willh51

Those photos of MF and Maverick are great. I'd love to use them as my background!

I may finally get up to Kings Dominion this weekend to ride 305 (still kicking myself for not going at the beginning but that's neither here nor there). I was watching some YouTube videos of it yesterday which made me even more excited. The water sprayers on the brake run are kind of funny, but at least in the videos I saw everyone on the train came back with smiles. The point of my post was to relay a funny story. I was recently at a work function and saw a family friend who was telling me his family was going to Kings Dominion and couldn't wait to ride 305 because he'd heard it was so intense you could "black out." Long story short they loved it and were raving about it. It's kind of funny how the general public has heard about the ride's intensity. They did remark how "nobody was riding it" and that the log flume had a longer wait (it is summer so that's not too terribly out of the ordinary). I feel like a great crew may have something to do with this, but are people too intimidated to ride?

Such sad news for the industry and coaster enthusiast community. My thoughts and prayers are with the family.

Wonderful pictures! I'm glad you also love Maverick since it's kind of polarizing. It's definitely my favorite ride there and tied for my #1 with Superman/Bizarro in Mass. I might have to go back this summer since it's been two years. It looks like a few things could use paint jobs (i.e. Millie and Raptor); I guess the park's location is pretty rough on the paint though.

If Sky Rocket can come close to being as awesome as The Chiller was with lapbars in the barrel rolls I'll be ecstatic. I think I'm going to finally make it up to Kennywood this summer, and the ride looks great!

I'm definitely glad they are doing the fine-tuning now. I live about three hours south of Kings Dominion and I was all but sure the ride wouldn't open on time. Honestly, I expected June. And I'm sure you know a lot more than I do about this, Robb, but didn't Tatsu absolutely blow through the course on it's first test runs and have to have different wheels installed?

^^(to FeeltheFORCE and above that) And that's absolutely the bottom line. The ride has to run safely and reliably and be enjoyed by the majority of the park's coaster-riding guests. That's all there is to it. Where they really going through that many wheels, too? From some reports I've read, it seems like they had mechanics on hand to switch the trains and replace wheels almost every hour. I have to give it to KD too. The ride's been open consistently from what I hear, no extreme periods of downtime. They seem to really care that when people get to the park, it's open.

I assume that since (rumors and conjecture reported) it was running much faster than designed, the problem wasn't anticipated beforehand. I wanted to ride it before they slowed it down but I'll always have Robb's video. Sure it'll still be a great ride, though.

Man I knew I should've gone down last weekend! I still haven't ridden it but I hope it's not going to be one of those things where people will say for years, "Well, I rode Intimidator 305 when it was good." I doubt it'll be that drastic though. I wonder if the trims are the permanent ones or if they can be turned on and off?

Yeah....most SLCs fully stop on that brake.

That train is awesome! Hope that director of maintenance is ready for some long days ahead . Looks pretty sweet though.

I was under the impression that Holiday World had sold two of the PTCs to Darien Lake for Predator, is that correct or are those actually from a different ride? Also, I assume Voyage will eventually have three of the new trains, right? They look absolutely amazing! It is kind of crazy that no sort of grate is on the front but it'll just be like a floorless or something.

Oh not good. I'm glad no one was seriously injured!

Those are some neat pictures. I'm glad you posted them because the other day, for no apparent reason, I got to thinking about how you'd do an evacuation on that ride. I've only ever gotten evacuated from Volcano after a rollback. They came by with a little platform and I got to walk inside smurf mountain for approximately 10 seconds before being back at the station.

Kings Dominion definitely allows re-rides, as I rode Dominator about 20 times just moving around the train last spring. I've actually done it at Cedar Point on Mantis, too.

Thanks for the picture link, Matt. I thought I was going crazy because I had looked on RCDB in the last month and all those new pictures of it operating weren't on there and there was no indication that it was open. I see the date on them is 3/13 so they can't have been there for long. But anyway, glad it's open.

I'm not 100 percent sure what to make of this, but after this review of Happy Valley, the writer talks about the Stingray. It sounds like he rode it, but it's kind of hard to say. http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftrips-n-pics.com%2F%3Fid%3D8122&sl=fr&tl=en "It requires a temperature of 15 degrees and not a fart of wind or rain to work."

I don't think It is the Anti-Rollbacks but more of a problem with the Red Train interacting with the roll-backs when its not suppose to. I rode Red and Silver yesterday and couldn't understand why the Red train was sporadically interacting the roll backs. Sorry if this has been asked, but are these fairly unique anti-rollbacks? I haven't been to KD yet this season so I've not seen them yet.

So you are comparing Scream! with poop? In all seriousness if they painted it and gave it some love I think it's a perfectly good ride. I don't find it rough and it's just another B&M Floorless to me. Then again I am one who loves X2 and doesn't find it rough until the last turn. It unnecessarily and personally annoys me that a nice B&M was just dropped on a parking lot but there's nothing we can do about it. I guess it was a "sorry X and Deja Vu are always broken" band-aid, abet an expensive one. And that paint job, and Nitro's, were destined to look bad upon fading. On an unrelated-ish note, I bet it'll be a pain in the neck to pain Patriot at WOF, since it has that white stripe all along the spine.

^ I have a soft spot in my heart for them so hopefully this is more the result of a very cautious government than a real serious problem. Didn't one or more of the trains on Riddler and Batman at Magic Mountain fail inspection a few years ago during that park's roughest days? That said, I'm guessing this is more serious than a padding issue but, as has been mentioned, we'll likely never know. It'd be a shame if Vekoma had to redesign their new trains, as everything I've seen points to this being quite a nice ride.

It's kind of weird that I rode Raptor six years ago and still vividly remember it's Vekoma turn. I rode Alpie about two years ago in most rows and didn't remember any midcourse snap, however they were trimming it HARD at the top of the lift. I, too, watched the Youtube videos of Raptor and Orochi and they definitely changed that particular piece of track, the bend is unmistakably different.

I remember being taken quite off guard the first time I rode Raptor when it entered the brake run. The first row literally whips the hell out of you, I absolutely loved it. It's not noticeable in the back at all. If I could find my Cedar Point trip report I'd post the paragraph I wrote about this infamous phenomenon.

I definitely gray-out on Millennium Force's drop so this looks to be just out of control. I can't believe how fast that transition in the middle of the ride is. Does anyone know if they are going to be running two trains this weekend? All the videos I've seen have only one in operation.

I don't even know how to respond to that. Intamin demands you take their sauce and love it. I cannot wait to ride it.

I actually just included the kid's quote because it was funny, but I mainly liked the part about it being smooth. Can't wait some updates!