints.

The two short pieces that look like transfer tracks are switches to let the trains roll on and off of the storage track. The storage track is going to be around the outside of the helix. Since one end is going to be higher than the other end, I don't know how that's going to work out. There must not have been enough room to put a full-length transfer track next to the station, not to mention that there are going to be three trains, whenever they get around to it.

The big deal is that Knoebels lets you bring your own food, beverages (non-alcoholic), pets, take your camera on rides, and whatnot, so to tell you you can't bring a Coke tap if you want one at your picnic is seriously incongruous. Yes, it's because they have a contract with Pepsi, but that's a very stupid thing to have in a contract, because it regulates the behavior of the public, not the park. It's not like Knoebels is setting up a Coke tap themselves. (Although I would object to even that provision in the contract if it was my business. I'm a libertarian, but I'm not the sort of libertarian who thinks that the rights of corporations should trump the rights of the public.)

That's not the most shocking thing about Knoebels relationship with Pepsi. That dis-honor goes to their picnic policy. Would you believe you're not allowed to have a tap setup with anything other than Pepsi products?

What did you think of Hydra? I was there today, and I had terrible Hydra rides! Last year, the front row vibrated a little more than I liked, and the back row wasn't too bad. This year, the front had full-on intolerable head-banging, and the back was only slightly better. I don't know if I was on the same train for each ride, but I decided not to take anymore rides to find out because I didn't want to be in pain the rest of the day. I wonder if I should have tried the middle of the train. Even with the trim brake on Thunderhawk, it still hits the final brakes dangerously hard sometimes. If you got a ride where it didn't, you were lucky. I hate to think of what it would be like without it, even though I would rather have the airtime the ride was designed to have. It should have skid brakes instead of fin brakes. Does anyone know if it originally had skid brakes, and why they were changed if so? It was interesting to see the general public's reaction to Voodoo. I think they were afraid to ride it. I've never seen as many people standing outside the queue watching a coaster as were in the queue, I've never seen such a short queue for a new ride, and I've never heard as many people screaming as loud on every train.

I was at the park all day today and I didn't see any testing going on at all. They were putting up two more bents for the storage track, but as far as I could tell no other work had been done on it since opening weekend. Speaking of the storage track, the first transfer switch is very close to the Flyers, and that's when it's in the running position. I haven't seen it in the transfer position, but I bet when it is it'll be more than a little unnerving to Flyer pilots -- at least those who like to aim for the trees. As for the Wipeout, it wasn't running yet. There was a sign saying that we should expect it by May 24th. They had all the lights lit today and I saw them running it very slowly once, but later there was a bunch of guys crawling around underneath it. If it's a portable ride, they've done a very nice job of making it look like a permanent setup with some landscape bricks built up underneath the entire perimiter of the platform. And I don't know if it's new or second-hand, but if it's second-hand they've got it cleaned up and shining like new.

It doesn't do much for me, not even in the front, because with the OTSRs you know you're not going anywhere. If you want thrill factor, try something like Nitro with no sides on the train and a weird lap restraint.

I was at Knoebels today. The parking lot was only about half full, but there were ridiculously long lines at the hand stamp office because they were having a two-for-one deal today. On the other hand, there was hardly anyone patronizing the restaurants for some reason, so they were getting orders up faster than usual. Phoenix is running about average. Twister is running fast and fairly smooth due to large amounts of track work over the winter. It was smooth enough that I took several rides in the back seat, which was ill-advised before. In the fall there was some talk that Dick Knoebel bought some old steel bridge from somewhere in the area and was going to use it to make a new road into the campground because too many RVs were having trouble getting through the covered bridge. There is a new road into the campground, but the bridge appears to be all new concrete construction, so I don't know what's going on with his alleged steel bridge. The log flume was running. Skloosh, their Shoot-the-Chutes, was not. I don't know if it was because of the cool weather or if something was wrong. (I can't remember if it was running opening weekend last year either.) Like last fall, there were about half a dozen bumper cars not running, and a few that were in use smelled hot and steered roughly. I still had a good time on them though. I also got way too wild on the flyers (I actually had to settle down a little) but nobody said anything about it.

On another board, someone said Geauga's was still for sale, so they don't know where Knoebels is getting theirs. Does anyone know where it's going to go? The only open space I can think of is between Fandango and the campground road, where they still have some lumber left over from Flying Turns stored.

Wow, that came out of nowhere. It's not even on the price list. I wonder where they're going to put it? Assuming they already have the space cleared for it (which I have no idea about), I wouldn't think it would take all season to get it installed. It almost looks like a portable ride.

WNEP-TV showed the train for a few seconds tonight as part of an announcement that the park will be opening this weekend. There seemed to be a lot of work going on around it involving grinding off bolts etc. They said that they hoped to have it open sometime this summer, which wasn't anymore specific than what we already knew. They also said that there is a new feature in the Haunted House.

I thought the power line was supposed to have been put in last year.

The press release says each tub seats two people, but with this being the Larson model that just isn't going to happen for a lot of people, especially considering the seatbelt. The antique version that you can still find at (surprise, surprise) Knoebels is roomier, and has looser restraints (if you can call them that). Granted, it's more fun to fly than just ride anyway, but I'm just pointing out the oversight in their press release.